In-Depth Fleet Commands Explained - Q&A X4: Foundations

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[@draeath]

I really wish there was a "defend fleet" order. "Defend commander" is almost universally useless.

[@hi13760]

I think what we are all wanting to see is: How to fleet attack a station without the ships derping out and getting close and getting blown to bits.

[@egoaut]

With a new start (5.0) it works fine, but never use Rattlesnakes. To prevent clumping of your ships and to destroy stations faster, i would recommend to surround your ships ~20km around and then attack (IS)

[@DreadX10]

For now my best results where with: Setting waypoint well above/below the target-station (every ship has line-of-sight with every module (at least on Xenon stations)). Use 'coordinated attack' with fleet in 'attack with' -mode. Set slider to 0 aggressiveness and without the 'weak first' option (might sometimes make them go towards a def-drone and forget there is a station there too....) Not full-proof because ships do cross each other's bow (very close too) and cause odd behaviour in response.

[@josephanthony1277]

KUDA AI tweaks mod

[@kerravon4159]

Lots and lots of micromanagement is the only thing I've found that actually works. If you leave them to their own devices they pile up like lemmings, get too close and get annihilated.

[@leonidnikityuk9460]

interception also takes into account the range of the commander's radar, subordinates will only attack ships that are within the range of the commander's radar

[@CaptainCollins]

Everyday I learn a little bit more because you share your knowledge :)

[@SlyNine]

Medium and small ships

[@reggie368]

I finally learn about the Mimic command... I was so confused about that one. Thanks Cap ! :D

[@NightWoLFGames]

I think the defense system could look like this: you choose what kind of ships they can attack, because many times we have to worry about ships only going to attack L ships and self-destructing, that is, the system doesn't work very well if you don't have an eye on it all the time, or also put an attack distance radius to only attack ships that get too close to the commander ship!

[@DC-wq6hx]

By answering those questions you helped me out lol. Intercept was the command I needed all this time.

[@deanfernandez7586]

thank you that was very helpful - i learn so much from your explanations

[@KaijuAKD]

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

[@dusk1947]

This guide was extremely helpful. Apparently I did not correctly understand the mimic nor the intercept commands. Great information, thank you

[@CaptainCollins]

Thank you for watching and letting me know! :)

[@timBenedetto]

Super helpful video for newbie like me, good work!

[@hempressellilinethehemperi7767]

Good video Captain, Thanks . I need to get back into x4. I am not sure if I want to wait for the next dlc or come back sooner.

[@diode86]

Thank you!

[@Jenny-eg3uh]

Thanks so much for this!

[@CaptainCollins]

you're welcome :)

[@MATTHEWVALERI]

Thank you for all your work. Couldn't figure out why my gunboats were not fighting back and all dying. Thanks to your video I realized I needed to have them on "Intercept". If it wasn't for content creators and Reddit I don't think anyone would play this game!

[@Gelnak]

Expanding on the commands, How about setting up fighters and fighter groups for carriers?

[@bookie60]

Mimic-protect position seems to be broken after the last small update to the public beta on 8Mar23. All the mimic troops just sit there doing nothing and blinking. hope they fix it soon.

[@NepoznatYuspeedy]

About a year ago Cap. Collins made a video about Supply (Trade) stations for v4.10. What you used was miners to mine and distribute resource to your own stations. I made a little upgrade. As you know every resource can be processed to 1 material type: silicon -> silicon wafers, methane -> graphene, hydrogen -> antimatter cells, helium -> superfluid coolant, ice -> water ore -> refined metals, or the teladianium. My idea was to upgarde yours in a way that the miners will mine and the mining station is also processing the resource to a material so that my traders can use that for the production, thus making my factory stations not needing any miners just traders. Example, a Silicon mining station will have the miners mine silicon ONLY and on the same station will have silicon wafer(s) module(s) to process it into silicon wafers. This station has 2 types of storage, solids for the mined stuff and containers for the processed materials ready to pick up by traders.

