Sent a dozen Syn destroyers against a defense station

[Bobucles]

Their loadout was impressive. 8 plasma L, 4 flak M.
Turret mode was obvious. Set the big guns to target capitals first, set the flak to target missiles first.
Sent everyone in to attack. Everyone died. Station was at 100% HP.

Half the ships ran through the defense station's turrets to reposition. They died, obviously.
The other half meandered around getting shot. A few started to "flee" which naturally meant boosting without regard for their direction, directly into the enemy station. They died.

The real culprit was the turret setting. It turns out that stations aren't capital class targets. They aren't even fighter class targets. They just aren't... targets. There is no turret setting for stations. Not even the one that you would naturally use to aim at large slow moving targets.

The X series is over 20 years old. The turrets don't know how to be turrets, and capital ships still don't know how to fight like capital ships, The game has a lot going for it, but come on dude.

[conrado.lacerda]

Stations are treated as capital by turrets, but if your destroyers were maneuvering in order to get firing lines, then the turrets weren't able to shoot as well...

One trick to deal with this is to place your destroyers a few km above or below the station's plane in order for them to get firing lines to all of the station's modules without having to maneuver.

[EXPLODENSTEIN]

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

Stations are treated as capital by turrets, but if your destroyers were maneuvering in order to get firing lines, then the turrets weren't able to shoot as well...

One trick to deal with this is to place your destroyers a few km above or below the station's plane in order for them to get firing lines to all of the station's modules without having to maneuver.

I even have to do this in capitol ships that I myself are flying, otherwise they blow away one section and just don't see the rest of the station. I usually fly under it and point up.

[Frienby]

In over 30 station fights on the public beta, a team of destroyers and battleships including Syns, they only killed themselves twice.... both times on power plants. I might suggest trying out the beta for less frustrating capital ships.

[Bozz 💀]

I use 5 Behemoths, 4 Sapporo's for station demolition, in 7.5 I have destroyed 3 pirate sectors and a lot of stations, I lost 2 Sapporo's my behemoth's seem to keep distance and fire properly. how many stars have your captains ?

It was mostly OOS though.

[Frienby]

My 5 star Syn and 4 star Asgard pilots all killed themselves on the powerplant, I do not believe star rating matters to when capital pilot AI fails and is probably some sort of scripting error.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

There is no turret setting for stations.

If you use "attack all enemies" or "attack my current enemy" (followed by attack order), what happens?

[Erei]

It used to be in the past that ships would get in the range of ALL turrets that can potentially fire to the target.
Your flak are short range, and they theoritically can fire at the station, since it's allowed (missiles first, if there are no missiles, stations are fair game). So, the ship is trying to get into flak turret range.

To prevent that, my short range captial turret (IE flaks, basically) are set to target fighters only.


AI can still derp around, but I had much less issues ever since I did it, it's night and day.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Their loadout was impressive. 8 plasma L, 4 flak M.
Turret mode was obvious. Set the big guns to target capitals first, set the flak to target missiles first.
Sent everyone in to attack. Everyone died. Station was at 100% HP.

There is currently reported bug with "attack capitals first". Turrets prioritize station drones instead. But it is also might came into coincidence with another behavior/bug/feature (really depends on the version) when plasma turrets don't shoot at fighters / smaller targets.

So in your case turrets might have focused station drones but since plasma don't want fire at these something got broken in entire Syn attack logic.

[Mariouzs]

Try using "Coordinated Attack" command, with L turrets set to "Attack only Capitals". The fleet will follow waypoint to set a formation and fire from distance.

[Sandokan]

Originally posted by Mariouzs:

Try using "Coordinated Attack" command, with L turrets set to "Attack only Capitals". The fleet will follow waypoint to set a formation and fire from distance.

Thats the Way it works.

[Dinvan]

Use VRO.

[Bobucles]

If you use "attack all enemies" or "attack my current enemy" (followed by attack order), what happens?

