Fleet behaviour

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Fleet behaviour - 12/30/2021 3:43:24 AM

Nade

Posts: 6
Joined: 9/1/2021
Status: offline

My situation:

I have 3 colonies in my home system and i build a fleet for each of them consisting of a couple frigates. Additionally there is a 4th fleet that i use for attacking.

The "Defense" fleets are auto and have their respective colony as home set. The posture is defend and the range is system.

The "Attack" fleet is also set on auto and has my home system as home set. The posture is attack and the range is nearby systems.

The ships are equipped with hyperdrives and missiles/blasters.

My problem:

So a pirate attacks one of my colonies and none of my fleets react at all... well except the ships that are stationed at said colony because they get shot at.

What i would like is that the other ships in my system converge on the attackers. They did so fine in other games so i know it works.

All ships also ignored slugs in the system when my exploration ships tried to chart the asteroids.
The only expected thing my fleets actually do is take position at the set home colony.

What i have done so far:

I checked my empire settings and set everything to engage system targets(manual and auto). I tried to change ranges, toggling posture settings and deactivate auto and reactivate auto again.

Post #: 1

RE: Fleet behaviour - 12/30/2021 4:30:57 AM

Retreat1970

Posts: 948
Joined: 11/6/2013
From: Wisconsin
Status: offline

Hi Nade. Postured fleets don't react to incoming pirates because technically you are not at war with them (if that makes sense). They will react when something is shot, but by then it's usually too late unless they're close enough.

(in reply to Nade)

Post #: 2

RE: Fleet behaviour - 12/30/2021 1:37:12 PM

Nade

Posts: 6
Joined: 9/1/2021
Status: offline

Okay, however unless i am remembering totally wrong, my ships used to react to pirates AND monsters in other games. Ships in range would respond if anything got attacked.

I have not played a lot to be honest but in my time i was hardly at war at all, pirates and monsters however...

(in reply to Retreat1970)

Post #: 3

RE: Fleet behaviour - 12/30/2021 3:30:56 PM

Aeson

Posts: 784
Joined: 8/30/2013
Status: offline

If I recall correctly, there's a couple of settings that affect how aggressively ships respond to hostiles:
- In Empire Settings, there is a Ship Battle Caution Factor. I don't recall what this does off the top of my head, but based on the name I expect it makes ships more or less willing to engage something based on the relative strength of the two ships.
- In Options => Empire Settings, there is an Attack Overmatch setting. Higher settings will cause the game to try to send more strength to attack a target.
- Also in Options => Empire Settings, there are two sets of default engagement stance settings. If you want ships to engage hostiles in the same system as they are, these should be set to either Nearby or System Targets. I don't recall what the difference between Nearby Targets and System Targets is, but to my recollection both will fairly consistently result in ships engaging anything hostile in the same system as they're in.
- In the selection panel in the lower left corner of the screen, you can set the current engagement stance of the selected vessel using the button in the lower right corner.

It should be noted that if you have a default stance set for a given mission and assignment (manual or automatic) type in Empire Settings, then that default stance will be applied to any ship assigned to that mission by the method for which the default stance is set, i.e. if under the Automated settings the Patrol mission is set to Engage System Targets then any ships that the game's automation routines decide to issue Patrol missions to will have their engagement stance set to Engage System Targets.

As to your fleet setup, a couple of things:
- I believe that the Attack posture is best used offensively and against static targets, not defensively or against mobile targets.
- Travel times can make it very difficult for out-of-system fleets to mount an effective response to pirate raids. You might think that a Gerax II or an Equinox I is fast... but the sector edge length is 2,000,000 distance units, so it'll take ships equipped with such hyperdrives over a minute to respond to an incident a mere half-sector away; even with fully-developed Torrent Drives, you're still looking at a minimum response time on the order of 30 seconds for something that's just a half-sector away. A typical pirate raid will quite often be over one way or the other long before out-of-system ships can arrive.
- I don't think it'll really help with how automated ships respond to pirate threats, but it is worth mentioning that proactive threat response isn't really possible unless you can detect a threat before it arrives, and the only reliable way to do that is with long-range scanners.

(in reply to Nade)

Post #: 4

RE: Fleet behaviour - 12/30/2021 4:38:12 PM

Nade

Posts: 6
Joined: 9/1/2021
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aeson

- In the selection panel in the lower left corner of the screen, you can set the current engagement stance of the selected vessel using the button in the lower right corner.

That was it! The stance was for some reason set to nearby, when switched to system targets my other fleets react and converge.

As to your fleet setup, a couple of things:
- I believe that the Attack posture is best used offensively and against static targets, not defensively or against mobile targets.
- Travel times can make it very difficult for out-of-system fleets to mount an effective response to pirate raids. You might think that a Gerax II or an Equinox I is fast... but the sector edge length is 2,000,000 distance units, so it'll take ships equipped with such hyperdrives over a minute to respond to an incident a mere half-sector away; even with fully-developed Torrent Drives, you're still looking at a minimum response time on the order of 30 seconds for something that's just a half-sector away. A typical pirate raid will quite often be over one way or the other long before out-of-system ships can arrive.
- I don't think it'll really help with how automated ships respond to pirate threats, but it is worth mentioning that proactive threat response isn't really possible unless you can detect a threat before it arrives, and the only reliable way to do that is with long-range scanners.

Agreed my first concern was the system response, i usually have a small fleet in every system. My plan is to to hold of attackers until help arrives from outside

(in reply to Aeson)

Post #: 5

RE: Fleet behaviour - 12/31/2021 7:28:23 AM

Chris21wen

Posts: 6249
Joined: 1/17/2002
From: Cottesmore, Rutland
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nade

That was it! The stance was for some reason set to nearby, when switched to system targets my other fleets react and converge.

This is how I think it works for manual settings, fleets or ships.

Not sure why nearby did not work. As I understand it nearby reacts to stuff upto half a sector away. As this includes the system it's in, it shouldn't make any difference.

Empire settings in options are used to give newly built ships (and I think those newly repaired/upgraded) an engagement stance which you can obviously override.

What I've never been sure about is how stance settings are use if a fleet is set to auto. My belief is they are ignored, posture setting being used insteed.

This maybe a load of cobblers but it seems to work for me.

(in reply to Nade)

Post #: 6