I hope they add an option for selecting what right click does when you have fleet or ships selected and click on enemy. Right now it is the "prepare and attack" and sometimes my ships jump from the fight to refuel in the middle of a firefight with nearly full tanks.
Is that fucking why my fleet was doing that yesterday? Was fighting creatures around a star with 2 fleets. 1 small defensive local fleet with my main fleet and everytime I click on the new enemy to attack they'd jump away to refuel with 3/4 fuel
The retreat never on fleet is pretty clear honestly. The fleet will always keep the order to attack so your ships will flee then come back (say they retreat at 20% shield and come back once shield recharged). When your fleet retreat, the fleet loses the order to attack/invade. For the attack stance on fleet I have no idea. Great video :)
Thanks a lot for your video Tutorial. That explains a lot of weird behaviour that I experience with fleet managment. I hope that the developers will add more features or change this in future updates. Right now, for those of us that like to manage manually the fleets, the option are very limited. I like to create diferent ship designs with the same hull for diferent roles and with this tactic settings seems to be imposible to create fleets with several multirole Ships
As a newbie to this game I highly appreciate this video series. It is indispensable (as is your guide) to my enjoyment of the game. If you had a Patreon page, I'd join! If I may, I have a fleet question: On the galactic screen, when I select one of the fleets (at the bottom of the screen) I see it highlighted on the map surrounded by several dashed lined circles (some fleets have 2 and other have just 1). What do these circles indicate? I've looked everywhere for an explanation but cannot find it. (which usually means that it right in front of me :)) Many thanks and please do more videos.
Really appreciate all the work you put into your tutorial videos. Thank You. Will you be putting out any new content when the next expansion is released?
I use the override of the engagement range to split defense fleets. I leave battleships and the like on same system and then set the fleet to sector. That way the fleet isn't waiting for the battleship to spool up and will arrive in the target system faster while still having the local protection of a bigger ship.
@@scottsspace5562 From what I've seen yeah. The battleships will just hang out while the faster ships respond. Things might have changed with the recent changed to fleet mechanics though.
Re 'retreat', if enemy strength is greater, the AI appears to adopt the more prudent settings ie individual ship settings, giving greater priority to retreat. It would be interesting to see if this policy is adopted for an enemy of lesser strength (lesser than the ship that is retreating).
Could we get a video on how to setup proper anti pirate coverage across your empire I’ve gone to just tossing up 4~ fleets and put there homes in the cardinal directions of the empire and have them auto defend and attack and it feels about the same and doesn’t feel like it works well
I would imagine that the fuel percentage would be for for the missions to restrict just how far out the fleets will travel to engage the hostiles. Just a guess on that one as I had a fleet rather deep on my territory that didn't seem to see any action outside of my borders once they were clear of hostiles.
Another nice video, very helpful. Thank you. I think i lost concentration a bit at some point though :D Not sure whether fleet or ship 'Attack Stance' has priority? If an individual ship's tactic is cautious, but the fleet's tactics are aggressive, what distance will the ship try to maintain? I got the part about the 'most restrictive' rule for Engagement Range, but not sure if that rule also applies to Attack Stance, and if it does, what is classed as the most restrictive? Cautious? Apologies if it is in the video, but I watched it multiple times and searched through for this info. but I can't find it.
Very useful. Thanks! This is a great series. I haven't been playing the game much, because it crashes so often. But if they ever get that fixed, I'll definitely be using this info. PS. You said you put your frigates as picket ships in the fleet, because they had a lot of PD. You wanted to use them as missile/fighter defense for the rest of the fleet. But didn't you say, earlier, that PD on ships will only attack the missiles/torpedoes which are aimed at _them?_ That they won't attack missiles aimed at other ships? Now, maybe missiles will always attack the closest ship, so these will be the ships targets by them, anyway? Indeed, that might be why you'd want them on picket duty, so they _would_ be targeted first. If they were closer together, then the AI might target the bigger ships? But it seemed to me that, if that's how PD actually works, you'd probably want a small amount of PD on _every_ ship, rather than specializing. Because - again, if that's actually how it works - you'd hate to have the enemy target your carriers, only to have your PD ships doing nothing, because the missiles weren't aimed specifically at _them._
I never said that actually - a viewer did. And I don’t think it’s true anyway. But regardless - yes they will target the closest threat so the picket idea will work either way.
