[Arkainjel]

Well it's really a question about how to do this!! I'm hoping to garner a conversation leading to advice that will help people using hangar pets . Using a recluse, my pets always take forever to move on to a distant target and send to get distracted along the way. It's frustrating to evasive or full impulse across the map to continue pew-pewing only to see my frigates are 20-30 away... Any and all advice/tips on their behavior and ways to minimize their individuality would be most helpful. Thank you!

-- Ark

[Three of Seven]

You wish to minimise their individuality? Have you tried assimilation

I think as a general rule, pets like to wonder and I don't think they can keep up at speed, you can set them to Escort and that should hopefully keep them close to you. That should then mean they only attack enemies near you. Try not to go at high speeds a lot as well, only if you really need to and if you want them all back, you can use the recall command.

[Daedalus]

Remember that pets will not engage your target past 14km and the AI will prioritize their flight patterns to stay within 20 km of you.

If you need to get them across a map quickly, I've found the best option is to recall your hangars and pack them up for the trip. In most cases you do not need to wait for them to dock, just wait for them to flash a command confirmation (pet status will flash green). Once they get more than 20km away, they will auto dock in most cases. Note that this doesn't always work as pets lose their minds occasionally and refuse to follow the recall command. If this occurs, they will either respawn on your next hangar launch or you'll have to wait for them to trudge across the map slowly.

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[ForTheGamer]

If you want to keep them close to yourself, select yourself and then utilize the the skill, Escort. This will make them stick around you and if you can even boost the damage they receive with an appropriate Flight Deck officer.

[Arkainjel]

Thanks for the replies and info everyone.

I'm now curioius about escort mode that forthegamer mentioned... will this result in a DPS loss because they are not in attack mode?

[Daedalus]

IIRC, Escort only attacks your attacker(s) . Therefore, if you are taking no damage your pets are doing nothing.

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[Dark]

That's not entirely true.

If you are not in combat, then Attack will make your hangers attack your target if it is in range, and Escort will not. If you are already in combat, they will attack according to their priority list on both Attack and Escort, regardless of if you're being attacked.

The difference is that on Attack, your current target is placed at the top of their priority list. On Escort, any small craft and destructible objects (like enemy fighters and heavy plasma torpedoes) that pop up are placed at the top of their priority list. If you leave them on Escort or have no targets on Attack, they do whatever their AI tells them to do.

If you do ISE and have your hangers on Escort, they'll attack the generator you're attacking, but then split off and attack the spheres that show up. If you have them on Attack and then Escort, they'll ignore the spheres until that generator is destroyed, then engage the spheres even if you start attacking another generator. If you leave them on Attack, they'll ignore the spheres until you target them.

So on ISE, what you generally want to do is leave them on Attack so they'll hit whatever you're trying to destroy, but when you engage the cubes you switch to Escort after you already have the cube targeted. That puts the cube initially on top of their priority list, then the heavy plasma torps have priority, but when they're destroyed it goes back to the cube. If you leave it on Escort without ever targeting the cube on Attack, they'll attack whatever they feel like (like the closest sphere or something).