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Author Topic: Defend Order  (Read 1661 times)

Arcanos

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Defend Order
« on: August 07, 2012, 01:46:31 PM »

The AI for defending an objective is very annoying. It has a kind of "dog on a leash" mentality. I order my ships to defend an objective but if they see even a talon fighter wing every ship available runs after it to a certain distance then run back. This makes it impossible to ever make a good defensive position because all my ships leave the object i assign them to and run around unorganized. Either the defense order needs to keep a tighter leash on the ships or a new order be made to make them "sit and stay."
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Alex

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Re: Defend Order
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2012, 02:06:35 PM »

It used to be a tigher leash in an earlier dev build. Didn't work very well - ships on a tight leash are very vulnerable. Right now, the distance they travel depends on how close enemies are to the point they're defending - i.e., they'll move away from it, but not at the expense of letting the enemy take it over. Try to look at it as "ships will protect this point from the enemy" rather than "ships will stay here", since the former is how it actually works.

With that in mind, it makes sense to put a defend order a bit back from where you want your engagement to occur.
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Catra

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Re: Defend Order
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2012, 03:11:40 PM »

it would be alot easier to determine where we want the engagement to be if we could see just how far out the defense zone goes.
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Alex

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Re: Defend Order
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2012, 03:22:08 PM »

Good point. I don't quite have time to experiment with it right now, but I'll definitely keep it in mind for when I'm working on that part of the code again.

For now, just FYI - the ships will go about 3 grid squares away from that point, or as far as the nearest enemy is from the point - whichever is less.
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