The first thing to know about fleets is the importance of your Fleet Commander knowledge. How much you have defines how large your fleet can be. Each ship size has a cost for including it, and the total cost of your fleet may not go over your Fleet Commander. Here are the size costs:

• Shuttle: 2
  
• Yacht: 3
  
• Corvette: 5
  
• Frigate: 10
  
• Cruiser: 20
  
• Dreadnought: 40

You earn Fleet Commander points by killing ships whose level is above yours, while you have a fleet. Mercenaries count as having a fleet, but do not require Fleet Commander to hire - they are an easy way to get started. The points and kills are not a 1-1 ratio; Think of it rather as a separate level bar, that only gains experience from these kills. At first you will earn points quickly, but then it will slow down and you will need more and more kills to advance it.

Like all knowledge your Fleet Commander is capped at your level, maxing out at 50. However you can earn bonus points. Bonus points do not count towards the cap, and can go over it, but grant you the full bonuses as if they were a normal point. There are 3 ways to get bonus points: Perks, skills, and ship bonuses.

There are currently 2 perks that can grant you bonus Fleet Commander:

The Command experience perk grants 2 bonus Fleet Commander points - enough to start your fleet with a shuttle, and skip mercs entirely.

The White Collar background perk grants 3 bonus Fleet Commander points - enough for an extra yacht, and to skip requiring mercs.

Ship Bonuses:

The Syndicate ship's faction bonus includes 2 bonus Fleet Commander points. This means that simply flying a Syndicate ship gives enough points to add a shuttle to your fleet.

Carriers also add their docking capacity as bonus Fleet Commander when you are flying them.

Skills:

Finally there is the Leadership skill. This skill grants 10 bonus Fleet Commander points, as well as providing buffs to your fleet ships.

Ships in your fleet are, of course, AI controlled. This means a few things to keep in mind:

1. They can be very stupid
2. They don't get your skills or perks, instead getting special fleet bonuses.
3. Not everything is useful to them
4. They do not pick up items

1. Your ship's AI is dependent on the skills of the captain. How well he flies depends on his Pilot skill, and his accuracy is based on his Gunner accuracy. Note that his accuracy does not affect gunner-controlled turrets - those are still based on the gunner. Getting a good pilot/gunner to fly it is one of the most important, and difficult, challenges in adding a ship to your fleet.

2. They do not get the bonuses from your skills and perks. Any extra shield, damage, speed - nothing like that.

3. Not all equipment is meaningful to the AIs. They don't need or use scanners, and will not choose to activate equipment other than drones, such as Repair Systems. However, if you had equipment active when you swap away they will keep it running, unless they run out of energy for it - then it will turn off, and the AI will not turn it back on. The exceptions to this are tractor beams and cloaking, which are not kept running when swapping out of the ship.

4. Even if they have a collector beam running, it will suck items to them but they will not pick up the items. (although it is planned for them to eventually be able to do so)

There are sets of bonuses that specifically bonus your fleet ships, instead of you. Note that these bonuses only apply when they are/are in the flagship (the ship the player is in). Currently there are 3 ways of getting these bonuses:

Tacticians are crew that go in Co-Pilot, First Officer, or Staff slots. Tacticians can provide bonus Fleet Commander, and/or a wide array of bonuses to your fleet ships, but not to you. Tacticians only apply their bonus when in the flagship - for player fleets, that is the ship that you are flying.

Carriers are a special kind of ship. Carriers not only have docking bays where they can dock and repair ships, up to a certain size, but also provide bonuses to their fleet ships. Note that they do not dock ships when not the flagship (player ship, in your fleet), and when they are the flagship their docking capacity is added to your Fleet Commander.

Special Crew can have just about anything, so I won't try to go over what they might do. I'm not aware of any with unique bonuses relating for fleets right now.

There are some options you can set for how your ships act. These settings are available per-ship in the fleet control panel.

Role: Damage dealer, Healer, or Miner. Defaults to: Damage dealer
This defines whether the ship is meant to fight for you, help heal you and your fleet members, or mine asteroids. If you assign them as a healer, make sure to only give them repair beams and repair drones - otherwise they have been known to mix things up, and use the wrong tools on you and your allies. Miners will find nearby asteroids and mine them, but like other roles will not pick up any loot.

Collisions: Ignore, or Avoid. Defaults to: Avoid
This is whether your ships should worry about colliding with other ships. Helpful to change if the ship is a large ship, and/or has ramming weapons. Be aware that it can lead to your ship trying to go through you, instead of around, to get to its spot.

Combat Tactics: Strafe and fire, Hit and run, or Alternate. Defaults to: Alternate
This is how the ship should be have in combat. If set to Strafe and fire it will try to avoid damage by strafing side-to-side, and rolling (if it is small enough, and the pilot is a good enough level). This is the better option for most ships, unless armed with slow, heavy weapons. If set to Hit and run the ship will perform jousting attacks, sweeping in for a volley and then zipping away again. Alternate makes the ship alternate between the two styles.

Emergency Warp: Range from 0 to 80%
This defines when they should flee combat with their warp drive. If they have a warp drive they will warp out when their health falls below the specified threshold. Note that right now their warp does not require energy or energy cells, and has no range limits. When they warp out they will add a message to the log on the bottom right of your screen, saying where they warp to. After they do this warp, they must be fully repaired before they will do it again. They will wait in the sector they went to, and rejoin your fleet when you come to them. Note that if they have done this they can be called to warp back at any moment to rejoin you; At present there is no limit to how far they can warp to do this, although it will probably change in the future.

Carrier Launch/Attack key: Can be bound to any key, 5 by default.
If you are in a carrier this will order any fleet ships with that key bound to launch and/or attack the selected ship.

Carrier dock key: Can be bound to any key, 6 by default.
If you are in a carrier this will order any fleet ships with that key bound to dock with you.

Here's just a few helpful little tips and tricks I've come across. Feel free to tell me if you have found any others.

• Larger AI ships fly poorly without inertial stabilizers - they don't know how to use them properly. Large ships also have some troubles with docking, but there isn't much you can do about that at the moment.
  
• Smaller AI ships, especially with good pilots, benefit greatly from lateral thrusters - when the pilot is skilled enough they know how to strafe and dodge.
  
• If they are having trouble drawing fire, you can give them missiles - they will buy ammo as they need it, from your money. Using AIs entirely as missile-boats is a very plausible strategy when you prefer to be the tank, or if they just aren't good enough to survive direct combat.