1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying orders.

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> Tech Support >> 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying orders.

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1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying orders. - 7/28/2010 8:49:51 PM

Equendil

Posts: 35
Joined: 7/23/2010
Status: offline

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".

< Message edited by Equendil -- 7/31/2010 8:32:13 PM >

Post #: 1

RE: 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying or... - 7/29/2010 3:26:21 AM

torrenal

Posts: 189
Joined: 7/12/2010
Status: offline

Two points here: The 'lets do what I want' can be handy, but at times lethal. Take a ship low in fuel in a system with pirates, and order it to refuel at the base in that system. Watch said ship hyper over to attack the pirates, try to escape (low shields...), and die. It can be quite entertaining. At least, it is the first time or three. Then I get to the point where I order it to move outside the system, and watch it attack the pirates anyhow... (not sure if 1.0.6.0 fixed this or not -- at least I've not faced the scenario since the upgrade). ((A good (and early) option for ships with no fuel is to hyper out. Odds are, at 1/3rd speed even a porky resupply base can outrun an escort with no fuel, unless said escort is in hyper.))

As for attacking a planet: I've never used bombard (I suspect it does unpleasant things to rep), but I do know a thing or two about using troops: In the ship design screen, look at the Invasion tag. If it's set to 'Do Not Invade', the ship will not deploy troops. If it's 'Invade when clear', it will deploy troops when there is nothing by the planet to kill (not sure about actual criteria, but you get the idea). And you have Invade Immediately, for the hail-mary, darn the torpedoes, full speed ahead until I 'deploy troops or decide to flee' invade tactic. Troop transports default to 'Invade Immediately'. Cruisers are 'Invade when clear', and ships that have no business in a fight (construction ships) have it set to Never.

Another point, do you upgrade your ships? When you give a ship engagement rule on the view/edit design screen, you give a ship design the engagement rule. Just that one design. Any variants (newer or older) will not receive the updated orders. //Torrenal

(in reply to Equendil)

Post #: 2

RE: 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying or... - 7/29/2010 4:34:24 AM

Equendil

Posts: 35
Joined: 7/23/2010
Status: offline

The engagement rule I'm talking about is not from the design window, you can assign a ship or fleet a "stance" (from patch notes: "1. New Auto-Engagement Stance: engage targets when attacked, engage nearby targets, engage system targets", "4. Set engagement stance for an individual ship or an entire fleet: use the comma key to cycle settings when an individual ship is selected"). The icon to do so isn't always there though, for some reason (haven't tried the shortcut for it), and it reverts to default frequently.

(in reply to torrenal)

Post #: 3

RE: 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying or... - 7/29/2010 4:45:43 AM

Equendil

Posts: 35
Joined: 7/23/2010
Status: offline

Had another round of being entirely unable to get my ships to do as I asked. I had (successfully) invaded a planet in an enemy system, but there was another planet in the system that I wanted to take as well. I was trying to load troops off the first planet, but my fleet of cruisers & capital ships just kept shrugging at me, instead going after the never ending stream of little enemy ships going to & out the other planet. Didn't matter if I ordered the entire fleet or individual ships to load troops, they just never did.

(in reply to Equendil)

Post #: 4

RE: 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying or... - 7/29/2010 8:50:12 AM

Merker

Posts: 208
Joined: 7/3/2010
Status: offline

I can confirm this as a bug. It is especially damaging when using fleets. I had a few of the ancient ships collected from various points in the galaxy and just used them for pirate base clearing when an enemy empire declared war out of spite for my rapid expansion. So I decided to make the super ships into a fleet. I tried to get the fleet on manual to attack an enemy system but every time I gave the order they suddenly changed it to some other random target(ex an enemy mining base in a system even further away from the target). The only way I could use the ships was to take them out of the fleet and order each one in part. Not much of an issue since there are only 2 ships but with larger fleets it's a problem. However, once engaged I have no problem keeping my ships on the target I want dead. For example, I ordered them to attack the space port and ignore the enemy destroyers guarding it, and they did just that, completely ignored everything else and just whacked the space port, and only after every military target was gone and they had no orders for a few days did they engage the civilian ships.

Second issue about fleet behavior : I have a second fleet in ai hands that is supposedly attacking the other side of the enemy empire. The problem is they ignore the nearby colony the enemy took from me and go straight for a major system deep in enemy space(note that they have tons of troops for conquering planets). By the time they get there they need to refuel and now the whole fleet is out of fuel and still heading back to base while the enemy is picking off my infrastructure. I think this shouldn't happen...

Third issue: you say your ships won't load troops: how many troops are on the target planet. I'm asking because my capital ship refused to take all troops from a recently conquered planet which had only 2(the ship could carry 2) and it only took 1. Seems there is a required 'occupational force' for conquered worlds, probably depending on the size of the population.

Cheers

< Message edited by Merker -- 7/29/2010 8:51:48 AM >

(in reply to Equendil)

Post #: 5

RE: 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying or... - 7/29/2010 7:20:59 PM

Equendil

Posts: 35
Joined: 7/23/2010
Status: offline

If you use troops to invade a planet that is defended, one of the units will not be at max "readiness" for a while, and the troop transports will not take them aboard until they're back to 100 readiness. Can't remember how many troops I wanted to load, but I made sure to check they were "ready". When I was ordering my ships to load troops off the planet, they would initially head for the planet with "load troops" as their current task, only to be soon distracted by swarms of freigthers and mining ships.

(in reply to Merker)

Post #: 6

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> Tech Support >> 1.0.6.0 - Ships chasing flies instead of obeying orders.

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