Introduction
You got a carrier set up. You loaded it up. Perhaps you read some guides. In any case, you’re in a battle and you have no idea what to do.
Well first, finish your game then come back and read this guide because you should be talking to your team. Here is a complete breakdown of all the UI elements.
This guide is part of a series of guides prepared to help you get up to speed on carriers.
For a doctrinal guide: How to Win As a Carrier (Intermediate Doctrine and Tactics Guide)\
For how to load your craft onto your carrier and set it up: A Step By Step Guide to Setting Up Your Carrier and Loading Craft
For a guide to the Craft UI and how to launch and return craft: The Craft Management UI and Craft UI
For detailed Anti-Craft Missile Setup, I strongly recommend reviewing Comprehensive Craft Clobbering Compendium for Chic and Comely Captains: A guide on ACM design and usage
Moving Your Carrier
Carriers cannot move freely when launching craft. You must be at a certain Speed and Crab (the angle between heading and velocity) in order to launch your craft.
Flight Launch Speed Indicator - Mouse over FLIGHT to bring it up. Indicates if you can launch your craft. If SPD and CRB are red, if the dot is red, and outside your circle, the craft will just hang out on the pads even if they are launching.
If the dot is green your pads will launch. This is because your carrier must be traveling in a specific direction and speed to launch craft. Too fast (SPD not met), your craft will not launch. Travelling at the wrong angle (CRB) and your craft will not launch either.
FQ (Flight Quarters) Throttle Setting
Can’t manage your speed whilst also managing your craft and manoeuvring your carrier? Fear not! Use mouse clicks (right or left for forward or back) to set the Throttle (THRTL) to the blue FQ and your carrier will automatically stay within craft launch speeds, no matter its facing.
Flight Operations
To launch and load craft, open the Flight Operations Menu by clicking “FLIGHT”
Launch Pad Indicator
If you launch or recover craft they turn yellow in the number corresponding to the craft you are launching, indicating they’re taken. Unless you have a Strikedown Center, craft will not arm on a yellow pad. If your pad is taken out or damaged to the point of unusability, it will turn red. The large pads are the bigger squares and the small pads are the small squares.
Launching Craft
Select a craft. You left click to select one. Control + Left Click to Select Several, Left Click then SHIFT+Left Click to select a row
Selected craft show up with an orange outline and are indicated in the “Selected” indicator under “Flight Operations”
If you do not see any craft selected but the “Selected” box reads a number, you might have selected an alternate craft frame. Hit DESELECT ALL to clear your selection
Open the Loadouts sub-menu by mousing over the arrow on the bottom-right of your selected craft
Upon clicking the loadouts tied to that craft frame will appear
To have all selected craft load that specific loadout, hit the flight icon by the loadout. If you just click the loadout text only the craft whose loadout arrow you directly touched, will switch to that loadout. Note that you are told in “Available on Ship” how many loadouts you have of that type.
If you’ve done it correctly this is what you’ll see
Assuming you are at the correct speed, you can now hit the LAUNCH FLIGHT button
If you wish your craft to just sit on your carrier's pads after arming, hit the “Amber Hold” button. Hit it again to launch your craft.
A number of pads directly corresponding to the fighters you ordered launched will appear. You can now queue up more launches
Craft will then be winched up to the carrier’s pad and launched once the Pre-flight arming is complete. They will orbit your carrier until given further instructions
Congratulations, you’ve launched your first craft
To navigate to other types of craft, select your carrier, open the “Flight Operations” menu and select the craft frame you wish to launch with a left click.
Cancelling Craft Launch
Oh no! I don’t want this loadout/I need to clear the pads! To cancel a flight’s launch, select the flight the same way you select craft to launch a flight (Left Click, Left Click then Shift+ Left Click, Control + Left Click).
Hit the CANCEL SELECTED button
You should see them go to “Post-Flight” mode. Once that is complete, you can re-launch those craft again
The Craft Behaviour User Interface
Munitions
Weapons immediately available to a flight are indicated here
They are also available here:
HBURN - Hard Burn
Short for Engine Hard Burn. All craft have fuel. You can burn that fuel faster to make your craft go faster. This is a Toggle-on Toggle-Off ability which does mean you need to manually control it.
The sign of a craft on HBURN is a blue wake.
However, if your craft is HBURN on, but just rotating around a position, they go to IDLE mode and their wake turns orange. They are not actively burning to a location
Fuel
I mentioned all craft have fuel which indicates how much they can travel before they need to return to carrier aka “BINGO.” There is no limit to “BINGO” range but you have no control over the craft when they are BINGO. You can find measurements of the fuel your craft have remaining here:
Here: (the green lines under each craft indicate their separate fuel allowance)
And on the Tacmap (Tactical Map) represented as a purple dotted line
Returning Craft To Carrier
You can order your craft back to the carrier by clicking the “Return to Base” button or, SHIFT + Right clicking your carrier. The purple “Land on ship” order should be selected
Guard
Right click a friendly ship. This orders a flight to orbit a target friendly warship. They will intercept any offensive missiles fired at the target, and engage any craft within a certain range. If the craft are shot at by missiles, they will attempt to intercept any size 2 missiles and go evasive against any size 1 missiles.
Attacking Targets
Mouse over a target with a flight equipped with an appropriate weapon. You will see “Attack Target” pop up with this sword Icon.
Your craft will attack that target. Do not worry if you select a craft with a bomber or a ship with a fighter craft. Only the weapons that can damage a target will be authorized. The others will be deauthorized and turn grey. Note that you cannot shoot 20mm guns at ships.
