AI retreat cycling...not so fun

[Misaniovent]

I'm trying to find a way to counter this. I've seen it happen in multiple games. Here's the situation: multiple AI fleets are blockading a friendly system. When I attack a fleet, it immediately retreats to its territory, and then a new fleet cycles in. This process repeats endlessly, putting me in a position where I cannot make progress against enemy forces.

Because of the blockades, I can't cover the location they are retreating to either. It's putting me in a quagmire where even though my fleets are higher quality and more numerous, I can't beat this cycle.

How do you deal with this?

[Fendelphi]

If I remember right, you can get tech that allows you to travel between systems even if they dont have a lane. As such, you can by-pass those bottlenecks.

Also, creating and attacking with numerous fleets in the same location allows for more combats per turn. If you engage the enemy with as many fleets as they have, you will either force every enemy to retreat, or get into actual combat.

I agree that there should be a better way to do this. For instance, ground defense shooting at enemies entering/leaving the system(so that the constant back and forth would eventually kill them off when combined with a long ranged Kinetic fleet).

[BrigadierBill]

when the AI gets offensive retreat, it likes to use that rather than normal retreats. If they do that, Offense will get them. Otherwise if it's bad enough the Sheredyn can stop it entirely.

[MTB-Fritz]

Either jump em or bring numbers.

I know it seems endless but trust me if you bring enough fleets of your own and design em right eventually you ll whittle your enemy down. Just put some long-range weaponry into your ships. You see the retreat card takes effect at the end of the first segment. You can fire and hit enemy ships and possibly even damage/destroy some in the preocess. If you optimize your long-range capabilities chances are higher that the enemy AI will suffer heavy losses during those retreat spams.

As Bill said you can counter one of 2 possible retreat cards if you play the right battle card.

Or play as the Sheridyns (or use a custom race with the sheridyns affinity)

[BrigadierBill]

Originally posted by MTB-Fritz:

Just put some long-range weaponry into your ships. You see the retreat card takes effect at the end of the first segment. You can fire and hit enemy ships and possibly even damage/destroy some in the preocess. If you optimize your long-range capabilities chances are higher that the enemy AI will suffer heavy losses during those retreat spams.

LR Kinetics are best; LR missiles will not hit retreating enemies, and LR beams will hit normal retreats but not offensive retreats (if you forego using an offense battle action).

[Misaniovent]

Originally posted by BrigadierBill:

Originally posted by MTB-Fritz:

Just put some long-range weaponry into your ships. You see the retreat card takes effect at the end of the first segment. You can fire and hit enemy ships and possibly even damage/destroy some in the preocess. If you optimize your long-range capabilities chances are higher that the enemy AI will suffer heavy losses during those retreat spams.

LR Kinetics are best; LR missiles will not hit retreating enemies, and LR beams will hit normal retreats but not offensive retreats (if you forego using an offense battle action).

This seems extremely counter-intuitive, though I'd heard it before. Kinetics are supposed to be optimized for melee. Does it still work?

Also, should I be using cards that boost long-range missiles on the turn that they are expected to hit, or the turn that they are launched?

[BrigadierBill]

If someone retreats, you have 2 rounds to fire at them before they escape. If they successfully launch an offensive retreat, you have 1.

It takes 1 round for beam weapons to hit, 3 for missiles, and 0 for kinetics; missiles fire once, beams twice, and kinetics 4 times. Hence missiles are useless in retreats, and beams useless in offensive retreats (unless you counter it with an offense card).


Also, you can change weapon status based on personal preference, although I'd typically stick to beams for MR and kinetics for melee unless you particularly want melee weapons and the enemy is using too many deflectors. LR kinetics are nice simply because you have a lower chance of overpowering a single target (this is constantly a problem with missiles, and often with beams), and although they aren't optimized for long range the damage is still high enough that this doesn't matter. Missiles and beams tend to get damage inflicted values like 26000 on a 650 hull ship.

Do note that kinetics have higher industry cost than beams, which are higher than missiles. This means they will build slower. However I find that building quality ships is usually essential if you are facing large numbers of enemies, as always seems to happen in my games (where I go tech crazy then overexpand very quickly), and having ships of greater value makes more sense if you are constrained by the fleet cap.

