Sins Forums
How do you break down your fleet into diffrent fleets? Do you put all your units into one fleet so they stay in formation? Do you put them into fleets by ship type? Or do you put them into fleets of 10 ships of a specific shiptype so it's easier to micro? I am curious what's the best way to organize your fleet.
Personally, I micromanage only when I'm using a fleet and relegate it to the 8-0 numbers otherwise. It gets rather difficult in places, especially if I have more than two fronts open at a time or am operating in several star systems at once, but on a small scale it's very effective.
Edit: I just realised that the best way to get around this is by designing a keyboard with multiple rows of number keys... I'll make millions!
I make one or two major fleets, and hotkey the different ship types in each fleet. Here's a typical list of hotkeys for when I only have a single major fleet, and the rest are defense/siege/colonization fleets. I'm using TEC names just for simplicity's sake.
Hotkeys:
1: Entire attack fleet (for rapid transit)
2: Capital ship(s) (if any)
3: Heavy cruisers
4: LRM frigates
5: Light frigates
6: Flak frigates
7: Robotics cruisers
8: Command cruisers/Defense Fleet Alpha (depending on # of border worlds)
9: Strike craft/Defense Fleet Beta (depending on # of border worlds)
0: Colony frigates
It's probably not the best way of doing it, but so far it works decently for me.
I usually don't bother with subfleets; the only times I've ever wished I could control fleet components individually was with the carrier cruisers. (And with Entrenchment, the scouts). Since you can ALT-click to select all ships of a given type, there's not as much need to separate out ship types into subfleets.
That being said, I tend to structure my fleets in complementary ways anyway. For instance, here are the hotkeyed fleets on a large, late-game Vasari:
1> The Offense Fleet: three Desolators, one Marauder, a bunch of transporters (20+) loaded entirely with bombers, and LRM frigates if I use them. Also a couple scouts that accompany the capships instead of going off to sweep.
2-5> The four Defense Fleets: one battleship, one carrier (fighters only), one space egg, a good number (10-20) of heavy cruisers, some flak frigates, a handful (5-10) of transporters loaded mostly with fighters, and a few specialty ships (Overseer, Subverter). These spend their time covering all the front-line systems by way of phase stabilizers, and at least two will ALWAYS be sitting in a system containing an active phase stabilizer.
6-7> Minesweeper subfleets: a half-dozen scouts paired with a half-dozen flak frigates. These not only are useful for minesweeping, they also serve well as "backstop" fleets (when you attack an enemy and he slips a few siege frigates past to hit the recently-vacated planet, this sort of subfleet will defend) so that you don't have to wait for the static defenses to complete before advancing.
8-9> Minelayers, kept in a back-line system untill they're needed.
0> "Battle Fleet", see below.
Usually I don't bother hotkeying colony ships, as phase gates allow me to keep them stockpiled in my home system and send out as needed.
When I'm ready to attack someone I'll group my Offense Fleet, #1, with one of the four Defense Fleets (whichever is closest, least damaged, or most in need of XP), and often one of the minesweeper fleets; this group gets put on hotkey 0. So I'm not attacking with just #1, it's 1, 2, and 6 at the same time, each of which can be maneuvered separately; the combined force is 7 capships of all five types with full support, more than enough for most fights. Then, after the battle is over, I might leave #2 to defend the new system until its stabilizer is complete, send #6 back for repairs, and link 1 up with 3 and 7 to be the new Battle Fleet (redefine hotkey 0) for the next attack. If the new enemy doesn't use heavy mines, I won't even bother with 7, and just pair 1 with 3 alone. And for a REALLY heavy bottleneck fight, I might link two Defense Fleets together... it's flexible.
You just hold ctrl+[number] while having the necessary unit/building/planet selected. Clicking the relevant number again will select it, double-click will zoom you straight to it. It's the most basic rts trick in the books.
my structure is I'll have three fleets working together, two combat, and one only carrier cruisers. when ships join, they automatically join the right fleets (which is cool).
1= total strike force
2= combat fleets
3= combat fleet 1 A
4= Combat fleet B
5= carriers
9= Kostura cannons (tab, fire, tab, fire, tab, fire, etc. its awesome when you time it right)
I tend to hotkey fleets rather than individual unit types.
1: the whole fleet (this gets updated only when i need them all in one fleet unit)
then the other buttons are reserved for other fleets if I have to divide them up though I try and keep it to no more than three fleets at most so thats buttons 2, 3 and 4
the rest is done on the fly, like sometimes i'll put the fleets flak frigates into a group if theres a lot of strike craft and I need to micromanage
Does simply hotkeying the group of ships make it an official fleet?
There is actually a supported 'fleet' mechanic in the game, isn't there? You click that 'create fleet' button in the tactics menu (usually for my cap ship), and it gets a little icon. Also, if I DO happen to have the cap ship assigned to a number as well and I make a 'fleet' out of it, then set my frigate factories to rally to that same capital ship, the rallying ships join both the official 'fleet' as well as my hotkeyed number on their own; I don't have to add them manually. But this only happens if the cap ship is an official in-game 'fleet' and not just a hotkeyed number. Also, it doesn't always work properly...
Also, I have heard as well that the actual official 'fleets' have better unit support, targeting and autocast AI. Is this true?
no, hotkeying fleets doesn't make them official fleets.
yes, there is a supported fleet mechanic in the game. generally (pretty much always) ships will not join the hotkeyed group, but they will join Sins fleets
official fleets seem to take fewer losses, and take down enemy fleets faster. this may just be my imagination, or actually working better.
not your imagine. fleets have hugely improved focus firing behavior. auto-cast abilities on support ships are also used more intelligently in fleets, particular buff and repair type abilities. fleets also at least vaguely attempt to stay in formation so they have been weapons/ability range overlap. this is a particularly big deal when it comes to Aura type abilities or other area based buffs (like the Iconus Guardians shield sphere).
and for those of you looking to improve your micro by a small amount, SHIFT+F is the keyboard shortcut that forms a fleet out of a group of selected ships.
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