locked thread????

[tom147]

Hmm first decient discussion in a thread for weeks and the dev locks it? I wa gonna say im not talking about the main travel map when moving a fleet. I have no problem making fleets and orbiting them oround a planet. The problem comes when u engage the fleet as a few other players have mentioned. I have a huge enemy fleet blockading one of my planets. If I orbit the nearest planet with 3x 10 ship fleets. I have superior fleet strength by about 5 ships, many of my ships bigger also. If I use AI auto I get my but kicked big time. I need to flank the fleet from all sides or other involved options to win. I now must move all 30 ships individually to do this. AUUUUUG! Not having fun anymore. Game mechanics seem to fail if I even try it.

[galadon3]

Not that its a real consolation about the still not very good battle AI, but from what i experienced it has the worst issues with the real big motherships. Seems it handles Cruisers a lot better (still makes a lot of dumb moving forwards and backwards but its still superior to when its tasked with handling the big ships)

[tom147]

The thing I cant understand is why cant we move a fleet as one unit durring a battle like we can on the travel map? I like a long game and durring long games mullti fleets are in use in battles. It should not be rocket science for the devs to allow us to click on a fleet and move it as one in order to flank a large enemy fleet. That teck is decades old. Moving 30 ships one ship at a time is ludicrous. The AI is stupid. It will send 2 bombers into the middle of a fleet of 20+ ships while the rest of the fleet watches, Would be nice to be able to select a fleet and have a dropdown box- order the entire fleet to attack as one or move to a position etc.. I think a lot of the problems with long waits for turns when u have a big fleet is the AI is moving everyones fleets 1 ship at a time .

[galadon3]

yea that is another basic problem, even the "strategic movement" (moving fleets from one sector to another) really happens on those maps that are used for combat. Which is why fleets can be seperated when moving around or 2 fleets starting at the same Planet, comprised of the same ships can arrive at their destination in different turns.
Im not really sure if the last update improved the situation with Mothership-Fleets (I didnt build them again after the Desasters I've seen) but before the last patch (and probably still) that was so bad that a Fleet of motherships that should've taken 7 turns (time estimated by the game) took TWENTY-FIFE turns for that movement. I didnt really understand why that happened until i saw what the AI does with those ships in combat and that the strategical movement works the same.
Think a problem with moving a whole fleet is when part of the Area it has to move to is already occupied, you basically would have to rely on the AI again to re-arrange the fleet to fit in that Area.

And yea with the Fleet-numbers needed (i dont attack an enemy system with less then 3 full fleets) you can pretty much forget about doing those battles yourself.

First time i played i had this mothership-desaster and was really pissed by how easy the economy was to turn into a money-machine and just rush-build everything.
I tried it again after the patchnotes announced that Battle-AI should be better now and the economy was tweaked.
The economy-part at least is correct, it takes longer now to reach the point where rush-building becomes a viable option (it still does but ok at a certain point thats hard to avoid when such a factor is in game), so the early game became more enjoyable, since i actually had to do some planning when to build what.

On the Battle-AI im still unsure, it actually runs better then in my first games, but idk if its from me now using Cruisers instead of motherships or if their is an actual betterment.
Would have to build big Mothership-fleets again to test it and to be honest i didnt pay for this game to become playtester.
Another thing i now do after seeing that the very bad manoeuverability of those motherships seemed to be the main-problem for the AI to cope with, i normally take the Engine with the best manoeuverability available over those with more speed. (again not sure if it really helps and again: not a solution that makes the actual battle-model and battle-AI good, but maybe helps you with the actual state of the game)

[tom147]

All pretty well what Ive been experiencing. What ticks me is this could be a very good game with some what I think is probably easy fixes. One of the best descriptions Ive read on reviews of this game from a major reviewer was "25% brilliant 50% OK and 25% unplayable". The lack of posts in this forum shows that players have given up on this game which is unfortunate. With a few much needed changes to make combat flow better and some diplomacy changes alowing easier trading of tek with other races, Id be pretty happy with this game and its replayability. Right now its not working for me.

[galadon3]

Im not really sure i would call it brilliant, for that marker it lacks true innovative mechanisms over Games that were already there since MoO2 (wich is a damn long time) but yea with a working battle-system and a bit refinement to diplomacy it'd be a solid game now that would definitely be worth its money.

One thing that i discovered lately that could use some tweaking is the number of Transport-ships you need for an actual planetary Invasion.
Even with full bonusses (techlevels all 10) against a much inferior opponent i need two fleets full of maxed out transportships to be on the save side.
And since those need then to be refilled to take the next Planet. Meaning they must travel back to my next system and refill their troop-compartments, then travel back to the frontline, it normally takes 7 turns minimum.
As it is the quick genocide-option of bombing the Colony into Oblivion and re-settle it (rush-building the buildings) is the much more viable option to keep the front moving.
Especially in the Endgame there is pretty little incentive to go for Conquest, since the higher Income a Planet with a Pop in the Billions has over a newly established Colony doesnt really mean much with a big Empire. (While in the early game building 20+ Transports instead of actual Warships isnt really attractive either.)
So having bigger Troop-Compartments or the Option to at least rush-buy the Troop-Fill at a firendly Planet would make actually Conquering enemy Colonies a lot more attractive.