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Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:44:02 PM   
JudgeDredd


Posts: 8573
Joined: 11/14/2003
From: Scotland
Status: offline 		Well, I decided to leave automation on, but I have to say, I probably find it more confusing than if I controlled things.

Fleets appear then disappear. As an example, I had 1st Fleet. My colony made a load of ships, and I decided to create another fleet using these (it didn't seem like the AI was going to create a fleet with them and I much prefer having pockets of ships than individual ones kicking around)...so I highlight the ships and select New Fleet - I get a message asking if I want to turn off automation - well, I don't really - I just want to create a fleet - so I say no...so it disbands my 1st fleet and creates 2nd Fleet.

Anyway, I send 2nd fleet off to destroy a pirate base...when it's complete I use the Cycle Fleets button so select 2nd Fleet so I can send it for refuelling...but it's not there anymore...apparently disbanded. So I highlight all the ships again and select Nw Fleet...same message about turning off automation to which I again so no to, and then I send my fleet off for fuel.

Later, when I try to select my Fleet, it's not there again! I'm very confused about how the AI is creating and disbanding fleets. Is it meant to do this?

Some other functions (when you are asked if you want to turn off automation and say no) allows you to do that task with that ship, apparently whilst leaving automation on. But this doesn't seem to be the case for a colony ship I have. I've sent a colony ship to a system where there is an Ocean Planet (29.7k and Quality 100%) but I have no option in the menu for colonising.

I'm very, very confused at the moment. I've been through both tutorials twice now and I don't get why I cannot colonise this planet. Is it because it's Unoccupied?

I think I'm getting my knickers in a twist over the "automate" "no automation" thingy...I'm not sure I like the automation...I like to know what things are doing. I know there will be a time when I need automation on...it's probably just something I have to get used to.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:49:14 PM   
ASHBERY76


Posts: 2136
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: England
Status: offline 		You need tech to colonize non continental worlds at the start.

The A.I seems to disband fleets so I control them all,and hotkey them to 0-9 for easy control.I only automate patrol,escorts itl works well.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:51:22 PM   
Nemo84

 

Posts: 115
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline 		I've seen the exact same problem, even when AI fleet control is disabled. Ships seem to leave fleets for a wide variety of reasons, such as fleeing an opponent and refuelling. If the ships in the fleet are automated, they'll even leave just to transfer to another system. I've also noticed fleets seem to switch HQ planets sometimes. I'd assign one fleet per solar system, put the main planet in each system as HQ and 30 minutes later half the fleets have disbanded or are now far under strength, others have changed their HQ to a planet half a sector away. I'm starting to think there are some serious bugs in the automation AI routines. I can't even imagine what it would be like to attempt a minor war against a neighbouring empire, with my fleets acting so randomly.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:53:21 PM   
HsojVvad

 

Posts: 1036
Joined: 3/24/2010
Status: offline 		You can hot key them? I don't remember reading this. So how do we do this?

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:57:16 PM   
JudgeDredd


Posts: 8573
Joined: 11/14/2003
From: Scotland
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo84

I've seen the exact same problem, even when AI fleet control is disabled. Ships seem to leave fleets for a wide variety of reasons, such as fleeing an opponent and refuelling. If the ships in the fleet are automated, they'll even leave just to transfer to another system. I've also noticed fleets seem to switch HQ planets sometimes. I'd assign one fleet per solar system, put the main planet in each system as HQ and 30 minutes later half the fleets have disbanded or are now far under strength, others have changed their HQ to a planet half a sector away. I'm starting to think there are some serious bugs in the automation AI routines. I can't even imagine what it would be like to attempt a minor war against a neighbouring empire, with my fleets acting so randomly.

I suppose when you create a fleet (and have automation off for fleets) then the ship automation is still there, hence they may well come and go. I suspect once you create a fleet, you have to give it an order to remove all ships in that fleet from automation.

