Its been asked... Its not been answered... yet...

I think fleet formations is a must, if done right,

Yeah I'd love to see formations but especially as Hadley said, just some option to stop all the faster ships tearing off the second they see the enemy leaving your "fleet" scattered all over the place

fleet formations that follow way points for patrol !

+1 for the inclusion of Fleet Formations and moving in formation as an option.

They simply are not possible without excruciating pains and even then once you really try to move and enter combat it all falls apart. As I said before and another commented on in this post the games at its core is about fleet battles, pure and simple. Any augmentations that are done to it needs to flesh this out.

The trick or magic as I see it will be to tie that element to the stars within the game. They are just so damn beautiful and a near total waste of space at the moment.

I truly believe once this marriage happens this game will be well on its way to being all it can be at least in my mind.

I would essentially agree with Spartan's comments on fleet battle.

That being said, using the HW engine as an example (you could use SotS also, but I think HW is more comparable)- even simple formations could be useful. Fighters screening for capital ships, etc... come to mind.

Now, it could be argued that it worked in HW but wouldn't work here for two reasons. First, the gravity well in Sins is a much smaller area compared to the open-ended maps of HW, hence the need for formations being diminished in Sins. I suppose that argument has some merit. The second being that HW had more ship types, and the capital ships in that game were atrocious at point defense, therefore desperately needing the protection offered by certain formations. I would say that argument also has merit.

But I do think the points being brought up about "I just throw my fleets together, they enter a gravity well, and off they go..." are also valid and somewhat concerning. I honestly feel this will get "old" quick, and some tactical control, however little, would go a long way to appease a lot of folks.

I'm rambling a bit, but I hope I'm getting my point across. I like the idea of formations - and if people have a real reason to use them, all the better.

This is something I think IC should explore further. Nice idea.

i usually send missiles and bombers at the cannons, cobalts at the hangers.

caps at the planet/whatever

fighters a flax after bombers and fighters after the bombers are done

and the kodiak depends on if the ai has lots of hangers or not hangers if a lot cannon if few hangers

but that is becouse the ai isn't building any ships at the moment

and the formation breaks up as soon as it enters the grav well

To be honest I think ships take too much damage, and don't blow up fast enough.

If everything became more fragile, with the exception of some cruisers and all capitol ships I believe thinking tactically would be a bit more required.

Also do things have extra vulnrabilities I understand fighters die quickly to flak, but do capitol ships take alot more damage from missle ships or are cruisers alot more vulnrable to bombers ?

I think if counters became alot more clearer people may start thinking a bit more , we might just not exactly know what's more effective.

I understand that on the website it said that the game shouldn't be about micro , that it should be more about what you bring to the fight and using the right combinations. But I do enjoy my upclose and personal ship managment, where sending in a certain squad will save the day or using ambush tactics and assaulting from 3 sides is actually effective.

The problem with making numbers = victory, is that it always results in overproduction = victory, and to produce alot more than your enemies that results in you rushing to colonize planets - which means the person who can spam out more ships, and rush rather than taking his time to carefully plan will always win as he can field a bigger fleet.

Yeah, lets say we have a formation of cobalts in a close formation, This allows said cobalts to fire faster and have better armour, but to lack range and mobility While a loose formation has slightly decreased attack speed a farther attack range, a chance to dodge shots but weaker armour.

Thats the sort of stuff i want to see. Oh and autocannon turrets too.. i want them, now.

If you refering to what Neskonlith suggested when you talked about 'silly artificial buffs) then I think youre being a bit harsh.

"This would reflect the increased effectiveness of point-defense abilities and coordinated firing control that fleets enjoy, thereby allowing a significant advantage over uncoordinated spam fleets."

Those arnt fantasy aspects of how fleets work at all and the modifiers hes suggesting for things like accuracy and defence are just a way of factoring these into formations in a fairly simple way instead of actually modelling things like individual ships targeting data and realised point defense Both of the things he suggests ARE benefits of fighting in formation whether you think them fantasy or not.

EDIT: and actually I just noticed what you said about capital ships providing range buffs. THATS fantasy

Really where formations would become useful (and tactically relevant) is in pairing up the different types of ships to form an effective fleet group. For instance, you could put your heavy frigates to the front, since they're heavily armored, to absorb incoming fire a bit. Cap ships could be the core and flanked by flak frigates and carrier frigates to protect them. In the rear you could have the LRM frigates that basically blast stuff from afar.

Just sticking ships into a wedge formation for the heck of it doesn't really accomplish anything.