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[Micro102]

So, I've been having my survey group split up to explore a new system, and now I want them to all regroup. Is there a reasonable way to do this? Or do  have to tell them to all move to a location and then manually combine them?

[tryrar]

Just have the lead ship in the squadron return to earth, then copy its orders across the squadron with the copy orders to subordinate formation button. Once they get there, just hit assemble.(If you don't want to go back to earth yet, any location will do)

[Micro102]

Copy orders to subordinate button? How do I tell who is the subordinate of who and where is this button?

[MarcAFK]

He must be talking about the mysterious task forces window , I have heard legends that this wonderous place allows the most magical control over your forces, however written in mystical elven runes leaves me unable to decipher it's secrets.

[varsovie]

He must be talking about the mysterious task forces window , I have heard legends that this wonderous place allows the most magical control over your forces, however written in mystical elven runes leaves me unable to decipher it's secrets.

It's not that complicated really, just little fiddly.

[Micro102]

He must be talking about the mysterious task forces window , I have heard legends that this wonderous place allows the most magical control over your forces, however written in mystical elven runes leaves me unable to decipher it's secrets.

Thanks for not answering my questions, and instead pointing me to a window where literally all I can do is make a new task force, which I have already done before posting.

[Flying Dice]

He must be talking about the mysterious task forces window , I have heard legends that this wonderous place allows the most magical control over your forces, however written in mystical elven runes leaves me unable to decipher it's secrets.

Thanks for not answering my questions, and instead pointing me to a window where literally all I can do is make a new task force, which I have already done before posting.

1. Task Groups window (F12).
2. Special Orders/Organization tab.
3. Select a TG you want to make subordinate to another TG (in this case, each of the survey ships not in the original TG).
4. The second panel from the left, go to it.
5. The dropdown bar labelled "Superior Formation." Open it, select the TG you want your survey ships to return to. Do so for each ship's TG.
6. Select the original TG intended to hold all of the ships. Order it to move to your intended rally point.
7. On the same tab in the same place (just below the place for 5.), labelled 'Copy Orders to Subordinate Formations', click the 'Copy' button.
8. Once all ships arrive, select each subordinate TG and merge it with the main one.

Of course that's a pain in the ass. It's easier to just move the core group there, then order each of the sub-groups to merge with it. Or to keep your survey ships operating independently since there's no reason to keep them all in the same TG.

[Dorfs R Fun]

I always use default orders, survey nearest body and return to entry jump point. I give the divide on jump order when entering the system, they survey all the bodies and return to the entry jump point. Then I just push the assemble button to reunite. Since I typically run with over a dozen survey ships this works best for me.

[Shooer]

Accidentally left a navy yard expanding.  Was planning on using it to make a carrier around when it hit 50k, kind of forgot about it and now it's at 150k.  When life gives you lemons, you make a 150k carrier in a game where your next biggest military ship is 12k.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hatchetman class Carrier    150,000 tons     2391 Crew     20954.4 BP      TCS 3000  TH 10240  EM 3600
3413 km/s     Armour 6-251     Shields 120-300     Sensors 84/42/0/0     Damage Control Rating 114     PPV 33.93
Maint Life 1.84 Years     MSP 8207    AFR 1914%    IFR 26.6%    1YR 3060    5YR 45897    Max Repair 1120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Flight Crew Berths 2353   
Hangar Deck Capacity 60000 tons     Magazine 1080   

320 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (32)    Power 320    Fuel Use 48%    Signature 320    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 19,500,000 Litres    Range 48.7 billion km   (165 days at full power)
Epsilon R300/432 Shields (40)   Total Fuel Cost  720 Litres per hour  (17,280 per day)

Single 10cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (9x1)    Range 120,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S04 80-16000 (3)    Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (9)     Total Power Output 27    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Mirage ST/SR Mk2 (1)     GPS 280     Range 39.2m km    MCR 4.3m km    Resolution 1
Orbital ASR Mk2 (1)     GPS 44800     Range 991.7m km    Resolution 40
Thermal Sensor TH6-84 (1)     Sensitivity 84     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  84m km
EM Detection Sensor EM3-42 (1)     Sensitivity 42     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  42m km

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Now to build the 120 fighters to fit into one, and the 610 more maint facilities I'll need.  Probably hold off from building until after I get ICF drives, only 2 more years.

Also going to have to get a civilian yard the same size to make a tender for this thing.

[MarcAFK]

He must be talking about the mysterious task forces window , I have heard legends that this wonderous place allows the most magical control over your forces, however written in mystical elven runes leaves me unable to decipher it's secrets.

Thanks for not answering my questions, and instead pointing me to a window where literally all I can do is make a new task force, which I have already done before posting.

Actually I was referring to the fact that I have no idea how task forces work properly, in the hope that flying dice or someone would elaborate as he has down there

[Micro102]

He must be talking about the mysterious task forces window , I have heard legends that this wonderous place allows the most magical control over your forces, however written in mystical elven runes leaves me unable to decipher it's secrets.

Thanks for not answering my questions, and instead pointing me to a window where literally all I can do is make a new task force, which I have already done before posting.

Actually I was referring to the fact that I have no idea how task forces work properly, in the hope that flying dice or someone would elaborate as he has down there

We need more /stuffs. Sorry for assuming taunting satire.

