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How to Merge Fleets in Stellaris

Stellaris is all about managing your fleets of vessels as you roam the cosmos. Sometimes it can be downright unwieldy to manage so many different fleets.

One of the best ways to solve this is to merge your fleets together. Wondering how to merge fleets in Stellaris and troubleshoot any problems that you may encounter on the way?

Keep reading to discover how in our comprehensive guide.

Nice and Easy

Can't fight this sudden merge

Merging your fleets is actually one of the easiest things in the game. Start out by selecting multiple fleets. To do this, all you have to do is hold down your Shift key and select the fleets that you want to merge.

Once you have selected all of the chosen fleets, hit the “merge” button to merge those fleets. To save some time, you can also use “G” as a merge shortcut key.

Obviously, your fleets can’t merge until they meet up. So while you can command ships in multiple systems to merge, it will take a little time before they meet and join with one another.

Most of the time, this will be enough to merge your fleets. If this doesn’t work, however, there are a few steps you may need to take to understand the problem.

The Tooltips Have the Answer

Are there tool men in space?

Some RTS gamers hate to peek at the tooltips. To them, it’s a point of pride that they figured everything in the game out on their own. But if your fleets aren’t merging, then you need to check the tooltips for the answer.

Most of the time, the answer is pretty straightforward. For example, certain specialty fleets may be unable to merge with certain ships. If your ships have different kinds of drive systems, it is impossible to merge them together.

Additionally, fleets that are busy with either repairs or upgrades will be unable to merge. And you can’t merge if doing so will put you over your Command Limit (more on this in a minute). The tooltip may also warn you about user error; you’d be surprised how often players hit the merge button and only have one fleet selected.

The tooltip can’t warn you about everything. For instance, if you give the wrong command, it will faithfully execute that command; the game doesn’t know you wanted to merge instead. If you try to merge fleets with empires between them, you may be unable to merge if you have no open borders arrangements with those empires.

Take It To the (Command) Limit

One more time

The Command Points Limit puts a cap on how many ships you can have in a fleet. The limit doesn’t represent the actual number of ships. That’s because certain types of ships count more towards that limit than others. In other words, with a Command Limit of 20, you could have 20 corvettes but only 10 destroyers.

If merging fleets would put you over that Command Limit, you will be unable to merge. Therefore, optimizing your fleets involves mastering the art of transferring ships and splitting fleets.

Transfer of Power

Good time to request a transfer

You’re probably already familiar with the transfer command. In fact, many players accidentally click on “transfer” instead of “merge” and wonder why their fleets aren’t merging together.

To transfer ships properly, start by selecting a particular fleet and hitting the transfer button. You can then select a particular ship from this current fleet and move it into a new fleet. You can also do so with multiple ships from a single fleet and then merge the new fleet you have created into one of your existing fleets.

Why bother transferring ships like this? It goes back to the “rock, paper, scissors” design of most RTS games. No one fleet configuration is going to be able to handle every situation. By strategically moving ships around, you can determine the optimal way to solve most problems.

Calling It “Splits”

Ever see a fleet do the splits?

Transferring ships using the above method assumes that you want to micromanage different ships and configurations. What if you just want to quickly split up a fleet that is too large?

You can select any fleet and then select the Split Fleet icon. At that point, the computer will do its best to split the one large fleet into two smaller fleets of approximately equal size.

Why would you want to split fleets like this? This is the quickest way to break up a large fleet that was too big to merge with another fleet. This technique works best when the fleet you are splitting is made up of the same ships. For example, you can split up a large fleet of destroyers into two smaller destroy fleets that are ready to merge as needed.

How to Merge Fleets In Stellaris: Wrapping It Up

Merging fleets is like most actions in Stellaris. It’s easy enough to learn how to do, and after this guide, you know how to merge fleets in Stellaris with the best of them. But the art of transferring, merging, and optimizing your fleets may take years to fully master.

Fortunately, SideGamer is here to provide you with the best Stellaris guides to enhance your gameplay.

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Written By

Chris Snellgrove is a professional nerd turned nerdy professional. After completing a PhD in English, he started teaching by day and writing by night. Despite the manic schedule, he finds plenty of time for books, comics, movies, and video games. Ultimately, he lives his life by the philosophy of the Rocky Horror Picture Show: "don't dream it...be it!"

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