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Aeson -> RE: To automate or not to automate? (5/19/2014 10:27:40 PM)
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quote:
Now I am having mixed feelings about automation especially when I have plans to play the largest galaxy and systems. How worst is it going to be when war would start? I am not talking about little ones but full-scale ones that blows up tons of ships and whatnot?
First off, it depends on the war. A fight to take over a minor empire is a very different thing from a long war against an empire that has only you to fight; same goes for a fight against a large empire which only controls a few planets nearby and is otherwise on the other side of a large expanse of empty space and a fight with a similar empire squashed up against yours. The number of enemies that you're fighting, their locations relative to you within the galaxy (especially the proximity of the majority of their good bases to you), the number of fleets that they have, and how many other people that they are fighting will all influence how much of a pain a war will be. If your empire has long borders or if your enemy has the ability to strike deep into your territory, expect to have more issues fighting the war than you would if your empire is compact and your enemy is too far away to strike deep within your territory.
What I personally do is that I have automated defense fleets assigned to important systems, with the home base set to a colony in that system (if available, and preferably one with a relatively strong garrison). These defense fleets are set to defensive stance, system-level engagement range (possibly larger, if I'm more interested in protecting nearby things than in specifically protecting the base system and have a hyperdrive which is fast enough that my fleet might be able to arrive in a reasonable amount of time to protect stuff outside of the system). If I notice that one of these fleets is taking a beating, I queue up a bunch of reinforcing ships, go to the ships menu, and assign these new vessels to that fleet; as long as the home base of the fleet isn't lost, the reinforcing ships will automatically go to the fleet's station. Changing the defended area is as easy as assigning the fleet a new home base (which can be done in the Fleets listing, if you know the name of a planet in the area that you want to protect, or by selecting the fleet and using the 'set home base' button in the lower left corner of the screen). Another thing you can do with automated defensive posture fleets is set up a number of small local defense fleets with one big fleet set up to act as a rapid response force (in other words, have several small fleets covering a system each, and have a larger fleet stationed at, for example, the local shipyard; the smaller fleets will do their best to hold off hostile incursions, and the larger fleet will respond to whatever the computer considers worthy, assuming you set the engagement radius correctly; you can have several layers like this, even up to having base-only defenders, system-wide defenders, nearby stars defenders, sector level defenders, and galaxy-wide defenders, if you really wanted to do so). It can also be advantageous to have some overlap between rapid-response forces, if you organize your defensive fleets this way.
Note that setting a fleet up in defensive posture and giving it a home base and limited engagement range is a good way to ensure that a specific fleet can always be found in a specific area (unless it gets wiped out), and will also allow you to easily spot where that fleet is, if you have the 'fleet postures' map filter active. This can be a good way to keep track of large fleets that you don't really want to automate but don't have enough hotkeys to keep track of, or which you generally want to use to guard an area but will occasionally use as an extra attack force; setting the engagement range to an unusual size compared to what you typically use will help you spot this fleet (e.g. nearby stars instead of system engagement range). You can leave the fleet automated and it will remain in the general area that you set it to defend, and when you need it you can take it off automation, use it for whatever you needed, and then turn automation back on when you're done with it and it will return to where you found it, assuming you didn't change engagement range, posture, or home base.
Aside from that about automated fleets, I like to keep about five main fleets under my direct control which act as my primary battle forces (the exact number and size of the fleets depends on the money situation and on what I feel that my empire needs), at least for offensive purposes. I will also have a couple of groups of transports, possibly with escorts, to use for invasions, and will probably also have some resupply ships (again, perhaps with an escort squadron; both the resupply ships and the transport groups are sized and present based on current and expected needs and the financial situation). Each of these fleets or high value ships will be assigned a hot key (control plus a number) so that I can always find them and rapidly issue orders (I like using 1-X for battle fleets, X+1-X+N for invasion fleets, and X+N+1-0 for resupply ships). One tap of the hot key will select the ship or fleet, while a double tap will zoom to it. The fleets assigned to hot keys are the fleets that I usually play with; the automated defense fleets I mostly just keep an eye on to make certain that they aren't wiped out, though I occasionally make an exception if I feel that it would be advantageous to add a few more ships into an attack or need a little more firepower to defend something.
As far as non-Navy automation during wartime goes, it really depends on how large your empire is and how much damage the computer has done to your infrastructure. Usually, I will only bother with controlling constructor behavior in the early stages of the game, but if a war wipes out a lot of mining facilities in an area I might consider manually assigning constructors, just to keep them from prioritizing things like Dantha fur over the best chromium source in my empire or something like that, especially if the mining infrastructure is damaged enough to impact some reasonably significant fraction of my shipyards. I always personally manage colony taxes and troop recruitment, but I automate facility construction (though I put limits on what the computer is allowed to build - for example, there isn't much point in having a Cloning Facility and Armor Factory on every planet, since usually the native troops are at least adequate for defending, even if they aren't great, and I'm unlikely to be recruiting large numbers of troops on every planet anyways).
Regardless, I'd suggest playing the game and experimenting with automation settings; try some of the things suggested in the thread. See what you're comfortable with allowing the computer to handle, what is too much of a hassle for you to bother with, how many fleets and which types of fleets you like to control yourself. Answering those questions, and other similar questions, will give you some idea about what you should and should not automate, nor are these questions that we can answer for you. Nor is it a bad idea to update the automation settings throughout the game - early on, while your empire is still small, maybe you'll like controlling the constructors and colonization efforts manually. Later, when you have a well-established empire and have other things to hold your attention, perhaps these are things that you'll find you won't mind allowing the computer to handle; same goes for any other settings.
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