A suggestion to reduce micro management

from Sins Forums

I know that the developers intent is to keep micro management as close to a minimum as possible.

I think what would help that is the ability to issue blanket standing orders to groups of ships.  I thought of this a few days ago when I was playing a game as TEC.  I had a large fleet with around 40 robotics cruisers, and I had researched demolition bots for them.  My intent was for the robotics cruisers to use demo bots to disable the weapons on my opponents heavy cruisers and then use that breathing room to have my heavy cruisers and LRMs knock out his support cruisers.  It was a reasonable enough plan, the problem is that the robotics cruisers weren't going after the heavy cruisers as much as I needed them to, so I selected them all and started manually issuing orders to use demo bots on enemy HCs using the Empire window.  What would've been nice for this situation would've been if I could've issued a blanket order to my robotics cruisers to the effect of "Use demo bots on enemy heavy cruisers, do not focus fire."

Furthermore, I also think it'd be useful to be able to order ships and strikecraft to avoid certain enemies.  I'd like to be issue a blanket order to my interceptors making enemy interceptors their primary target, but to not follow enemy interceptors to within reach of enemy flak frigates.

Basically, in addition to being able to issue specific orders to ships, I think it would greatly reduce micro management if the player could direct a ship's overall behavior.

11,162 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah that is what is bad about demolition bots, I think your suggestion would be good one. I find it that unless you disable repair, the hoshikos waste all antimatter repairing and never use demolition bots.

As far as strikecraft, that may not work. As it is fighters target fighters/bombers first anyway. And the only thing I can think of telling them to avoid would be flak. I donut think it would be that easy to implement. It's a lot easier to tell them to go somewhere than tell them not to go to many places.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, the game needs a way to use the abilities of dozens of different ships in a easier/faster way.

About strikecrafts, I say just assing prioritys, go after bombers or fighters first, for example. But avoid flak frigates? That might not be a good idea at all. As in many cases the flaks frigs will be very close to the other frigs and cruisers. Thus if fighters/bombers are set to avoid the flaks' firing range, they might just fly around the enemy fleet, never moving in to attack, simply because they are avoiding the flaks right next to the target.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah that is what is bad about demolition bots, I think your suggestion would be good one. I find it that unless you disable repair, the hoshikos waste all antimatter repairing and never use demolition bots.
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Additionally, I find that even when I disable repair, the Hoshikos tend to use demo bots on less than optimal targets. They seem to want to go after light carriers, which might be because their standard laser weapon is effective against light carrier's armor type. Nevertheless, demo bots should be used on things like LRMs and heavy cruisers. It'd be handy to be able to issue a blanket order during a battle to get them to go after better targets without individually ordering each one to do it.

I've observed similar behavior in Domina Subjugators. They tend not to pick very good targets for disabling when left to their own devices.