IS there a way to keep the strategic from doing whatever the hell it feels like?

[Grim Rapper]

imagine the following. you playing as UEF you are at tier 3 and you produced a bunch of strategic bomber in case the enemey will sent the monkey lord at you.

and eventually it does great! except that your srategic decided to wonder off across the map resulted in a good bunch of them getting blown out of the skies.

you cant really tell them to stay landed until you need them becuse they have tedency of taking off whenever they feel like it.

so the only way to keep them under controll is to set there engagement to "Hold fire"

but next the monkeylord you better pick up on it in time becuse now you need to activly call the bombers to engage.

(and every time it happens the damn thing is already to close to the base and manage to do some damage before it goes down.)

so i gues what im asking him. IS THERE A WAY TO KEEP THOSE STUPID THING ON A LEASH AND MAKE SURE THAT WHEN I TELL THEM TO PATROLL AROUND THE BASE THEY WILL STICK TO IT?

[loudman2]

No. Those units have a blueprint value called 'AutoAttack' - so when they are in the air - if they spot a target in range - they'll attack it. Fighters will do the same - and chase spy planes all across the map, to their doom - for the same reason.

The only way to change this, is to alter the blueprint value to false - in which case, the units won't attack anything unless you specifically tell them to.

[Bolt]

What the game needs is a reasonable guard distance at which the unit starts attacking and past which it gives up the chase and returns, but then continues with its previous task. Could be done by removing the intel entry of the targeted unit from the targeting unit upon exceeding the intended distance from the point that triggered the reaction. Don't know if that's possible via modding though.

Unit stupidity is especially noticable with engineering units that don't update their orders properly as well, like when another unit already gathered a wreck or finished a structure: the non-updated unit may try to move to an old area to perform an action that's already completed. Sometimes engineers keep blocking another up to the point where they silently drop orders instead of sending a notification. Engineering stations can't be ordered to only perform specific tasks, like repairs, and thus will try to assist anything in range, even if they aren't supposed to. The only workaround is either to manually order them to support only a specific unit/structure or turn their automatic response off.

Combat units suffer from poor target choices and overkill. In another game, "They are Billions", the units try to avoid overkill damage pretty well. In Supreme Commander not at all, which may be due to the presence of area shields and physical shots that can miss or be blocked by other units instead of guaranteed hits. Poor target choices are especially noticeable with siege units that prefer to target units instead of defensive structures, shield strucutures and other structures in range before units.

In terms of movement units will also bump stationary units outside the shields sometimes or into other structures where they're stuck or terrain they can't leave. Pathfinding in general is one of the weakes parts of the game. Aircraft don't have collision at all, allowing infinite amounts of them to be stacked on top of another or really tight to bomb the hell out of a single spot, if needed.

There are a lot of things that aren't optimal. I view Forged Alliance as a game that never left the beta stage, even after they put it up for sale and supplied it with multiple patches because there were still a bunch of leftover unit bugs. Still: Could be worse. The game mostly has a playerbase for the scale, crazy weapons and fluid economy that also makes use of wreck gathering.

[Antineutron]

Patrol = seek out and engage targets on your path, not "peacefully move between these 2 points", it is essentially same as attack move but looping.

They attack any unit that gets near them when landed yes, so land them somewhere where enemy units aren't moving through and not on front lines, it takes them 3 seconds to take off and they are fast, or you can queue move orders back and forth without turning them to patrols to keep them from attacking, but that's a waste of fuel.

T3 gunships are also good vs land units and experimentals btw, not just strats, may be easier to use, especially for defense, as the way they attack doesn't move them around a lot (bombers fly over target and far behind them when attacking before turning around to bomb again, usually flying into aa or fighters in the process, gunships just hover and shoot with similar dps)

Also monkey has a stealth field, I suggest you queue some patrol orders on some t3 scouts so they can see it coming before it is already in your base so you can react, those can't attack so they will just fly back and forth without "wandering off". Intel is kind of important so you know what to do ahead of time instead of scrambling to react every time enemy appears "out of nowhere".

You should zoom out all the way every once in a while to look at what's happening anyways, idk how you only notice what your bombers are doing minutes after they already got shot down.

[Grim Rapper]

Originally posted by Antineutron:

Patrol = seek out and engage targets on your path, not "peacefully move between these 2 points", it is essentially same as attack move but looping.

They attack any unit that gets near them when landed yes, so land them somewhere where enemy units aren't moving through and not on front lines, it takes them 3 seconds to take off and they are fast, or you can queue move orders back and forth without turning them to patrols to keep them from attacking, but that's a waste of fuel.

T3 gunships are also good vs land units and experimentals btw, not just strats, may be easier to use, especially for defense, as the way they attack doesn't move them around a lot (bombers fly over target and far behind them when attacking before turning around to bomb again, usually flying into aa or fighters in the process, gunships just hover and shoot with similar dps)

Also monkey has a stealth field, I suggest you queue some patrol orders on some t3 scouts so they can see it coming before it is already in your base so you can react, those can't attack so they will just fly back and forth without "wandering off". Intel is kind of important so you know what to do ahead of time instead of scrambling to react every time enemy appears "out of nowhere".

You should zoom out all the way every once in a while to look at what's happening anyways, idk how you only notice what your bombers are doing minutes after they already got shot down.

yeah i usaully tend to use the Strategic bombers together with the T3 gunships to take tou expirementals. say, is there a way to queue orders to a loop?