[@DreadX10]

Miner-haulers are not harassed by pirates, traders are! Something to consider. Also in the Oort cloud (almost no sunshine), this means bringing energy cells on the way back or spend lots of resources on building solar. If you want to boost your production with workers, you will have a logistic puzzle to solve with lots of small stations. Several super-stations (as in super-market, 'we have it all') that are fed with raw resources is much easier to set up and maintain (as in 'slowly grow in size'). Then again, half the game is trying different things to see what works in what situation so both systems should be tested. And to tie this to the subject of this video: use mimic commander orders where you can because it is so much easier to add an extra ship when you need more transport volume.

[@NepoznatYuspeedy]

@@DreadX10 Terran has a complete different take on resource management. I was doing this in Split territory and so far it goes fine. Will try different mechanics in the next playthrough. But a good advice m8. Cheers

[@BL1P]

07 Captain, I was wondering how do you keep a Juan on your XL ships as a turret gun boat for extra turrets without it flying away to attack or defend, and also without it being listed in the Unassigned Ships, rather than the Fleets Sub Menu? -- Great stuff BTW very helpful videos !!!

[@aseroxd]

Why aren't there any mods that tries to improve this? In X3 TC we at least had the Carrier Commands mod.

[@greydracoplays]

This ^^^^^. I miss Carrier Commands too.

[@Akideoni]

Oh I fled from actually doing combat fleet, I actually had given up on doing it, it doesn't return well, at most just have them mimic command for organization purpose. Right now any combat oriented commands would be unassigned and ordered directly. Yes, I attempt to fleet Asgards... And I end up having to untangle the mess they get themselves into, fed up I unassigned them. As of now only one mascot fleet of Shih was assigned to protect PHQ for behavior observation purposes. Last gather they love to solo somehow enemies (regardless their inferiority)

[@XcitedBenle]

you should think about switching your live-streams to youtube. could make a playlist and VoD-series of a playthrough.

[@MrSmartman23]

Cpt Collins , o7. Thanks for your guides, help a lot. I have a question regarding fleet control. I have police fleet same like you showed - Cerberus cmdr and 5 Eclipses. Want to know why one of fighters always trying to dock cmdr vessel and how to avoid it?

[@trlavalley9909]

Fighter Commands Question: Ok so Fighters have 4 Weapon Configurations, for Primary and Secondary. I have been trying to set up Primary 1 Guns. Primary 2 Guns+Torpedo, so my fighters are not wasting torpedo's shooting at small fast targets, but there does not seem to be a way to command all of them to click over to setting two. I can command the same group to all rearm at the wharf, but selecting a wing and clicking over to weapon 2 only changes the first fighter selected. Are you aware of a way of doing this without microing maybe 40 fighters.

[@cmdt.brezonte9023]

I want to create a carrier with several fighters for patrol work and I wanted to ask if the fighters repair themselves in the carrier because they are close to it or do they have to be in the same group? I hope I was clear, thanks

[@destyrian]

When I have a fleet and tell them to defend or follow my ship, they sit back for several tens of kilometres before trying to follow me. They never follow me into travel mode and take a long time to catch up. It ruins the game for me. Any tips at all?

[@sixtheninth]

Oh god this must be the most unintuitive and overengineered fleet management I have ever seen in a game. That combined with a flimsy AI, and game turns into mayhem. I hope this will get modded one day also for non-German players :))

[@SPACE_GEKKO]

If I want to use 10 Destroyers to eliminate a Station, and I set them to "attack with commander" will they all aim for the same module, or even the same surface component? Would the "mimic" command be the better option? And what if I take 100 fighters with blast mortars instead the destroyers?

[@CaptainCollins]

The question about the station attack is interesting... I will try that out! But no ideas about the fighters. Never attacked a station with fighters :D

[@breaveheart8078]

@@CaptainCollins 🤣I did attack a defense xenon station with capital ships,distroyers and and fighters and it was a epic fight but was also a bad idea on the fighter side because i lost every single of them!!!