If this is the case, then I would like to see it that when you create a fleet, those ships being used in the fleet are removed from automation..if this is indeed part of your issue.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:58:15 PM   
ASHBERY76


Posts: 2136
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: England
Status: offline
quote:

0-9
Selection hotkeys for stored items – press key once to select, twice to move to item

Ctrl 0-Ctrl 9
Hotkey storage – store items for later quick selection



It makes the game so much easier.You just press 0-9 for your fleets and right click on enemy to attack,ect.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 8:58:38 PM   
Jim D Burns


Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline 		Don’t let the AI handle your fleets, it has a plan and that plan is most assuredly not what you want to do, so it’s going to disband your fleets forever and try and form fleets that conform to its plan. I think the AI only views fleets as military function units, not patrol type units, so the AI will only use them to try and attack other powers or pirate bases, the rest of the time it sits at your home world doing nothing.

I’ve never seen it use a fleet to go after a creature or large concentration of pirate ships, so that’s up to you to handle and you’ll need control if you want to do stuff like that.

It’s actually a good thing fleet and individual ship automation is separate. By keeping my fleet under my control, I can use it as a fire brigade and send it where needed, while all the AI controlled individual ships get sent to patrol worlds and the various civilian miners by the AI.

The AI even does a passable job of engaging pirates and creatures with the individual ships if they appear in a developed system with a lot of individual AI ships around. But on the fringes you’ll need a fleet or two and the AI simply can’t handle that kind of need for you.

Jim


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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 9:22:29 PM   
Nemo84

 

Posts: 115
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

The AI even does a passable job of engaging pirates and creatures with the individual ships if they appear in a developed system with a lot of individual AI ships around. But on the fringes you’ll need a fleet or two and the AI simply can’t handle that kind of need for you.

Jim



That's why I was creating fleets in the first place. For some reason, when individual frigates get automated, they constantly fly across the galaxy, wasting fuel, adding downtime and leaving me with systems which are either massively under- or overdefended. When I put them in fleets, they at least stayed put for a while and engaged local threats more consistenly (though rather piecemeal). Until they ran off to refuel, or had to flee, or... and the fleet disbanded.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 9:32:39 PM   
JudgeDredd


Posts: 8573
Joined: 11/14/2003
From: Scotland
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Don’t let the AI handle your fleets, it has a plan and that plan is most assuredly not what you want to do, so it’s going to disband your fleets forever and try and form fleets that conform to its plan. I think the AI only views fleets as military function units, not patrol type units, so the AI will only use them to try and attack other powers or pirate bases, the rest of the time it sits at your home world doing nothing.

I’ve never seen it use a fleet to go after a creature or large concentration of pirate ships, so that’s up to you to handle and you’ll need control if you want to do stuff like that.

It’s actually a good thing fleet and individual ship automation is separate. By keeping my fleet under my control, I can use it as a fire brigade and send it where needed, while all the AI controlled individual ships get sent to patrol worlds and the various civilian miners by the AI.

The AI even does a passable job of engaging pirates and creatures with the individual ships if they appear in a developed system with a lot of individual AI ships around. But on the fringes you’ll need a fleet or two and the AI simply can’t handle that kind of need for you.

Jim


Yep - I believe you are correct and therefore I will be taking Fleets under my control.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 9:34:28 PM   
JudgeDredd


Posts: 8573
Joined: 11/14/2003
From: Scotland
Status: offline 		I meant to say though - have posted in this games forums several times now - congratulations on a great game.

Looks like the first 4x game I've ever enjoyed.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 9:52:24 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline 		Serious praise, thanks!

I agree with Jim on how to use fleets at present. After some testing with 1.02 I think we may also have an auto-fleet disband bug in there when you have fleet automation on and assign some manual mission to them. It's on the list for further investigation and fixing.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 10:09:55 PM   
Jim D Burns


Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd
Yep - I believe you are correct and therefore I will be taking Fleets under my control.


Forgot to add one trick I’ve learned. If you have fleets under manual control, but you then assign the individual ships in that fleet automation on the ships list (right hand column, click it and they get automated), the AI will take care of keeping them refit and refueled while you have nothing you want them to be doing.

When you need them simply select the fleet, order them to top off their fuel and they're ready to go. When you're done with the task, pull up the list, automate the ships and then forget about them till you need them again. Cuts down on all the micromanaging of having to order them to refuel all the time under manual control.

Jim


< Message edited by Jim D Burns -- 3/29/2010 10:10:36 PM >

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 10:20:17 PM   
Gertjan

 

Posts: 698
Joined: 12/9/2009
Status: offline 		Can you please post a screen shot how to do that last trick? What do you mean by right hand column and click?

