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[Aikeru]

So the enemies have these cargo/transport ships carrying everything I want short of the weapons on their defenders ships, but said ships are never deployed. I understand that they hold the least amount of offensive capability as well as low defensive capabilities, and by being the cargo/transports are to be "protected" since they hold everything required to continue moving through space. There is just no real reason to protect them when you can just simply never deploy them into battle(outside of pursuits where it's forced). It is the smartest thing to do considering you only need a strong force to destroy anything on the battlefield, but that leaves me thinking in most cases this just leads to another fight with just the cargo,transports and retreated forces anyways since they have a majority of the resources stored on them(the others are just running for their lives). All in all what I'm getting at is if it's possible to make it so the game forces cargo/transport ships to be deployed? (for both the player and the AI) Even though it brings a lot more disadvantages to the battlefield no matter how you look at it. I just think it's very odd that the cargo/transports don't ever need to be deployed less the enemy is already running from or after me. Also not saying this should be a thing for base game or anyone else for that matter I just want this for my own immersion if it's possible.

(Plus "Rally civilian ships" is something I would use if I actually had a reason to deploy them outside of pursuit battles where you are running away)


tl;dr Is it possible to force cargo/transport deployment for the player and AI?

[Igncom1]

You are forced to deploy them during an escape battle.

But otherwise, yeah there is little to no reason to even equip them for battle, or use less-effective but armed versions of these freighters as it is. Just don't get into fights you can't win.

[Aikeru]

Alas the mantra we gotta live by don't pick fights you can't win. Guess if I want them to always deploy them I just gotta force them to at least attempt to escape. heh sounds...  fun

[kenwth81]

You can if you trick them to believe all the transport ships are combat ships. This seem to happen often with the modded pirates where most of their transport ships are combat freighters.

[Cyber Von Cyberus]

Well worst case scenario you can always deploy them to serve as decoys since they're cheap. But honestly a monitor is the best you can get if you need a decoy

[bobucles]

If you want the loot, you have to win the main battle and then score lots of kills in the pursuit battle. Fast destroyers and frigates are your best bet for a pursuit, frigates also have an obscure bonus of having additional deployment locations on the sides.

The pursuit battle has an autoresolve option that essentially ignores ship speed. So if you throw a bunch of beefy capitals into a pursuit and autoresolve, they'll score all the kills.

[Aikeru]

Well yeah, If I want the loot I need to win in the main fight and get their cargo ships in the second fight with smaller ships or auto-resolve with whatever. I did find it odd that auto-resolve just kinda let you kill everything with a slow ship even though if you played it yourself you would've never caught up. But it was more so about why it has to be two battles rather then have them actually deploy them in the back in the first fight I mean the AI does know when to retreat albeit a lot of the time after they have lost just about everything. I wouldn't mind having to protect them at all, but again this is just a whimsical curiosity I didn't question it much considering "why would I engage my resource carriers in battle?" but after a while I simply became curious and wanted to know if I could have it like that. Not a gripe nor a problem I have with the game just something I'm curious if I could change or not.

[BringerofBabies]

But it was more so about why it has to be two battles rather then have them actually deploy them in the back in the first fight I mean the AI does know when to retreat albeit a lot of the time after they have lost just about everything. I wouldn't mind having to protect them at all, but again this is just a whimsical curiosity I didn't question it much considering "why would I engage my resource carriers in battle?" but after a while I simply became curious and wanted to know if I could have it like that. Not a gripe nor a problem I have with the game just something I'm curious if I could change or not.

It might be possible to create this behavior with a a mod that replaces the combat manager or something, but if possible it would be fairly involved, I think.
However, if the universally correct strategy for both player and AI is to immediately retreat your logistics ships, then having them deployed all the time is a waste of resources - both the player's time to have to order them to retreat, and computer resources to have to handle the ship AI and render them. The battle size setting isn't a balance limit but a limit to try to keep a stable framerate on all computers.

[bobucles]

There's also a more important concern that deploying ships costs supplies. If every ship was forced into deployment first thing, you'd be paying the full fleet cost every battle. A single enemy kite would trash your CR.

It might be neat to combine combat and pursuit into a single larger battle, but one of the reasons they end up as separate fights is to protect FPS performance.  Fleet pursuits, by their nature, force the entire defensive fleet into battle. If you were to retreat with a full fleet, you'd have a gigantic lag ball of ships on the field. The game doesn't like that. It instead forces you to have a normal battle, where limited deployment points keep you from having all your ships active at once. You can either deal enough damage to score a free disengage (so the game doesn't have to place your full, laggy fleet into a pursuit), or die badly enough that a non-laggy pursuit battle becomes possible.

[SCC]

I have asked Alex to introduce some harass battles once, but he was nonplussed about the idea.

But it was more so about why it has to be two battles rather then have them actually deploy them in the back in the first fight

Performance concerns. The last time I checked, the issue was that the game can't force everyone to deploy all the ships, or else you might get a performance hit, perhaps severe, if that results in a lot of ships being on the battle field. This is also the reason, why there's a battlesize slider and why at some point you can't retreat anymore.

[Aikeru]

Yeah considering the dips it takes in performance in huge battles I can see that forcing the units into battle would only cause issues with fps, and yeah deploying them every battle would cost a ton of resources. Guess I'll have to settle for just chasing down every trade/smuggler if I want the cargo. Also mentioned it before but I don't think even if it was possible that it should be implemented at all into the game I'd rather have it as a mod for myself if anything. Anyways thanks for the input guys 

[Cyber Von Cyberus]

Yeah considering the dips it takes in performance in huge battles I can see that forcing the units into battle would only cause issues with fps, and yeah deploying them every battle would cost a ton of resources. Guess I'll have to settle for just chasing down every trade/smuggler if I want the cargo. Also mentioned it before but I don't think even if it was possible that it should be implemented at all into the game I'd rather have it as a mod for myself if anything. Anyways thanks for the input guys 

If you go to the settings.json files you can set the maximum dp limit for a fleet to be able to participate in fleet pursuits. If your computer can handle the lag then set it higher so you can have the option to have all of your ships auto deploy.