Attack in Range (Order)
Attack in Range | |
 | |
| Category | Combat |
| Instruction Method | Order |
| Skill | ☆☆☆☆☆ |
| Ship | Any |
| Commander | None |
| Mimic | No |
| Repeat Order | Yes |
Overview
Attack in Range offers a solution to the tedium of manually queueing up attack orders or performing a multi-select of targets by simply directing a ship or group of ships to attack all enemy objects within a given radius and then return to their default behaviour once the task is complete.
Configuration
Select the ship (or group of ships) that are to attack the objects near a point of interest from either the property menu or the map interface itself. use LEFT-CLICK to select and hold SHIFT or CTRL to either allow for dragging to multi-select or to individually add ships respectively.
While remaining in the map interface RIGHT-CLICK the location that is to be the centre of the range and select " Attack targets in range" from the context menu that appears next to the cursor.
By default the radius of the sphere to attack within is set to 40km, however, this can be adjusted in the ship's behaviours tab 
of the information menu by selecting the + next to Attack targets in range and then dragging the radius slider
To abort the attack make the selection of ships again and then select "Remove all Orders" from the context menu. Note that this will reset the ships to their default behaviour which may be a combat command that could have them engage enemy objects again. To mitigate this it can be useful to then give all ships a "Fly and Wait" command to physically draw them away from the engagement.
Skill Effects
Crew and pilot skills have a variety of effects on how the attack order is performed, some key effects are summarised below:
Missile utilisation - Higher skill pilots will deploy their missiles at shorter intervals between salvos
Boosting - Higher skill crews allow their ship to boost while in combat (unless expressly forbidden by the player)
Applications
Attack in Range is excellent for an indiscriminate attack on any enemy fleet and has no priority logic for the ships involved in the attack. As the player is selecting and area it is also generally faster than making a larger selection with the attack order. The order can also be used as an excellent means of defending a series of positions when combined with the Repeat Orders default behaviour as ships will use their travel drive to fly to each area to begin the attack in range command, if they fly to a range and there are no enemy ships there the order completes and the ship flies to the next area to check again for enemies and will do so indefinitely.
Example
As an example this corvette is set in a loop of 3 attack in range orders which causes the ship to fly between the 3 areas of interest and engage targets whenever any are encountered within those areas. To amplify the utility of this setup, two fighters are set to "Attack with Commander" which allows them to engage the targets in the range in the same order as their commander.
Caveats
Ships will attack any enemy object in range, this can include stations which is often undesirable particularly when the intent was to attack a group of fighters at a location and the station can distract from the actual intended targets.