Fleet

A fleet is a collection of ships, which move and act together. It is the basic unit of naval organization in C#, equivalent to VB6 Task Groups. Each ship must always be within a fleet. Fleets are organized and commanded from the F4 Naval Organization window, along with Naval Admin Commands, which can command multiple fleets.

Orders

A fleet is always together at the same point in space, doing a single thing. They cannot move faster than their slowest ship, and cannot pass through a jump point unless the entire fleet can jump together. Fleets are given orders as a unit, and follow those orders as a unit - any ship which cannot complete a given order simply sits idle while the other ships complete it. (For example, if you have a survey fleet with a frigate guarding the survey ships, the frigate will not survey, but it also won't prevent the fleet from surveying. It'll just sit and wait while the survey ships do their work.)

To give orders to a fleet, open the Naval Organization window (F4), click a fleet in the left sidebar, and make sure that the Fleet tab is picked at the top, and the Movement Orders tab below that. Then you can issue orders, based on the orders you've already issued. More details on this process are given on the Orders page.

Fleet Commanders

Each fleet with at least one ship will have a fleet commander. However, there's two different types of fleet commander.

If a fleet contains no ships with a Flag Bridge Command and Control module, then the senior-most officer commanding a ship in the fleet will be the fleet commander. However, this fleet commander position is only a title, and offers no game benefits.

If a fleet contains at least one ship with a Flag Bridge, that ship has a Fleet Commander officer position available, which is filled like any other ship's officer position. The senior-most officer in a Fleet Commander position will command the fleet. This allows all ships in the fleet to benefit from the fleet commander's reaction bonus.

Sub-Fleets

A group of ships within a fleet can be marked as a "sub-fleet". This allows them to easily be detached into a separate fleet, while maintaining their organization. Sub-fleets can be convenient for organization, or for fleets that are expected to break up at some point (e.g., tug ships dropping off the stations they're hauling, and returning home). Sub-fleets can have their own sub-fleets. Deleting a sub-fleet moves the ships inside the sub-fleet back to the main fleet.

Sub-fleets are similar to squadrons, but squadrons organize parasite craft (such as fighters) within a single carrier's hangar deck, instead of organizing multiple independent ships.