[Micro102]

Ok, designed a fighter, tell me what you think.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Needle class Fighter    205 tons     8 Crew     42.5 BP      TCS 4.1  TH 36  EM 0
8780 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2
Maint Life 10.86 Years     MSP 13    AFR 3%    IFR 0%    1YR 0    5YR 3    Max Repair 20 MSP

FTR Ion Engine E700 (1)    Power 36    Fuel Use 7000%    Signature 36    Armour 0    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 0.6 billion km   (19 hours at full power)

10cm C1 Ultraviolet Laser (FTR) (1)    Range 12,000km     TS: 8780 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 4    ROF 15        3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.2 6-4000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 12,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 0.45    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 0.9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

I am also trying to make a box launcher fighter but am having a hard time figuring out how to make use of them. They seem to take 90 minutes to reload in the hangar and that just doesn't seem worth it compared to normal missile launchers.

[Flying Dice]

Try to keep your fighters at round numbers so that you aren't wasting hanger space. 200t, 250t, and 500t are all good points. Your range on that one is a bit short, especially since it's not a missile fighter; that's a total potential traveled distance of 600m km from the point where you launch to the point where you land, and there's no way piddly little fighter lasers are going to kill anything in that timeframe unless you've got approximately ten fucktons of them. That short range fundamentally means that you're going to have to keep your carriers relatively close to the fighting, which is the exact opposite of what you want.

Missile fighters are god for several reasons. Not good, god.

1. They allow you to attack without being attacked. This is the most important: fighters (especially little 200-250t ones) are small enough that they usually won't be detected at ~30m km out from their target, as long as you've got a specialized fighter or another ship spotting for them. Over the long term this can save you a whole lot of effort and resources by virtue of not needing to repair components in the field or take ships back to a base for armor repair. It also means that your effective firepower remains the same for the entire engagement, rather than being diminished as your ships take damage.

2. Missiles extend their effective range. 20-50m km isn't huge by Aurora distance standards, but that's that much more fuel for them to return to base, which in turn means that you can position your carriers farther out and strike at enemies from planets much farther than you would normally be able to.

3. Missiles are fire-and-forget. You don't need to burn fuel constantly chasing down or kiting enemy ships, just dump the load and RTB. This means that missile fighters have an effective maximum deployment range of ~1/2 their listed range, whereas beam fighters have a much shorter effective deployment range due to their need to stay inside their combat envelop for extended periods of time.

4. Missiles are cheaper to replace than fighters.

5. The in-hanger reload time for box launchers only matters if the enemy has detected your carriers and has ships fast enough to catch them before they get out of system and has ships strong enough to punch through whatever escorts they have.

My carrier doctrine is actually very, very skimpy in terms of weight of fire. I like my CVLs a lot. My typical carrier group for deployment against anything that isn't a major fleet is something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1x-3x CVLs (2 squadrons missile fighters + 4-6 specialized fighters each)
1x-2x CIC cruisers (max-size active sensor strapped to engines; even with low tech you'll usually manage a range of 1b km+ -- these are the spotters so that you don't risk your carriers by pinging active sensors from them)
1x-2x stealth cruisers (basically the left hand to the CIC right; they mount large passive sensors, reduced thermal output drives, and a cloaking device, and act as early recon + forward detection)
1x PD frigate per CVL
6x-8x 250t missile fighters per squadron
2x-4x 500t beam fighters per CVL for cleanup work
2x 500t scout fighters per CVL for secondary spotting

I tend to pop the stealth cruiser in-system a few months ahead of time when I know about an enemy presence, which lets me creep it up at low speed. Cloaking tech is actually very, very effective once you put some research into it. Sometimes I actually just leave them scattered around on long deployments to gather intel. Once I'm ready to engage, I drop the fleet group in-system, race the spotting cruiser(s) away from everything else, then pop on their sensors. At that point unless I've screwed up massively (which basically only happens if I don't know the top speed of all of the enemy classes, which in turn won't happen if I've done my prep work properly thanks to stealthed scouting) it comes down to my sensor cruiser kiting enemy ships around while the missile fighters pick them apart.

Yeah, it can take days or weeks (true story, lol) to resolve larger engagements, but they go off without losing anything except missiles. The only times things get dicey and I lose ships are again a) when I don't scout properly and b) when I run out of missiles and miscalculate the timing for sending a tender through to meet the carriers. The worst I've ever had with carriers was when I dropped my fleet through a half-gated JP into a system that wasn't fully explored without a jump tender nearby to get them back, and even that wasn't a total write-off, given that it basically ended with me running what was left off into deep space to wait for rescue.

[Micro102]

Well I am far too impatient to kite fleets with fighters so I'll just build around the idea that they can deliver a payload of missiles without being detected.

Also, thanks for catching the fuel problem. That would of been bad 
I gave them 60 hours to work with now.

Not much I can do about the size. I'd rather design the carrier to hold the fighter. And if I have a little extra space, well, better than having all my fighters just be slightly less efficient.

[Flying Dice]

That's what I'm saying, though. The extra fuel space should put you right about at that 250t mark, which is a great standard: 4 fighters per hanger, easy peasy.