...and while I'm at it, I noticed quite a change in moving my heaviest ship around in the fleet order. I have an admittedly wretched little fleet of SOW2, S3, S3. If I put the SOW2 first, I got creamed. If I put it last, I get creamed. It seemed to do best in the middle.

Is this just a function of random results, or is having a little ship soften a fleet up just better? Any inside mechanics to this? (This is the game mechanics help section)

Fleet order plays no role in fleet speed. The slowest ship however, affects the speed of all fleet.

Crew plays a high importance in ship speed.

We have a guide with all the details:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=76

Thanks but my question is to the order of battle of a fleet, and had nothing to do with speed.

Say you have one particularly good ship, is there any benefit to the slot it occupies in the fleet? I have already seen about week ships at the end, got that, but if you want to maximize damage to the opponent's fleet?

It doesnt matter that much what order (excluding the last ship) but you could test a few ways and see which is best. I found that your ship order mostly depends on who your battling and what arrangement they have.

The reason people are using a cheap ship in their fleets is because you lose a level on it if you have a high number of total ships.

Code: Select all

    1 to 3 Ships: 0% Sink Chance (Ships never lose a level)
    4 to 10 Ships: 2% Sink chance
    11 to 25 Ships: 5% Sink Chance
    26 to 50 Ships: 25% Sink Chance
    51 to 100 Ships: 33% Sink Chance
    101 to 150 Ships: 50% Sink Chance
    151 to 200 Ships: 75% Sink Chance
    201 or more Ships: 100% Sink Chance (Ships always lose a level)

If you have a full fleet of Ship of the line you'll lose a level on the last one. It costs over 2 million... that's why you put a cutter or a sloop for last ship

I've done sooo many things wrong, I'm afraid I will only dream of a level 10 SOL, but thanks:)

I've done sooo many things wrong, I'm afraid I will only dream of a level 10 SOL, but thanks:)

Don't think that way. It's not very hard. I've even got two lvl 10 SoLs from tidal waves