How are fleets supposed to behave?

[mtilsted]

I have a lot of questions about fleets.

1: i can set the fleet to either attack, defend or manual. A fleet in attack mode will attack all enemies in range, inclusive Pirate lairs and monsters. In defend mode it behaved as in attack mode except it does not attack pirate lairs and monsters. In manual mode it seems to behave as in defense mode but that makes no sense.

2: ship positions. How are these supposed to work? I tried to make a fleet with missile frigates as core, and battleships with short range weapons as picket. I expected this to have the frigates in the center, and then battleships in a ring/line out from the frigates core. This did not happen at all. A preview fleet layout would be gold in the fleet designer. Or just a description of how fleet positions work

3: does it matter if ships inside an automated fleet are automated?

[D3st]

hi there


1.You seem to understand well the basic about how attack and defense work.One of the big part of these mecanism is the other setting you are using as well like fuel range,% of how strong vs they should attack a target and are also based on few other config in your automatisation windows of your empire under fleet.There other option there like the ratio number of your fleet vs number of enemy before the AI green light an attack.

For manual fleet its will depend mostly on the range the fleet is allowed to operate.The difference is there is no AI guiding it.For example,if you let an ai fleet on defense guarding a planet with a range of 30% and enemy not stronger then 100% and an enemy fleet bigger then your fleet get in range and attack a mining station,your defense fleet wont move or will seek reinforcement of an other defense fleet before going in to match your stronger preference and your ship battle ratio.

In manual if your set the range to 30%,your fleet will not analyse the situation and will go in and fight them even if they are outmached or outnumbered by the enemy until its reach the ship template setting for when its should retreated or the fleet one if you use it.In manual there is no AI brain they will just apply what order they have.If you use AI both attack or defense they will analyse the situation based on your setting and attack or wait or move an other fleet close to the enemy and attack with both fleet..

2.Fleet position work as you said,if its did not work make sure that you did not use in the fleet menu(allow fleet to reassign position inside the fleet)If you want AI to use your template ship position you have to make sure to not let fleet AI reorganising them in fleet menu setting.

3.Its better if you auto them,AI fleet may sometime drop a ship who is badly damaged from fleet in order to either send constructor to repair it or repairing the ship at space port.Unless you order fleet construction yourseflt,if you auto ship production AI will most of the time build ship first and then group them into a fleet keeping adding more ship to it until the template is full.So if you build your fleet yourseflt via the menu and ship are on manual instead of auto 2 things can happen.If a ship is badly dmg the fleet will not drop it and will go back at space port to repair or sometime they still kick the ship out the fleet(not intented maybe)and there a good chance that the ship will stay there for a long time before you notice it unless you keep an eye on all your individual ship not in fleet time to time.Basicaly if AI build ship for you,Individual ship not in fleet are a pool of ship where fleet select what they need or return them to it so its best to keep them automated.

Hope its help you

[APhoenixSoaring]

Re your point 2, the game tends to overrule the players wishes. In the game's conception, battleships are core ships, frigates are picket ships, so the game will tend to treat your choice to make the battleships picket ships and the frigates core ships as invalid and do its own thing instead. I have had very little success with that part of the ship designer.

Modifying how a design is supposed to behave and how the automation is supposed to treat it is one aspect of the ship designer I would like to see improve.

[stax]

Originally posted by mtilsted:

1: i can set the fleet to either attack, defend or manual. A fleet in attack mode will attack all enemies in range, inclusive Pirate lairs and monsters. In defend mode it behaved as in attack mode except it does not attack pirate lairs and monsters. In manual mode it seems to behave as in defense mode but that makes no sense.

The difference between attack and defense modes is that a fleet in defense mode only engages targets which have threatened one of your assets. A pirate lair of space monster will still be targeted by a defense fleet IF it attacked one of your freighters, for example. (of course all other conditions have to be met as well, like engagement range, fleet strength etc.)

The main difference between the above and a fleet in manual mode is that a manual fleet will never leave the system it is currently in (but will still autonomously attack enemies inside the system)

[jorgen_cab]

Originally posted by stax:

The main difference between the above and a fleet in manual mode is that a manual fleet will never leave the system it is currently in (but will still autonomously attack enemies inside the system)

This depends on the setting of the fleet, you can specify the fleet to only engage nearby enemies and it will only do that. Manual fleet will never engage anything outside a system automatically though no matter if you allow the fleet to do so.

In order to not get a manual fleet to engage anything is to set the fleet to "do not engage"

[jorgen_cab]

Originally posted by APhoenixSoaring:

Re your point 2, the game tends to overrule the players wishes. In the game's conception, battleships are core ships, frigates are picket ships, so the game will tend to treat your choice to make the battleships picket ships and the frigates core ships as invalid and do its own thing instead. I have had very little success with that part of the ship designer.

Modifying how a design is supposed to behave and how the automation is supposed to treat it is one aspect of the ship designer I would like to see improve.

In order for ships to retain their position within a fleet you must set that option in the fleet options. If you do then ships will retain the position that you set in the ship designer.

