Flak Frigate behavior

from Sins Forums
I'm still somewhat of a new player, but I have a suggestion that would relieve a lot of frustration. I include at least a few flak frigates in all of my fleets. The problem is that I usually end up wanting to court-martial whatever inept trained monkey the devs have hired to captain the things. :) I put them in my fleets for a purely defensive role, but when I try to get the fleet to focus-fire, they always run out in front of the heavy cruisers and cap ships and get toasted. I can get around this, sort of, by splitting fleets into separate control groups, but that seems to defeat the purpose of fleets in the first place.

It would be great to have an option on the tactics menu that sets them as 'defense only,' which would cause them to ignore any direct attack orders from the player. That way they'd just follow the fleet around and attack targets of opportunity. (which would usually end up being squadrons or fast frigates that manage to get into the middle of the fleet) Carrier cruisers might benefit, as well, but they seem to do a much better job of staying out of trouble.
18,514 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Make more than one fleet or simply have flak as a ctrl group outside the fleet.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
i think it works fine..

alt+click a flak, put them in another group.


What I do is:
group 6 = everything.
group 1 = main offense
group 2 = support1
group 3 = support2
group 4 = flak


Seems to work as intended to me.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
i've got to agree, flak ships default should be something other then running in front of all of your other ships. i like the defense only idea, would work for other support ships also.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Set their move orders so that they won't chase things.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
do you have to reset the control group if you add more of the same ships to your fleet or will they automatically fall under the group?
For example you have 10 flak under group 4 and 2 more flak join the fleet do they also show up under group 4 or do you have to reset it again?
does that make sense? lol

also how do you set this contrl group up?
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
You have to re-create the group, only fleets automatically update. You set it up by alt+clicking a ship to select all ships of that type, and then hitting Ctrl+# ;)
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I have had a slightly different problem. It seems they don't like to stay WITH the fleet even when not engaged.

I will get a screen when I can, but when I moved to a planet to invade with a few flak frigates in there, and had a tight coordination setting for my fleet, all the flaks just flew to the phase lines at the edge of the gravity wells...

And stayed there, no matter what happened. So in short, they were utterly useless, and I have yet to field them again.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
sentinels or no?
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
i think it works fine..alt+click a flak, put them in another group.What I do is:group 6 = everything.group 1 = main offensegroup 2 = support1group 3 = support2group 4 = flakSeems to work as intended to me.
End of quote


Yeah, that works for one fleet, and maybe even two fleets, but what about three or more (for those big maps)? My numeric keys don't go that high.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
I'm wondering if what I'm doing is working. Basically, I have my capital ships (progenitor and radiance for obvious reasons :p) hot keyed to 1 and 2, then my support cruisers hot keyed to 3. Outside of that, I have all my combat craft (illums, crusaders, disciples for AM), not hot keyed. I have all of these in a fleet together, using the fleet to move/target and the hot keys to micro abilities. I find that as a fleet, the formation/movement for these works well enough.

That's not the issue here though. I have my flak grouped as another fleet, set engagement range for hold, then tell them to follow my radiance. This tends to put them in the same layer as the disciples (behind radiance/HCs, in front of illums/guardians) when everything moves, and they stay put.

Now, what I'm unsure about is the flaks effectiveness here. They're central enough to cover the entire group (unless the radiance gets bomber spammed), and they maintain that position, but I wonder if having them set to follow compromises their firepower at all. I remember reading somewhere that when a ship moves, its DPS is reduced (accuracy), so is having them on follow orders like having them constantly moving (I find most RTS' act like this if you give follow orders... they ignore targets more often than not), or is the follow order more like a guard order, where they move to position next to the guarded target and then hold and fire at full effectiveness?

I guess the individual grouping is not really that important, but that the flak is fleeted separately, and on follow orders on a central unit.