Squad command: duties, formations and crews

Up to six squads fly with your flagship. Used well, they double the strength of your fleet. This guide covers the squad types, their duties, the formations and their skills, ranks and crews.

Squad types

• Interceptors: fast fighters that hunt enemy small craft.
• Bulwarks: heavy gunships that soak fire and protect what they escort.
• Lancers: bombers that hit capital ships and stations hard.

Your six squads start as two of each. Each civilization flies its own designs, so the small craft change with the crews you hire.

Duties

Escort	Fly in formation around your capital and engage whatever comes close.
Attack	Hunt the target you mark, then clear the area around it.
Defend	Guard an ally, station, convoy or point and intercept anything that comes near it.
Hold	Hold a position and fire on anything in range. They will not chase.
Intercept	Hunt enemy fighters that threaten your capital.
Objective	Fly to the active objective or side quest and fight there.

Give orders in command mode (Tab): pick squads with 1–6, a duty key, then click. A good default: two interceptor squads on Intercept, lancers on Attack against the biggest capital, bulwarks on Escort.

Formations

The formation decides where escorts fly around you and gives the whole fleet a bonus. Each one has a skill, used with N. Press B to cycle, or turn on automatic formations in the battle’s command panel.

Ranks

Squads rank up with kills, and each rank adds attack and hull: Recruit (0 kills), Regular (30 kills), Veteran (90 kills), Elite (200 kills), Ace (400 kills). A squad that dies loses nothing, so do not be afraid to throw them at a target.

Crews

At Meridian Station’s crew hall you can hire 14 crews from different civilizations. A crew changes a squad’s stats and gives it a skill that fires on its own (or all together with K). Some examples:

• Earthforce Starfury wing (Earthforce). Your own pilots in X-frame fighters. Steady, reliable, and already on the payroll. Skill: Strafing run, every craft in the squad makes a heavy gun pass on the nearest hostile.
• Blood Riders (Korrath Dominion). Korrath duellists. They close fast and hit hard, and they do not dodge. Skill: Bloodrush, the squad frenzies for 5 s: faster and harder hitting.
• Brood flyers (Verdant Choir). Living fighters that swerve like birds. Skill: Spore trail, a corrosive burst around the squad that keeps eating hulls.
• Veil Corsairs (Veil Nomads). Salvage-clan raiders: the fastest wing for hire. Skill: Ambush, the squad swoops on the nearest hostile with everything it has.
• Covenant Moonblades (Selene Covenant). Pearl darts that are half hidden from enemy sensors. Skill: Moonflash, a blinding flash disables the craft around the squad’s target.
• Throne Sun-gliders (Gilded Throne). Arched gliders flown by freed Throne pilots with a grudge. Skill: Staff run, four staff-cannon shells land around the squad’s target.
• Mandate Bastion Guard (Iron Mandate). Deserters from the Mandate: slow, armoured, unbreakable. Skill: Shield wall, the squad locks shields; your capital gets a share if it is close.
• Tidekin Skimmers (Myrr Tidekin). Tide-ships that ride incoming fire like a wave. Skill: Riptide, a cold surge around the squad slows every hostile in it.

Fleet synergies

Your flagship, the crews flying your squads, your hired warships and your relic wing each belong to a civilization. Some civilizations work together: when your fleet holds both halves of a pair, the ships of one half radiate an aura, and the ships it is for get a bonus while they are within its reach. That makes positioning matter. Keep the squads that need an aura close to the ship that radiates it, and use the formation and squad positions to do it. In battle a faint dashed ring shows each aura’s reach, and the Crew hall and the Warship dock list the synergies you have and the ones you are one pick away from.

Synergy	Needs	Radiates from	Bonus
Drone Lattice	an Earthforce carrier flagship or hired warship + any Tessellate ship or crew	The first, 420 m, to drones	+25% damage, +20% fire rate, +2% hull per second; prints 2 drones every 20 s (up to 6)
Shieldwall Compact	any Iron Mandate ship or crew + any Elder Conclave ship or crew	The second, 380 m, to your squads	+12% less damage taken
Tidesong	any Myrr Tidekin ship or crew + any Verdant Choir ship or crew	The first, 480 m, to every ship	+0.8% hull per second
Raiders’ Pact	any Korrath Dominion ship or crew + any Veil Nomads ship or crew	The first, 400 m, to Wisp squads	+15% damage, +10% fire rate
Focused Light	any Aurelian Concord ship or crew + any The Lumina ship or crew	The first, 420 m, to Needle squads	+20% damage
Requiem Watch	any Selene Covenant ship or crew + any The Hollow ship or crew	The first, 400 m, to every ship	+8% damage, +6% less damage taken
Gilded Accord	any Gilded Throne ship or crew + any Varenn Regency ship or crew	The second, 480 m, to capitals	+15% fire rate
First Friends	an Earthforce flagship or hired warship + any Myrr Tidekin ship or crew	The second, 400 m, to your squads	+6% less damage taken, +0.6% hull per second

Different synergies add up, but the same one never stacks with itself, and no ship can get more than +40% damage, +30% less damage taken, +40% fire rate, +3% hull per second from all its auras together. The battle simulator has no synergies, so its fights stay even.