I have an idea for a new fleet command - right-click on one of your own ship’s profile silhouette and select the command “Set as Fleet Leader”, which is the ship all other ships follow. I know fleets aren’t always tactically viable (though it’s so cool we have them so ships can pull off strategies that require alignment), but this could be a helpful step for making fleets even more viable to command for two reasons:
1: In the heat of battle, if the lead ship of a fleet is destroyed, the player must set the fleet order priorities of potentially every ship (and this won’t affect custom formations at all). But if there was a command to set a new fleet leader, that would allow the surviving vessels to regroup quickly - this could be quite cinematic for players in the new adventure mode. For instance, during missions where they lose their lead ship in battle, by setting a new fleet leader, their surviving ships cruise into their last formation around a new lead ship of the player’s choice. The ability to quickly regroup in a new formation around a new lead vessel of the player’s choice and not have to adjust fleet order priorities would make formations much easier to use in battle.
2: But the heat of battle isn’t the only reason a “Set as Fleet Leader” command would be vastly useful; sometimes when setting ships to fly in formation, the ship chosen to be the lead ship isn’t the one the player wants to be the lead ship. It usually picks the largest ship as the lead ship, which I like in the respect that the largest ship is usually the command ship/capital ship with the smaller ships being escorts, frigates or fighters. This is usually a safe assumption that the largest ship should be the fleet leader, but what if there were two similarly-sized ships (one slightly smaller and one slightly larger), but the smaller ship was built by the player to be the command vessel? This might be the case if the larger ship is responsible for protecting the fleet with flak/PD, while other ships surround the smaller capital ship for escort.
With this in mind, a “Set as Fleet Leader” command for a starship would accommodate both of the reasons listed above, and help make fleets a viable, tactical option for players to use in battles!
