Subfleets, do you ever use them? If so where do you find them helpful?
Similarly, for fighters, squadrons. I usually manually detach and move things around but I’m curious if there are other approaches.
I use them for organizing and maintaining formations. Makes creating detachments easy and helps keep track of them.
1 Like
I use squadrons heavily, but rarely use subfleets. The thing about squadrons is that you break them off a lot, and keeping them together helps substantially.
Seeing Marski’s usage of subfleets, I feel like I there is definite value in those as well. Helps you keep track of fleet roles for ships. I commonly have nearly blind craft supported by a SWACS, and heavy hitters vs light and fast pursuit craft, all in the same fleet
Whenever I need to rescue a ship out of fuel with tankers, I always use “join as subfleet” so that once the ship returns I can easily detatch the tankers into the same name fleet they started with.
I also put every destroyer, cruiser, etc. squadron in its own subfleet of my main battle fleet. It keeps the list of fleets around Earth de-cluttered and also lets me easily detach and return a few ships at a time for anti-raider work or colonial station.
Yeah, I love them:
Both Assault and Battle Fleets are organized like this when in ‘port’ or deploying between Earth or Asrat. For combat, I often detach a sub-fleet to do its own thing, like carriers hanging back while battleships charge for melee and so on.
Here is from a different game where the USA is keeping all its shuttles and fighters under the Navy Assets “fleet” so that the system view doesn’t get cluttered. The actual vessels are under 3 or 4 layers of sub-fleets. So the twelve F-10 Wasp fighters belong to 101st Fighter Squadron, a sub-fleet of the 10th Fighter Wing, itself a sub-fleet of the 1st Fighter Group. Whereas the R-4 Swallow ‘Marilyn’ recon shuttle forms a ‘fleet’ of its own called Navajo 1-One, that belongs to the 301st Reconnaissance Squadron, a sub-fleet of 12th Composite Wing, in turn a sub-fleet of the 3rd Support Group. In this game the USA and the USSR were both limited to using fighter-sized vessels only. Anyway, the logic here is that during peace time I can avoid system view being cluttered and during a crisis or war, I can detach the level that is needed - perhaps a single squadron is enough or perhaps I need to utilize the whole wing and, in more extreme cases, the entire Group. Similarly, if it becomes necessary to relocate units from Earth to elsewhere, it’s easy to issue the order once at the highest level needed.
4 Likes
Rather than organizational or aesthetic concerns, mine are strictly utilitarian.
This Carrier group is divided into 4 sections. The main section, contains 3 Carriers, 3 Point Defense platforms, 6 Patrol Craft (7K ton Missile Boats) and a sensor platform. This is the core of the Carrier group, and seldom would an element be detached for any particular reason.
The next two sections are an extension of the core section, containing 2 Carriers, a PD platform, a sensor platform and 2 PCs. Each of these section is capable of operation independently, in system.
The last section is the Support Section, responsible for the long-range capabilities of the fleet, containing a tanker, a supply vessel, a TBD collier, and enough jump ships for the entire carrier group.
You can further divide the support section, to Jumpships, Colliers, tankers, supply ships, where when a section runs out of material, it could be configured to quickly detach, resupply, then reattach as subfleet, again supporting the group.
In relation to squadrons, I mainly use them in carriers.
Take this light carrier for example. It has two squadrons, each fitted with 5 bombers, 1 awacs, 1 jumpfighter.
This means, that each squadron could launch, activate sensors, jump to designated system, bomb the enemy, jump back, then land on Assigned Mothership / Squadron, to the same organizational situation as when it started, to rearm, and do it all again.
I don’t need to specify how many fighters per squadron, or which awacs do I add, or calculate whether a squadron is jump capable or not. I have a strike group? then I automatically assume it has all of these capabilities. I set it up once, then it just works. This is the same exact strikegroup formation for every single bomber squadron in the entire navy.
In short, subfleets and squadrons are an excellent timesaving and mind-load reducing organizational tools. Use them.
1 Like
Sub-fleets are very useful when you are towing lots of stuff (eg: Orbital Fortresses) into battle.
Put each Tug + Load into its own sub-fleet, and you can see immediately which Tug is towing which Fortress module.
2 Likes
Here’s one for planetary air forces. 100 fighters per division is standard, all regiments fly one model of aircraft due to speed differences new and old models have.
