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Author Topic: The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?  (Read 4411 times)

DirectionsToL3Please

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Unless I have absolute dominance over the enemy fleets, I don't have a chance of winning a fight without substantial casualties...and it's not that the fleet doesn't work well together, and it's not that my ships aren't good enough, and it's not that my officers are reckless.  It's that I can't keep my fleet together, no matter what I do.  It takes seven command points just to tell my fleet to stay in formation for 60 seconds while the enemy closes.  And once it does, my ships immediately split up and act like they've never heard of a formation in their life.

There has to be a better way.  There has to be a way to keep ships together so that, for example, my cruiser guards the unshielded rear of my Onslaught.  There has to be a way to keep my GORRAM RADIANT from teleporting away from the main group to chase a single droneship frigate that it will never catch anyway.  There has to be some way to keep my speed-boosted Paragon from going off on its own and getting torn to shreds by three cruisers, instead of sticking close and just roflstomping them as a group with the fleet.

How?  Or is there no how, and this is just how bad the tactical game is?
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Null Ganymede

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If officers are completely ignoring orders there's probably something going on - are they seriously outnumbered or outmatched?

AI cores in Radiants know no fear - make them escort something that does. Making something light escort an Onslaught is usually enough to protect its engines unless, again, massively outnumbered. A line of "Defend" orders is often enough to build a cohesive battle line.

As long as the comm frequency is open (indicator top right of the map view) you can set as many orders as you like for a single command point. Command point is needed to start giving orders, but you've got a second window to pause and give as many as you like.
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TontonBoo

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I don't know how you play so I'll give you my way. Maybe it'll open some insight for your playstyle.

On a battle with capture points i tend to "C"apture them first, starting with the two or even sometimes three closest. That way my fleet starts advancing in their basic startup formation, but a couple smaller ships go for the capture while giving advanced recon data for the fleet. When I begin to see their ugly hulls I still let my guys do their thing, but prioritize ("e") a couple of the worst offenders in a way that also distributes my fleet : one in the middle to take point, and a couple on the side to start flanking. Any very big bastards gets an "avoid" order (can't remember the shortcut) so my ships try to isolate them automatically from the rest of their fleet. We get to them later, when the escorts are down.

While the battle unfolds I still let them do their offensive and defensive choices. The AI is fantastic, and will try to support each other when needed or reinforce weak points in my line. On itself and without my intervention. Pretty incredible to just watch it happen. I tend to cancel the "capture this point" orders after a while, so my ships don't just stand there and away from the skirmish. Same for attack orders on ships : I use them as much to destroy an individual target as to direct the battle flow. An "E" order basically mean "go there guys and do whatever while keeping this guy and his cronies in your crosshair". Sometimes a well placed "C" order on a ship ("rush there to blast him out of the sky with extreme prejudice and with as much overkill as possible") can force the AI to attack a zone or a target, whatever the situation actually may be. Handy to take care of a resilient Mora or an isolated Onslaught (even with frigates believe me).

I think you get my point : in RTS I usually directly order units to do stuff. Here, I tend to suggest an approach and trust the AI. If you go easy on the direct orders (like escort or move) and just direct the flow of battle you will win. Only times I use a direct move is to rush my carriers away when I see the front shifting towards them.

Hope that helps. And if I'm playing it wrong, please do tell me.
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DirectionsToL3Please

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Seriously outnumbered is more or less a given when deploying battleships.  The only fights that really matter are those 300,000+ credit bounty fleets which are always huge, or Remnant Ordo or Sub-Ordo fleets.  Anything else falls into the category of "I have absolute dominance" and no matter how bad the tactical AI fails, there's no threat.  No number of combat freighters is going to take down a Death Star (as I like to refer to Paragons and Radiants).  But it doesn't seem like just being outnumbered 3-1 or 4-1 should rattle a group of Steady officers, especially since, if they stay together, they'll be popping those enemy destroyers like pinatas.

Escorts aren't sticky enough, is a big part of the problem.  An escort will dart off to engage an enemy that poses no real threat, but by breaking formation that escort will suddenly be in the midst of a dozen enemy ships.  All my pilots have elite Shield Modulation, all my ships have Hardened Shields S-mods, and maximum flux capacitor loadouts, but 10,000-15,000 flux goes fill up real fast, even at 0.4/dam, when the AI does something so stunningly stupid as to break free of the sheltering PD storm the battleships can throw up, and rush a dozen smaller ships.

And I do try to mae use of that free command window, but the problem there is that I find that command persistence is about exactly as long as the command window.  So I'll give a series of Defend commands all at once, and ten seconds later I've got three ships drunkenly pirouetting around each other and drifting away from their assigned nav points...until a single enemy scouting frigate or gunship shows up, at which point they ignore orders and rush over to the tiny ship that they can't catch, breaking up the formation and knocking over the first domino in a series of infuriating AI failures that leads to heavy losses or total battle failure.

