The following rules are common for all four types of admirals (parameters are marked as underlined):
Assign ships of specific ship-design produced on specific planet(s) to this Admiral. This allows you to automatically assign freshly produced ships to this Admiral. Please note: this rule is only applied to ships that have been produced this very turn. You can right click on the specific planet(s) link to switch to all of my planets.
Fully|Sufficiently man ships of specific ship-design in orbit of specific planet(s) with Stationed Military, if rank level is at least|most 0. This allows you to automatically assign crew to ships that are in orbit of specific planet, and that are under control of this Admiral. You can right click on the specific planet(s) link to switch to all of my planets.
If you specify at most it will pick the least experienced military first. On the other hand when specifying at least it will pick the most experienced military first.
Please note: This rule is not executed on planets who are still partly influenced by previous conquerors!
Please note: If you specified “fully man ships” an admiral will wait until the ship is indeed fully manned before it takes control over it.
Add ships of specific ship-design to existing fleet|a new fleet named specific fleet|specific name if at same position. This allows you to automatically add ships to an already existing fleet, as soon as the ship reaches the same position as the specified fleet. A second option allows you to have a new fleet created the first time two ships of the specified type meet. All subsequent ships will be added to that new fleet once it is in existence.
Effectively, these set of rules allow you to have any ships built in the future being automatically put under the control of an Admiral, and perform the same tasks as all the other ships assigned to that Admiral!
The Transport Admiral basically only offers one rule (parameters are marked as underlined):
The Transport Admiral will send the ship under its control to one of the specified source planets, load it with stationed military present on that planet, send that ship to one of the destination planets, and unload the optional crew there. After that the ship will return to the source planet, and the cycle will be repeated.
There is a set of optional rules, that allows to gain more control on how Stationed Military are transported back and forth between planets:
Transport to specific planet first. Where specific planets can be one of the following:
Planet with lowest stationed-military count. Planets with a lower number of stationed military are preferred.
Closest planet. The closest planet to this ship is served first.
Planet with lowest military to population ratio. This one means that planets with a lower number of military compared to their population count are preferred.
Only transport Stationed Military with a rank of at least|most 0. Only military with a specific rank will be transported.
Do not transport to planets with a Stationed Military count below|above 0. This means planets that do not meet the requirement will not be served anymore.
Make sure one Transport Ship is sent to a target|source|destination - then, begin to double up|hold position. Since you can select multiple planets as the source and destination, and assign multiple ships to this Admiral, this rule will make sure that if another ship under the control of this Admiral is on its way to that planet already, it will pick the next best planet on the list. “Target” in this context means both source and destination. If there is no next best planet, you can chose to either start “doubling up” (which means ships will be evenly spread among the possible target planets), or “hold position” right there and wait until a planet becomes available.
Wait for Transport Ship to be fully manned. The transport ship will wait at a source planet until it is fully crewed.
The Scout Admiral offers the following specialized rules (parameters are marked as underlined):
Scout specific suns(s). The admiral will scout all star(s) specified in the list. It will send the ship to the star in the list that is closest to the current ship’s position. After all stars on the list have been explored, it will then move on to the star that has not been scouted for the longest while.
Scout all solar-systems within specific unit range of specific planet/sun|an arbitrary point in space. The admiral will scout all unexplored solar-systems within the radius of a specific planet/sun. If all stars have been explored, the admiral will begin scouting systems that have not been scouted for awhile. The specific planet/sun parameter can be changed to an arbitrary point in space by right clicking.
If the Scout Admiral is assigned to many ships, it will avoid sending ships to the same system. It will also try to send scout ships in different, opposing directions.
The Assault Admiral offers the following specialized rules (parameters are marked as underlined):
Attack specific planet(s). This will attack and conquer one planet after the other according to the planet list (specied by you). Please note: in order to conquer a planet a troop ship needs to be present! The rule will be deactivated as soon as it is fulfilled.
Attack specific ship(s). This will attack specific hostile ships according to list of ships that you specify. The rule will be deactivated as soon as it is fulfilled.
Set rally point at an arbitrary point in space|specific sun/planet/ship, and wait until specific number|percentage of assigned ships of ships reached this rally point. This allows you to set a rendezvous point for this Admiral’s ships before you start the attack, and only start to attack once a minimum number of ships have gathered. The rule will be deactivated as soon as it is fulfilled. This rule can also set a rally point to a specific sun/planet/ship. Right click the at an arbitrary point in space and select specific sun/planet/ship. In addition, the specific number parameter can be changed to a Percentage of Assigned Ships by right clicking that parameter.
Admiral rules are processed from top to bottom. The first attack target according to the rules that is available, will be attacked. Then the next one and so forth.
