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Author Topic: Let's talk about Escort orders  (Read 2713 times)

Gothars

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Let's talk about Escort orders
« on: January 15, 2025, 07:48:17 AM »

So, despite playing Starsector since the beginning, I never really understood Escort orders. I'm not sure if I'm just not getting something or if they maybe really don't make complete sense.

There are five ways of ordering an escort - Light, Medium and Heavy Escort, Defend and manual assignment of ships. There appear to be complex rules hidden behind the first four, that's why I almost always use manual assignment.

Let me try and brake down my issues:

1) If I manually assign too many ships (more than three cruisers) to escort a target, it automatically generates a Defend order and assigns even more ships than I intended - why? Please don't do that. I have to carefully identify and manually un-assign the ships I didn't want, which is a pain.

2) The same issue, less severe, happens if your manually assigned ships get disabled. The game automatically assigns a new ship, which is rarely the one I'd want/tactically appropriate.

3) Is anyone actually using Light/Medium/Heavy Escort orders? I find them highly unpredictable und unreliable, and how could they not be? The game doesn't really understand what the role of each ship in my fleet is supposed to be (even if there is a Monitor next to me I get assigned a Kite), or how their relative positions matter (please don't assign frigates to the rear that are about to reach an Objective).
Or is this actually exclusively meant for inexperienced players who have no idea which ships go well together? Because other than in this function, this seems like a case of the game trying to be too smart and ending up looking dumb.

4) What does Escort actually mean - is the escorting ship supposed to defend the escortee, to give it fire support or to be protected by it? I think the game differentiates between these depending on the ships involved, but I'm not sure if it always gets it right. There are certainly many cases were a vulnerable ship ends up in front or a tanky ship ends up in the rear, but this could be due to general maneuvering, I guess. Unfortunately, I cannot see what the game is trying to do and can't manually change the escort purpose. I'd love more fine grained control (or at least information) here.


So, can someone enlighten me how to properly use these orders, or what else their purpose might be? Should they maybe be better explained or changed in some way? Because with my current understanding of them, I would argue that the whole automatic escort behavior and Light/Medium/Heavy Escort orders could be completely removed from the game. Or, at least, manual assignment should no longer generate a dynamic escort order.
On the other hand, I would not mind an even more off-hand approach - if I could give a standing order to automatically assign escort orders (following the logic the enemy admiral AI uses), so I can focus even more on piloting when I want, that would be neat.




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Thaago

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2025, 08:17:43 AM »

Yeah, I agree with you: I always manually assign escorts and I frequently have to micro if the escort dies so as to not mess things up. Here's my understanding of the new escort behavior which I hope is right:

The escort's primary responsibility is securing the escortee's flanks and rear. They have two two movement restrictions making them do that: 1) a strict, short-range leash anchored to the side and behind the escortee, with some coordination between escorts to split the sides/angles, and 2) a facing override that forces them to face at a target in range that is not in in front of the escortee (there is some sort of priority depending on the angle off the escortee's nose, but I don't remember). The facing override has bugs and can cause excessive target switching, but the leash works well and escorts almost never cross in front of the escortee, if they have the speed to avoid it. If there is no secondary target for the escort to face at, it will face at the target in front of the escortee. Whether or not it engages depends on personality/weapons range; long range and aggressive can serve as fire support, but its always going to be secondary to flank protection.

The escort leash is strong enough that Reckless captains can make good escorts: they rabidly engage, but only targets in close range, so are much less likely to over-extend. I use right-click escort with Reckless often to get get Reckless ships safely into a good position; then I'll right-click eliminate with them to let them off their leash. Once they've killed the target, they'll automatically go back to escorting, which is a nice hidden interaction.

Defend is different; that puts a weak leash on the target ship which other ships try to obey. They don't have any restrictions in position or facing, so if winning will swarm forward and block firing lines, if losing will flee thousands of units back, etc. I sometimes use it, but only for bigger, slower ships to keep them in roughly the same area. I wish the leash were half or a third as long.
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PixiCode

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2025, 08:26:27 AM »

Take this upcoming comment with a grain of sand, I’m not 100% sure but it’s something I noticed when doing over a hundred hours of AI Battles tests for tournaments

Giving a ship a generic escort command - that is, an escort command where you didn’t tell a specific ship to escort it - may help improve the chances of your escorts surviving, because I feel like it allows them to leave the escort they’re with and have another ship take its place.