There needs to be a "stop thinking for yourself and hold the line, ye scurvy dogs" option.  At some point, placement matters more than individual capability.  You'd think that even in the future, people would know that in combat you die alone but succeed as a team.

edit to TontonBoo: If you're not ragequitting, you're playing less wrong than I am ;)

I can't find that balance of strategy-level commands that keeps the fleet together, is the ultimate point of failure.  And once my fleet is split up - especially once combat has gone on a minute or so and I'm out of command points and can't do anything about half my fleet chasing a single friggin' gunship while the other half - invariably the Astral and Onslaught - gets pounded by what should have been a manageable OpFor, all I can do is stare at my screen and stew in my hatred for this AI :P
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Grievous69

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Have you tried using smaller ships? Capital spam is not really the best strat and it's no wonder your ships are derping out when they have to fight 10 ships at once.
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DirectionsToL3Please

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Have you tried using smaller ships? Capital spam is not really the best strat and it's no wonder your ships are derping out when they have to fight 10 ships at once.
I have. Smaller ships tend to sublimate on contact with enemy battleships which is not really a survival strategy, so I try to deploy two, and sometimes even three, capital ships per battle, with cruiser escort.  I save my destroyers and frigates for a mop-up pursuit fleet, usually - early in the game they had some survivability but by 211 or 212 the game world had ramped up enough that those smaller ships just couldn't hang in the fight long enough to matter, and 30 deployment points of destroyer/frigate invariably did less than one heavy cruiser or two light cruisers.

So are you saying that your officers aren't reckless, or that they are reckless but you don't think that's a cause?
One officer is Reckless, the rest are steady, except the one on the Astral-class carrier, who is Cautious.  The Reckless one doesn't get deployed much in the main battle fleet and I don't have any reason to believe that they're a problem when sitting on standby.  Unless their Recklessness somehow carries over to other pilots, which would be a good detail to know so I can pitch them out an airlock give them their severance pay.
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Kriby

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Two cents, the first mistake I was doing when I first started out playing was giving a lot of orders. These days I might go with some capture orders at the start, with an assault thrown in maybe if I want my fleet to leg it to some specific place. Then I make a point of cancelling those orders once the fleet encounters the bulk of the enemy fleet. If I give specific neutralize orders I also typically pause and throw in S&D on my smaller ships. Typically I do 1-2 capitals, 2-4 cruisers and 3-8 destroyers. Most of my smaller ships tend to be defensive nuisance type ships that hold a lot of enemy attention while doing whittling damage while my larger ships focus fire on threats. Hope that can translate into something for you.
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DirectionsToL3Please

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Two cents, the first mistake I was doing when I first started out playing was giving a lot of orders. [...] Most of my smaller ships tend to be defensive nuisance type ships that hold a lot of enemy attention while doing whittling damage while my larger ships focus fire on threats. Hope that can translate into something for you.
I do run out of command points pretty quickly, and I haven't yet tried adding an escort wing of pure distraction destroyers.  Given that I'm failing with what I am trying, that can't hurt.  I'll give it a shot.  Thanks for the tip.
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Daynen

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It's always strange to me to hear folks using up all their command points--I barely give ships commands at all.  Extra command points are something I skip over.  Makes me wonder just how differently people are doing things.

I find that mixing ships of similar speeds tends to help keep them together.  If one of your ships has a mobility system like phase skimmer or burn drives, they're going to use it with reckless abandon to get into battle as fast as possible, orders be damned.  In fact, I tend to avoid giving the AI ships with burn drives at all; I commonly see them dive enemy formations at the absolute wrong times, as they have zero concept of tactical timing and cooldown conservation.

The weapons you equip also matter; an AI with all machine guns is going to fly differently than one with hypervelocity drivers.

Never use reckless officers if you want your ships to stick together.  They are all but kamikaze pilots.  If that's not part of your strat, mentor them down to aggressive or pitch them because they WILL throw your ships away.  I tend to level up my officers with as many defensive skills as possible so they survive their own dumb decisions and provide them ships that can take a punch, with strong PD, good wide shields and a ship that can turn and defend its engines.  Eagles are a great general purpose cruiser for this.  I also find the apogee incredibly durable when modded and skilled properly; even when out of missiles an AI can keep an apogee alive and distract enemy squadrons for a long time.  Consider making more of your officers carrier specialists if you can; they'll spend a lot less time diving and a lot more time sending fighters to do the diving for them.

When you order a ship to capture a nav point, they'll then move on to other things once the capture is done.  If you then order them to DEFEND a captured nav point, they will stay in that general area.

For escort ships, you'll be hard pressed to find something tougher than an omen.  It's expensive for a frigate, but has solid shields, is fast, and its ship system works as phenomenal point defense.  Only problem is that its peak time may run out long before the ship it's escorting.  If you don't need the PD, get your hands on some monitors and mod out their shields.  Those things can take a cruiser level beating.

