Noobish Fleet questions

Just got the game a few days ago. Trying to figure out this fleet thing.

I know that on a capital ship (for instance) set the auto fleet and that works fine. I know how to make a fleet move simultaneously too.

But on one of my fleets i have this nice golden Icon above the fleet in the playing field and on the empire tree. My other fleet of a capital + more does not have that useful icon. The icon is great for me because I know when i click it i order everyone to attack or move. Without the icon, i am never sure if they fleet is really thinking it's a fleet.

And what happens when two fleets come near eachother? do they merge? I can think that would be NOT wanted. Then you'd have to redefine them again if you want a fleet to move away.

I could probably go on with tedious noob questions, but if i get the answer to those, i'll be very happy for now!

Thanks

(Btw, my user name is dumb. I didn't want to waste time thinking, i just wanted to play)

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Without the icon, it's not a fleet. You have to specifically create the fleet with your group of ships by going into the Tactical options and selecting Create Fleet. The shortcut is F > F (keybinds are mapped to slots on the UI, rather than individual abilities or functions so same-place icons have the same hotkey).

You can choose which ship gets to be the fleet leader - it's the one with the whitest selection outline (empire tree and grav well both show it). You can Tab through your entire selection to pick the ship before forming the fleet.

And what happens when two fleets come near eachother? do they merge? I can think that would be NOT wanted. Then you'd have to redefine them again if you want a fleet to move away.

Absolutely nothing happens. Ships that don't belong to any fleet join one automatically if they are entering and stopping at a grav well where a fleet currently exists. This is the only time your ships automatically join it (you can do manually however you like). Ships part of another fleet don't leave it to join, and ships only passing through the grav well also don't join it. All fleet merging is done manually.

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Thanks for the answers! And for being patient with a nooby!

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thats Annatar for you and these forums are super friendly (most of the time) so don't be afraid to ask questions

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While we're on the subject... how do you control which fleet ships will auto-join if there are more than one fleet in a gravity well?

I figured I could turn off auto-join on the fleet that I wanted to remain static, and new ships would join the attack force I was building. But new ships kept joining the wrong fleet. I finally decided to move my "static" fleet to an adjascent planet, and move it back in once the main force had left. But that's a pain to have to do every time I want to build an invasion force but still leave a reserve fleet at the planet.

Maybe it didn't work because I was playing the demo at the time. I haven't tried it since I bought the game. Anyway... what's the trick?

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Unfortunately, Sariden, I don't know of any trick to do what you want. I run into the same problem quite often, and usually handle it the same way you do.

Alternatively, I'll have my reinforcements set to rally at a planet just behind my two fleets and then manually ad them to the fleet I want. It can be beneficial if you want to scare off your opponent by having a large number of reinforcements show up simultaneously.

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I do believe it was tweaked so that if you set the factory's rally point on a fleet icon, ships will join that fleet specifically if there are multiple fleets in the grav well. This is more recent, so the demo definitely didn't work this way back then. It should now.

The auto-join behavior is a little counter-intuitive. It isn't a setting applied to an existing fleet to accept new ships or not, it's a setting for each individual ship to join a fleet or not. Setting auto-join off on an already-existing fleet won't do anything since those ships are already in it.

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Thanks, I hadn't thought of setting the rally point on a fleet -- I've mostly used the rally points to send ships to other gravity wells. Will that rally point still work after the fleet leaves the planet? That would be very useful!

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Yes, it'll work if the fleet leaves the grav well. The ships will fly to it wherever it is. Note that they'll take the shortest path, even if it leads though a pirate base or enemy planets. Also, if the fleet leader is destroyed or you assign another ship, the rally point will be reset and you'd have to do it again.

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relating to auto-join: ships about to autojoin fleets in a grav well where there's two+ fleets will select the most appropriate fleet. i.e. (my usual setup) if you have a main fleet and a carrier fleet (or carrier/flak), any carriers that autojoin a fleet will autojoin the carrier fleet. any other ships will join the normal fleet

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