HOTAS mostly, with a second joystick I sometimes use (instead of the throttle) for better strafe control when flying S ships or using spacesuit.

Like when I had to order my wing of interceptor Mako to kill the engine of a K, because my wing of bomber Baracuda could not catch up, for being so hilariously slow. :lol: Know what you mean, had similar incidents in my game. Ended up having to mod chassis & engines on my Barracudas (Polisher & Nud...

Loaded the same Fires of Defeat game. Changed the manager to Argon before teleporting to station. Office was Split. Teleported to a different station, saved the game & reloaded, then teleported back. Office still Split. Started custom game as a Teladi who owned a Boron mining outpost (just docks, st...

Just did a very brief test. Loaded an old Fires of Defeat save made in version 3.30. Visited my HQ which just consisted of docks & storage (was using it as a trade station). Manager's office was the new Split one. Corridor outside the office was also the Split version. Changed the manager from Split...

Incidentally I never break apart fleets & reconfigure them for a specific task, as I noticed you did at the start of your video - that for me would be far more micro than I'd want to bother with. Certainly a lot more clicking than giving a single ship a Fly & Wait order. The purpose of that is to h...

No, it is not just a matter of Fly & Wait order in front of the K. In your screenshot you vastly overwhelmed the K with your ships and it died before reaching the fleeing distance (50% range of the main gun which is 5km) of your ships in which they would all turn and run like headless chickens. Tha...

The keyword here is "ideal". The player has to go out of their way to put the AI in an ideal situation for them to work. Meanwhile, the Xenon AI can simply do rush tactic and it just works. And what about the other factions that the player can't control? An improvement to the current AI would benef...

I'm familiar with your preferred tactics, is just that it involves too much micro for my taste. In principle it's precisely ONE extra order in the command ship's queue (Fly & Wait), it's hardly micromanagement hell. Surprised you've never tried it. Makes the world of difference if destroyers start ...

Find I get MUCH better results if I put a Fly & Wait order in the command ship's queue ahead of the Attack order & if necessary move the Fly & Wait in response to movement by the target, to ensure that when destroyers complete the Fly & Wait, & start the Attack order, they're at optimum range for th...

What advantage would there be had in putting everything in 1 station from an economic standpoint? Logistics. Building a single big station eliminates the need for all the ships that would otherwise be needed to shift wares between different modules in each production chain. Can potentially remove t...

Tend to restock carriers & auxiliaries from a baggage train of L freighters which follow the fleet around. They have a nominal defend role for the auxiliary, simply so they're formally part of the fleet. I handle the restocking manually, rather than letting them autotrade. Have previously used M fre...

Generally use 2 types of missile in my fleets, launched by 2 distinct sets of ships. Frigates, set to intercept, use Light Smart to saturate the battlefield with a continuous barrage of flare-proof, auto-retargeting missiles. Makes life extremely unpleasant for nearby enemy S & M ships. Also use hea...

I use the Protect Position zone to judge distances. With it set to 40km it's fairly easy to estimate where to place the carrier so there's about a 1/4 radius gap between the edge of the zone & the station. I then place my destroyers just inside the perimeter of the zone, before shrinking it down to ...

Can be avoided if the carrier is placed at an appropriate distance from the station. Intercept range is determined by the commander's radar range, normally 40km. Consequently when attacking a station I place my destroyers at about 10km from the station & carrier at about 50km, directly behind them. ...

Maybe it's rep related? Suspect that was the case for a recent skirmish between otherwise friendly factions in my game. At high rep levels factions 'may decide to send patrol ships to areas in which your assets have been repeatedly attacked'. In this case it was some MIN ships which had started sho...

Found this quite an amusing outcome when a bunch of overly zealous MIN police decided to hassle one of my freighters: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sxxv4p8nakkju4d3iyydm/20240525141640_1.jpg?rlkey=8klrnsddybcay2sr8wcyw4p5s&dl=0 Those blue ships pursuing the last ship of the MIN force - they're Tela...

If I intend to wipe out a faction I often prefer to let one of their enemies take over their sectors, that way someone else has the job of suppressing their attempts to rebuild. For example, in my current game RHA were on the chopping block. However BOR now own their sectors & are doing a fine job o...

I think the other destroyers get picked more than people let on. The Syn and Rattlesnake just happen to have good talking points. The Syn (while admittedly very good) gets a bit of a boost in discussions due to the ease of getting one early, while the Rattlesnake is the default answer to "more gun"...

My usual approach to this sort of incident is first to identify where it took place. I do this by turning off faction colours & scanning the map of the faction's region, looking for red ships that normally wouldn't be. When I've identified the sector I temporarily add it to my default activities bla...

Looks like a reasonable selection - you'll probably do fine with that setup. Only mods I'd suggest considering as alternatives are Whirlygig on the engines & Lubricator on the chassis. Rattlesnake starts out as a remarkably fast destroyer, so if it was my ship I'd probably prioritise improving handl...