Action code 130, which is a fleet sweep with Vanguard.
Act# ACde Location#1 Flt#1 Qty BCde Empire/Ship Name Flt#2 Location#2 Spc# Notes
1 130 MMM333 6 WAR 10 MMM3331
At the time this game started I didn't have it finished quite like I wanted. It worked last game but would only report the recon. Any attack was not done yet. And I also made a decision at the last moment to use it as a way to test the new fleet ship to ship combat as well as weapons. Well I got it working pretty well although not everything is perfect yet.
The idea is using a smaller fleet to recon for your larger fleet and take out anything it finds that it can outfight itself. If it can't it calls in the big fleet. That was the basic idea. Think of the WWI battlecruiser fleets of England and Germany used to scout for their main battle fleets in the North sea. They both tried to locate the main battle fleet of the other with the battle cruisers and then closed with their main battle fleet. Only happened one time at Jutland but there were several clashes between the battle cruiser fleets before and after Jutland. Anyway you get the idea.
So to set up a Vanguard fleet you can only use 10 ships. Ships in the fleet can only be Battle cruiser class or less, meaning no Battle Orbs or even Battle ships and definitely not Carriers. Most small ships are fine, Destroyers, cruisers, scouts, etc. You need to give them Vanguard standing orders, which is a 4 in the special number slot. You can use any maneuver with them.
To use action code 130 which is a move and do here are the specs.
You can send the fleet to any location, deep space, system space or even a planet orbit to start the fleet sweep. So that location goes into Location 1. Fleet #1 box is your vanguard fleet.
Empire/Ship name you can add several filters.
WAR means attack any fleet you are at war with. Others will be ignored.
A specific empire name means your vanguard fleet only attacks that empires fleets ignoring all others.
ALL means you attack any non-allied fleet your vanguard fleet finds.
Leaving this slot blank means your fleet will attack no enemy or neutral fleets. Only scout and report fleets found although if it runs into another fleet with vanguard orders you're going to have fight if at war with that empire.
Location #2 is where you wish to sent your fleet to recon. It can only do one system or planet so sending it to recon subsector space is not useful. If you send it to system space it will recon system space and all planet orbits in the system. All fleets encountered will be reported to you similar to how a carrier recon works.
A fleet performing a vanguard action will attack any fleet it finds that it can reasonably have a chance of defeating and is defined in the Empire/Ship Name slot. This means if it encounters a large fleet it will not attack but will engage fleets of roughly the same firepower or less. It may engage fleets of superior firepower but not too much more, maybe 10% more firepower. It's a random number based on the fleet commander. More on that later. Right now not important.
If it finds a fleet it cannot reasonably stand a chance against it calls in the larger fleet which is where you put the fleet number in the Fleet #2 box. Now warning. This last part has not been added yet as the ship to ship combat has to be written for large fleets. I successfully tested fleets with up to about 60 or 70 ships but the memory limits on the old programs I feared would probably be exceeded if I tried more. I have to set aside a lot of strings to do the combat. So with fleets running around with 500 ships in them it was just not going to work. I'll add this part soon.
But for the moment the vanguard fleets do a bang up job of finding smaller fleets and killing them.
But second warning. Ship to ship combat is limited to base firepower right now. I have not added weapons as I consider it to be a bit unfair to just add them to vanguard fleets while most players have not planned for them. So base firepower it is right now and ship to ship combat is therefor at range 1. Not point blank but not longer ship weapon ranges either.
And it's bloody. A ship doesn't hit with 100% of its firepower but still a significant amount. Shields are useful but nowhere near as useful as say running into planet defenses with heavy scouts. Shields usually go down with the first good hit. And each ship in each fleet fires on an opposing ship. Damage dealt is simultaneous, survivors fire again till one fleet has no ships or retreats due to aggression level which in this case is measured in ships lost not firepower lost. So a fleet with 70% aggression will retreat when it loses 7 ships out of 10.
After the action or recon the vanguard fleet returns to it's starting location.
Some minor points. The fleet combat even though it can happen in a planet orbit the planets defenses never come into play. The engagement is considered to be outside the effective range of the planets defenses. Thus your vanguard fleet will never end up defeating the enemy fleet only to enter orbit and be pummeled by planetary torpedoes. If a vanguard fleet does enter planet orbit and there are defenses it is considered to have break contact orders when engaging planet defenses. However if you start the fleet sweep by sending the fleet to a planet with defenses and they shoot the action will be aborted when the fleet retreats to deep space. So if starting a fleet sweep from a planet orbit be aware if you don't know the planet specs you may get your fleet bounced.
Second minor point is that if you include a ship with scanning ability you'll get scans just like using an explorer fleet. So a fleet going to system space and recon the system will also report planets stats. It's pretty useful. You can scout and find fleets in the system at the same time.
I started this action code last game but the game ended before I finished it. Always thought it was a good addition. I've tested it in my test universe and it works well and is interesting. I even used it a few times now in the past couple turns and had no problems. I even found a couple NPC fleets around a planet that way. In one of them there was only one big ship. I destroyed the ship but when that ship returned fire and hit one of my battlecruisers there was not much left although it did survive barely. Luckily no critical hit.