Grouped units should stick together

Agreed its annoying when they split up but what u can do is put attack stance thing to wepon range only i do that with my ships and my fighters i put on grav well so they go and kill da turrets then the rest of my ships mop up

I'm pretty sure formations would solve this issue to some extent. Even if they wont stand in exactly the same position, they'll be on a 'leash' not allowed to distance themselves from the center of the fleet by certain distance.

That would allow the support ships the time to get around. I'm having similar problems on this issue.

For me the most annoying part is how the Siege Frigates zerg straight to the planet, right through multiple groups of Gauss Guns, capital ships and bombers. Sure they do some damage to the planet and might even be outside the range of guns... but bombers and frigates will destroy all of them. I need to order them to hold back a little

yea i know i have this problem with the marza

This is how we intended attack ranges to be used. I RARELY ever have my ships on attack range: entire gravity well". As soon as I create a group I setup my attack ranges for whatever purpose I have that fleet designed for.

Do you mind explaining to me how it works so that I can use it too? Because it's doing my head in. I have no idea how the weapon ranges work.

They are described in the advanced interface tutorial included with the game but the basic idea is you can right click the attack button to change how far the units will go to engage targets. Hovering over the attack button will let you know the attack range status of all the units you currently have selected. This is similiar behavior to how "group move" works when you want units to move together as a unit.

Aha I see, and when I set a range this decides how far out they will go from the position they are in when you set the range? And from after I move them they will not leave far from the area where I place them?

If this is the case, there's some micromanagement to be needed anyway, to conquer planets on several fronts... Or am I getting it wrong?

The general idea was to be able to send a group to a system where they can manage themselves while I manage the empire in general. If I need to check in with them to move them it's only part-ways a solution to the main problem.

Yes, and now I understand more of the request. You want the AI to handle the respositionning of the range focal point once the area is cleared. Not a bad idea. Let me think on that.

Yeah, it would sure help managing larger empires, as well as seeing your grouped units fight smarter. However, it would have to be working a bit different than just repositioning them.

New ships would constantly fly into the focal area. They would have to use a sort of priority target and kill it, then move on. If one would really go deep into making a smarter AI, it would be to include knowledge of the own group, as well as knowledge of what's in the planet area.

As an example, if many hangers are in the system, and the group is low on anti-fighter/bomber capabilities, they would focus on killing the hangers first. And so on...

As this would be a group AI behaviour, in my mind, it wouldn't affect the AI of the units in the group in any major way. Once the group AI decides to go kill a hanger, it send the group there and direct the fire of the units that does best damage versus the target to attack it, while letting the other units do what they do. And all along staying within the area of operations decided by the group AI.

I hope a solution is found

Oddly enough I just assumed the AI already did this as a matter of practice. I simply thought it was weak on the evaluation side. Silly me...