Escort Control

Escorts are no longer the pain that they once were, too dumb do defend themselves, and too gung-ho for their own good.

Upgrading and Selling

My personal favorite part about the new escort control would be the fact that you can sell or upgrade your escorts. The process is rather straight-forward: hail your escort, and you'll see it's sell and upgrade prices (as well as a "release" button, but you don't want to do that with captured ships...). Select one, and the next time you take off from a planet with a shipyard, the credits will be added/subtracted, and you'll get a message telling you how much you got or lost.

Some ships are wonderful to have as escorts (like Type IV Pirate Valkyries), while others are just better to sell (like Vipers, for a quick 10,000).

Escort Orders

In EV and EVO, you could have 6 escorts (not including fighters), and they all had the same commands. In Nova, you can give all four types (Fighter, Medium, Warship, Freighter) different orders (see below). While these orders don't stick with your fleet from system to system, they do revert back to Formation, so you don't have to keep hitting "V" when you want them to stay out of trouble.

Order Breakdown:

• Attack: Just what you think: your escorts will (or at least try to) kill anyone hostile to you. If you have a ship selected when you order them to Attack, they'll go for that person first.

• Defend: Want to capture those ships instead of blow them up? Telling your ships to Defend you will make them take out nearby hostiles, but leave them disabled. When there is no one left to fight, they'll fall back in line until the next time you're attacked.

• Formation: This will cause your escorts to follow behind you. Looks great, and keeps them out of trouble.

• Hold: Use this to keep them out of the way, or keep them from attacking until you can use them better (like after your opponent has run out of long-range weapons).

• Run Away: For your freighters. Since they can't do much, they run away. Simple enough.

Selection

In EV and EVO, if you option-tabbed through the ships in the system, you'd see other ships and then yours. If you option-tab in Nova, you can only see your escorts, which makes it much easier to check their shield levels.