I get the fleet systems and ship tactics and how they combine to make dozens of different variables. What i cant figure out is why the automation wont make my twenty fleets of max level troop ships attack different targets. I end up with 17 out of 20 fleets of troop ships attacking the same target and the only reason the other 3 havent gone there is because they are refueling or refiting... some 1M plus troops ... a giant waste of effort and fuel when the enemy has 50 basicly unguarded systems and i have the ships and troops to take 20 systems simultaniously.
Hello, in the template for attack fleets, fuel tankers are suggested in the fleet. Which fleet tactics or ship tactics of the tanker do I have to set to ensure correct functioning. applies to automatic and attack points etc.
I think the out of system engagement range is related to the current threat list(shift+f12). If the fleet is set to auto, it will look up into the list and engage accordingly(strength/fleet mode/range etc,). Great vid btw, the military section in the policy settings is another important part when trying to figure out ships behavior.
From my observation, I think the fleet is just another layer above the ship layer. That is, like ship has its components, fleet has ships. When fleet engage each other, the aggressive stance influence the jump insertion distance towards the enemy fleet, during the engagement fleet also evaluate strength difference and decide whether to retreat based on the retreat setting. This all happens on the fleet layer thus individual ship retreat condition is not affected.
If you have a ship in a fleet who is set to do not engage, will It travel with the fleet? Could it be used for say Fuel Tankers or pure picket ships so they are focused on non attack missions?
@@scottsspace5562 Thanks. I imagine that is the idea behind it (Obviously could be better explained) but that way if you have a picket ship with no true offensive capabilities for some reason it would focus on PD defense and not get drawn into a battle.
Its useful if you micro everything but on large scale maps is unplayable. Tried to do all this, now my fleets form huge circles aroun a flagship and if left to automatic they are always stranded through 3-4 systems at a time refueling refitting and chasing solo enemy ships instead of enemy fleets. Im literally sitting with 8+ way superior fleets within my borders unable to catch a single enemy fleet, whilst ai randomly rakes colonies and kills bases.my main invasion fleet is chasing random ai frigates. So far the automation is broken, rendering late gameplay unplayable unless you manual everything.
Yup - I never play on large scale maps for that reason. But your point is valid even on other maps w. regards to the fact that they can never seem to catch/intercept enemy fleets in time.
but isn´t it sometimes "good" to loose the ships? they get more damage out and when they die they stimulate the economy. it´s just hat you have to pay for the building but they are also newest tech then. if the fights are somewhat even isn´t it more important to win the encounter? when they flee, they get to the nearest spaceport to repair and refuel, wouldn´t it be even faster to get new ships as reinforcements in? i really don´t know.
You're referring to losing freighters and constructors to stimulate the economy. Losing combat ships does nothing for you. You can retrofit old ships to the newest tech (and some techs - like version numbers - auto update). Not sure what you mean about even fights - yes it is good usually to have your ships retreat rather than fight to the death.
@@scottsspace5562 i mean the strategic ressources and shipping you use up. That should stimulate private economy at least a bit. If you fight 200% or 150% fights yeah then its always good to run but for those 100% fights i had better experience with lower fleeing treshhold. Getting new ships into battle is almost always faster then refuel and repair with fleets near spaceports.
Honestly, it's a lot. Given that I accept your advice and analysis, or that any new player might be well advised to, I reckon you could summarise it in a 5 minute video that just says "Do this, don't do this, ..." to manage your ships and fleets.
Funny - I just wrote a response to another viewer who wanted more than 1 test for each point in another video. Anyway - it is what it is. Thanks for watching.
