Love - hate relationship

[cineadept]

While creating factories, trades, doing some missions is extremely involving, fleet battles are hell! My own fleet controlled by (in sector) AI is 5/6 times charging destroyers close range to Xenon K and gets obliterated by its many powerful turrets. My own destroyers seem not to notice they have main artillery with much longer range. IT IS FRUSTRATING TO THE POINT I DONT WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME NO MORE! There is no point at this moment, maybe Out Of Sector and numbers game. Otherwise only viable solution is to fly my own ship. What is point of having fleets than?
Another thing - fighters and medium combat ship are very bad wingman. If set to defence they just randomly choose target that is far away, many times one fighter charges at formation of Xenon M class escorted by 4 fighters. Result is obvious.

[conrado.lacerda]

Against enemy capital ships, I use destroyers mainly as meat shields; heavy fighters armed with heavy torpedoes do the actual killing.

"Defend" isn't a good role overall; instead, try "intercept" against S/M ships and "bombard" against L/XL.

[Vali]

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

Against enemy capital ships, I use destroyers mainly as meat shields; heavy fighters armed with heavy torpedoes do the actual killing.

"Defend" isn't a good role overall; instead, try "intercept" against S/M ships and "bombard" against L/XL.

Yes fighters are the key in fleet combat. They kill Xenons K's and I's even before the destroyers are close enough to shoot. Works In Sight and Out of sight.

[Mordtziel]

My limited understanding of the problems are as follows...

Ships try to use all their guns that are appropriate for a target. Not the highest dps combination nor attempting to maintain a range advantage. If you want your destroyers to utilize their primary weapons, then you need to make sure all their turrets will not fire on a station/capital ship where that range matters by setting them to target fighters/missiles only.

Defense is a role that requires an enemy to hit the commander before they will respond (really only useful for ships that will dock with the commander). Most of the time, you'll want to utilize the intercept command instead if you want them strictly for defensive play (keep in mind they will only intercept S and M class ships). You'll want the attack with command if you want their assistance in firepower otherwise.

[Vali]

Really fighters make the difference, just try and you will see.

Buy a shark with capacity of 68 S-Ships. Or other carriers with enough space.

30 Barracudas with fast partical cannons on command "attack"
30 Barracudas with Torpedos on command "bombard"
8 other ships, I use usually Interceptor
8 M Ships, some different types are better on "defence"

2-6 Guppys on "attack"
each 4 Barracudas on attack
each 4 Barracudas on bombard

4-8 Destroyer on "attack"
each destroyer at least
2 Heavy Fighters on "attack"
rest Fighter on "intercept"

a Supply Ship on "Support"
full with Fighter on Intercept
8+ different M ships on defend (you can use them as cavalry)

[Vali]

This game is really good in fleet combat, it makes so much fun to destroy a defence station in 15 minutes or fight against Vigor with so much fighter.

Give it a try. Carrier and Fighter are worth it. :-)

[Cythal]

It can be frustrating at times yes but I think AI behaviour can be learnt and accounted for.. I recommend watch for yourself this below.

Let say you have a fleet of only Destroyers without any other fighters or support.

In OOS combat, watch the target of the fleet leader, you will notice that it picks targets one by one. The fleet, seems to destroy things one by one. I stand corrected if wrong.

Which makes the composition and assignments of other ships in a fleet really important. If you rely only on the turret from the destroyers taking out enemies, it simply takes too long as they are slow to catch fighters since the fleet leader is selecting targets one by one.

Additionally, fighters seems to take priority. A destroyer will ignore an I close to it and chase the target of the fleet leader, instead of focusing on the nearest target.

In Sector combat, setting turrets to attack all enemies will probably make the combat better since the correct turrets will keep firing towards nearby enemies. But am not sure if distance is considered OOS.

Originally posted by Vali:

Really fighters make the difference, just try and you will see.

Buy a shark with capacity of 68 S-Ships. Or other carriers with enough space.

30 Barracudas with fast partical cannons on command "attack"
30 Barracudas with Torpedos on command "bombard"
8 other ships, I use usually Interceptor
8 M Ships, some different types are better on "defence"

2-6 Guppys on "attack"
each 4 Barracudas on attack
each 4 Barracudas on bombard

4-8 Destroyer on "attack"
each destroyer at least
2 Heavy Fighters on "attack"
rest Fighter on "intercept"

a Supply Ship on "Support"
full with Fighter on Intercept
8+ different M ships on defend (you can use them as cavalry)

So a fleet like this is excellent and will ensure each ship would more likely have different commands, ensuring that enemy fleet are dealt with in a more efficient manner, even if the fleet leader is selecting targets one by one.

[flywlyx]

It's a common issue that destroyers can't use their main weapons effectively in in-sector combat, and the only workaround is to stay out-of-sector. The developers are aware of the problem but currently have no plans to address it.

More reading: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=452635
Combat compare
https://youtu.be/9r9PQgtqIqo
https://youtu.be/D3cJfqlzCuI

If you're want to challenge yourself, you could try predicting the Xenon K's movements and issue commands accordingly to take it down with a destroyer, but it can be quite frustrating.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfdjfnoZXd8

[flywlyx]

Originally posted by Mordtziel:

My limited understanding of the problems are as follows...

Ships try to use all their guns that are appropriate for a target. Not the highest dps combination nor attempting to maintain a range advantage. If you want your destroyers to utilize their primary weapons, then you need to make sure all their turrets will not fire on a station/capital ship where that range matters by setting them to target fighters/missiles only.