Otherwise, escort package as it is is sort of required to use to make fearless AI ships not dive 1 v 7 alone if your fleet isn’t similarly reckless.
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F4RST4R

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2025, 08:51:44 AM »

Tactical logic in this game eludes me.  I spend a few minutes before every battle setting escorts ship-by-ship.  It's tedious, but what makes it worse is my starting 'formation' is often a mess.  Sometimes I use escort orders, sometimes I use rally points - often both.  The results are iffy either way.  Just letting them free-for-all seems like it works just as well in a lot of cases.

I'm also finding lately that destroyers are a pain.  They simply clog up too much space if you have more than one in escort.  One destroyer per cruiser seems to be the limit of sanity.  (and a Frigate or two)

I do like to use escort for carriers.  I escort my anchor ship with a Heron, then assign other carriers to escort the Heron.  It keeps them tucked behind my combat ships - mostly.  Currently with a cautious Heron pilot its working well.  The problem being I can't tell if carriers are actually worth fielding, but that's another topic.
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Brainwright

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2025, 09:09:42 AM »

Frankly, I wish non-specific escort commands chose the slowest ships first.  It would be a great way to organize my most vulnerable ships.

Also, a "fighter escort," command would be useful, too, so I can assist specific ships I want to do something without seeing the carrier dive head first into combat.  Would be pretty cool if ships assigned this command used their own fighters specifically for close defense rather than sending them off into the wild blue yonder.

A generalized "screen," command.  Would be good if it assigned ships for PD support, too.
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Killer of Fate

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2025, 09:16:27 AM »

escort means protect the flank, exchange in fire, provide cover for example when a ship needs to vent. And sometimes protect the ship from the front when its disabled. So, throw yourself in the line of fire.

They behave almost like Xyphos in that manner.

Defend is surround a ship and protect it from all sides.

But if you actually want to save the ship which is being attacked you don't use escort or defend. You use Full Assault. Cause escort and defend doesn't understand how to bail out ships aggressively. They are only going to provide tactical long-term support most of the time. From my experience.

I assume the reason why defend works the way it does is because of AI limitations. Giving escort to a large amount of ships to protect a singular one may create convoluted firing patterns. Think of it like combine soldiers in Half Life 2 with maximum squadron sizes.


Defend instead surrounds a uni and protects it from all sides, to re-elaborate.

If you could create infinitely sized shooting squadrons, too much firepower would be lost in overcomplicated suppression protocols. So the command is instead overwritten.
I ASSUME THAT'S HOW IT WORKS. And because we use the same set of commands AI does, the player has the same restriction.
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Caconym

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2025, 01:33:39 PM »

 I think the escort order is one of those things that made more sense with the old command system. Remember, back when directly assigning a ship to an order required like 5 mouse clicks and cost you a command point, so you really couldn't do it that often?

also wow, that was over 12 years ago...
« Last Edit: January 15, 2025, 01:35:16 PM by Caconym »
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Gothars

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2025, 01:54:04 PM »

The escort's primary responsibility is securing the escortee's flanks and rear.

Thanks for the breakdown, this is helpful to clear up point 4 for me! Although it still leaves me with question about different roles - of course carriers don't behave this way, and neither do civilian ships, they generally stay at a 5/7 o'clock position. And it seems the dynamic is quite different if the escortee is a carrier/civilian too, although that might just be caused by them moving away from targets. What I wonder is where the line is drawn in edge cases of e.g. battle carriers, long range support ships, or if ships get in trouble.
In any case, the escort orders could stand to be way more descriptive :) The only hint it gives at flanking protection being the primary purpose is the order icon.


Giving a ship a generic escort command - that is, an escort command where you didn’t tell a specific ship to escort it - may help improve the chances of your escorts surviving, because I feel like it allows them to leave the escort they’re with and have another ship take its place.

Interesting! I also observed escorts sometimes changing when using those dynamic orders, but thought of it more as a sign of disorganization.