In all honesty I never touch missiles, but stick to LR kinetics, MR beams, and sometimes melee kinetics. The only time you might want missiles is if you were making suicide ships, since they would still hit the enemy with full firepower even if they were immediately destroyed (while kinetics need to survive 4 rounds to fire 4 times). Bombers are really the best suicide weapons, but you can't mount enough to fill a ship with them. And honestly, it's a better tactic to make heavily-armored cruisers with bombers, craptons of armor and defense, and repair modules, since these can hold an enemy in place for a ridiculously long time and will cripple fleets based on glass cannons.

[MTB-Fritz]

This seems extremely counter-intuitive, though I'd heard it before. Kinetics are supposed to be optimized for melee. Does it still work?

They were in Vanilla Endless Space where melee was their only option. In Disharmony all weapons of the same range setting are "almost" equal on paper while the old favorites keep a small advantage over the rest in their respective fields (melee kinetics will bit a bit better then melee beams or melee missiles).

Sadly reality looks differently. That is the one major flaw I see in Disharmony (and seen from the start but the devs obviously think this is how it should work). Regarding long-range...on paper....Missiles are your best choice of weaponry. Game mechanics screw that up tho.

Missiles fire 1x per segment
Beams fire 2x per segment
Kinetics fire 4x per segment

Fire repetition is the reason why Kinetics outperform every other weapon choice by far at the moment. It doesnt matter if a single kinetics attack at long range will do a bit less damage then missiles of the same setting. As they hit 4 times compared to missiles they are garantueed to deal triple if not quadraple of the damage missiles can do.

Like Bill I stick to Beams and Kinetics mostly and only put in missiles to "confuse" my opponent trying to lure him into wasting tonnage on flak modules (more important at higher difficulties). Sadly Missile modules underperform so greatly that I consider them a waste of tonnage alltogether.

Directly after Disharmony was released they had a different system in place. Fire rate was directly linked to range-setting so if set your kinetics to long-range they would fire 1x. And melee missiles would volley-fire (still the MOST AWESOME display of firepower really...check out "Hectic Combat" mod if you wanne see how it looked like and not even that comes close really) 4x per segment.

Under that system Missiles were the best choice of weapons (tho not by far) so the devs felt the need to change it. A couple of days after release the new system took place...the one we still enjoy now and it (IMO) broke the combat system by taking a lot of choices from us.

Old system = every weapon choice was viable, you could min-max if you went for specific set-ups but overall I felt weapons were balanced

Current system = broken, if you want to be successfull in combat you HAVE to go specific set-ups. If you dont you are already lying down to die.

[MTB-Fritz]

Of course simply going long-range kinetics is no garantuee to win. If you pile up kinetic modules a mirror-design will completely negate kinetics effectivity but the point is surprise. You can be pretty sure that the AI will always try for a balanced design upon first contact mostly going for beam weapons (looks to be hardcoded) and an even defense across all weapon types.

This is where your long-range sniper designs simply rip them apart. Push forward and ride upon that wave of destruction and you can cripple an AI easily before it can change its fleets to match your firepower.

Up to a certain difficulty level (cough...hard...cough) its a tried strategy. Simply go full long-range kinetics and you will win.

Okay...picking the right cards to support your fleets still is a major factor and becomes increasingly important once better tier modules are in play.

[Misaniovent]

Originally posted by MTB-Fritz:

Of course simply going long-range kinetics is no garantuee to win. If you pile up kinetic modules a mirror-design will completely negate kinetics effectivity but the point is surprise. You can be pretty sure that the AI will always try for a balanced design upon first contact mostly going for beam weapons (looks to be hardcoded) and an even defense across all weapon types.

This is where your long-range sniper designs simply rip them apart. Push forward and ride upon that wave of destruction and you can cripple an AI easily before it can change its fleets to match your firepower.

Up to a certain difficulty level (cough...hard...cough) its a tried strategy. Simply go full long-range kinetics and you will win.

Okay...picking the right cards to support your fleets still is a major factor and becomes increasingly important once better tier modules are in play.

Thanks for your input.

[Nasarog]

THis has been a problem from the start, and it still sucks.

[1]

Game is full of bugs and not worth playing.

[MTB-Fritz]

/sigh you are just swarming the forum with flame posts now because you are frustrated dont you?

[ShadeTwo]

Also - the Sheryden empire prevents enemies from retreating in combat. A very useful ability. Can be taken with Custom Factions, or just play as Sheryden

[Sirrus]

Sherydin are like Scorpion - "GET OVER HERE!". :D

[BrigadierBill]

I didn't really take too much interest in the sheredyn setup--I never focus on money enough to justify a buyout faction--but that whole no retreat thing was pretty hilarious :)