Every time i try to understand this game, i get angry. The times of throwing such "magic stupid decision" from the devs with missleading wording, without any explanation should be over now. This game is made by some nerds, who seems to me, don´t give a sh....about the gamers.To handle a fleet with different tasks for the same ship hull type is a must - since years. But no, the dev or devs don´t care. 50%, 30% fuel range, sector range...without a visual circle to inform the player how to set up his fleets is a disgrace. The hidden mechanics leads to frustration, too. What the hell, did they think by creating this?????? This game is a mess. An early access title, nothing more. Qol, wording, mechanics and the soundtrack is terrible, immersion breaking and absolutly out of time. ...............and still i am playing it...because it could be such a gem.....sigh..... Thanks for your videos, they are helping very much. Please take your time to go into details. I am looking forward to the following content by you.
I feel your frustration. However, at least I feel confident that the developer/publisher will make it right. They have just about finished fixing the performance/crashes. Fleets are next.
@@scottsspace5562 Thank you for your kind answer. I would be so happy, if the devs really iron out all those little things, wich bring confusion. I hope so deeply, that this could be possible. - I love this game so much! :) Thanks again, and sorry for my clunky english.
Scott's ship and fleet tactics
Excellent. Should be pinned in the steam forums. Also, the system is needlessly complicated. It could definitely be simplified.
Glad it helped!
I am finding these videos more interesting than the game at the moment, so please continue :P
Thanks!
You are by far our favorite Distant Worlds nerd, Sir.
Thanks!
These videos are most appreciated. They make me want go back into game with new found knowldedge.
So glad it helped!
New patch cleans up and fixes a lot of the issues you pointed out, thanks in part to your analysis and reporting I'm sure. We all appreciate it.
Thanks!! Yes - I’m going to release a new fleets video soon that will update this and finally discuss auto fleets now that they work correctly
I hope they add an option for selecting what right click does when you have fleet or ships selected and click on enemy. Right now it is the "prepare and attack" and sometimes my ships jump from the fight to refuel in the middle of a firefight with nearly full tanks.
Is that fucking why my fleet was doing that yesterday? Was fighting creatures around a star with 2 fleets. 1 small defensive local fleet with my main fleet and everytime I click on the new enemy to attack they'd jump away to refuel with 3/4 fuel
The retreat never on fleet is pretty clear honestly. The fleet will always keep the order to attack so your ships will flee then come back (say they retreat at 20% shield and come back once shield recharged). When your fleet retreat, the fleet loses the order to attack/invade. For the attack stance on fleet I have no idea.
Great video :)
This one was a big help. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the next one on auto fleets.
Glad to hear it!
Thanks a lot for your video Tutorial. That explains a lot of weird behaviour that I experience with fleet managment. I hope that the developers will add more features or change this in future updates. Right now, for those of us that like to manage manually the fleets, the option are very limited.
I like to create diferent ship designs with the same hull for diferent roles and with this tactic settings seems to be imposible to create fleets with several multirole Ships
Glad it helped!
As a newbie to this game I highly appreciate this video series. It is indispensable (as is your guide) to my enjoyment of the game. If you had a Patreon page, I'd join!
If I may, I have a fleet question: On the galactic screen, when I select one of the fleets (at the bottom of the screen) I see it highlighted on the map surrounded by several dashed lined circles (some fleets have 2 and other have just 1). What do these circles indicate? I've looked everywhere for an explanation but cannot find it. (which usually means that it right in front of me :))
Many thanks and please do more videos.
So glad it helped! Not sure what that is - next time I play I'll try to check it out. It's probably so automatic in my head I don't think about it.
Really appreciate all the work you put into your tutorial videos. Thank You. Will you be putting out any new content when the next expansion is released?
Lots of nice information!
I use the override of the engagement range to split defense fleets. I leave battleships and the like on same system and then set the fleet to sector. That way the fleet isn't waiting for the battleship to spool up and will arrive in the target system faster while still having the local protection of a bigger ship.
I like it. Interesting idea. And the other ships don't wait for the battleships? They know they aren't coming I guess?
@@scottsspace5562 From what I've seen yeah. The battleships will just hang out while the faster ships respond. Things might have changed with the recent changed to fleet mechanics though.
Re 'retreat', if enemy strength is greater, the AI appears to adopt the more prudent settings ie individual ship settings, giving greater priority to retreat. It would be interesting to see if this policy is adopted for an enemy of lesser strength (lesser than the ship that is retreating).
excellent
Thanks this helps alot.
