Formations: Fast ships yes, slow ships never.

Killcreek2

Formations are a great idea, but unfortunately are only suitable for fast & manoeuvrable designs.
But why is this the case? Some case studies:

15 fast / nimble ships in any formation:
+ Each can reach their assigned position very quickly in a few seconds.
+ If you change the attack vector dramatically it is only a small delay till the squad starts moving again.
++ The ships keep a nice separation so do not block each others weapon arcs when they reach the enemy.

15 nimble ships in no formation:
+ No delay when moving or changing attack vector.
--- Will clump up and block each other constantly. Very bad for weak ships which rely on outnumbering the enemy.

5 large & slow ships in line formation:
--- Takes many minutes to reach assigned position. Boring & dull waste of gaming time.
--- If you change the attack vector dramatically there is a similar huge delay till the squad starts moving again while they slowly derp into position.
+ Keeps a nice separation between ships.

5 cumbersome ships in no formation:
+ Small / no delay when moving or changing attack vector [only rotation speed really matters].
- Will clump up without manual intervention, but less of an issue with fewer large ships that likely have broad firing arcs [compared to many small ships].

In conclusion: This game has the same problem as the Homeworld series did with formations: great with strike craft, but a complete waste of time to use with capital ships.

Anyone have any thoughts / ideas on how to remedy this unfortunate situation, to be able to use formations effectively with fleets of big / slow ships?
[If i had a good solution, this would have been posted in suggestions...]

Off topic: Walt, thanks for developing this game & releasing it for free during alpha period: it is scratching a certain gaming itch very nicely! Solid gameplay with lots of excellent features & very few issues found so far. Well done. [Got it a few days ago, very close to finishing the bounty hunter campaign.]

minimurgle

Well for one formations correct themselves much faster at 4x speed.

You could try keeping the big ships as the center of the formation, that way they need to move less.

It should also be less of a problem though once we get docking. Then instead of having the big ships slowing down the formation you can dock them all to the big ship and not bother using formations with your capital ship (not really sure I'd call that a solution though)

Killcreek2

minimurgle You could try keeping the big ships as the centre of the formation, that way they need to move less.

I tried that, but had major difficulties doing so. Could not assign specific ships to specific formation positions at all, & it seems a bit arbitrary which ship is considered the "leader". Even tried selling & re-buying ships in case that made any difference [nope].
I tried selecting one ship first & adding the rest afterwards, then band boxing all the rest first & adding that one ship afterwards, plus a few other methods too. But the ship I wanted in the centre was never picked for that formation slot, nor made the formation leader.

Manually arranging them & creating a custom formation kinda worked, but it picked a random ship on the far edge as the "leader", which meant the entire formation was very hard to move into position easily [as it was moving / rotating around one end instead of from the middle].

Space Empires V had a great formations system: it placed the ships into the formation in the order you added them to the group, so the first ship selected was always the default formation leader. [Also the formations had numbered slots, so you knew exactly where each ship would end up, but it featured much more complex & larger formations than this or Homeworld uses.]

minimurgle

Select all the follower ships then right click the leader. After telling them to follow the leader you can hold shift to assign specific positions.

Works fine for me

Killcreek2

minimurgle Oooh, that is useful. Thanks.
I had not tried using the attack command on my own ships before, so did not realise there even was a "follow" command. Had read through [& adjusted] the keybindings but did not spot it.

After testing it out ingame [creative], it works great until they encounter an enemy & swap target. Thus it needs to be reapplied after every combat, which is a bit annoying.
Still, it does bypass the formation leader issue I was having by ironically not using the ingame formations altogether.

minimurgle

Yep, but when you have everyone selected and in formation there's a formation menu in the bottom left. In there you can save the formation. So once combat is over you select everyone and reapply the formation quicker.

Jsamue

Doesn't work for me, have a formation of 3 ships, 1 primary and 2 identical secondaries. It keeps designating one of the 2 identical ships the center every time i put them into a formation.