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[Arcagnello]

Also it seems fighting powerful Ordos and Doritos seems to be a big discussion point so i just want to throw this out there as food for thought.

Why do u think they are so hard to fight?

• A)They have better ships
• B)They are better at commanding their own units?
• C) Or because your forces don't employ a good strategy in order to beat them. Also this takes in consideration your own orders which the Ai is incapable of following. ( This choice is what i think is the cause)

As the last tournament has shown the AI simply doesn't employ a good strategy to beat them.

As such you end up in the position where

• the AI doesn't employ strategy on its own
• you cannot make them employ a good strategy through orders

I think this is the reason why so many people end up calling the ship AI stupid, morons, braindead etc.
I also think this is why some people complain about it being an artificially difficult fight. They simply cannot use their forces to their full extent and end up relying on RAW stats and other mechanics the game uses (built in hullmods, the more powerful of the ship roster that are considered "OP").

As an example:  The Doritos while they are very powerful in regards to flux, weapons, ship system and speed they are only 2 ships in the end. A very simple strategy against them would be to surround them. Because of the current state of ship AI and orders you cannot do this and ultimately have to rely on them making mistakes. To prove my point is that in the few cases where it randomly happens for my fleet to surround them I end up on stomping them(I will work on providing screenshot, footage).

This is false. The latest AI battles against the Tesseracts would have been significantly easier if it was possible to assign orders.

Surrounding them is also doable with some finesse, but its certainly more fleet composition dependent than most fights.

I have basically played my last 3 Starsector campaigns (all of which have now successfully beaten endgame) without even manually controlling any ship and just using a combination of orders and strategies for everything. What Rusty Cabbage says here is 100% authentic.

You can execute advanced strategies aimed at sploiting your enemies' weaknesses with just the orders you're given with in the tactical view, it simply takes experience to realize how your AI ships actually behave when given any order and what ship variants the AI uses best to execute orders better, which generally comes with experience.

In short, fail enough at the game while keeping an open mind for new ways to do things and you'll eventually come out ontop. This litterally applies to every aspect of Starsector, including fleet orders.

[CozyCloudy]

I have basically played my last 3 Starsector campaigns (all of which have now successfully beaten endgame) without even manually controlling any ship and just using a combination of orders and strategies for everything. What Rusty Cabbage says here is 100% authentic.

You can execute advanced strategies aimed at sploiting your enemies' weaknesses with just the orders you're given with in the tactical view, it simply takes experience to realize how your AI ships actually behave when given any order and what ship variants the AI uses best to execute orders better, which generally comes with experience.

In short, fail enough at the game while keeping an open mind for new ways to do things and you'll eventually come out ontop. This litterally applies to every aspect of Starsector, including fleet orders.

Well if that is how you see things then I would really like to find some proof of the strategies being employed using orders.
I have watched all youtube (Nemonaemo, Uran, Lowsettings, Asher, WadeStar, MoshiKnight, Friendly Rough Ai,
HELMUT  etc.) material i can find, google things, stalk this forum, reddit and discord but I really haven't seen a single example of the things you mention. (I have yet to see someone with this experience you speak of using put it in practice and recorded).

What I am trying to say I have yet to see someone use orders to deploy an actual strategy beyond: set your fleet to defend these points so they don't all rush forward, capture points, escort, maybe avoid on smth).

The problem I have is not that I can't deal with with the challenges this game throws at me (if at this point they can be called so) but that I am compelled by the current game design to brute force every single one of them.(more info in the previous posts)

[Arcagnello]

Sure. I can supply you with some screenshot material.
Are you fine with spoilers?

Pardon the short reply but I'm in the middle of editing threads and making screenshot of ship variants xD

[CozyCloudy]

Please do.

[Thaago]

idea

Huh, thats a really interesting idea! I'm not sure exactly how the UI would be presented to the player to give them orders, but showing them what commands are in use would be interesting.

That could also be a neat part of a skill, now that I'm thinking of it. "Counterintelligence" or something. Gives some bonuses and also displays enemy orders.

[Deshara]

That could also be a neat part of a skill, now that I'm thinking of it. "Counterintelligence" or something. Gives some bonuses and also displays enemy orders.

that's... understatedly brilliant. You could make it a hullmod unlocked by a skill, "clandestine sensor suite" that can only be equipped on civilian ships without militarized subsystems that gives the ship the stealth benefits of militarized subsystems but without making the ship behave as a non-civilian ship, and if deployed to battle will spy on the enemy fleet's comms & tell u what their commander is ordering

[Yunru]

Or as a consequence of winning ECM, maybe?

[Killian]

I've rarely seen a case where the ECM war wasn't outrageously lopsided (usually in my favour), and this would squash its effects where it would be arguably at its most useful, understanding the Remnant. Those tin-cans can bring up to 60% (if not more) ECM to the field, and you just won't win that fight no matter how hard you try.

On the one hand that might be desirable (keeping them as this powerful, inscrutable nemesis), but on the other hand... maybe not so much.

