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[Sollaire]

I've been playing starsector and have been having trouble dealing with the friendly AI, they are not particularly smart in battle and tend to do things like getting in the line of fire
rushing too carelessly and instantly dying or not doing anything useful and sitting back. Most of the time it feels like playing the game is a long drawn out session of *** wrangling
trying to make the best of these idiots.

I've been able to do well so far because the enemy AI is also very braindead doing similar things or worse but as the game progresses i am faced with larger fleets and the fact that the
AI i face is *** gets culled by their better or larger fleets

I have tried using commands to little effect and have avoided using them since most the times i have tried i have been punished harshly for doing so. As the pilots have little in the way of abstraction as when asked to follow a ship i don't mean just sit next to it and do litterally nothing
I am tired of being in awe of seeing either the enemy or my ships doing something so unbelivably stupid that i end up just avoiding combat altogether unless i have a massive numerical advantage.
How do i make do with my pilots ?

[Mondaymonkey]

That is a known problem.

You should remember, AI is much better pilot some ships, than the other ones. Same thing to weapon loadouts.

So, practically you should create separate ships and loadouts to fly by yourself and to give in control for AI.

Also, assigning an officer with a specific behavior (aggressive, cautious, etc) can boost not just stats, but AI. Some ship builds able to fight only with specific officer.

[TaLaR]

1) Use optimized, AI-compatible variants. Ones used by enemies are mostly crap.
2) Use maxed out and optimally skilled officers. Most enemy factions don't have enough officers and have random selection of skills.
3) Use AI-friendly ships (average to good speed, easy to use system, medium to long range). Hammerhead, Eagle, Falcon, carriers, etc. Nothing that requires fancy piloting, system use or rationing limited missiles to be worth their DP, Hyperion being most extreme example of player-only ship.
4) Use one or several defend orders to prevent ships from wandering away alone, escort orders are too constraining once you get into medium to large battles. Use occasional eliminate/fighter strike/avoid as needed.
5) Pick good player-ship(s) and wreck about half enemy fleet yourself. In the end allied AI ships are quite passive - use them as environment to leverage, instead of expecting them to win on their own.

[Scorpixel]

What TaLaR said, you don't really control your fleet as much as you herd it.
This even applies to allies, if less numerous than your forces they will attempt to plug themselves in your formation and will somewhat follow the flow of the battle.
However i digress on the AI's inability to be an effective combat force, as i rarely pilot myself and even then only temporarily.

First of all every single ship need to be on agressive by default, reckless is suicidal and redundant with the Full Assault order while everything else makes them scaredy kittens, and yes even carriers, a carrier is safer on the battle line than alone somewhere, it can use what little it has and tank a part of the enemy barrage, fighters and bombers take less time to go around and can pursuit the enemy further, don't be like those WoWs CV players.

Make sure your battle line stays cohesive enough and exploit enemy positioning by giving Eliminate orders on vulnerable ships, followed by either regrouping or launching Full Assault when the enemy line breaks.
Reminder that one defence order risk making a blob, two next to each other helps forming a line.
Be generous on the flux when outfitting them, no fancy stuff, focus on what is simple, has a good range and deals reliable damage.
Missiles? Must be meaningful effect with plentiful ammunition. Sabot? It's their get out of jail card. Harpoon? Good finisher and the enemy AI loses it's mind against those. Reaper? They'll waste it on the first Kite they encounter.

Available order points are not an issue as long as you use them in the same time-frame, and always clean out of date orders when they are detrimental to you, it's free and has to be done, examples:
-Keeping an Eliminate on a ship that is hiding in the enemy blob will make your ships suicide one by one trying to get it
-An escort order on a ship who's fine when the escorts could be doing something useful instead
-A ship guarding a defence order way behind your line doing nothing
-Not cancelling a retreat order on a ship to force disengage, if his hp bar is decent keep it in battle
-Leaving Full Assault On when the enemy reinforcements are regrouped, don't headbutt a wall

[shrek_luigi]

I find that the best way to manage AI for a lot of different fleet compositions is to create a sort of daisy-chain at the beginning of the fight using a string of escort commands--there are a number of slow & tanky cruiser-class ships (even a handful of civilian hulls suited for combat; especially if you're playing with mod-ships) which make for excellent intermediary anchors, or an in-between for your backline & the big ships trading-flux upfront. This three-or-four-layered formation goes a long way to ensure that your backline has a lot of buffering between themselves and the enemy, the less-durable ships like destroyers & heavy frigates have somewhere to settle in the middle where they can by repositioned at a moment's notice, and everybody is positioned whereas they can do their job. As the fight starts to turn in your favour, systematically turn ships off escort-duty to engage the enemy freely.

I've been playing modded for too long to pull names of good vanilla anchor-candidates out the hat bc I cant specifically remember which *** is vanilla or not but there are a number of them--and in the case of mod-ships, just have a look at how many retooled Venture-variants there are, for example...  their individual loadouts as it relates to stuff like PD & swarming-srm/medium-to-long-range missile support (good qualities for an anchor), and their deployment-cost relative to their size.....it may seem inefficient to deploy what is essentially half-a-cruiser but when properly used it can invalidate stuff like fighter swarms or mass frigates the enemy might employ as well as helping keep formation, can be well worth the cost.

