Sub-fleets, usage and practices?

[vorpal+5 (OP)]

How do you use them? I'm using them in a very limited way in fact. As they are virtual fleets and not real fleets within a fleet, I don't find them very useful. I noticed that by grouping my fighters squadrons within the same big blog, I remove their display from the tactical display, which is logical as they are part of the same fleet now. But the flip face of the coin (quite logically too) is that what were separate fighter squadrons are now becoming one huge list I have to browse semi-painfully when checking fleets content and statuses.

So that's it? This is only a mean to organize things? Any other good tip and usage from players?

[Droll]

Carrier wings - especially for large carriers.

I had a carrier design with 60 bombers and organized them into 3 sub-fleets of 20. This means that I can choose to easily launch 1/3 of the bombers if I think I won't need all.

In the carrier context its also helpful because sub-fleets can be made to keep their names through launches thanks to the "dock at mothership as sub-fleet" command.
Sub-fleets also remember their formation commands assigned to them when detached - very useful for scout fighters as you can have them automatically fan out after detaching them.

Otherwise only really useful on large battlegroups you've got travelling together to let you quickly detach pre-defined groups, like detaching your beam ships from the missile group etc.

[nuclearslurpee]

For me a major use of sub-fleets is that they can be detached as a unit just like individual ships, making an easy way to launch a fighter squadron, separate a cruiser squadron to pursue a fleeing enemy, peel escorts off of a convoy, etc. Note that ships can (re)join a fleet as a sub-fleet with that specific order, which is unfortunately necessary as dragging in the Fleet window will not join one fleet to another as a subfleet.

Even a single-ship subfleet is convenient if you want to have a fleet name besides the ship's name when you detach it. This is a helpful organizational tool.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I use them allot as I think it make sense both from an organizational perspective and a practical one.

If I have say a carrier battlegroup then the Battlegroup in and of itself only have the actual carrier in it (usually a sub-fleet in and of itself). I then have the Carrier Air-wing as a sub fleet which in turn are divided into fighter squadrons or strike groups and scout sections as appropriate in addition to sub-fleets categorized by fighter type. The fighter type sub-fleet is only for organizational purposes. For example each carrier group might then be assigned a color. So a fighter strike group may then be called SG-Green-1, SG-Green-2 and on another carrier SG-Red-1 and so forth. It is quite easy to just drag and drop what fighters you want to launch into a specific group when necessary. So I can have a few pre-made sub fleets called SG-Green-1, SG-Green-2, SC-Green-1, SC-Green-2 etc... where SG stand for Strike-Group and SC for Scout. Then I also know which group belong to a specific carrier group on a glance.

I then have each escort/scout class in their own section based on role and under them I organize the various ships and under them scouting and/or strike elements joined to the escort.

Any ship or formation you expect to eventually or at some point disconnect you should have in their own sub fleet. I'm not alien to having every capital ship in their own sub-fleet at times. I would just have the sub-fleet be the same name as the ship with some abbreviation of their role as well.

But I'm a sucker for meticulous organization of stuff so that is probably overdoing it at times...

But then again... using the sub-fleet system as a way to simply organize your fleets visually is very useful for your sanity, especially when a fleet can become quite big eventually.

[Squigles]

I use them often times to condense the number of orders I need to issue.  As an example, I usually group 5 of my freighters together as a fleet, and that's the standard unit that I use for freight purposes. 

Whenever I know I'm about to move an absolute mess of things and will want more than 5 freighters, I send multiple groups of freighters to the pick up location.  Once they're all there, instead of going through and issuing orders for pick up < route to target < drop off, plus whatever other commands are needed for each and every group of freighters, I simply issue a single command to each to join one of them as a sub-fleet.

At that point it's a simple matter of issuing the orders to the top-level fleet to have all the fleets do the job.  Once it's finished you can quickly detach the sub-fleets and everything is back to the way it was with no need to fix organizational issues.

[nuclearslurpee]

It's worth noting that you can click and drag subfleets between fleets at the same location in the Naval organization window, which is a very nice organizational tool, e.g. you can move a DESRON or CRURON from one fleet to another effortlessly instead of dragging individual ships.

There are also a few fire control options in the Ship Combat window that operate on a subfleet (and one or two that are labeled "Fleet" but operate on a subfleet, which is annoying). So there is a small practical benefit as well for finer-grained fire control.

[Borealis4x]

I haven't done this, but I think a good use of the sub-fleet mechanic is to quickly attached and unattached support vessels like tankers, colliers, jump-tenders, and repair ships. Unless its urgent, I'd want these ships to fly along with my fleet so I don't have to worry about their range so much when re-basing.

One thing I wish the game did tho was to recognize an actual hierarchy between sub-fleets and their mother fleet and have a chain of command extend down to their. I also wish you could keep these fleets chained even when separated, so the Admiral in charge of the main Carrier group is also the superior of the Vice-Admirals detached Beam Ship wolfpack and the Commodore's Fleet Support Group. Make it so the effect only works if these groups are all in the same system.