Fleet orders.

[Bladeriker]

To make a long story short, last night after the patch I took two fleets and my main cap ship looking for new mines. Both fleets were from my fleet submissions. while I was fleet mining I got attacked by Pirates. I found that if a fleet is ordered to mine a sector the non-mining ships will not do anything even when attacked, this led to damage on several of the mining fleets escorts, as they did not engage the attacking pirates. The second fleet that had been instructed to defend the sector only engaged with turrets until I ordered it to sentry mode, then it got real, real fast.

Once I ordered the damaged mining fleet back to my station sector they kept getting damaged every time I would enter or exit the sector, not sure why as they were not in the line of fire of the station defense systems.

So am I missing something or is this working as intended?

Still fun to watch my dedicated light craft destroyers clean house in minutes against 30+ pirates. I did not know it at the time but there was a Pirate station near by that was causing attacks, it's dead now :p

 

[StarWars1981]

Station defense forces at sectors around the miners, I guess, and order them to Sentry to start with. Also perhaps fly cover for the miners yourself, no Fleet AI issues then.

 

[Bladeriker]

That is what I had to do, still not a huge issue just a bunch of repairing I had to do after.

 

[StarWars1981]

And find the nearest pirate station, now I think of it, and put one of your fleets between them and your miners. That'll probably head off much of the trouble, even if it is far away.

 

[Madman198237]

That'll work when we get unloaded sector fleet action, and not before. Only then will we be able to station fleets to intercept waves of pirates coming from stations in fleet format (Which really should be what pirates act like).

 

[Crusade]

That'll work when we get unloaded sector fleet action

For simulated battles, this already exists and works. Unloaded sector fleet mining is the thing that doesn't work.

 

[Madman198237]

For simulated battles, this already exists and works. Unloaded sector fleet mining is the thing that doesn't work.

Ah. I didn't know. So, do random pirate waves actually come from stations yet, by any chance? And, following that, is there (Will there be?) a way to intercept fleets moving from a location?
As in, pirates move from stations in a fleet form, and so do player fleets (Obviously), and you can leave fleets stationed around a station, blockading it. Or, when AI becomes capable of using things like cloakers and scanners, just spying on it and its fleets' every move.