Defend Position (Assignment)
Defend Position (Assignment) | |
 | |
| Category | Combat |
| Instruction Method | Assignment |
| Skill | ☆☆☆☆☆ |
| Ship | Any |
| Commander | Carrier |
| Mimic | Yes (but not worthwhile) |
| Repeat Order | No |
Overview
Th Defend Position (Assignment) is a means to have a carrier manage multiple independent wings that are each defending a different location, that is, they will attack any enemy ships that come within 20km of their target location. These locations are manually selected by the player and can be located right next to their carrier or in an entirely different sector.
Configuration
Assigning ships to position defence is a lot more involved than other assignments, interestingly enough, ships can only be directly assigned to existing position defence groups so to set up the initial position defence groups is more involved.
Select the ship (or group of ships) that are to join the carrier's fleet 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 commander and hover over any valid assignment (with the iron exception of position defence when making a new group) from the context menu that appears next to the cursor, the group selection options will appear in a menu cascaded off of the context menu and select a valid group.
In the loadout menu 
of the carrier select the group that is to be changed to defend a position and choose "Defend Position" a position marker 
will then appear in the map, the marker can then be dragged to the desired location of the wing's activities.
To remove the assignment it is matter of re-selecting the ship or group of ships and choosing "remove all orders and assignments" from the context menu.
As a basic example configuration the carrier doesn't have a default behaviour and the subordinates are all sharing the same position defence task.
Additional Settings
Defend Position has 3 options that can be applied on a per-group basis which are all enabled by default, these are:
- Attack on sight, whether or not ships will attack enemies on sight or if they'll wait to be attacked first
- Resupply at carrier, whether or not ships will repair and resupply at their carrier if it is possible to do so
- Reinforce other positions, whether or not ships are allowed to fly to other position defence wings and assist them when they are attacked
These options can be accessed be right-clicking the position marker for a group and making selections in the 3 checkboxes.
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
Defend position is another part of the player's carrier operations toolbox and allows them to extend their fighter groups and fleets across a sector or even multiple sectors while still having the assurance of resupply with a carrier. The instruction can also be a means to ensure that carriers hold back from combat by intentionally placing groups near gates, highways and accelerators and having the carrier either idle on its own or protect a smaller, less involved, location.
Example
Defend position, interestingly, can be used to create response fleets. This can be achieved by creating lots of small groups that act as "lookouts" for the other groups, these lookouts can then be reinforced by larger groups that are located in a more central location to respond to all lookout groups with equal efficacy.
Caveats
Unlike the Defend Position default behaviour the carrier assignment version has a radius limited to 20km and cannot be adjusted.