[APhoenixSoaring]

Originally posted by jorgen_cab:

Originally posted by APhoenixSoaring:

Re your point 2, the game tends to overrule the players wishes. In the game's conception, battleships are core ships, frigates are picket ships, so the game will tend to treat your choice to make the battleships picket ships and the frigates core ships as invalid and do its own thing instead. I have had very little success with that part of the ship designer.

Modifying how a design is supposed to behave and how the automation is supposed to treat it is one aspect of the ship designer I would like to see improve.

In order for ships to retain their position within a fleet you must set that option in the fleet options. If you do then ships will retain the position that you set in the ship designer.

Of course I know that... however, what's the default setting? As I said, the game tends to overrule the players wishes.

Not to mention that the ship position reassignment can be useful to maintain formations and ensure your valuable ships are escorted, even with ships of the same design.

Besides which, the description for core and picket isn't remotely close to what happens. It implies that picket ships are tethered to the core ships - in my experience, that may be true for close-escort ships, but picket ships tend to be tethered to the enemy, leave the relative safety of the fleet, get nearly destroyed, retreat, and then leave the core ships vulnerable to whatever the pickets were supposed to be picketing against.

As I said, modifying how a design is supposed to behave and how the automation is supposed to treat it is one aspect of the ship designer I would like to see improve.

[jorgen_cab]

Sure, fleet behaviour in battle could certainly be tweaked and improved upon, but I do think it currently work as intended. Once fleet engages they are not really working in a coherent way anymore and as far as I can tell the positioning only really matter much before fleets engages in a battle.

[Terminus]

I don't have a lot of experience with this, but if ships in a fleet have different speeds, will the formation fly at the same speed? For example faster ships will outrun slower ships when moving even if they start in a certain formation after warp.

[Nightskies]

Terminus: Yes and no.

In battle, no.

En route to battle, before shots are fired, yes. This doesn't happen often or for long.

Then there are fleet orders. If the fleet order is to attack the Attack Point and that target is a fleet, colony, or something else nebulous (blockade), the ships engage independently with their own settings as long as it doesn't override the fleet engagement setting or have ship override enabled.

Since ships begin an engagement almost right away, be it fighters or a station's long reach weapons, a fleet will usually break formation almost right away.

Realizing that you're probably thinking about Fleet cohesion, this is only practically achievable through manual control. Moving orders will make the fleet fire less often but will help with cohesion, while ordering to engage the nearest Target will help them to all stay within their designated stances, which also enforces cohesion. Under automation the only way to keep a fleet in good cohesion is to set it engagement range to when fired upon.

[ROBINO]

This was a very useful thread.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by mtilsted:

A fleet in attack mode will attack all enemies in range, inclusive Pirate lairs and monsters.

AFAIK, latter will only be included when meeting condition for defence fleets.

Originally posted by mtilsted:

In defend mode it behaved as in attack mode except it does not attack pirate lairs and monsters.

Wrong. Defence fleets reacts to threats to your assets: pirates attack station? enemy en route to your colony? freighter decided to jump inside spacemonster lair? - a defence fleet is supposed to react to that.

In addition, defence fleets will also get assigned on "removing threats" missions such as preemptive strikes on pirate lairs and monsters within range, provided it is considered strong enough (do note that "military attacks", which are under different tab, - is another category that defence fleets do not get assigned to... at least I've yet to notice that).

Originally posted by mtilsted:

In manual mode it seems to behave as in defense mode

I think it's more like attack mode, as they do not seem to wait for assets to be targeted. never paid much attention to their shenanigans, though, especially since I usually stop them the first opportunity I get.

Originally posted by mtilsted:

that makes no sense.

Very little in this game does.

Originally posted by mtilsted:

2: ship positions. How are these supposed to work? I tried to make a fleet with missile frigates as core, and battleships with short range weapons as picket. I expected this to have the frigates in the center, and then battleships in a ring/line out from the frigates core. This did not happen at all. A preview fleet layout would be gold in the fleet designer. Or just a description of how fleet positions work

It's supposed to do exactly that, yes. And actually does it when fleet is stationary (or is about to engage, provided you used "prepare and..." command for that, or if automation did not split it into million pieces beforehand). Thing is: this matters very little, because when it comes to a spacebattle, everything instantly disintegrates into a chaotic mess in the best traditions of your average hollywood movie, where ti's impossible to tell friend from foe. In a more realistic scenario, captains would be shot for breaking formation that way; still works as a passable representation for pirate raids, I suppose.

Originally posted by mtilsted:

3: does it matter if ships inside an automated fleet are automated?

In theory, it should not, since fleet is supposed to be overriding ship default behaviour, including automation (so a manual ships would still follow fleet orders or whichever ship behaviour it is supposed to follow based on fleet settings). Some are of the opinion that it does affect ships anyway (something I've yet to see). Problem is: there's no documentation on how automation works, so all you'll ever get (including this post) is speculation.

[Janov [GER]]

This game would benefit vastly from Erik Rutin sitting down with someone knowledegable in the science fiction and 4X strategy genre who has never played DW before and take notes very careful every time that person says "what the f*ck??".

The resultant streamlining and pruning of options and "logic" would cut complexity by ca. 90% and the game would get several magnitudes more enjoyable and successful.

The designer has gotten completely blind to his own contraption (not surprising after working on it for 20+ years) and his general stance towards all of our complaints is "no, you are holding it wrong!".