What happens is the plasma turrets target all the fighters swarming around space.
I put the guys in position. Set the plasma turrets to attack my target. Pewpewpew. Set the turrets to prioritize capital ships. Turrets go offline. They won't shoot, at all.

Try using "Coordinated Attack" command,

Actually, that's exactly how they all died, leaving the station at 100%HP. Coordinated attack only cares about final position, it does not care about flying into danger and it locks the weapons until everyone is in position. Capital ships take about half an hour to get into position, so they just die.

To prevent that, my short range captial turret (IE flaks, basically) are set to target fighters only.

That sounds dumb enough to be real. I'll give it a shot, but it still sounds bad. How are turrets supposed to be missile defense/fighter defense, but not completely ruin the ship AI? I guess it doesn't matter because I'm adding pure anti fighter support ships anyway.

I dunno. The only attack command that actually works is move to position, then delete all orders. Every other thing the AI attempts is an active downgrade over finding a spot and sitting perfectly still. That's literally how players use their capital ships vs. stations, they park and turrets go brr. Line ships are supposed to "line up" and shoot.

[Erei]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

That sounds dumb enough to be real. I'll give it a shot, but it still sounds bad. How are turrets supposed to be missile defense/fighter defense, but not completely ruin the ship AI? I guess it doesn't matter because I'm adding pure anti fighter support ships anyway.

The AI try to get in range of ALL possible turrets. Flaks (and others) have very short ranges, and going at this range make them vulnerable.
Short range weapons should focus missiles/fighters/whaetever only but never be able to engage capitals (don't do "fighter first" do "fighter only" instead).

That way they keep doing what you want them to do, but won't interfere with the ship AI. And it's not like you're going to miss those flak turrets firepower against a station they are too far to shoot anyway.

In the end, it's all the same result for you, minus the AI derpiness. Flak shoot missiles/fighters (whatever), plasma shoot capitals. Obviously, adapt it depending on your loadout.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Set the turrets to prioritize capital ships. Turrets go offline. They won't shoot, at all.

I haven't tried "shoot capital ships first," but when I've set turrets to "shoot capital ships only" in v7.5 they'll shoot at stations when the stations are in range. The "problem" that I've encountered with turrets on "attack capital ships only" when attacking stations is that it appears to me that the AI does not consider its turrets' ranges or firing arcs when positioning itself to engage a station - my Behemoths and Odysseuses will happily sit around bombarding a station with their main guns from ~10km, which leaves their L Plasma turrets out of action even though they could safely close the range enough to bring those to bear against any station that doesn't have missiles or Paranid/Teladi/Argon L Plasma turrets.

Having said that, I'm not really convinced that this is that much of an issue, especially given the destroyer pilot AI's propensity for blundering into range of a station's turrets even with a 4+ km range advantage. Sure, it might be nice if my AI-controlled destroyers would deliberately maneuver to bring their L turrets into action when it's safe to do so, but on the other hand I probably don't want them to do so when it'd expose them to return fire from an immobile target that they ought to be able to bombard safely with their main guns, I'd generally prefer my big expensive ships to be overly-cautious than dead, I definitely don't want the added hassle of going through each of the ships I'm using for a station assault toggling turrets on or off or changing targeting mode, and while L plasma turrets' damage contribution is not insignificant it's also not enough that I'll really miss it if my AI-controlled destroyers aren't maneuvering to bring them into action, especially if I'm at a stage of the game where I can just throw more ships at a problem.

Originally posted by Bobucles:

How are turrets supposed to be missile defense/fighter defense, but not completely ruin the ship AI?

You set them to "attack fighters only" or "attack missiles only" depending on what you want the turrets to shoot, and then you complain because most destroyers don't have enough turret groups - or, for that matter, turrets - to cover either role (let alone both) more than marginally adequately, especially if you want to reserve the L turrets for the big targets.

[Frienby]

Coordinate attacks often works great, but I've also seen it put a ship in firing range of a station and get obliterated while waiting for other ships to get into position.