Defense fleets target priorities

[cwaadd]

The enemy AI has gotten really good lately and often has invading fleets lying in wait for my defensive fleets to go away to attack.
Which is great but more often than not the defense fleet responds to a minor danger like a space creature.

Would it be possible to select what threats the defense fleet would react to ?
Like this for example :
1 Only respond to enemy fleets targeting a colony
2 Only respond to enemy fleets
3 Only respond to attacks
4 Investigate all threats

In war time I would put my fleets on priority one and in peace time 3 or 4. It would avoid in war time your defense fleet chasing a worthless target while your colony is invaded

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Defence fleets only operate in this mode:

Originally posted by cwaadd:

3 Only respond to attacks

hence the name. Typically, they react to ongoing attacks (which, obviously, often ends with wasting time and fuel); if sensor coverage is good enough to detect incoming enemies, defence fleets also might try moving to defend whatever is being targeted. At least, that's the idea.

They can, additionally (meaning they will still respond to attacks), be in this mode:

Originally posted by cwaadd:

4 Investigate all threats

depending on your military attacks setting (on or off). The setting is, obviously, global.

Whatever activity fleets are assigned takes priority, so if they were tasked with a mission to chase away space bums, they will do exactly that and completely ignore pirates ravaging their home base until space bums are dealt with (and after that they'll ignore pirates anyway because they'll need refueling).

Fleet operation range is also supposed to play a factor, at least patchnotes of recent beta updates hint that way (in previous versions missions could easily send fleets way beyond their normal operation range draining all their fuel before they reach destination; no idea now).

Although, notes also hint that fleets became more careful, but the one iteration I tired left me with different impression, so go figure...

[cwaadd]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Defence fleets only operate in this mode:

Originally posted by cwaadd:

3 Only respond to attacks

hence the name.

That's what you would think and that's what they were doing before the latest patches but i have seen on multiple occasions defense fleets attacking stations or space creatures that were not attacking anything.
Or rarely chasing one escort beyond their range with a full fleet with battleships while colonies they are supposed to defend are being invaded.

It's not the end of the world, you just have babysit them but I think it worked better before.
It could be because Military Attacks was on Auto. With Military attacks on suggest it seems to be a little better.

Ideally I would want my big defense fleets to focus only on major threats and have attack fleets to take care of stations, space creatures minor threats etc

[Shake_vivid]

Originally posted by cwaadd:

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Defence fleets only operate in this mode:

hence the name.

That's what you would think and that's what they were doing before the latest patches but i have seen on multiple occasions defense fleets attacking stations or space creatures that were not attacking anything.
Or rarely chasing one escort beyond their range with a full fleet with battleships while colonies they are supposed to defend are being invaded.

It's not the end of the world, you just have babysit them but I think it worked better before.
It could be because Military Attacks was on Auto. With Military attacks on suggest it seems to be a little better.

Ideally I would want my big defense fleets to focus only on major threats and have attack fleets to take care of stations, space creatures minor threats etc

Do you have 'Fleet postures' in your Policy menu set to automated by any chance?

[cwaadd]

Originally posted by Corusame:

Do you have 'Fleet postures' in your Policy menu set to automated by any chance?

No they are on manual

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by cwaadd:

It could be because Military Attacks was on Auto.

That is exactly the reason: despite this being fairly unintuitive, defensive fleets always were dragged into those military attacks by automation (usually, tasks like killing nearby space critters and the like) - those fleets are always "idle", after all.