Annoying problem.. any help appreciated. |
Right, i go and invade an enemys star system (there only system) and promptly capture all there planets and destroy there warships only problem is there are a few drones and fighters loose and sitting about in the system even tho this empire has no planets left.
Whats the problem you might ask, well these lil sons of bitches flee every time i try to attack thus making it impossiable to finish this empire of. I have tried totally surrounding them but they still just flee away and end up in same hex as one of my surrounding ships on the main map.
I had this problem with some of there minelayers and other "Dont get hurt" style ships but they vanished as the enemies supplies dwindled or i managed to get em to run out of moves and engage in a very frustrating chase em round and round the combat map tactic that eventually worked. I managed to eventually get the fighters like this (tho it takes many attempts due to the combat timer running out) after quite some time but the drones are tricksie lil bar-stewards. Because they are on the edge of the map they have a habit of fleeing the map entirley and appearing on the other side of the system miles from my surrounding ships, this state of affairs is beggining to piss me of immensly esspecially as i expect it to be repeated in every system i assault.
Any suggestions on how to deal with these lil rascals?
I had the same problem and
I had the same problem and reported it as a bug because drones are suppose to run out of supplies and then vanish. For now I use fighters to chase them down.
Try this...
If they are retreating into a hex with your ship, go into the sector view and position your ship right next to them before attacking again. When battle starts... boom! Hope that helps.
Can't move stuff in sector view with enemies present
Recall this latest patch prevents you from re-positioning your stuff in sector view if there are enemies there.
it helps to increase the border radius
In data/Settings.txt:
Space Combat Map Radius := 1500.0
//Space Combat Map Radius := 1000.0
Gives you more time to chase things down.
-- all your planets are belong to us --
fighters can catch drones in stock
high-tech fighters can do 44 km/sec, and I haven't seen any AI drones that do that.
Of course, I haven't seen any AI drones that don't suck, either.
Real pain in the ass tbh :/
Havent really done any reaserch in drones and just starting with fighters so not likley ima get em for a while, might try stratigically placing loads of ships in the square the will retreat to via the system view then chase em into it mebe that will work.
They really gotta sort this fleeing thing out cause its a bit silly and really spoils the fun of the game when u spend litterally hours running around after drones dispite wiping out there entire military in 30mins. I also strongly suspect this kinda madness is what the AI is up to when it slows down during turn processing... hard problem to solve without removing retreat option alltogether tho 
Couple suggestions tho, when you take all of an opponants planets they should be utterly removed from the game which tbh seems realistic anyways as imo a few stray ships from a dead empire would go settle somewhere or become pirates ect...
Also some sort of interdicter cruiser type technology (ala star wars universe) that prevents you from fleeing while that ships around would be cool (apologies if this is already in the game and i just havent reaserched it). Or perhaps making flee combat an option you click instead of an area of space you fly to with a timer during which ships are defencless or have to stay put at the edge of the map for a set time thus making fleeing a risky option unless mebe you sacrifice a ship or two keeping the enemy occupied while rest get away.
Dead empire ships should disappear
I agree, all their ships/drones/fighters etc…should disappear, maybe except if they have some colonisation ships left (a rag tag fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest, for a shining planet known as Earth 
)
Does AI suffer maintenance consequences?
)
Which raises another question... The SEV manual states that an Empire which cannot pay its maintenance costs will have its ships spontaneously disappear. But I don't recall ever seeing the AI have this problem, even when I knock out all of their resource production.
Will the AI ever lose ships due to inability to pay maintenance?
I've never been unable to pay for my own empire, so I don't even know if that's working for human players.
I think they do...
As i said there bigger "Dont get hurt" style ships seemed to dissapear and i assumed this was because the maintenance ran out due to there empire collapsing, its just the fighters and drones that seem to be causing me real grief tho chasing the bigger ships around did annoy me somewhat till i decided to ignore them and go for the planets.
It works for human players
I have lost ships to resource deficits on one nasty occasion due to a sneak raid on my one space port which cut off the defending squadron and I lost both of my two new and very high maintainace Battle cruisers. I now build multiple space ports in systems to avoid this especially in frontier systems
What?
Last I checked, spaceports only do system -> "bank" resource transfers; "bank"->system/ship/unit transfers don't require a spacepport.
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.
Couldn't cover maint costs
What I think evilginger meant was that he lost the resources from that system creating a deficit in resources so he couldn't pay the maintenance on the ships.
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I lost the systems resources
Sorry I did not make it clear the loss of the spaceport lost me the resources from major Minerals mining system and that was enough to make me go into deficit. It also caused supply problems with the other ships as it’s the space port that distributes ordinance and supplies thought a system
Drones to kill drones...
You'd need to make something fast enough to catch the drones - which are only other drones if you're playing stock.
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