Trying to neutralise the threat of a Mk IV world bordering one of my planets, I decided to follow advice given on one of the forums and send a fleet of about twenty ships (mainly starships with a mobile repair centre) in under cover of two Mk II force fields. I arranged all of the ships under the overlapping force fields, then set everything to formation mode and sent them through the wormhole.
Instead of being able to manage a cohesive formation of ships and concentrate on switching the force fields on and off to allow for repair, my formation decended into chaos the instant it emerged into the enemy system. Each ship seemed to forget about formation and rushed out from cover in a suicidal race to certain destruction. I kept pausing the game and trying to direct seige starships etc back into the force field, but it was like herding cats -as soon as one was brought back into safety (carefully leaving space between units), something else charged off. To add insult to injury, the AI had a minefield around the wormhole and my ships repeatedly moved back and forth until every single mine had been detonated.
I have a couple of questions;
- How does anyone get this tactic to work -the ships just don't have the discipline to obey orders and stay within the forcefield
- Shouldn't formation move force ships to keep together regardless of what's going on around them? If it doesn't, it's not much use!
Am I missing something, or should I log this in Mantis please?
Regards
