Ship combat needs a lot of improvement

[Klapauzius]

Manually controlling a fleet of 30 (I think that is the max we can have in combat right now) is obviously tedious and not really feasible.

But AI controlled ships just do stupid things - like they maneuver a lot, but with no rhyme or reason.

An example: Assaulting an alien space station protected by some fleet.

On AI control for my fleet this is what usually happens:
A fleet of 15 heavily armored titans will turn their back towards a heavily armed alien station to try to catch a single gunship with their spinal coil guns. Or they will just close up to the station to a point where they get shredded by shots to the weakly armored side.

I found the best strategy so far is to just stop all ships in close formation, and let the aliens do their silly maneuvering dance into my ships hull weapons, at which point they all get blow to bits - despite the fancy dance and maneuvers.

Again, no tactics. no maneuvering, just sit tight and fire. Basically creating my own battle station.

Once all the moving ships are destroyed, how to take out the station?
Technically, should be easy - move the titans forward until their main weapons can reach the station.

In practice, annoying and tedious - need to set a course for every ship, then break at the right moment - so that my ships dont slide into the range of the staions PD, which will just turn them to slag with side shots .

None of this required formation flying is automated in a meaningful way at the moment.
Turning on a AI at this point usually leads to disastrous results, as just this simple maneuver of moving up and firing the main spinal mount weapons seems beyond the capabilities of the AI.
(yes - I know there is the 'lock' to target option - but it seems to do nothing mostly - or ships start spinning, exposing their weakly armored rear)

So I just exit the battle. Wait a little bit, relaunch the attack and auto resolve (which miraculously actually WORKS in this case....)

For a game , that puts so much emphasis on realistic space combat, this is a bit underwhelming.

To top it all off - I just destroyed a 13k alien fleet with a 2.3k rated fleet of my own (how are these combat ratings calculated????), but because I retreated with the station intact, I get zero salvage. Just nothing. Fine, maybe the alien station sucked in all the debris.

Next I destroy an alien ring-station ... and all I get is like 0.2 units of alien exotic matter for salvage - it seems these stations are just mirages after all???

Where did all the stuff go? That is less than killing a bunch of corvettes.

I think some higher level formation commands for space battles would be nice - some thing like "for this group of ships close up to target X until you are in firing range of main weapons and then stop and attack" - or "change cluster formation to wall" or something. T

To do this all manually with the current system is just insane - especially with bigger fleets, which try to leverage something like combined-arms tactics. The possibilities are definitely there, but the current system is so unusable that in the end it all boils down into stupid "bring bigger and more guns" tactics...

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Klapauzius:

(yes - I know there is the 'lock' to target option - but it seems to do nothing mostly - or ships start spinning, exposing their weakly armored rear)

I've never seen it do anything but what it says it does. It will keep the ship's nose pointed at their primary target, if you set one.

[Klapauzius]

I tried that multiple times - and I swear, those expensive titans just show their unarmored rears to the station , only to get pelted and blown up in an undignified manner.

[Enoukdep Mav]

Originally posted by Klapauzius:

I tried that multiple times - and I swear, those expensive titans just show their unarmored rears to the station , only to get pelted and blown up in an undignified manner.

Are said Titans targeting a station module and not under AI command?

[Klapauzius]

They are.

[Total Oh No]

Multi-ship control during battle is apparently coming "soon", maybe on the next validation update.

[DarthVishis]

Alien AI needs significant improvement. Agreed on that.

Ideal fleet for taking out stations....

3x dreads with plasma nose cannons and coilguns on hull.
6x lancers with 960cm phaser nose cannons and heavy lasers on hull.
All ships at least one PD ofc, and a minimum of 70 hull armor.

As for fleet handling. The less of it you do the better. Sadly.

Select high wall. Do NOT lock nose to target. Do NOT change ship speed or course. Just leave the formation to slowly advance. The three dreads (plasma plus coilguns) will kill all incoming alien ships in quick time. You can set primary target if you want to make sure something is focused down, but there is no reason to lock nose to target. This fleet should wipe out any alien defensive fleets before it gets within range of the alien station. If you only have 2 or 0 dreads, some alien ships may make it through your formation and survive, which means you don't get the victory or the salvage, even if you annihilated the rest of the aliens.

You can add a handful of destroyers to the fleet and keep them back to chase down survivors as an insurance mechanism, but with three properly kitted out dreads its not really necessary.

The 6x lancers (960cm phasers) will shred the alien station before your plasma or coilgun shots even get close to it. Having 70+ nose armor is more than enough to shrug off incoming plasma from the alien battlestations. If you have fewer than 6 lancers you may need to up the armor because they will kill slower. If you have 7 or more lancers it's massive overkill.

