Attack priorities / Unit control

from Sins Forums
Hi well anyway I'm one of those newbies who made a very general post that quietly died and decided to make a more specific one.

Anyway to get the ball rolling, some of the attack priorities are a little odd right now, for example flak frigates especially wont attack enemy fighters/bombers first off they tend to attack whatever the rest of the fleet is attacking.

A great boon for unit control would be if you were able to order units to defend each other, IE follow as close as possible and attack anything that attacks the units they are defending.
This would mean I wouldn't have to babysit my flak frigates as they wander away from siege frigates that they are meant to be defending from those pesky bombers.

Another issue I have is that almost every ship will actively turn around to attack Gauss turrets they are already out of the range of, if you let them. Personally I think that is the only purpose of Gauss turrets, to fool the units into wasting health/time engaging them, with as much health as the turrets have, its almost always more advantageous just to fly past them.
Also as the turrets range doesn't extend to the edge of the sector, so all I have to do to avoid getting too beat up by them is order my fleet to go around/over them. So I generally don't like it when my fleet keeps on trying to attack Gauss turrets I've already bypassed!
Also I realise that setting my units to "Attack in local area" would mean that they wouldn't attack the Gauss turrets, but It would also mean that they wouldn't attack new ships coming for my siege frigates from a different system.

Maybe that is the solution to my problem, however in my opinion that solution is a work around. The best solution for me would be that if the turrets are out of range, the close combat units simply ignore them until everything else in the sector is dead and buried.
4,495 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

As it turns out, the targetting is broken (especially for flak frigates and fighters). This aspect of the targeting bug(s) is/are already fixed and will be included in the next patch. As for the gauss problem, we typically use a mixture of queued waypoints and range stances to get the desired effect you are describing. However, we may add an AI stance control to help with it. Finally, once you start playing multiplayer you will find that gauss defense is primarily used in positions where its guarding something you really do need to attack and is not something you can just 'avoid'.

Oh and finally finally, guarding is already in beta 2 by telling one unit to move to another - they will engage anything within a certain range of the unit they are targetting and otherwise they will stick as close as possible to the unit.

So aside from the bugs, everything you need is there

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
And that ladies and gentlemen, was the fat lady singing her heart out for your listing pleasure!
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Oh and finally finally, guarding is already in beta 2 by telling one unit to move to another - they will engage anything within a certain range of the unit they are targetting and otherwise they will stick as close as possible to the unit.


Nice... I just thought it followed the unit, I didn't realize it protected it.

So if I were to assign a few cobalts to say a trade ship, would the follow it along its trade route and protect it where needed?
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Awesome. It's really nice to get such a speedy reply. I guess its just the AI's poor placement that causes this problem with gauss turrets in the first place, gauss turrets shouldn't really be used like the auto-build uses them, but to defend actual structures/the planet itself. Then destroying them would become an actual necessity rather than an option.

As for the defending thing thanks for telling me once when I told a flak unit to go to another unit, assuming it would defend it like you said, it started attacking what the first unit was attacking, but now I see that that was just the result of the flak bug. Well thanks for clearing that all up for me.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Nice... I just thought it followed the unit, I didn't realize it protected it.

So if I were to assign a few cobalts to say a trade ship, would the follow it along its trade route and protect it where needed?

Yes that is the intended behavior and in the game I just played it worked fine. (Though I fully admit there maybe some erratic behavior due to targetting bugs under certain circumstances).

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know, I tried that with a flak frigate, and the frigate would attack whatever I told it's follow target to attack. It did neither follow close nor defend, IIRC the target was a light factory.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know, I tried that with a flak frigate, and the frigate would attack whatever I told it's follow target to attack. It did neither follow close nor defend, IIRC the target was a light factory.


As Blair said above the target priorities on Gardas are messed up in the current build, so they're incorrectly favoring other targets over fighters/bombers. It should be fixed when a patch goes out.