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[Rauschkind]

i think i cant play this game any longer.
the ships are just to dumb.  i cant count the battles i lost and replayed and lost again because its just not possbile to work with the inbuild *** of player owned ai controlled ships.

- i see ships staying out of their own weapon range getting shot at untill they die while they are stronger and faster and could win a fight easily. (no. agreesiveness  of officer does not change this. a reckless officer will do the same, he will just be more idiotic in other regards. no. eliminate target will not work to make the ship get into weapons range)

- i see my ships ignoring all orders - like to move away from a location - to chase a frigate into an enemy armarda.

- i give a ship to defend a right sided objective and another one theorder to defend left, and certainly, one of them will fly over to the other side, again  ignoring my orders.

- it seems, pirme objective of any of my ships seems to be to get between me and my target.  they will do so without any need. they will suicide to do that, flying into the frontal firepower of a radiant if only thats the spot where they can block my shots the most effectively. (try to explain that with the survival instinct of my captains...)

the ammount of micromanagement to controll these idiotic ships would be quite over the top. but its all futile anyway becasue: they ignore the order half of the time and the other half of the time they never even try to get into weapons range.
that is compounded by the fact that i cant even give enough orders to micromange my ships because i am not allowed to give very many orders in the first place.

i understand that this game aims to be a combat simulator first. but its just not working as that.

[Kpop]

works fine on my end haha

1. Hovering out of weapon range is not usually an issue for me with aggressive officers. All of my ships that are ballistic/energy focused gets ITU as baseline. I usually outrange the enemy with ECM though so idk. I'm speculating but I think the amount of flux buildup on a shield when a ship is trying to make an attack run makes a difference. If flux gets too high before it can really start unloading it will back off. Hardened shields might mitigate this problem.

2. Orders don't happen instantly all the time. Even though an order is given a ship might be in one of the complex flanking dance/mating rituals that it needs to complete before complying.

3. Get longer ranged weapons I guess? Or have less direct fire ships and more carriers. Just the fact of the matter is there's limited room sometimes when fighting stuff. There are examples of course(I've seen it) where its you + 1 vs enemy ship and your ally is getting in your damn way even though he could have went literally anywhere else. This happens more with fast destroyers and frigates with short range weapons from my experience. Missile cruisers for instance usually try to flank effectively.

[Daynen]

Yeah the trick with orders is that the AI already has several priorities it's trying to manage and throwing in your orders forces it to recalculate while keeping its original priorities more or less intact.  Some orders even change after they're given because they're "complete" so to speak, like capturing a point.  Once it's captured, they go off and do other stuff.  I WILL second the notion that "staying out of friendly firing arcs" needs to be a LITTLE BIT HIGHER on that priority list though, especially when the player flagship has an ENORMOUS advantage in firepower and is clearly the one that should have a firing line to the target.

Maybe it would help if the "escort" order could be split into two different orders that specify the ship should either follow behind you OR try to stay in front of you, but not both.

[Drazan]

- i see ships staying out of their own weapon range getting shot at untill they die while they are stronger and faster and could win a fight easily. (no. agreesiveness  of officer does not change this. a reckless officer will do the same, he will just be more idiotic in other regards. no. eliminate target will not work to make the ship get into weapons range)

I encounter a similar problem like that when im fighting redacted fleets, nit bounties just normal fleets that spawn in high danger systems.
I have some finely tuned Pirate Falcon missile cruisers. They can kill anything in their weightclass 1v1, even redacted ships. But when im piloting my custom Onslaught aganist redacted, my officers pilozing the falcons wil patiently watch as I overloaded and killed by 5 or 6 brilliant cruisers plus frigates. I know for a fact that they could kill them easily, but they just refuse to help even when I give them a kill command. Somwhere someone mentioned that ai wont engage if they have no PD weapons, so of course they have)

[Lucky33]

What's the loadout of those Falcon(P)?

[Sarissofoi]

Yeah I seen that.

[Drazan]

What's the loadout of those Falcon(P)?

Sorry, cant send a pic right now, will send in a couple of hours.

[nathanebht]

"staying out of friendly firing arcs" 

[Zimerius]

Yea i know what you mean, grouping ships with numbers, as in old rts tradition, and providing targets for groups is a much better option then singling out
Or how a cruiser detaches its self, if for example all your frigates are out, either destroyed or retreat because of failing combat readiness ) to defend a capture point in the heat of battle
there is of course a pause function, which allows you to quickly assess current situations and if given targets for elimination can be hold or must be withdrawn/replaced

further more, cruisers are a great way to hold up enemy forces, especially when configured for long range and there are many more tactical exploits to discover

but yea, i'm still in my honeymoon weeks so, disregard anything i said at your own leisure ;-)

In short, the a.i. could use a lot of improvements but..... with the tools provided, and with my own experience level i find it to be more then manageable

[Drazan]

Here is the loadout of my pirate falcon

Spoiler

[close]

[robepriority]

Oh dear, no wonder why it's preforming poorly. Right now it will essentially lose any flux war and get flanked outside it's missile range.
 
Converted Fighter Bay and Heavy Armor have negative synergy with Unstable Ejector.
Your only source of kinetic damage is the sabots.

[Drazan]

Oh dear, no wonder why it's preforming poorly. Right now it will essentially lose any flux war and get flanked outside it's missile range.

That was my first thought about it when i started using this loadout in 0.91, beacuse someone mentioned it, and i thought this would be funky. And it was. It was also extremly effective. Back then I didn't use heavy armor, and there were IR pulse lasers instead of PD ones, the fighter wing does all the PD it needs. Its still fast enough to engage/disengage at will, with missile racks and missile skill the number of saboots is sufficent, if the engagment is not super duper long.
The heavy armor and the PD lasers are recent additions with both im trying to encourage it to be more aggressive.
So no it does not performs poorly, it hits above its weightclass in 1v1 fights especially aganist slower opponents. But in a fleet battle it just refuses to engage most of the time. When it does it wrecks ***.

[Nafensoriel]

Someone once told me that there are two types of rifles. Ones that can destroy any target they are fired at... and one that can actually be used to effectively kill the enemy.

Lately I've seen people treat their loadouts like they are trying to make a marine fireteam carry nothing but 20mm rifles. In reality you need your ships to be able to MOVE and FIGHT for long periods of time. This movement and fighting power is flux. No flux is a panting idiot about to get flanked and ganked.

The amount of hardpoints and size of hardpoints are a trap many people fall straight into. Player sees a large mount and goes "I'm gonna stick this giant 28op pecker gun into it". Then they proceed to fill out every tiny little mount and put 2 vents on the ship.

In reality you should max your flux and vents then try to get the most amount of utility and damage you can with what's left. If that boils down to putting railguns in every single slot(including large/meds) because that's all you can do then that is what you SHOULD do. Once you understand flux war you will be able to expand loadouts.

[Locklave]

I have no clue why anyone would fill every hardpoint on most ships, even small ships like the Hammerhead would be wasting flux filling every slot.

[Thaago]

Depends on the ship, depends on the flux budget, depends on the mount types, depends if the player wants any point defense or goes full shield tank for HE missiles/salamanders. Some ships are pretty good with all mounts filled, some really want the extra OP from leaving them empty. For a Hammerhead I think it has enough flux to run 2 mediums + 2 small as offense (with T4L at least), so the question is whether or not to include rear PD. I've seen no PD do good things (often with extended shields), but I like slapping vulcans on.

For that Falcon: it needs a reckless officer to be effective, and probably a full assault order on top of that. Maybe also eliminate commands. You are right that you just need to convince the enemy to go all in with it and it will get kills.