For example, suppose you wanted to set a rally point near an opponent’s planet and attack the planet once all ships have arrived. You achieve this by setting the following two rules in this order:
“Set rally point at an arbitrary point in space, and start attacking when a specific percentage of assigned ships reach this rally point”
“Attack specific planet(s)”
When conquering transfer specific number of Stationed Military to the planet. After successfully conquering a planet usually all troops participating in the ground battle stay on the conquered planet. With this rule one can set a maximum number of troops that stay as Stationed Military on the planet. The rest of the troops remain on the troop ships, ready to be used in subsequent battles at different planets.
Re-conquer planets of your ‘attack planets’ list, if they were lost. This is an optional rule for the “conquer planets” rule. In case any of the planets on the “list of planets to attack” is lost, this rule makes sure that your fleet is sent back and tries to conquer that planet again.
The Defense Admiral offers the following specialized rules (parameters are marked as underlined):
Defend specific planet(s). Should a hostile ship approach one of the specified planets, it will send the ships assigned to this Admiral to the threatened planet. If no threats are in sight, it will send the ship back to its rally point. If no rally point was set, it will stop the ship right there.
Intercept hostile ships within a specific unit range. Should hostile ships come closer than the specified range (measured from the lead-ship) the hostile ship will be attacked directly.
Also note, that any ship with that rule set will immediately start to attack hostile ships that are at the same location in space.
Set rally point at an arbitrary point in space|at a specific planet/sun. This allows you to set a gathering point for this Admiral’s ships. In case there is currently no threat, the ships will rally at the specific position. This rule can also set a rally point to a specific sun/planet/ship. Right click the at an arbitrary point in space and select specific sun/planet/ship.
Both the Assault and Defense Admiral offer a set of rules that make sure that all ships assigned to an admiral form a cluster, and all newly added ships try to follow and merge with that cluster.
You can choose if you want clustering enabled or not, and IF you do, you manually need to pick the lead-ship. The “Set Lead-Ship” rule enables clustering. It comes with two optional rules, that define what to do when the lead-ship gets lost (for what ever reason), and another rule that makes sure that once a cluster has formed around the lead-ship, the speed of the lead-ship is limited to the speed of the slowest ship in the cluster.
Basically the difference between clustering and non-clustering is that, if clustering is disabled, and you gave the admiral the rule to (for instance) “attack Planet A”, then all ships under control of the Admiral are sent to this planet with the attack order. Since they are treated as individual ships, they most likely will arrive at different times, making this a sub-optimal assault (unless you set a rally-point first and all ships have the same speed). If clustering is enabled (via “set lead-ship”), the only difference is that only the lead-ship will get the “attack planet A” order, and all other ships are ordered to follow the lead ship.
The same clustering/non-clustering distinction is made for all other rules, for instance for the “retreat” rule. If you order to retreat when the average ship-condition is below 50%, then this works in both cases: with clustering disabled, this rule checks the “health” of every individual ship, with clustering enabled this rule checks the health of all ships inside the cluster as a whole, and will retreat the entire cluster if the condition is met (besides that, the retreat rule will also check all ships that are not part of the cluster, and treat them as individual ships).
So here are the ship clustering rules:
Set specific ship|fleet as lead-ship, and make all other ships follow it. This rule enables automatic ship-clustering. All ships will try to catch up with the specified ship or fleet. It is possible to pick a ship or fleet of another player. Note however that the “reduce ship speed” is not applicable in that case, since you can not slow down the (lead-)ship of another player.
When lead-ship is lost, automatically pick closest ship to last known position as new lead-ship. In case the lead ship is lost (destroyed or out of vicinity) a new ship is automatically picked, according to the specified condition.
Make sure speed of Lead-Ship is reduced to that of the slowest ship within lead ship-cluster. Once other ships caughes up with the lead-ship and forms a cluster, the speed of the lead-ship is automatically reduced to make sure all other ships in the cluster can keep up with the speed.
Don’t follow ships to hostile planets. In case your ships are ordered to attack other ships, this rule will make sure that we don’t follow ships to a (possibly heavily fortified) hostile planet.
Retreat individual ships|entire lead-ship-cluster to specific planet/sun/ship, when a specific condition is met. This allows you to define conditions on which the entire lead-cluster (or individual ships not part of the lead-cluster) are supposed to retreat during a battle. This rule has the ability to remove individual ships from the cluster or even part of a fleet if the specified conditions is met.
Example: you order your troop ships to withdraw if the number of troopers aboard each ship is below a certain number. Then, as soon as the troop ship is fully manned again, the troop ship is sent to rejoin with the rest of the fleet (in case clustering is enabled). You also need to specify a “fully man troop ship” rule for this to work automatically.
Please note that in case of a retreat, all attack- and rally-point rules are deactivated for the entire cluster.