Yes I was doing something wrong, apparently there's a "Break off formation on attack" and I probably activated it & forgot about it, probably because for most cases keeping formation makes little sense. maybe to keep a line of battleships or something.

You can see it working in the last two screenshots of this ship: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894765781
Maybe it's something in your options or maybe you can tweak formation behaviour further via right click or something.

No, it seems like you're doing something wrong then. I've had plenty of career fights where I kept the Crabs in formation on either side of my main battle ship and they happily stayed there. I don't know what the problem is for you, but the formation behaviour you seek is possible without any micro.

Ah didn't knew about that, still there's still the issue that we have to micro manage them, even the crab goes on the attack and break formation as soon as the wing leader is in range, guess it's a limitation of this game's controls.

They're not built to act as PD-escorts for larger ships. For that role I made this: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2895311000
The Dakkas are individual attack ships, but as I said a year ago, this is a crap ship.

Jaja found a way to use it in kite situations properly: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103728585

How are you supposed to use these ones? I feel these only work if you're pushing forward, but if you're using a kite (most of the EU ships are setup as kites) then the Dakkas can't back up quick enough, feels like only the heaviest EU battle cruisers could use it properly.

@montie1123 The other difference between PD and blasters is range, only thing with more range than blasters are missiles, ion rays & rail-guns.

Heh. You're welcome. Though, I fallen a bit out of love with this one. It's very expensive for what it does and it's not a good attacker for it's size. It'll get the job done, if you don't care about cost, but it's not my most efficient ship.

Diz be a gud kroozer for our fleet, ya git! Da Orkz be takin dis for our Waagh!

If you hold down ALT while hovering over a part, you can see the stats. The PD guns do pretty much the same damage as a blaster (a bit less), so in terms of raw numbers its somewhat viable. The problem is that they cannot target specific parts and spread their damage all over the area they're aimed at while blasters do pin point damage. This is a very fair trade off for the ability to shoot down incoming missiles and cannon shots.

do the PD guns do enough damage? I am not seeing any mane guns? I love the mining ships for starters though hehe

i like them because i can use them easy in career and the ships are very good made.

An honor. Try playing against them in creative. I hope they make good opponents. And if not, I'm always eager to hear of ways to improve the designs. :)

i love it to play with all the ships you have build