[@nikolaipentrov1514]

Take 100 fighters with blast mortars and 30 fighters working on intercept to fight the drones, and you can easily destroy a xenon station with 10-20 losses

[@nikolaipentrov1514]

But you need to be in sector for it to work effectively

[@Wulfaskr]

@@nikolaipentrov1514 Are blast mortars better than Torpedoes in this scenario? I suppose not having to worry about resupply is the biggest benefit

[@mrug987]

How mimic works with pilot stars? WIll pilot with 1 star mimic another pilot who does something that require more stars like 'Police'?

[@shaunwilson3059]

if the commander can do it then the fleet can do it, i believe

[@ghoulas]

If I'll build a trading ship and add mimic will they trade just the same as a leader? Like I give leader a manual buy command?

[@pickphilips8271]

Ive played all the other games but i cant get my capitalship to attack even with a full crew st 5 atar, on the map i select my ship then the ship i want to attack which is red in colour by right clicking and select attack ive checked all other tasks are finished or cancelled but my ship wont attack?

[@HalkerVeil]

You'd think they would have basic RTS commands like making a group one unit that has a strategy switch for handling situations. It's almost like Egosoft is stuck in 90's DOS logic.

[@laserak9887]

Very useful information, they should pay you to write a codex (AKA translate EGOSOFT) in the game.

[@jasonwright8546]

Amen. I bought the game at release, struggled for 100 hours, then shelved it. I am just now coming back to it. I want to love this game, but I find it a constant war with the interface, and understanding the mechanics. The game itself seems like it could be fantastic, but interfacing with it feels like garbage.

[@Arefear]

How do you get the cap ships to launch fighters when they are attacked when they are on patrol without having to have 200+ fighters always buzzing about

[@CaptNemo_]

I wish they added a command where you can have a ship go and explore the map, any mods for that?

[@12fishcake]

Try sector explorer, been working really well for me with a handful of small scout ships. Set as their default behaviour and when they have no other commands they will move to the centre of the sector then move in an expanding hexagonal pattern until whole sector has been covered. Then they'll notify you that they've finished. There's various options within the behaviour too. You can have them go to lockboxes and abandoned ships as they are discovered, when this happens the pilot will notify you and you can tell them to ignore or claim the lockbox/ship before resuming exploring. This is a nice touch because you just get free stuff pop up every now and then passively. There's also an option to have the ship move to the next sector once finished exploring, I assume this goes to the next sector not fully explored but I haven't tested it as I manually send them myself since I don't want them to wander into xenon sectors and such. As for revealing the whole map, AFAIK there's no way to send your ships through a jumpgate/accelerator to a sector you have not yet visited, so for that I grab a scout (Pegasus is a nice fast one for this) and through a bunch of sectors, long range scanning for connecting gates then have others start revealing the rest of the area with this behaviour. And yeah, the vanilla "explore" command seems pretty useless I never use it now lol.

[@marceloponce8447]

@@12fishcake you can order a ship to explore a gate, even if you did not enter that gate, the ship enter and start exploring the new sector. You only need that some ship discover the gate first.

[@dasunding4448]

Why do docked ships not defend the commander while the commander is attacked even if the ships are on defend? Only if I change the command manuelly for example to attack with they start. This This makes no sense for me. The joke is if the commander is attacked and the commander attacks they do not start but if the are now set to defend they start... its such a joke... what happens is that the L-Miner do fight against ships, but doent use the "defend" fighters and it fights forever, because it is not really able to kill them while the fighter are chilling on the miner...

[@pscheuerling]

WHY DO I HAVE TO READ AND WATCH VIDEOS ABOUT IT INSTEAD OF INGAME DESCRIPTION?

[@user-zp4iz8sw4e]

так посмотрим....

[@WiseOwl_1408]

What a confusing fleet system