[Asuzu]

Whoever designed UI, space combat, and weapons in TI is inept imbecile and a terrible game designer and should go work in McDonalds instead. Its my objective opinion.

Build only large ships (dreadnaught/titan), anything smaller is a waste of MC.
Use only plasma weapons and point defenses (everything else is trash, bad on long range, or countered by PD).

Never use stupid formations except Wall-like:
Line for up to 3 ships
Short wall for 4-8 ships
High Wall for 8+ ships

This way your ships cover each other with Point Defenses as they fly forward and destroy everything.

Never manually select fleet targets, let them spread and focus fire automatically as enemies come in. Never set ships to lock on enemy ships, its pointless and makes them turn their weakest hull parts towards the enemy fire.

When combat starts, retract radiators and unpause the game, go make some tea, come back to collect the loot. Your ships will slowly proceed forward obliterating everything in their way.

Its as dumb as it sounds, but that's how space combat currently is in Terra Invicta.

[Pawleus]

Combat has obviously issues and devs are still working on it but your "objective opinion", Asuzu, is unfortunately of similar quality as your advice - it's so wrong for the most of the game that it's beyond me why you are so sure about your thinking. When you research so much techs before fighting Aliens that your ships are basically better than theirs your advice might be valid but there are much better strategically and less boring ways of playing the game, currently, so why you choose it and call others dumb?

[Asuzu]

Originally posted by Pawleus:

Combat has obviously issues and devs are still working on it but your "objective opinion", Asuzu, is unfortunately of similar quality as your advice - it's so wrong for the most of the game that it's beyond me why you are so sure about your thinking. When you research so much techs before fighting Aliens that your ships are basically better than theirs your advice might be valid but there are much better strategically and less boring ways of playing the game, currently, so why you choose it and call others dumb?

But the "boring way" is the way designed by developers.
You are basically biding your time, staying inside your MC aggro range, building up infrastructure, mining, and research in preparation of releasing the Kraken.
Then you release the Kraken and move into an open confrontation phase.
The pacing, and progression, is exactly that - there is no midgame. There is early game and late game.
And thats the design bestowed upon us by amazing devs.

[Total Oh No]

Originally posted by Asuzu:

But the "boring way" is the way designed by developers.
You are basically biding your time, staying inside your MC aggro range, building up infrastructure, mining, and research in preparation of releasing the Kraken.
Then you release the Kraken and move into an open confrontation phase.
The pacing, and progression, is exactly that - there is no midgame. There is early game and late game.
And thats the design bestowed upon us by amazing devs.

This is a pretty open-ended game with many different ways to play. Trying to turtle up without triggering alien retaliation is one of them, but definitely not the only way to play. You can start a proper naval war against the aliens already with the start of the game Krait missiles.
The devs don't actually seem to like people researching the whole tech tree without fighting the aliens though, which is why research campuses cost MC now, so you have to fight the aliens if you want to ramp up your research speed.

[Asuzu]

Originally posted by Total Oh No:

Originally posted by Asuzu:

But the "boring way" is the way designed by developers.
You are basically biding your time, staying inside your MC aggro range, building up infrastructure, mining, and research in preparation of releasing the Kraken.
Then you release the Kraken and move into an open confrontation phase.
The pacing, and progression, is exactly that - there is no midgame. There is early game and late game.
And thats the design bestowed upon us by amazing devs.

This is a pretty open-ended game with many different ways to play. Trying to turtle up without triggering alien retaliation is one of them, but definitely not the only way to play. You can start a proper naval war against the aliens already with the start of the game Krait missiles.
The devs don't actually seem to like people researching the whole tech tree without fighting the aliens though, which is why research campuses cost MC now, so you have to fight the aliens if you want to ramp up your research speed.

It's not very open-ended, the game follows quite straight rails.

Aggroing aliens early with Krait missile trash ships is probably the worst move you can do,
Building trash ships in general is a waste of resources.
And its risky going early aggression, because if you manage to piss off aliens and get wiped out of orbits, there is no way to get back to those orbits because aliens relentlessly destroy any station under construction. So why even risk it.

There is literally 0 reason to fight aliens and waste resources when you can settle entire Mars, Ceres, and Mercury peacefully.

If you ramp up boost early game and build MC properly, you can settle entirety of Mars before other factions probe it, then mine it, and spam research campuses on it. The amount of research you get will allow you to plow through entire tech tree before 2040.

Throw in MC bases and nanofactories on Mercury, and mining + MC bases on Ceres - more than enough to build defensive fleets rapidly in orbits of your important planets.
With fleets in orbits, thee is nothing aliens can do to you, period.