I liked it before I watched it ... I have enjoyed all the others ,,, :)
Could we get a video on how to setup proper anti pirate coverage across your empire I’ve gone to just tossing up 4~ fleets and put there homes in the cardinal directions of the empire and have them auto defend and attack and it feels about the same and doesn’t feel like it works well
Sure! Will add it to the list. Thanks for watching.
The more of DW2 I play, the more I feel is missing...
I would imagine that the fuel percentage would be for for the missions to restrict just how far out the fleets will travel to engage the hostiles. Just a guess on that one as I had a fleet rather deep on my territory that didn't seem to see any action outside of my borders once they were clear of hostiles.
Another nice video, very helpful. Thank you. I think i lost concentration a bit at some point though :D Not sure whether fleet or ship 'Attack Stance' has priority? If an individual ship's tactic is cautious, but the fleet's tactics are aggressive, what distance will the ship try to maintain? I got the part about the 'most restrictive' rule for Engagement Range, but not sure if that rule also applies to Attack Stance, and if it does, what is classed as the most restrictive? Cautious? Apologies if it is in the video, but I watched it multiple times and searched through for this info. but I can't find it.
Nah - that Attack Stance is unclear and I didn't cover it in the video (except for ships by themselves). Next video on Auto Fleets will cover it.
Very useful. Thanks! This is a great series. I haven't been playing the game much, because it crashes so often. But if they ever get that fixed, I'll definitely be using this info.
PS. You said you put your frigates as picket ships in the fleet, because they had a lot of PD. You wanted to use them as missile/fighter defense for the rest of the fleet. But didn't you say, earlier, that PD on ships will only attack the missiles/torpedoes which are aimed at _them?_ That they won't attack missiles aimed at other ships?
Now, maybe missiles will always attack the closest ship, so these will be the ships targets by them, anyway? Indeed, that might be why you'd want them on picket duty, so they _would_ be targeted first. If they were closer together, then the AI might target the bigger ships?
But it seemed to me that, if that's how PD actually works, you'd probably want a small amount of PD on _every_ ship, rather than specializing. Because - again, if that's actually how it works - you'd hate to have the enemy target your carriers, only to have your PD ships doing nothing, because the missiles weren't aimed specifically at _them._
I never said that actually - a viewer did. And I don’t think it’s true anyway. But regardless - yes they will target the closest threat so the picket idea will work either way.
@@scottsspace5562
_I never said that actually - a viewer did._
Oops! My mistake. But thanks for the reply!
I get the fleet systems and ship tactics and how they combine to make dozens of different variables. What i cant figure out is why the automation wont make my twenty fleets of max level troop ships attack different targets. I end up with 17 out of 20 fleets of troop ships attacking the same target and the only reason the other 3 havent gone there is because they are refueling or refiting... some 1M plus troops ... a giant waste of effort and fuel when the enemy has 50 basicly unguarded systems and i have the ships and troops to take 20 systems simultaniously.
Hopefully they will improve soon.
Hello, in the template for attack fleets, fuel tankers are suggested in the fleet.
Which fleet tactics or ship tactics of the tanker do I have to set to ensure correct functioning. applies to automatic and attack points etc.
Just set them to AUTO and the default settings and they seem to work fine
I think the out of system engagement range is related to the current threat list(shift+f12). If the fleet is set to auto, it will look up into the list and engage accordingly(strength/fleet mode/range etc,).
Great vid btw, the military section in the policy settings is another important part when trying to figure out ships behavior.
From my observation, I think the fleet is just another layer above the ship layer. That is, like ship has its components, fleet has ships. When fleet engage each other, the aggressive stance influence the jump insertion distance towards the enemy fleet, during the engagement fleet also evaluate strength difference and decide whether to retreat based on the retreat setting. This all happens on the fleet layer thus individual ship retreat condition is not affected.
I'll check that out. Sounds reasonable.
@@scottsspace5562I hope you are right because the fleet/ships management layer is, in my opinion, where the real fun of the game is located.
For the purpose of raiding fleets. Ok entercaps duty. When boarding other ships or bases, is crew size or troop size important?