[Morrokain]

I 100% agree that a lot of the misconceptions about the AI comes down to lack of information - whether explicit or contextual - or player experience with the AI.

For instance, speed is a big one here. Because space mostly lacks static background things to judge relative speeds, the illusion of a ship "being completely unwilling to engage" can simply be that one ship is fleeing and the other is chasing it and their speed is roughly the same. That's just one example.

I think Deshara and Thaago are barking up the right tree with the idea of explicitly showing the player how the AI is operating while the player is playing the game (rather than a tutorial or tooltip because some players ignore those) in some sort of mission format. This could also significantly benefit hunting down bugs with the AI since a player can give more context if they are seeing something weird.

I mean, I'm not saying the AI is perfect or anything and I am one of those people who does miss the more aggressive AI from .8 - but I'm also more willing to accept ship losses than some players.

[Thaago]

I also agree btw that the 'steady' setting is too cautious for my taste: I always click up my fleet aggression in the doctrine tab and use aggressive officers over steady. I also find myself switching from HVD/Mauler builds to Heavy Needler/Heavy Mortar ones, at least for ships with officers that can afford to be close to the enemy so that my ships get closer instead of trying to maintain range.

[intrinsic_parity]

If more player-facing info about the AI is added, I really don't think it should be a hullmod/skill, or generally have some sort of in-game cost. If it's too much information, then make it toggleable (an overlay on the tactical map for instance), but paying a skill point for basic information doesn't seem like a good idea. It feels like one of those things where experienced players will see it as a trap if they already have a decent understanding of the AI, but new players will really benefit from it and thus lose out on other things to get basic information.

[Lucky33]

This is circular error logic. Fix the system so you don't need to explain its unclear logic. In our case, remove the command points entirely and replace them with the order queue.

[Arcagnello]

Please do.

Alright, I will admit I don't tend to do all that many screenshots  when I'm actually having to concentrate but I hope some of these screenshots help somewhat, even tough they're a mashup of different battles.

The first thing I do is deploy some 75% of my fast units plus a capital ship or two (preferably the slowest ones, unlike this case) and put capture orders on every single point. I do this because every single AI fleet from pirates to remnants does the same, the more it is going to be occupied contesting capture points away from my frigates and the less pressure is going to come the way of my hard hitters.

Spoiler

[close]

Next thing to do is properly coordinating my fleet to properly engage the right targets at the right moment
1) I tend to put a "strike" orders on the smallest ships first the enemy fields (since I usually bring my carriers with fighters
2) if I notice one of my frigates is contesting a buoy against a single enemy frigate I give it an "Eliminate" order to quickly dispatch it and go back to capturing the buoy. I do this during the entire duration of the game.
3)I more or less put "engage" orders on anything bigger than a frigate so that all my fast units properly spread out and harass.

I usually have my main combat force manually "engage" one of the enemies I set that order on to focus fire and eliminate enemies more quickly.
I find it to be really important to have the main force possessing a lot of strike damage potential to quickly overpower one enemy at a time. In this case you can easily assume I've got a Gryphon escorting each Conquest, mostly to keep them out of trouble.

Spoiler

[close]

I sometimes really want something on the enemy team to get mashed as fast as possible so I switch that "engage" order it most likely had to "eliminate" and manually assign my main force to do the job all at once, like in these two cases. They'll most likely take damage (especially if they have 90 degree omni shields  ) but I'll be left with one less nasty enemy to deal with.

Spoiler

[close]

Spoiler

[close]

I also tend to "balance" the aggressiveness of my main strike forces, usually telling one of those ships with the orders of "eliminating" an enemy to "retreat" instead if it's getting ahead too much, then quickly set it back to "eliminate" once the rest of the ships catch up.

I hope this was useful. I would love to provide more screenshots but I've got some 1900 of them in my folder and I've still got to edit stuff aroun the forum, maybe later 

[CozyCloudy]

Arcagnello I don't mean to be rude, especially since you put in the effort to try and show me some how you play the game, but I see a lot of problems with what you have posted:

• Your screenshots don't actually show the full enemy fleet
• All of your screenshots except the first one show situations in which you are already winning
• You are using mods

I would really appreciate if people who want to reply and contribute to the discussion would try and read what has been already posted by either me or others in the same thread. (I acknowledge the fact that AI does well on its own or follows certain orders when you are have a fleet advantage)
Also spamming high tech frigates does not help in regards to other arguments being made on this very same thread.

[ElPresidente]

Also spamming high tech frigates does not help in regards to other arguments being made on this very same thread.

Have to agree with this.
A tactic that only work if you have an entire high-tech fleet with specific weapons is very specific and just further illustrated the problem of AI behavior being very specific and unclear, and too dependant on ship/loadout.

In other words, it takes too much fiddling to get the ship to behave how you want it to. I don't mind the AI trying to use what it deems the best approach in general, but there should be a way to override it.