Stand-off And Stand-in
Stand off and Stand in are exactly what’s stated in the UI text explanation, which you can find if you hover offer the option. Do note that for both settings, the 75% fuel range safety margin applies to anti-craft missiles and the 95% fuel range safety margin will apply to ship-launched missiles.
Craft are also smart enough to calculate the lead they need to fire the missiles at when compared to the target’s course at the time they fired.
COHER - Coherence
Coherence refers to the distribution of your craft launched munitions.
Auto - A flight with anti-Ship munitions will automatically fire the SALVO size of munitions at the selected ship. A flight with anti-craft munitions will split targets against the selected enemy craft flight.
FOCUS - will order the flight to fire the SALVO size of munitions at a single target.
SPLIT - will order the flight to fire the SALVO size of munitions at multiple nearby targets
SALVO - Salvo Size
Salvo indicates the exact number of munitions that will be fired from that flight.
Auto - The setting orders all anti-ship munitions from the flight will be fired at a ship target whether SPLIT or FOCUS. When targeting craft, one of each munition will be fired based on the craft’s refire rate which is about 5 seconds. (This is assuming the craft has an angle to launch missiles)
One, Two, Three, Four - will fire that exact number of munitions at the selected target or nearby targets. This does not mean firing that number of munitions from every craft
Unlim/Unlimited - Fire everything. The craft fire all missiles until their loadout is exhausted or the target is dead.
STNCE - Stance
Determines how aggressive the flight is. A case that demonstrates how it works is how the command interact with units on Guard order. If on Passive, craft will continue to orbit friendly warships after engagement. Craft on Aggressive will pursue craft that attack your friendly ship. Craft on Evasive will run away, but should still defend your ship against anti-ship missiles.
ATGT - Attack Target
Attack Target (ATGT) orders the craft to target specific enemy modules while on an attack order. This command only applies to unguided munitions (35mm slug guns, gunpods, rockets, bombs) and not guided missiles.
ENGINE - Targets thrusters and engine thrusters
DEFWEP - Defensive Weapons. Orders the craft to target point defense mounts
OFFWEP - Offensive Weapons. Orders the craft to target offensive weapon mounts
SENSOR - Orders the craft to target radar panels and other sensors
WRTB - Return To Base By Weapon Status
WRTB determines on which weapon status does your craft return to their carrier.
SKOSH - The default setting for craft. When a craft expends all missiles, it will automatically return to carrier. This means if a fighter is on SKOSH and uses its missiles, it will then try to return to carrier.
WINCH - Short for Winchester. Your craft will automatically return to the carrier only when its nose-gun ammunition is exhausted. Toggle to this for fighter craft.
NEVER - Your craft will continue to engage and will never return to your carrier, even if all their munitions are expended. Turn this on if you don’t want your craft to automatically path back to your carrier due to enemies nearby.
MNVR - Maneuvering Posture
MNVR determines how your flight moves while orbiting friendlies, and how they move to get to an ordered position.
Direct - Your flight fly in a straight line as they move or orbit. This is quite vulnerable to RPF, Flak, and Sandshot.
Juke - Your flight will do a little wiggle as they travel or as they orbit which can throw off Sandshot at range and RPF at range.
Evade - Your flight starts doing corkscrews as they travel to do everything they can to not get hit. This however severely reduces their speed and expends more fuel as they need to move more to get to a location.
FORM - Formation
FORM toggle alters the formation you wish to set your craft in, which can help when maneuvering around rocks and cover. You choose different formation types you wish to organize your craft into. The options are Wedge, Line, Cross and Echelon
Notes On Craft Behavior
Against direct fire weapons (Sarissa, RPF): If your crafts are getting shot at, they will NOT start automatically maneuvering. You need to make sure they are on Juke at least.
Against Size 1 missiles: Craft will notch, deploy decoys and attempt to evade enemy anti-craft missiles. They have different behaviors for missiles of different seekers and will employ both on their own accord.
If you want them to ignore that behavior, issue a move order.
Against Size 2 missiles: Craft will attempt to engage enemy Size 2 missiles fired at them with guns and size 1 missiles, but if they’re fired too close they may not be able to intercept them.
Craft Behavior On Landing
If your carrier’s pads are unavailable due to launching another flight, flights that are being recovered will circle in a pattern behind their home carrier.
The Furball Tracker
When two groups of craft get into a dogfight or a craft versus craft engagement, an icon pops up indicating a “furball” has occurred, reducing the amount of clutter on screen unless you select a craft inside the furball. Otherwise all you see is an indicator with Green and Red dots representing the enemy and friendly craft engaged
The downwards Red Arrow next to the dots in the below picture does not represent that the enemy is winning, even if in this case, yes, they are winning. It actually indicates that your flight has lost more craft to the enemy flight than your flight has killed.
An upwards Green arrow is displayed when your craft kill more of the enemy’s craft than they have lost.
The gray dots indicate craft lost in the engagement, with their position corresponding to whether they were enemy (bottom rows) or friendly (top rows).
Allied craft are displayed as blue dots.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401620886
More NEBULOUS: Fleet Command guilds
- All Guilds
- Comprehensive Craft Clobbering Compendium for Chic and Comely Captains: A guide on ACM design and usage
- How to Win As a Carrier (Intermediate Doctrine and Tactics Guide)
- A Step By Step Guide to Setting Up Your Carrier and Loading Craft
- A Step by Step Guide to Setting Up Your Craft
- Salvo size = infinity; Cruise missile Time on Target attack handbook.
- Nebulous: Cap Fleet Commandments
- MD/Rail
- Jakub's Guide to not Dying to Missile Spam
- NEBULOUS: Fleet Command Guide 427