Hello,
Tonight, I was trying to beat an anti-fighter fleet test, but I ran into a very frustrating problem. I had to big sub fleets, one consisting of bombers and the other of fighters. I assigned every fighter to a bomber as escorts, which was kind of taking some time, but the orders were never carried into battle. Each time, when I got back into the deployment screen, the orders weren’t there anymore… I then tried to save the orders, save the fleet, etc, but the orders always are disapearing…
I then tried some formation orders, but it resulted in the same thing…
I’ve never had such problems before, any clue what could be the cause. Please not that my fighters were pretty far from the bombers the were assigned to escort…
Thank you very much!
I don’t think the formation and the escort orders are applied to fighters. They can escort and follow formation of other ships but nothing can escort or form up on fighter groups.
I have found this frustrating as well - the best I can say is use a protector order but those sometimes seem pretty random. I would like fighters to escort other fighters/bombers.
Berny
its true that you can only escort non fighters, same with formation, and that formation and escort orders are mutually exclusive. The game will not let you apply ‘illegal’ orders. It’s just because in gameplay terms, the way the orders work makes certain combinations impossible.
Ok I see now. I would be nice if the UI could either prevent applying such orders, or at least provide a warning popup that these orders will not be used, as they are not permitted. It just looked like it didn’t work but there really was no clue that this was inteded by the game engine 
Thanks for the replies!