Equendil -> 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying orders. (7/28/2010 8:49:51 PM)
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Not strictly speaking a bug report (though some of my problem might stem from bugs), but I'm getting quite frustrated with the level of automation of military ships, even when they are in manual mode and given direct orders. The most annoying behaviour I refer to as "chasing flies", ie, ships ignoring their orders, instead shooting and chasing every single ennemy ship around, should they be military targets or mere freighters or passenger ships, eventually running out of fuel then warping away to refuel, having failed to fulfill their mission. To outline the issue(s), here's what happened when I tried to take on a major ennemy hub with an invasion force, a complete waste of one hour of my time: I was at war with a minor ennemy faction with maybe 15 systems to their name. After a bit of skirmishing on the outskirt of their empire and capturing a few minor settlements, I decided it was time to head for their capital. To that end, I brought an overwhelming force of capital ships and cruisers including one with nukes so I could weaken the defense army, a few troop transports, and a total of 22 troops to match the planet's 7. One fleet (no troops) I had used to clear the system of space ports and military ships. My other fleet and transports were refueled in nearby systems, ready to jump in. My plan was to move my second fleet and transport into the system, use my cruiser with nukes to bombard the capital a bit before ordering all my troops to take over. 1st attempt That didn't go as planned. I ordered my fleet and transports to jump into the ennemy system, which they did. I then moved my fleet to the capital. I manually selected my cruiser with nukes and ordered it to attack the capital, by right clicking on it. However, being a major hub, the ennemy capital was surrounded with a cloud of freighters and passenger ships, which my ships started chasing around, including the cruiser to which I had given a direct order to attack the planet. I thought, ok, maybe the default "attack the planet" order is only for troop invasion, and the cruiser having no troop couldn't proceed. I zoomed out, specifically ordered the cruiser to bombard the planet using the menu. Still my cruiser kept chasing little ships instead. Ok, I thought, maybe my cruiser is behaving that way because it's part of a fleet. I took it out of the fleet, gave the same "bombard" order again, which it ignored, determined to exterminate every single freighter nearby. Meanwhile, some of my other ships including troop transports had spontaneously jumped to the other planets to chase more civilian ships. My cruiser ran out of fuel, as did a couple of my other ships that were scattered all over the system, and I had to abort the mission, and sent all my ships to refuel for a second attempt. 2nd attempt An eternity elapsed, until finally, my ships were refueled. I was going to proceed a little differently this time, moving my ships in the system in "stand by" mode, using the new engage behaviour toggle. So, I selected my fleet and transports, told them to only "engage when attacked", and moved them to the system. They promptly started burning fuel chasing more freighters which led to another abort & refuel order ... Edit: A note here: I used the icon to change the "engage" behaviour of my ships, not the keybind, icon only seems to show occasionally, dunno why, in retrospect, maybe the icon does not do exactly the same thing as the keybind ? 3rd attempt Another eternity elapsed, which gave me time to play around a bit with the "engage" toggle, and soon found out that ships spontaneously revert to the default "engage system targets" for no reason at all other that they don't like being told what to do. Arghhhhh. Ok, this time I thought, I'll make ships wait just outside the system in empty space so they won't engage system targets and I'll clear the system with my other fleet before I move in. My nuke-bomber was first to refuel, and I ordered it to a location just outside the system, as I did with my transports and finally after quite a long time my main invasion fleet was refueled and moved nearby also. I was ready. Or so I thought. When trying to locate my bomber, its fuel gauge was in the red. At this point it occurred to me that collectors were not working just outside the system, and my bomber had just run itself out of fuel on static energy usage. Argh. I was getting very frustrated at that point, and went "**** it". "forget the bombarding" I thought, "I have 22 troops to the AI's 7", "I'll just order all in". So I did. I ordered my fleet and my three troop transports to attack the planet. They warped in. The planet's orbit was crowded again, not only with civilian ships but also a brand new (large) spaceport with the latest technology and a few military ships. One of my troop transports dropped 4 troops on the planet. The rest of my ships decided to ignore my order and attack the space ports and ships instead. Mayhem ensued. The 4 troops that landed were soon annihilated by the time my ships finally agreed to obey their (repeated) orders. One cruiser (1 troop) had been destroyed, a capital ship (3 troops) was damaged and had warped away, the remainder of my troops weren't enough to flip the planet, especially seeing as they still didn't quite land simultaneously. I was in full rage mode at that point and promptly ended my session. I since devised a new strategy as a workaround: since military ships just can't help "chasing flies", I will clear my cruisers and capital ships of troops, redesign troop transports with no weapons and civilian engagement rules, and use those and only those to land troops. Hopefully they'll listen. Likewise, my "bombard" ships will likely be stripped of all other weapons, maybe just maybe, they won't try to destroy everything in sight then. Anyway, while I think it's fine that ships have some degree of automation when idle, direct orders being overridden makes it very hard to control much of anything around major hubs to the point of being infuriating. The new toggle that alters "engagement" rules ("engage nearby targets", "engage when attacked") also doesn't seem to want to "stick".
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