From there just bomb all alien bases with nuke trash ships, and they have to run back to Quaoar to refuel. Game is pretty much over at that point, because its just a waiting room for the advanced antimatter engine tech to reach Quaoar with your latest tech Titans.

But of course, if you want to RP and play suboptimal, you can have fun whichever way you want. It's just nowhere near as efficient.

[Total Oh No]

Well, to me this kinda sounds like talking about an RTS like Age of Empires and saying "there's no reason to attack the enemy, you should always just turtle in your base until you've researched all technologies". Attacking the enemy is the objective, you're gonna have to do it at some point either way. If you don't, they're gonna expand and accumulate their forces.
In TI, you can prevent alien councilors and armies from landing on earth and prevent stuff like their "observation" fleet missions. Destroying alien ships is also the main way of how to gather one of the most valueable resources in the game.

Originally posted by Asuzu:

Aggroing aliens early with Krait missile trash ships is probably the worst move you can do,
Building trash ships in general is a waste of resources.
And its risky going early aggression, because if you manage to piss off aliens and get wiped out of orbits, there is no way to get back to those orbits because aliens relentlessly destroy any station under construction. So why even risk it.

That's not true. Most of the time it's not hard to recover form alien retaliation, because the aliens will generally calm down eventually after they blow up some stations or ships. You only have a problem when it's very late in the game and the aliens decided to launch a full war, but by then you should have defensible bases on other places, that are hard for the aliens to destroy.
Personally I'm for starting the war with the aliens as soon as possible though and not even letting them do any retaliation. They don't even seem have any fleets with more than 1-2 ships in my game, because I blow up everything that comes close to earth, mars and mercury.

Originally posted by Asuzu:

[
But of course, if you want to RP and play suboptimal, you can have fun whichever way you want. It's just nowhere near as efficient.

I very much doubt that turtling is the "optimal" and "efficient" way to play. I assume with efficient you mean it's the fastest way to win the game, but I bet you can win the game a lot faster than you might think when you don't limit yourself by trying to min-max the alien aggression MC cap.
Deciding to fight the aliens for example means that you can build a lot more research stations, because you don't have to stay under that MC cap.

It also depends on your difficulty setting of course. If you play on the hardest difficulty setting, the MC cap will be so low that staying under the cap is gonna be a big handicap.

[DuX1112]

Originally posted by Asuzu:

Whoever designed UI, space combat, and weapons in TI is inept imbecile and a terrible game designer and should go work in McDonalds instead. Its my objective opinion.

I have the same objective opinion, I pointed this out in my feedback thread. It sounds harsh but it's true. -_-

[Klapauzius]

In the end , it just feels a bit anticlimactic - you build a fleet of giant ships - as pointed out here, with lots of PD and some heavy hitting guns, and that is it - it becomes a grind to move that fleet slowly across the solar system to wipe out the Aliens. All the hyper-realistic combat mechanics, the gazillion techs you can research - all go to waste , as in the end its just one type of ship, one type of drive and a tedious and grindy strategy. Same on earth actually - once you secured control of the USA, EU, China and India, there is not much to do. Alien invasions are now a mere hassle - more grinding actually... I admit, in the beginning I was really hooked by the game and all my early game blunders led to some excitements as the aliens were really keeping me an my toes...watching in horror as vastly superior alien armies storm across Africa in 2035 and my bases constantly getting bombed smithereens.

But now I just yawn, as my doomstack of 30 Titans (with the ridiculous combat rating of less than 10k, because I am not using missiles or Torpedoes, which are absolute trash) wipes out "30k" alien fleets and stations, by basically just sitting there and let the alien fleet mindlessly fly into the crossfire....

There isnt even the excitement about new tech anymore, since I finished it by 2050...and possibly, when more min-maxing, could have done it a lot earlier even.

I understand this is an early access game, so maybe there will be some polishing of the game play and balance? I am not quite seeing how space combat could be improved to a degree, that maneuvering actually has any meaning instead of just designing giant flying fortresses...

Lastly - I am running this game on a 24-core 128 Gbyte RAM machine with an RTX 3080 and the performance is horrible - it cant be THAT hard to compute trajectories? I mean, this is not even relativistic mechanics, but plain old Newtonian physics.

[DuX1112]

IMO they should ditch all the fancy "realistically accurate space propulsion mechanics" and ditch the need to calculate weapon mass vs weapon type vs weapon projectile velocity vs distance vs weapon energy drain vs acceleration vs ship mass etc etc. And just simplify and make the game MORE FUN. Who needs that anyway? You basically need to run calculations in order to play the game. Those can still be factors but done in the background and invisibly, and just give players a few toggles, point ships where to shoot, add special abilities to ships and that's it.