Battlegroups as Fleet Command Hierarchy

[Cheapskate]

So here's a thought that's been rattling around in my head for a while: Battlergoups!
In essence, a Battlegroup would be a smaller fleet inside of another fleet. So let's say your fleet consists of a group of fighters with it's carrier, two battleships, and your main destroyer. With Battlegroups, you would be able to mobilize all these ships to attack a specific location (such as a station). When you got there, you could command your Fighter Battlegroup to attack the station while you have your Battleship Battlegroup stay in formation around your destroyer. Perhaps you could even issue a command for your Battleship Battlegroup to only attack other vessels that are moving to engage your main destroyer(Should that order exist in the future).
There are other uses for this as well. Let's say one of your other fleets is under attack in another sector. If you have a spare Battlegroup sitting around, you could easily just transfer that spare group to the other fleet. The ships in that spare Battlegroup will break off and go reinforce the fleet you've sent them to.
But wait! What happens if one of your stations comes under attack? What would you do then when your Battlegroups are spread thin across a sector? It's simple, actually. Your fleet still acts like a fleet! All you would need to do is issue a "Defend this Sector" command to your Fleet and all the BattleGroups in that fleet will go fight off the attackers where you send them. After the battle, you can assign your Battlegroups back to their previous stations in the fleet and move the whole unit around as usual.
As the game develops and more combat orders become available, I think this function will become exponentially more useful.


Tl;DR - This will let you to group together and issue orders to multiple ships at once inside one of your fleets.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I've seen this suggested before.
For me, the simplest way to achieve what you want would be for Schine to allow us to nest fleets with an order priority chain.

 

[Madman198237]

I've actually suggested it before. I'd give a shameless plug, but.....I'm too lazy. My suggestion was titled "squadrons in fleets" or something like that.

The basic concept is "Sub-fleets with prioritized orders". So, the orders for a squadron are superseded by the orders for the fleet. So if the fleet's set to defend a sector, and the squadron's out on patrol, when enemies are detected near the sector, the squadron moves to return to the fleet.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I've actually suggested it before

You're not the only one. Wings and Squadrons
Here's yours... Recognized - Squadrons in Fleets which was recognized.

Nested Fleets has also been suggested and is planned apparently.
Planned - Nested Fleets - aka Squadrons

 

[Madman198237]

Wow, someone who didn't even suggest my suggestion is less lazy than I am, so much less lazy that they actually bother to find it for me. Thanks, you've made me feel like a lazy dependent.

 

[spocklin]

I just use multiple fleets at one time for now since this feature hasn't been put in there...

 

[thecrazy13.main]

I was thinking maybe they could update the current AI with a series of tactical strategies that could be customized on a grid like the map, and through this you could have them preform maneuvers and other tactics.

For fleets, you could have a system of A-Z with a number (0-9) or (1-9), with some being attack and some being defense, and could be customized for individual fleets, or generalized using ship classes to apply to all the AI fleets universally. I also think an in-fleet command structure should be present, with the mothership being directly in command of assigned support ships that will be in command of the smaller fighters, and if you destroy one of the support ships than all the ships under that support ships command will scatter. and destroying the mothership will cause the entire fleet to scatter into their individual groups under the command of the support ships (essentially creating new fleets for each support ship)

The factions also need more ranks, maybe 10-20 ranks, and players could be in command of support ships or even individual fighters in the fleet.

The new ships class system is pretty great, but it could use some more diversity, like boarding craft, and juggernaut class. speaking of boarding, I think on-ship battles should become a thing, maybe it could be achieved by having each ship have a crew, and you can use a ship to latch onto another ship and have the crew of the latching ship try to get into the ship they are boarding and fight the crew of that ship for control.

so basically, formations, tactics on a kinda map-like grid (place ships in a grid system to make tactical formations) boarding, better AI's, really I think the whole combat aspect of the game is really lacking, you can't get awesome space battles with just lasers and missiles and the ships sitting back and circling.