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 10:30:30 PM   
Jim D Burns


Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline 		Sure, here you go. You can click the word auto on top to filter all your automated/non-automated ships to make it easier to find them.

Jim





Attachment (1)

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 10:31:26 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
Forgot to add one trick I’ve learned. If you have fleets under manual control, but you then assign the individual ships in that fleet automation on the ships list (right hand column, click it and they get automated), the AI will take care of keeping them refit and refueled while you have nothing you want them to be doing.

When you need them simply select the fleet, order them to top off their fuel and they're ready to go. When you're done with the task, pull up the list, automate the ships and then forget about them till you need them again. Cuts down on all the micromanaging of having to order them to refuel all the time under manual control.


That's exactly how I use my fleets too, for what it's worth.


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CEO, Matrix Games LLC



For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

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Post #: 15
RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 10:32:24 PM   
Nemo84

 

Posts: 115
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Forgot to add one trick I’ve learned. If you have fleets under manual control, but you then assign the individual ships in that fleet automation on the ships list (right hand column, click it and they get automated), the AI will take care of keeping them refit and refueled while you have nothing you want them to be doing.

When you need them simply select the fleet, order them to top off their fuel and they're ready to go. When you're done with the task, pull up the list, automate the ships and then forget about them till you need them again. Cuts down on all the micromanaging of having to order them to refuel all the time under manual control.

Jim



Jim, if I do that my fleets keep disbanding. Is it because those ships are classed as frigates, or because their nearest fuel source is in a neighbouring system, or merely because of a bug?

Also, if I make two different designs for the same ship class (think short-range brawler and long-range torpedo boat), how will the AI decide which design to use for an automated refit?

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 10:35:14 PM   
Jim D Burns


Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo84

Jim, if I do that my fleets keep disbanding. Is it because those ships are classed as frigates, or because their nearest fuel source is in a neighbouring system, or merely because of a bug?

Also, if I make two different designs for the same ship class (think short-range brawler and long-range torpedo boat), how will the AI decide which design to use for an automated refit?



Go into game options and turn off auto fleet control, the AI can't touch your fleets when you turn that off. Matrix will have to answer your second ?.

Jim

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 11:23:06 PM   
Coupon


Posts: 35
Joined: 6/25/2006
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo84

Jim, if I do that my fleets keep disbanding. Is it because those ships are classed as frigates, or because their nearest fuel source is in a neighbouring system, or merely because of a bug?

Also, if I make two different designs for the same ship class (think short-range brawler and long-range torpedo boat), how will the AI decide which design to use for an automated refit?



I'm also seeing that. Automated ships in fleets will refuel but not rejoin the fleet.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 11:26:49 PM   
Webbco


Posts: 682
Joined: 2/6/2010
Status: offline 		That's a good question Nemo, I've been wondering that too.

Just quickly going back to controlling fleets... if it hasn't been said already, even if you decide to Ctrl + number them to assemble a fleet, I notice that they still disband 

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RE: Confused.com - 3/29/2010 11:47:48 PM   
dawilko

 

Posts: 87
Joined: 2/25/2008
Status: offline 		Erik is there any plans to be able to automate an individual fleet via the right click context menu? For the same purposes as you mentioned before, refitting and fuel management while being ignored by the player.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 12:47:30 AM   
malkuth74

 

Posts: 115
Joined: 3/27/2010
Status: offline 		don't forget the bug where if you put your ships that are in a fleet at auto. That sometimes they get taken out of the fleet. Even when you have fleets set to manual.

I tried this in my new game, and sure enough it worked for awhile, but then when I wanted to take out a pirate ship, I went to my fleet and it went from 9 ships to 3.... I was like DOH.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 9:45:26 AM   
Nemo84

 

Posts: 115
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo84

Jim, if I do that my fleets keep disbanding. Is it because those ships are classed as frigates, or because their nearest fuel source is in a neighbouring system, or merely because of a bug?

Also, if I make two different designs for the same ship class (think short-range brawler and long-range torpedo boat), how will the AI decide which design to use for an automated refit?



Go into game options and turn off auto fleet control, the AI can't touch your fleets when you turn that off. Matrix will have to answer your second ?.

