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[Null Ganymede]

Reckless is soooometimes handy when you need a wrecking ball.

Steady is too intimidated by being outnumbered. Rest seem worthless - maybe on an escort carrier, to keep from suiciding fragile interceptors?

Aggressive just seems like the only useful setting for fleets I've put together.

[intrinsic_parity]

Cautious can be ok for carriers, or for a ship with very long range and ranged specialization (cautious stays in the max damage range band). I would still rather have a steady officer for those ships, but I sometimes will not immediately throw away level 6/7 cautious officer if the skills align with one of those strategies.

Timid is just useless. I agree that aggressive is best 90% of the time. I personally don't like reckless because I like my ships to stay alive.

[Sandor057]

In my experience, while in "standard" battles they usually do decently, aggressive officers are just too careless when approaching Redacted or (mainly) Phase fleets. You can circumvent it with assigning defend orders to them, but that is also not foolproof.

Steady is good if you just want the bonuses and no distinct behavioural changes.

Cautious is for when you only want to use those Gauss Cannons and fighters on your Legion or Tachyon Lances on that Paragon and not much else.

Reckless is for the fireworks. Something will explode. It's just likely, that it will be your officer's ship.

Timid officers are best used for clicking that "Dismiss" button as soon as you get them.

[LinWasTaken]

in one of my modded playthroughs i got a ship with many missile mounds and the ability to print more missiles in combat so i slapped a cautious officer on it with many long range missiles and he stayed in the back endlessly shooting missiles at the enemies.

[TaLaR]

Cautious can be ok ... for a ship with very long range and ranged specialization (cautious stays in the max damage range band).

Nope, doesn't really work. Cautious gets scared and disengages as soon as it is within about 120% of enemy's range. And as usual, AI is bad managing range on top of that.

It's pretty much impossible to have enough range advantage for cautious AI to consistently kill an enemy ship not intentionally built with minimal weapon range in same size class (or even one lower, cruisers have decent range and approach faster).

[SCC]

I have found steady furies to work well enough for me.

[Impetus]

Personally I only use steady officers, because I just want a fleet that can keep itself alive and distract the enemy while I zoom around on a safety-overrides Aurora and blast the hell out of everything. If I see a good opportunity for my fleet I just use the eliminate/engage command, but otherwise I'm just happy that my fleet isn't getting itself killed on Radiants all the time.

[intrinsic_parity]

Cautious can be ok ... for a ship with very long range and ranged specialization (cautious stays in the max damage range band).

Nope, doesn't really work. Cautious gets scared and disengages as soon as it is within about 120% of enemy's range. And as usual, AI is bad managing range on top of that.

It's pretty much impossible to have enough range advantage for cautious AI to consistently kill an enemy ship not intentionally built with minimal weapon range in same size class (or even one lower, cruisers have decent range and approach faster).

I had a cautious officer in a legion XIV that did good work (based on combat statistics mod, similarly to a steady officer in the same ship). 1000 range HVDs and hurricanes, the fighters hardly did anything. Hurricanes do the majority of the damage, but the HVD's still did a ton too, it definitely didn't stay out of range, and the missiles let it finish stuff in spite of the lack of aggression. I think it's actually important for cautious officers to be in slow ships that can't effectively disengage so their attempts to disengage leave them frequently in the right range band. It definitely doesn't work as well in something like a conquest. Like I said, I would rather have a steady officer, but I would consider using a cautious officer with the right skills in the right ship if I get offered one.

[FenMuir]

I only recruit reckless officers.
They charge the enemy and break their fleet up. If they're flying unending barrage type ships (their dissipation is higher than all weapons firing and shields up), they basically just get on someone, kill them, and then go after someone else. SO MUCH DAKKA! Also, be aware that they will explode, so embrace D-Mods.

The Mora covered with dual light machineguns and medium breaches works great here. If it is faster than its target, it just chases them down, overloads them, and slaughters them.

They work great on Phase Ships as well, especially the frigate varieties. A dead enemy is a harmless enemy.

Aggressive is good, too.

Steady is just basic ship behavior with skills.

Cautious is not useful for how I fight. I guess it might be good on max range laser ship, but I don't usually have many of those. An example would be the Laser Wolf or Laser Medusa, which just carry gravaton beams and tac lasers with extra range. They kill things excruciatingly slowly.