Marine barracks are important for boarding. I haven't used it much (except when I get ships from Pirates).
If you have a ship in a fleet who is set to do not engage, will It travel with the fleet? Could it be used for say Fuel Tankers or pure picket ships so they are focused on non attack missions?
It will travel with the fleet - it just won't engage enemies even if they attack that ship directly (it will fire PD defenses)
@@scottsspace5562 Thanks. I imagine that is the idea behind it (Obviously could be better explained) but that way if you have a picket ship with no true offensive capabilities for some reason it would focus on PD defense and not get drawn into a battle.
Its useful if you micro everything but on large scale maps is unplayable. Tried to do all this, now my fleets form huge circles aroun a flagship and if left to automatic they are always stranded through 3-4 systems at a time refueling refitting and chasing solo enemy ships instead of enemy fleets. Im literally sitting with 8+ way superior fleets within my borders unable to catch a single enemy fleet, whilst ai randomly rakes colonies and kills bases.my main invasion fleet is chasing random ai frigates. So far the automation is broken, rendering late gameplay unplayable unless you manual everything.
Yup - I never play on large scale maps for that reason. But your point is valid even on other maps w. regards to the fact that they can never seem to catch/intercept enemy fleets in time.
Pretty sure they were thinking “battle line” when they wrote “attack”
but isn´t it sometimes "good" to loose the ships? they get more damage out and when they die they stimulate the economy. it´s just hat you have to pay for the building but they are also newest tech then. if the fights are somewhat even isn´t it more important to win the encounter? when they flee, they get to the nearest spaceport to repair and refuel, wouldn´t it be even faster to get new ships as reinforcements in? i really don´t know.
You're referring to losing freighters and constructors to stimulate the economy. Losing combat ships does nothing for you. You can retrofit old ships to the newest tech (and some techs - like version numbers - auto update). Not sure what you mean about even fights - yes it is good usually to have your ships retreat rather than fight to the death.
@@scottsspace5562 i mean the strategic ressources and shipping you use up. That should stimulate private economy at least a bit. If you fight 200% or 150% fights yeah then its always good to run but for those 100% fights i had better experience with lower fleeing treshhold. Getting new ships into battle is almost always faster then refuel and repair with fleets near spaceports.
Not sure that makes a difference - but I could be wrong.
Have the problems with fleet retreat settings been patched out yet
Yes they have. I hope to make a new video about this.
It should go line picket screen
I like line. I might prefer Line - Escort - Screen. But anything is better than "attack". Ugh
Honestly, it's a lot. Given that I accept your advice and analysis, or that any new player might be well advised to, I reckon you could summarise it in a 5 minute video that just says "Do this, don't do this, ..." to manage your ships and fleets.
Funny - I just wrote a response to another viewer who wanted more than 1 test for each point in another video. Anyway - it is what it is. Thanks for watching.
Every time i try to understand this game, i get angry. The times of throwing such "magic stupid decision" from the devs with missleading wording, without any explanation should be over now. This game is made by some nerds, who seems to me, don´t give a sh....about the gamers.To handle a fleet with different tasks for the same ship hull type is a must - since years. But no, the dev or devs don´t care. 50%, 30% fuel range, sector range...without a visual circle to inform the player how to set up his fleets is a disgrace. The hidden mechanics leads to frustration, too. What the hell, did they think by creating this?????? This game is a mess. An early access title, nothing more. Qol, wording, mechanics and the soundtrack is terrible, immersion breaking and absolutly out of time. ...............and still i am playing it...because it could be such a gem.....sigh..... Thanks for your videos, they are helping very much. Please take your time to go into details. I am looking forward to the following content by you.
I feel your frustration. However, at least I feel confident that the developer/publisher will make it right. They have just about finished fixing the performance/crashes. Fleets are next.
@@scottsspace5562 Thank you for your kind answer. I would be so happy, if the devs really iron out all those little things, wich bring confusion. I hope so deeply, that this could be possible. - I love this game so much! :) Thanks again, and sorry for my clunky english.
Video is 46 minutes long because you repeat things over and over again while explaining... just saying.. painful
It's free. And most videos have chapters. But thanks for watching!