Wingmen behaviour

[JumpinDuck]

I spent 55k on 3 purist wingmen. First time they were following me well (they had admonisher ships) even through jump point and all looked ok until I docked at a mining station. When I got out 2 of them got destroyed in a second. I loaded and exited the same station again, this time there were none of them any more, just a lot of "space salvage" and trading items scattered around. It means they aren't with me any more I guess.

After that I loaded again, before I hired them. And hired them again. This time they were Plowshares. And they simply COULDN'T form up. I'm a plowshare too so no way I'm too fast. One moment they are 3000m from me and it seems ok, next moment they start increasing distance up to thousands of kilometers, for no reason whatsoever (no, I was not SPECing, I was either going 200m/s or even stood still). No enemies, no command from my behalf (except to form up), they just start going in the opposite direction. I simply couldn't get them to follow me. I even came to them, and they got lost again.

Bottom line question: Is hiring wingmen worth anything? Speaking from game's mechanic point of view. I mean, is the feature polished enough to be really usable or is it planned for the future?

[prestidigitator]

I believe wingmen are technically only supposed to be with you until the next time you dock (I think that's in the user manual). They ACTUALLY seem to stay with me for longer than that (until I quit/reload?). It's a good thing, too, because often scanning a planet results in my accidentally docking (especially on dancing/morphing targets like some of the moons in Sol/Sol). I'm running the released 0.4.3 version. I know they are randomly generated though (as are mission targets and in-system destinations), so it's no surprise they are different if you reload and re-acquire them.

As for their flight behavior, I'm not sure either. I've never even been able to SPOT the dang wingmen, and why they don't follow orders sometimes (I don't care how long it TAKES you to form up or attack this target, but DO IT!) is beyond me. I think they destroy my mission targets, though, because often I don't launch near enough missiles to account for all of them.

[Halleck]

Bottom line question: Is hiring wingmen worth anything?

Bottom line answer: no.

Maybe they will get better if the fleet management system is improved, and the wingman AI is improved to a level greater than "abysmal". (It may have gotten somewhat better since last I played, I think that spiritplumber's general AI improvements have been integrated into the VS trunk.)