[Mordodrukow]

- Dont split forces
- Camp border to avoid flanking
- Give long ranged (but not flux-hungry) loadouts to AI - it is way easier to them to appear in right place, just because their operating distance is bigger
- Make sure, AIs have 360° shields, because if not - they will find out how to die from that single reaper-armed frigate
- If using orders, try to use mostly "escort" and "retreat". The last one looks like the highest in priority, so, they will execute it almost perfectly (but still: not instantly). You can order the command to retreat, wait till the ally fall back, then give another order.

Also sometimes i m using "guard the point" and "avoid"/"eliminate", but they dont work good as orders listed above.

And yeah, "full assault", "full retreat" work good too, but it isultimate orders, so, i do not count them.

For fleet compozition... well, two Paragons and some random Odyssey is all you want (if we are talking about 300 limit). Paragon works good in AI hands. It is even not dies sometimes (just a joke... it lives well most of the time)

[Harmful Mechanic]

For my mid- and end-game fleets, I like to group my ships around cruisers or capitals; that way, I have task groups that stick together but can act more-or-less autonomously. Also improves my commands-and-control a bit; I can just order the central craft around and have the escorts follow it.

This works especially well with cruiser and capital carriers, because you can throw a couple of destroyers and maybe a frigate or two around one and they'll keep it safe while it deletes things with bomber strikes.

In the larger sense, one way to minimize the impact of AI derp is to choose longer-ranged ships and weapons, build more conservatively (lower flux weapons, missiles with more ammo and/or better guidance, Hardened Shields or Heavy Armor), and rely more on your ships pinning enemies in place for you to flank or destroy.

[Sollaire]

Oh well i've been trying to do all this stuff but still get moments like this that honestly are just starting to make me lol


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[Daynen]

A few things my experiences have taught me:

1: Never give the AI ships with movement abilities that disable steering, such as burn drives, plasma drives, etc.  They WILL --I repeat, THEY WILL-- dive straight into enemy formations and stations at PRECISELY THE WRONG TIMES and die.

2: Never have reckless or timid officers.  Reckless acts like point 1 (i.e. "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GO--oh I died, oh well"), timid runs and hides even when it has an overwhelming advantage.  Cautious is okay for unlimited missile boats and aggressive is alright, especially if you like safety override builds.

3: Never give the AI ships with limited use ship systems.  They will waste them at the first chance, i.e. the gryphon's autoforge.  I've seen the AI burn this active after one missile with several shots left in all its other hardpoints.  Some ships are meant for the player only.

4: Never let the AI fly without some form of point defense.  PD lasers, vulcans, SOMETHING.  Not only will they not be able to outmaneuver every fighter and missile that comes their way, they'll sometimes lead said fighters and missiles toward your other, more valuable ships, causing collateral damage.

5: Never --and I mean, NEVER--  give the AI reapers.  Just...don't.  In fact, don't give them dumbfire torpedoes of any kind, period.  The number of enemy ships they MIGHT kill is NEVER worth the friendly ships they WILL kill by not checking their fire.

[Mondaymonkey]

5: Never --and I mean, NEVER--  give the AI reapers.  Just...don't.  In fact, don't give them dumbfire torpedoes of any kind, period.  The number of enemy ships they MIGHT kill is NEVER worth the friendly ships they WILL kill by not checking their fire.

Small addition: except of Tempests. They do surprisingly well with reapers. Minimal friendly kill. But they frequently spend them to a wrong target, so probably not a best choice, for a single missile hardpoint.

[Tempest]

5: Never --and I mean, NEVER--  give the AI reapers.  Just...don't.  In fact, don't give them dumbfire torpedoes of any kind, period.  The number of enemy ships they MIGHT kill is NEVER worth the friendly ships they WILL kill by not checking their fire.

I once had the idea of deploying Mules full of annihilator missile pods with expanded missile racks. Took me a while to figure out why my own engines kept getting destroyed.

[lethargie]

Get a load of interceptors. Clearing the skies helps a lot your AI allies behave themselves.

Favor small cruiser and large destroyer around the 20 dp mark. Too many capitals and you get surrounded, too small ship and they get individually murdered. Get 1 -2 capital to act as a safe space for your other ship to retreat.

Favor more kinetics then HE. The computer does not handle well shield overload.

[Histidine]

The only time I've had friendly fire issues with Reapers was when I forgot to set weapon groups and the Shrike had its Typhoon Reaper launcher in the same group as a PD laser.

[Daynen]

That's the problem with reapers though: it only takes one misfire to ruin everything.

[Uncle1sstvan]

Personally I've found that when engaging in large battles i tend to give the Engage command to all of my ships towards their biggest heaviest ship. when set to engage the AI seems a little more thoughtful on what it does, they will go about shooting ships normally but they seem to move in better groupings and engage in a skirmisher like fashion playing near the edge of their range but not all the way. this isn't 100% but it has worked pretty well for me so far. Just target the biggest ship with all of your ships to Engage rather than Eliminate.