Also, some may scoff, but...bring your flagship and pilot it with decisiveness.  Whether you bring a heavy artillery platform or a strike frigate, you need to start clearing the board of extra targets while your fleet holds their ground.  It's been said already that enemy numbers heavily affect your fleet's AI behavior, so the faster you start tilting the board back your way, the better it goes.
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DaShiv

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Re: The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2022, 10:08:37 AM »

Have you tried using smaller ships? Capital spam is not really the best strat and it's no wonder your ships are derping out when they have to fight 10 ships at once.
I have. Smaller ships tend to sublimate on contact with enemy battleships which is not really a survival strategy, so I try to deploy two, and sometimes even three, capital ships per battle, with cruiser escort.  I save my destroyers and frigates for a mop-up pursuit fleet, usually - early in the game they had some survivability but by 211 or 212 the game world had ramped up enough that those smaller ships just couldn't hang in the fight long enough to matter, and 30 deployment points of destroyer/frigate invariably did less than one heavy cruiser or two light cruisers.

This here is the problem: fleet composition. You need more smaller ships to break up enemy formations and give enemies more targets to shoot at so that the enemy isn't swarming you and dictating the terms of engagement. If you're having issues with frigate survivability, start by adding a few Monitors into the mix. Then after that, see if you can work out builds for Hyperions, Omens, and/or Afflictors that keep them alive - any of these will add a ton of valuable disruption against enemy ranks, and it's pretty straightforward to make them endgame-capable.

If you try turtling with only capitals/cruisers, then the fleet AI and giving orders can't save your ships from being outnumbered, separated, and picked apart when you're fighting decent enemies like Ordos (and IMO they're much weaker this patch than in 0.95, due to Radiant/shield nerfs). It's a numbers game. To illustrate: take one of your caps and one of your cruisers and let them both autopilot in the simulator against an equivalent DP number of frigates (for example: Onslaught + Champion vs 65 DP of frigates, roughly 12-15 or so.) It doesn't matter what orders you give for your cruiser to cover the Onslaught's back - the raw number of enemy targets simply work against them tactically.

Also:

it's not that my ships aren't good enough [...] There has to be some way to keep my speed-boosted Paragon from going off on its own and getting torn to shreds by three cruisers

A Paragon is roughly the same DP value as 3 cruisers, so if your Paragon can't handle that on its own, then it might be the case your loadouts actually aren't good enough. Remember that capitals are very DP-intensive and it's completely expected that they should, at minimum, be able to handle an equivalent DP of reasonably-numbered enemy ships. For example, a well-built Radiant should at least be able to solo 3 of the SIM capitals at the same time on autopilot, and up to all 5 with some optimization.
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Nimiety

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Re: The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?
« Reply #11 on: January 05, 2022, 10:12:37 AM »

If you want to play fleet admiral you do want operations centre on your flagship and probably co-ordinated maneuvers too (20% top speed, 400% CO recovery). Otherwise some orders at the beginning, a few retreat or eliminate orders on damaged ships is all you should expect from the base regen rate.
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Nox

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Re: The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?
« Reply #12 on: January 05, 2022, 10:33:00 AM »

I'll describe to you in general how I engage  -

My first wave is an onslaught and a legion with wasp drones (yes, a legion) that are my core line.  They are initially supported by my assault line and support carriers, two dominators and gryphon.  Each of these ships has a specific role in combined arms. 

In my initial push I rely heavily on safety override enforcers and collosus MKIIIs carrying wasp drones.  The wasp drones establish air superiority and suppress.

Once my initial enforcers start to peter out if the battle becomes attritive, I withdraw them and replace them with LP Brawlers and Manticores for mopup.

You can't give orders to ships that are panicking.  Remember, all plans work perfectly until contact with the enemy.  There's a significantly low limit for effectiveness being reactive.  You need to be the one determining the shape of battle, or you're going to be losing to it.


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DirectionsToL3Please

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Re: The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?
« Reply #13 on: January 05, 2022, 11:58:13 AM »

[it might be the case your loadouts actually aren't good enough.
If you've got a sec, would you tell me if this is garbage, then? (The Unstable Systems was an early mistake; I got this one as a derelict in May or June of 206 and didn't realize so early in the game that a) that's an end-game ship and b) I should worry about making the fleet stay with the battleship, not the other way around) I've gotten fairly well along in this game but it is still my first stab at this, so I may have missed out on some necessary mechanics to inform the loadout.  The officer has: Combat Endurace*, Field Modulation*, Energy Weapon Mastery*, Target Analysis, Systems Expertise, Gunnery Implants.

It takes three or four Remnant cruisers plus maybe half a dozen little droneships to put a huge hurting on this ship as it is, if it's off on its own.  But if it and the Radiant stick close together, half a dozen cruisers and a dozen droneships die without significantly impacting the hulls, because the output of those two is complimentary and devastating.

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Grievous69

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Re: The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?
« Reply #14 on: January 05, 2022, 12:02:07 PM »

I'm so confused, what ship is this even? I have no idea what vanilla capital has 2 large energies, 2 medium missiles, bunch of medium and small energies along with some small missiles.
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