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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Retreat without Dying  (Read 2344 times)

Chaos Farseer

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Retreat without Dying
« on: November 15, 2015, 03:02:15 PM »

Hello forum,

Been playing some SS+ in anticipation of the update, and I've been having some trouble. If you want to retreat a fleet from a standard battle that includes cruisers, what tactics or sequence of commands do you use to try and get them out alive?

For context:
Ran into a superior Hegemony force with a hybrid fleet of Blackrock and SCY. My plan was to deploy all forces, inflict some casualties on the faster enemy forces, then retreat and re-engage. I attempted to tell all forces to Defend a point towards the bottom of the map... and the cruisers refused to go that direction. They were locked in combat, but still. An Erymanthian Boar was actually moving northwest away from the point, and eventually got surrounded and destroyed.
A straight-up retreat command would result in the ship turning its back and then getting destroyed anyway. What's some way to prevent things like that? 

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Megas

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Re: Retreat without Dying
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2015, 03:33:41 PM »

The most reliable way to send a ship to a point is to order an Escort to another ship already at the point (then change or rescind order to what you want after it gets there).  If you do not have a ship at that point, you are out of luck.

The AI is too stupid to backpedal with its front shields pointed at enemy.  If one of your ships cannot outspeed an enemy and cannot point shields at its direction, it is good as dead.  The only possible solution, is to transfer to the losing ship and retreat it yourself, hoping the AI does not pilot your original ship incompetently.
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Chaos Farseer

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Re: Retreat without Dying
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2015, 03:57:38 PM »

Oh, that's a good one! Thanks, Megas.

Yeah, the retreat command does lead to ships outright dying, but Escort will work better than Defend it seems.
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Megas

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Re: Retreat without Dying
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2015, 04:00:25 PM »

Hopefully, 0.7a will fix much of the AI problems many experience.
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Taizo Puckett

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Re: Retreat without Dying
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2015, 11:37:05 PM »

The AI is too stupid to backpedal with its front shields pointed at enemy.

Very true! This definitely needs to be fixed.

--== Some tactical offtopic ==--
Ran into a superior Hegemony force with a hybrid fleet of Blackrock and SCY. My plan was to deploy all forces, inflict some casualties on the faster enemy forces, then retreat and re-engage. I attempted to tell all forces to Defend a point towards the bottom of the map... and the cruisers refused to go that direction.

Good plan, but why deploy cruisers for this? To fight faster ships, better to deploy your faster ones.
And clustering all forces around one point is... kinda ponitless IMO. :) Small fast squads (via escort) scattered around the map and also dragging enemy forces apart (divide and conquer!) do better in this situation, from my experience. And fast ships have no problems with retreat. For slower ships I usually retreat with escort.
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Schwartz

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Re: Retreat without Dying
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2015, 01:55:39 AM »

It's not at all pointless to keep your forces bunched up if you're engaging a superior enemy. Particularly if you can exploit the terrain by defending in a nebula and also holding all the Nav points at the same time. It's like the Russian Winter defense.
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Chaos Farseer

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Re: Retreat without Dying
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2015, 01:25:18 PM »

Ran into a superior Hegemony force with a hybrid fleet of Blackrock and SCY. My plan was to deploy all forces, inflict some casualties on the faster enemy forces, then retreat and re-engage. I attempted to tell all forces to Defend a point towards the bottom of the map... and the cruisers refused to go that direction.

Good plan, but why deploy cruisers for this? To fight faster ships, better to deploy your faster ones.
And clustering all forces around one point is... kinda ponitless IMO. :) Small fast squads (via escort) scattered around the map and also dragging enemy forces apart (divide and conquer!) do better in this situation, from my experience. And fast ships have no problems with retreat. For slower ships I usually retreat with escort.

Well, I assumed SCY cruisers were fast enough. In retrospect, they were the armored versions, so that wasn't the best plan. The Hegemony fleet did have a number of midline ships.
The defend command towards the bottom was intended to draw all forces back and then get them to turn around and retreat. Before then I'd kind of let the ships go on free roam, although I don't think they were fast enough to kite like that. I'll try and change that up in the future and make faster variants. Thanks for the comments.

It's not at all pointless to keep your forces bunched up if you're engaging a superior enemy. Particularly if you can exploit the terrain by defending in a nebula and also holding all the Nav points at the same time. It's like the Russian Winter defense.
IDK, I might've been doing that too frequently. The heavier SCY ships, I don't want them running off and trying to solo things, so I tend to tell the whole fleet to defend an objective. I'll try some fights without that.
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