But if you actually want to save the ship which is being attacked you don't use escort or defend. You use Full Assault. Cause escort and defend doesn't understand how to bail out ships aggressively. They are only going to provide tactical long-term support most of the time. From my experience.

Mh, Full Assault seems very broad, wouldn't it make more sense to put an eliminate order on the attacker?



I think the escort order is one of those things that made more sense with the old command system. Remember, back when directly assigning a ship to an order required like 5 mouse clicks and cost you a command point, so you really couldn't do it that often?

also wow, that was over 12 years ago...

I don't remember it clearly, but in that context a dynamic escort order would certainly have made more sense!
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Mishrak

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2025, 01:55:29 PM »

The only escort orders I've had success with are:

1x destroyer per capital.  Anything beyond 1 is too much clutter.  Specifically, Escort Package Sunders.

2-3 frigates (esp. Omens) escorting either a cruiser or another capital and nothing else escorting it.

That's really it.
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Üstad

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #9 on: January 15, 2025, 02:58:47 PM »

I never tried an escort Grendel, I wonder how that would go ???
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Thaago

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #10 on: January 15, 2025, 04:18:48 PM »

I've had success doing some slightly nonstandard things with escort orders while piloting a Harbinger. Whatever ships I assign as escorts get dragged along by the tight leash, so I've:

Assigned a frigate that can keep up, usually a wolf with a phase lance or mining blaster, then phased directly over an enemy to force the two of us into flanking positions (after all, I can fly over the enemy: my escort can't!). I also get a lot of frigates killed dragging them into situations that are WAY too hot for them, so, uh, high risk! This doesn't work using another phase frigate as an escort, since it just comes along with me.

Assigned 2 support doctrine falcons (ir autolance +burst pds + IPDAI + smod emag + HVD/Hacs + advanced optics) that outrange me and use them as kinetic/anti-missile/anti-figher/damage sponge support. I suppose this is a more "normal" escort order because they are primarily there to shoot down fighters/missiles so I don't have to dodge them, but I also do things like zip into phase and fly right over them, to use them as mobile venting points when things are too hot.

Assigned 2 Harbingers (this is a weird run; I have 3 harbingers so far but 0 afflictors) as my escorts so they would always be right there with me when I needed them, then micro'd the pants off them with eliminate commands whenever anything tough comes along. It turns out that ~4000 DPS (pre skills) of phase lances with 3 system disruptors = a bad time for basically everything. Side note: most commands will kick phase ships into full speed phase mode instead of real-space toodle mode, and escort is no exception.
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Killer of Fate

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2025, 05:16:33 PM »

Mh, Full Assault seems very broad, wouldn't it make more sense to put an eliminate order on the attacker?
From experience the attacker tends to often be the whole fleet...
Also it's faster.

But yeah... Probably. I dunno. I was never in that kind of situation.
Usually it happens at the start when one of the idiots (say Odyssey) decides to ram in for no reason. Then I go full assault cause if one person commits. Everyone has to go...
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Farya

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2025, 01:17:08 PM »

Some commands really should be more like behaviour modes. For carriers it would be something like "prioritise frigates", "prioritise larger targets",  "provide point defense". For frigates it would be "escort larger ships", "escort non-combat ships", "harass larger ships". Because really, harass is a weird command as it is now. Why can't I simply assign some specific frigate to such duty so that one purpousefully flanks and annoys some slower ship targeted by nearby cruiser without being suicidal about it?
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Tempest

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #13 on: January 16, 2025, 02:17:39 PM »

The way it should be, is you assign escorts to ships in the fleet menu. That way the ships deploy with their escorts next to them, and you don't have to assign anything.
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happycrow

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Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« Reply #14 on: January 16, 2025, 03:43:10 PM »

Quote from: F4RST4R
It's tedious, but what makes it worse is my starting 'formation' is often a mess.  S

Preach it brother. I would love to know how to get that initial formation to be orderly so my ships didn't have a traffic jam trying to figure out how to get to their escort positions. I have good success with string of pearls and p************* type escort orders, but the traffic jam is ridiculous and sometimes can be a problem early on when I need my missile boats to cut flank hard so that they don't get overwhelmed by an initial foray down the middle.
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