Destroyers will attempt to use their main weapons whenever they are available, regardless of your turret settings.
This test is done in 6.0, but AI script is not changed on this behaviour:
https://youtu.be/lz8tak_B2dw

[Doom]

Originally posted by cineadept:

While creating factories, trades, doing some missions is extremely involving, fleet battles are hell! My own fleet controlled by (in sector) AI is 5/6 times charging destroyers close range to Xenon K and gets obliterated by its many powerful turrets. My own destroyers seem not to notice they have main artillery with much longer range. IT IS FRUSTRATING TO THE POINT I DONT WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME NO MORE! There is no point at this moment, maybe Out Of Sector and numbers game. Otherwise only viable solution is to fly my own ship. What is point of having fleets than?
Another thing - fighters and medium combat ship are very bad wingman. If set to defence they just randomly choose target that is far away, many times one fighter charges at formation of Xenon M class escorted by 4 fighters. Result is obvious.

This is a known problem. Aside from using fighters as mentioned above, another solution is to take on K's personally. Preferably using an Asgard of Erlking. Those rip Ks to pieces.

[Mordtziel]

Originally posted by flywlyx:

Originally posted by Mordtziel:

My limited understanding of the problems are as follows...

Ships try to use all their guns that are appropriate for a target. Not the highest dps combination nor attempting to maintain a range advantage. If you want your destroyers to utilize their primary weapons, then you need to make sure all their turrets will not fire on a station/capital ship where that range matters by setting them to target fighters/missiles only.

Destroyers will attempt to use their main weapons whenever they are available, regardless of your turret settings.
This test is done in 6.0, but AI script is not changed on this behaviour:
https://youtu.be/lz8tak_B2dw

Thanks for the info. I guess what I've seen others suggest somewhat recently was outdated information for them as well. o/

[atrox]

Battle and fleet AI battle are simply horrible ♥♥♥♥. Cope with it, will never improve.

There are quazdillions of threads about it, here and on Egosoft forums. For years.

There were good proposals to change what's wrong and how how to improve it - Egosoft never cared. So don't expect any improvements. And when they tried, it was one step forward and 3 steps back.

Looks like engine abilitles (or even the devs) are is too limited to do something substantial different/better.

[mortis7]

Egosoft apparently isnt interested in making battles work as intended.

Fighters should clear way for bombers, destroyers should have stronger shields and drop main batteries for better/more turrets.

Currently the only answer is fighter spam. Everything else falls short because of flight mode.

Yes, you heard correctly. Flight mode is the single worst thing that happend to fleet combat in X4. Why?

Because AI has trouble using it in battle. Coordinate attack is just a duct tape over the problem that sometimes work, sometimes dont and is mostly frustrating.

With flight mode, some ships arrive later than others, sometimes they park right in front of the enemy, sometimes 20 kilometers from it. You can never know.

Without flight mode, all of your ships would move more or less in the same pace. Every single time. So you could order your capitals to move to the position. Then deyploy fighters everything else. And then attack. Use SETA to skip waiting for travel times.


But sadly, they decided that flight mode is cool for gameplay and well, it kinda is - for flying and doing stuff.

Except some players, me included, as soon as we leave early game, I'm literally never flying any ship outside some missions and for combat. I'm being flown by my pilots from place to place like a proper CEO while running my company.
But that's apparently not the playstyle Egosoft support for their main experience.

[Epathos]

And some players, like me. Who have years and years of rts and strategy game experience.

Know how the computer a.i work, and have the intuition on how to use them... it's not just point... attack.. and watch... lol.

There is also a group of people who don't just sit behind the map screen and play the numbers game.

Many actually enjoy par taking in the actual fights.

But im starting to forget why im writing this. Anyways, being busy all day doing real work with a skidsteer plowing snow from roads.

Nothing ends the day better then a couple swings of whiskey.

[flywlyx]

Originally posted by Epathos:

And some players, like me. Who have years and years of rts and strategy game experience.

Know how the computer a.i work, and have the intuition on how to use them... it's not just point... attack.. and watch... lol.

I’ve never encountered an RTS game where the AI fails to use its primary weapons effectively. X4 is clearly not a strategy game, as the AI lacks any real strategic capability. I can easily wipe out an entire Xenon sector with just one ship. This design reflects a space shooter, not a true strategy game.

Originally posted by mortis7:

Egosoft apparently isnt interested in making battles work as intended.

Fighters should clear way for bombers, destroyers should have stronger shields and drop main batteries for better/more turrets.

Currently the only answer is fighter spam. Everything else falls short because of flight mode.

Yes, you heard correctly. Flight mode is the single worst thing that happend to fleet combat in X4. Why?

Because AI has trouble using it in battle. Coordinate attack is just a duct tape over the problem that sometimes work, sometimes dont and is mostly frustrating.

With flight mode, some ships arrive later than others, sometimes they park right in front of the enemy, sometimes 20 kilometers from it. You can never know.

Without flight mode, all of your ships would move more or less in the same pace. Every single time. So you could order your capitals to move to the position. Then deyploy fighters everything else. And then attack. Use SETA to skip waiting for travel times.

I believe you're referring to the travel drive, and I agree—it’s a significant loss to have replaced the jump drive with it. While it does make the universe feel "bigger," to be honest, it’s just boring. The poor AI only exacerbates the issue; watching a large fleet crawl slowly through a sector is truly torturous.