Issues with ships really messing up their formations in combat |
BM on 1.66, full tech
I'm trying to figure out how to keep ships from "bugging out" when they are supposed to be guarding a warp point. I have the ship's strategy set to Point Blank and I have the fleet strategy set to Point blank. Ships with various weapons, one weopon type each plus some PD weapons.
I want the ships to stay close to the warp point but, left to themselves, they always move out of their own weapon's range so that enemy ships coming through the warp point get in and form up unmolested. It doesn't matter if its a colony ship or an armada.
So, are the ships "afraid" of the warp point? I have some ships loaded with Ripper beams and they can get out of range pretty quickly. Maybe Point Blank means 8-10 squares away. Considering that the longest weapon range is 8 squares, point blank is pretty meaningless. I guess that Maximum Range must move them to the outer edges of the combat arena.
Kinda like some of the Stargate SG1 scenes where they have a couple dozen ships waiting for the Ori ships to come through the supergate. They were all sitting in front of the gate almost outside their weapons range. Anybody familiar with tactics knows that the best way to attack an enemy is to hit their flanks or rear. All those ships should have been sitting around the outside of the ring so that they could attack the Ori ships top, bottom and rear where the shielding might be less and the weapons would have to realign before counter attacking.
I guess the ship AI will be screwed up for some time to come. I hope that we can get some kind of AI manager function that will allow us to define what Point blank should do. Even then, it probably won't do it right.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
what I do in that situation is just tell my ships to hold position at the warp point. Then every enemy ship is destroyed the instant it comes through and rarely gets a chance to shoot back. If you tell them to hold position, then they can never move out of formation.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
what I do in that situation is just tell my ships to hold position at the warp point. Then every enemy ship is destroyed the instant it comes through and rarely gets a chance to shoot back. If you tell them to hold position, then they can never move out of formation.
Unfortunately this is only possible (and very tedious) in tactical combat, not in strategic combat.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
One thing you can do is move the ships or units off the hex they're guarding and right back onto it. When you do that, they'll reset at the center of the map for the next combat. It's not a perfect workaround because the ships have to have those 2 movement points--but it works well for the purpose of getting the spacecrafts back together.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
What? Am I invisible here?! Sheesh! 
(checking cloak settings)
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
What? Am I invisible here?! Sheesh!
(checking cloak settings)
haha everything you wrote after "fighters do their little victory dance" went in one eye and out the other, as I was subconsciously preoccupied with that hilarious picture.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
Yep this happens all the time. Another solution would be to manually place each ship in their proper positions after each combat through the sector view option (or something like that I don't remember the command) from the system view. This, however, is ridiculously tedious. 
So yeah, until this gets patched or something, the only solution would be to move them one hex away, then back again to "reset" their positions.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
That pretty much describes the un-necessary little zigzag they do after winning a battle. Ships do it too, I think.
Re: Issues with ships really messing up their formations in comb
I also don't like it when fighters do their little victory dance which progressively takes them further and further from the warp point they are supposed to be guarding. Do it enough times and they become unable to react effectively. My fix is to move them all one hex away then back, this will place them next to the warp point again. Appearently moving them resets their own stupidity.