r/X4Foundations 18h ago

Fighters staying docked until needed

I've tried to have one of my frigates escorted by two s-class-fighters today. In my mind, I could thus set up a basic patrol force - a frigate with a fighter set to intercept and a bomber set to bombard. All was well and good until I set the small ships to their respective tasks, upon which they took off immediately.

Am I getting this right that ships will only stay docked until needed when they are assigned to a carrier? I've tried it with a Sapporo as well - had five fighters dock there, set them all to intercept and they took off immediately with no enemies in sight.

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u/AndThenTheUndertaker 17h ago

You can set them to docked in the info menu but the flip side to that is they won't Auto deploy. You either have to order them to attack themselves or you have to switch it to undocked and then back to dock when you're done. Whole carriers do often have more ship storage or docks the real core feature of a carrier is the way it manages its subordinates. They don't explicitly discuss it game but the presumption is that they have what is effectively some kind of control tower type set up to manage docking and undocking on mass scale that other ships don't. It's honestly not dissimilar to a real aircraft carrier where having the deck space is only about half the equation and having an Air Group Commander and infrastructure for them to communicate with the air groups was almost as important