Defend Commander (Assignment)
Defend Commander | |
 | |
| Category | Combat |
| Instruction Method | Assignment |
| Skill | ☆☆☆☆☆ |
| Ship | Any |
| Commander | Ship/Station |
| Mimic | Yes (but not worthwhile) |
| Repeat Order | No |
Overview
Defend Commander is a way to ensure that a ship or fleet of ships remain with their commander and only attack targets that have attacked their commander or their commander's fleet first. Defend commander is an inherently reactive assignment and ships with this assignment will not actively choose targets and will only respond to provocation.
Configuration
Select the ship (or group of ships) that are to join the commander'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 "Defend Commander" 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 (one that is either empty or has all ships within it also defending the commander).
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.
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 commander is one means of defending civilian ships (miners traders etc) or stations as this is the only combat assignment that these object types support. In active combat fleets ships set to defend can be employed to join in battles later as the defend assignment only allows combat once an attack has already been made against the commander or commander's subordinates.
Example
Stray Xenon fighters and corvettes can find themselves attacking stations, particularly in border sectors, rather than equipping the station with turrets which are expensive and take time to set up it can be easier to setup a small fleet set to defend the station instead.
Caveats
Ships will only attack when they, their commander, or their commander's subordinates have already been attacked. This means that ships set to defend may respond too late to make a difference.