Any way to force aliens to fight???

[rosariodoamaral]

I finally managed to create a semi decent fleet. (2 BBs, 4 Monitors, 6x Vortex Engines)

But any alien fleet I can actually defeat runs away, as they have 40x more delta V tham my fleets.

I tried to wait for the aliens to start a mission (Bombardment), but no dice. they still ran.

So what can I do?

[Mistfox]

Fwiffo の投稿を引用：

corisai の投稿を引用：

This isn't a bug - it's called pincer maneuver when two fleets attack you from opposite directions and you're sitting duck.

Devs even planning to make it an option - game will automatically divide your fleet in two & aliens will fight weakest one so less micro with split/merge/transfer.

Space combat doesn't quite work this way. Pincer maneuvers are great in ground combat, where you cannot go up or down, and where you often have obstacles preventing or slowing down army movement. Objects in orbit are never at rest, and there are no obstacles to prevent them from burning away from you. Secondly if you want to fight battles with relatively short-ranged weapons (hundreds of kilometers, even going up to a few thousand), you have to match their speed, otherwise you'll just shoot past. If you send 2 fleets on the same course, you cannot pincer an enemy that is trying to evade you, since both parts of your fleet are coming from the same direction, and the enemy can just burn away from you.

To even attempt to execute a pincer maneuver in space, you'd need engines with better acceleration, sufficient to match the enemy velocity while applying "sideways" acceleration (and deceleration), and you'd need to expend more dV for the same reason.

Well, if they did this in the game, human ships will never ever engage aliens. Not to mention that the xenos can just pitch up or down on the z-axis and create a whole new vector. Not fun for a player not to be able to catch his target.

OP, don't particle your point defence, those bolts are very iffy on accuracy and are short ranged. Lasers clean house as PD like nothing else.

[rosariodoamaral]

Nickk の投稿を引用：

To be honest, I don't have enough experience with the game to know what's best for late-game ships. I do think that missiles should be avoided in small quantities. If you're using them you want enough to saturate the enemy point-defence.
As for laser engines, I have been using them but I don't know how much effect they have - the weapons stats don't seem to update when i add one to the ship so I have no idea whether they're really worthwhile.

So, empiric method (trial and error) it is. gotta research the tech and then build the fleet.

I will try a frontline using BBs with 4 ARC Laser PD, and put Green Arc Lasers the remaining 2.
And a backline of Monitors going full missiles.

Thanks for the hints.

[Fwiffo]

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

Well, if they did this in the game, human ships will never ever engage aliens. Not to mention that the xenos can just pitch up or down on the z-axis and create a whole new vector. Not fun for a player not to be able to catch his target.

I'm not arguing about the balance of it, just the justification of the pincer maneuver, since it cannot be explained away in this manner. You cannot pincer in space when you have inferior thrust and dV.

I'm fine with it being kept as is and even improved, but the justification could use some work ideally.

Alternatively, if you're going for realism, chasing a ship is more complex than just comparing dV - for simplest example, take Orion drive and Ion thrusters, and you'll see that even though the ship with ion drive will have much better dV, it would not be able to outrun the more powerful Orion in short term, where combat is concerned. So if going for realism, you could either add an ability to house multiple engine types on a ship (which would make sense for bigger ships), or an afterburner to achieve that short-term boost in order to catch the enemy up, at the cost of taking a utility slot for instance.

[Mistfox]

Fwiffo の投稿を引用：

.........

In real life, I really don't see any chance of humans catching alien ships unless the other side committed to a high speed vector they can't pull out of easily. Then it's less "Catching up" but rather standing in a spot he has to go by and getting off a single firing pass before he zooms out of range. Even my initial idea of blasting buckshot into an area he has to pass to force him to turn doesn't quite work due to the fact that he is armoured and has PD to pop anything large enough to be a threat.

Maybe long ranged high agility missiles? The aliens definitely would also cap out on Gs with their physiology so an inanimate "ship" like a missile might catch up? But those would have to be huge and still face the PD problem.

[jfoytek]

rosariodoamaral の投稿を引用：

bryceorian の投稿を引用：

You can catch them if you send two fleets. The aliens with flee from the first but won't be able to flee from the second.

I did that and it worked. However...

Joostorm の投稿を引用：

Reduce your fleet power or go up against more powerful fleets so they think it's in their favour. In my experience the aliens' fleet power is highly overestimated.