Timid Officers are a big no. I don't think there is a way to have them be a higher priority for the enemy fleet, so those officers' ability to avoid enemy ships and win is mostly useless AFAIK.

[Linnis]

They all are good. Build your fleet with escorts in mind and you can have a cautious officer escort an reckless officer, or the other way around.

[Zonk]

You can always make an Aggressive or Reckless officer less aggressive through escort or defend orders. But it's much harder to get a Steady officer to be aggressive than the inverse. I find that steady officers do an okay job managing themselves overall (particularly on Astrals or Herons I really want to hang back) but really falter when it comes to finishing off damaged enemies. I have to micromanage every officer less than Aggressive with right click + eliminate to make sure they're actually killing and not just wounding enemy ships, but my Aggressive and Reckless officers will happily push into a flank to secure an enemy capital kill (which often causes that flank of the enemy fleet to collapse anyways).

Sometimes the best defense is a good offense and that's true in Starsector too. The beginning of a fight where CR is maxed and missile racks are full is the time when you can be most decisive and impactful but dancing around at max range will not achieve that.

[Sharp]

If timid officers herded together they could actually be useful, you could have a timid group and an aggressive group and use the timid group to play keep away from the enemy main force while aggressive ones can flank.

Too often I fall into the trap from the otherside chasing some ship while my fleet gets cut apart.

Timids with pilums will at least still be doing something.

[TaLaR]

I had a cautious officer in a legion XIV that did good work (based on combat statistics mod, similarly to a steady officer in the same ship). 1000 range HVDs and hurricanes, the fighters hardly did anything. Hurricanes do the majority of the damage, but the HVD's still did a ton too, it definitely didn't stay out of range, and the missiles let it finish stuff in spite of the lack of aggression. I think it's actually important for cautious officers to be in slow ships that can't effectively disengage so their attempts to disengage leave them frequently in the right range band. It definitely doesn't work as well in something like a conquest. Like I said, I would rather have a steady officer, but I would consider using a cautious officer with the right skills in the right ship if I get offered one.

But Conquest is exactly the ship that would benefit most from Cautious AI that actually works.

Your example is more about AI being less relevant for Legion (as long as it is not Timid or ultra aggressive to spam burn drive), since it doesn't get a choice to disengage. Though it is a valid use case.

[intrinsic_parity]

But Conquest is exactly the ship that would benefit most from Cautious AI that actually works.

Your example is more about AI being less relevant for Legion (as long as it is not Timid or ultra aggressive to spam burn drive), since it doesn't get a choice to disengage. Though it is a valid use case.

I would say that the tendency to engage is still important for slower ships, even if the positioning logic is less important. I think aggressive would be significantly worse on the legion XIV I was running because it would overextend and get into bad situations or even just waste the ranged specialization bonus.

Like I also said, I don't think it was much better than steady, but it was still good enough that I felt like it justified keeping the level 7 cautious officer I found rather than trying to replace them. I wouldn't intentionally make a cautious officer.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

I had a cautious officer in a legion XIV that did good work (based on combat statistics mod, similarly to a steady officer in the same ship). 1000 range HVDs and hurricanes, the fighters hardly did anything. Hurricanes do the majority of the damage, but the HVD's still did a ton too, it definitely didn't stay out of range, and the missiles let it finish stuff in spite of the lack of aggression. I think it's actually important for cautious officers to be in slow ships that can't effectively disengage so their attempts to disengage leave them frequently in the right range band. It definitely doesn't work as well in something like a conquest. Like I said, I would rather have a steady officer, but I would consider using a cautious officer with the right skills in the right ship if I get offered one.

But Conquest is exactly the ship that would benefit most from Cautious AI that actually works.

Your example is more about AI being less relevant for Legion (as long as it is not Timid or ultra aggressive to spam burn drive), since it doesn't get a choice to disengage. Though it is a valid use case.

Interesting, I was under the impression that the carrier AI only overrides officer AI (except timid?) when bombers are present in bay slots (not fighters or interceptors).  How did game AI make a cautious officer burn drive into battle then?  I might expect a steady officer to still burn drive in, but not a cautious one.  More just curious if a different version of those AI logic tags is applied to fighters just like bombers to affect how officers use carriers... too lazy to crack code open, faster to ask.  Or it might be just a Legion hull model thing.