Jim


That option has been disabled from the start, the ships still leave their fleets. I can confirm they sometimes do this when they go to refuel in another system, and I've also seen them do it when fleeing from combat (but didn't check fuel status, so it might be the fuel thing again).

I'll try building some destroyers tonight, and see if they perform differently from my frigate fleets.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 10:01:52 AM   
sbach2o

 

Posts: 378
Joined: 3/26/2010
Status: offline 		Just a note thrown in: I have observed that ships sustaining damage leave their fleet automatically. This hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread (well... I was reading sort of diagonally).

People who have fleet automation off and still wonder why ships leave fleets 'silently' should consider that this could have been due to damage received in battle. I am not saying this is definitely the only cause but it is the only which I have observed consistently. Well, maybe it is too obvious, so there may something else be at work still.

I have even refitted ships while they retained their fleet membership. Until I needed the rest of the fleet for battle, that is. I couldn'd send out part of a fleet, while other ships were tied up in a yard.

< Message edited by sbach2o -- 3/30/2010 10:03:24 AM >

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RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 10:08:44 AM   
Wade1000


Posts: 771
Joined: 10/27/2009
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		Yeah, I think it's just automated escorts and frigates that don't return to a manual fleet, while larger ships will return. I think escorts and frigates automated are programmed to patrol, escort private ships, and attack pirate ships.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 10:30:57 AM   
Nemo84

 

Posts: 115
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline
quote:

Just a note thrown in: I have observed that ships sustaining damage leave their fleet automatically. This hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread (well... I was reading sort of diagonally).


Oh yes, I think I've seen similar behaviour as well. Though I'm not sure if it was the damage or the flee from combat routine that causes this.

quote:

Yeah, I think it's just automated escorts and frigates that don't return to a manual fleet, while larger ships will return. I think escorts and frigates automated are programmed to patrol, escort private ships, and attack pirate ships.


That would make it very annoying to include a few heavy frigates as highly mobile assets in a battlefleet or as escorts for troop ships and supply ships. This game really needs an overview of what the priorities are for automated ships.

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RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 12:36:00 PM   
Gertjan

 

Posts: 698
Joined: 12/9/2009
Status: offline 		Just to get this straight, so even when you manually control fleets, automated ships do leave your fleets?

@Jim, thanks for the screenshot. I'm going to use the fleet tool more. BTW It looks like you have an interesting game going there, judging from the mini galaxy map.

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Post #: 26
RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 5:06:19 PM   
JaguarUSF

 

Posts: 261
Joined: 7/31/2003
From: Jacksonville, FL
Status: offline 		Yes, automated ships in a manually controlled fleet will leave. You need to manually control manually controlled ships (or something like that), which means you gotta refuel them manually every once in a while. Manually speaking, of course. Manually.

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Post #: 27
RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 5:10:10 PM   
Wade1000


Posts: 771
Joined: 10/27/2009
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		Man.

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Wish list:population centers beyond planetary(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture):Ships,Ring Orbitals,Sphere Orbitals,Ringworlds,Sphereworlds;ability to create & destroy planets,population centers,stars;AI competently using all advances & features.

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Post #: 28
RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 6:31:57 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline 		Automated ships that take damage will leave the fleet to repair. If fleet automation is on, they will be pulled back into the fleet (or another replacement will be) when ready. If you are running your fleets manually, you need to keep track of their fuel and damage.

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Post #: 29
RE: Confused.com - 3/30/2010 9:19:56 PM   
zenryl

 

Posts: 15
Joined: 3/25/2010
Status: offline 		My main issue is that they attack independant world. If I late my ships automated, the AI create a bit fleet and just start to attack independant world.

"We have conquered world xxx" Exuse me ?

It would be usefull when automating something to tell the AI what to do ala HOI3, that means you can give objective at fleet level. For example protect sector H9, protect system XXX, invade world xxx. I manage the fleet, give them the ship they want, they can tell me what ship they think they need to achieve their objective etc... HQ management in HOI3 does not work so well but it's a great idea and if you can do it in DW it will be a great improvment to the game. I don't want to micro-manage the fleet but at least I want to tell them what to do.

Maybe it's a bit to much for a patch, but I will be buy an expansion with only that feature

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