Thats kind of the problem. the aliens in my playthrough are using a lot of missiles. A LOT of missiles.

without keeping those 6 ships in the same fleet, in closed formations, the 4 alien ships end up overwhelming my PD screen (4 Particle PD per BB, 2 per monitor) in all combinations I tried (2 BBs, 4 Monitors, 1 BB 2 Monitors, etc)

For 4 alien ships I would use the following
2 monitors with 4 PD and alot of armor their job is to survive thats it
4 Escorts with 2 Viper missles and a magazine.... these will die more then likely but they will take out the ship they target...

the Aliens won't consider that fleet to be a threat and won't run away from it either...

[Fwiffo]

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

Maybe long ranged high agility missiles? The aliens definitely would also cap out on Gs with their physiology so an inanimate "ship" like a missile might catch up? But those would have to be huge and still face the PD problem.

Long range AND agile are kind of opposite from one another. Long range = more fuel, less agility. More agile = less mass, less fuel, less range.

What COULD be feasible at long range is a sort of stealthy-ish missile that you could throw on an intercept course, and it would float most of the way without firing up its thrusters to remain unsees - think something akin to Expanse's stealth composites - to even have a chance to get close to target, and only actively thrust in the final approach.

Otherwise, just slugging rocks at high velocity similar to Halo's MAC cannons remains the most viable approach: accelerate a rock to a large enough speed that the target will not have a chance to dodge after detecting the projectile. Obviously, you'd need more than 6 kps muzzle velocity.

[[*~MAJA~*] Mandragoron]

corisai の投稿を引用：

Joostorm の投稿を引用：

Is that true? If so it sounds like a bug, why can't they flee from the 2nd?

This isn't a bug - it's called pincer maneuver when two fleets attack you from opposite directions and you're sitting duck.

You do understand that space is not 2D, its 3D so 2 Fleets can't block all directions, not even close.

Just implement tech which blocks drives for some time as mid tech. That would work fine.

[Mistfox]

Fwiffo の投稿を引用：

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

Maybe long ranged high agility missiles? The aliens definitely would also cap out on Gs with their physiology so an inanimate "ship" like a missile might catch up? But those would have to be huge and still face the PD problem.

Long range AND agile are kind of opposite from one another. Long range = more fuel, less agility. More agile = less mass, less fuel, less range.

What COULD be feasible at long range is a sort of stealthy-ish missile that you could throw on an intercept course, and it would float most of the way without firing up its thrusters to remain unsees - think something akin to Expanse's stealth composites - to even have a chance to get close to target, and only actively thrust in the final approach.

Otherwise, just slugging rocks at high velocity similar to Halo's MAC cannons remains the most viable approach: accelerate a rock to a large enough speed that the target will not have a chance to dodge after detecting the projectile. Obviously, you'd need more than 6 kps muzzle velocity.

Some misunderstandings.

1- in space you can have long range and agile. An object in motion tends to stay in motion so even without fuel, a missile will still coast until it hits something or self destruct. What it does need is some way to change direction fast.

2- The purpose is not to do damage. A single hit won't solve anything. The goal is to create a hazard zone that forces the enemy to turn. Once he turns, all the velocity he created going in that direction has to be negated which gives your fleet the chance to force a decisive engagement rather than the one hit he might take rushing through your hazard field. It's basically a game of chicken.

[corisai]

Fwiffo の投稿を引用：

To even attempt to execute a pincer maneuver in space, you'd need engines with better acceleration, sufficient to match the enemy velocity while applying "sideways" acceleration (and deceleration), and you'd need to expend more dV for the same reason.

No :)

We're need precise timing to send our fleets on same orbit but in different direction. So enemy will be forced to do straight deorbiting (extremely taxing both in dV and acceleration).

[corisai]

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

In real life, I really don't see any chance of humans catching alien ships unless the other side committed to a high speed vector they can't pull out of easily.

You're forgetting that aliens don't own any kind of magic FTL radars. Humanity is abusing our extreme amounts of satellites to track their moverments near Earth while aliens are mostly blind here.

[Riftwalker]

look up the fleet in being doctrine and hope it works.

[corisai]

Riftwalker の投稿を引用：

look up the fleet in being doctrine and hope it works.

It works. When you have a big fleet - aliens will spam their biggest ships and send good-sized fleets against you :)