Flak and how they will act in a fleet.

Flaks should keep primary focus on the strike craft, but to be honest I haven't paid attention. An easy way to check of course is to try it, hover over a flak, and see if the red line leads to the target you selected for your fleet, or a nearby strikecraft

From memory, I'm pretty sure they do indeed chase fighters.

Ok I'll look into it.

Thanks for the tip.

The only reason Hoshikos and the light carriers dont attack is they cannot attack. Capital carriers will move and attack other ships if you direct them to, because they do have some weapons.

I dont typically build any flak frigates, I rely on fighters and I direct them to kill enemy strikecraft separately.

In my fleets, I have the light carriers and capital carriers set to 'Hold position', so they just launch their strikecraft and stay where they are (out of the battle).

Hmm interesting.

I thought that the Hoshikos have really light crappy guns. I didn't know they had none what-so-ever.

I think they have a special ability (through the tech tree) that gives them assault bots, but I dont believe they can attack any other way.

Yeah, they definitely focus on fighters. I remember being frustrated with them almost every time I used them because they wouldn't do crap for me, except against carriers (this was before I realized they were for a specific purpose).

Flak is mostly useful in groups if u send a lot of them fighters and bombers dont stand a chance.

The flaw with building lots of fighters instead of flak is that the other player might build a lot of fighters too, which means your fighters might not win against your enemies' fighters.

Fighters are primarily good against bombers, but that doesn't mean that flak isn't any better at taking out bombers

Flak frigates are not meant to attack larger ships

They do actually have a peashooter gun that they can shoot with But it's about as effective as the colony frigate's gun.

But yeah, light carriers definitely don't. It doesn't actually depend on whether the ship has a gun or not, IC made it so that support ships in a fleet ignore a direct attack order if your whole fleet is selected so they can focus on their support jobs (this is a change from lots of feedback during the beta, since it was a pain micromanaging Hoshikos because they can't cast and attack at the same time).

If you only have the support ships selected, then they will obey a direct attack order, obviously if they have guns

I knew Hoshikos had pee shooters, I'M NOT CRAZY! 

and just to clarify, I have been playing this game for 4 months, I've got basics down. Thanks everyone for advice though. ...even if I already knew most of it.

Actually, you probably are a bit crazy if you think Hoshikos shoot pee. Although, I suppose they have to get rid of it somehow, since they probably do have a decent sized crew. I suppose shooting pee at enemy vessels is a bit demoralizing ("What the hell is *that* on our viewer?").

LOL! DAMN WORDS! I should have seen that one coming pee "pea" CRAP!  *sigh* this has definitly been a long week.

I agree. I think we should forget words and communicate with grunts and rudimentary hand gestures. Who's with me?

*growls and scratches butt*

Indeed, it seems a lot of people on these forums communicate by grunts and growls.  By choice, it seems.  Of course, some can't do it any other way.

pek