Bug: adding cargo in simulator is broken
 

BUG: In combat simulator, if you click on a ship that has been added to combat (before starting combat!) you can add cargo to it. (Use the Add Cargo button.) So I made a drone-launching cruiser and went to add drones to it. I had encountered another race and one of their sat designs was in the list of possible things to add, just below my drone design. But every time I clicked on the drone to add it, the program also added an alien sat. Then I had to click on the alien sat in my cargo bay to get rid of it. In addition, raising the amount of cargo to add had NO effect. So adding 8 drones to cargo took 16 clicks instead of only 2 or 3 clicks if things had worked. Now imagine if this had been a real game, and it was turn 150! Instant carpal tunnel.

Question: How to make drones work?
 

In the combat simulator, I can't figure out how to get drones to attack the enemy. They just sit there.

Re: Question: How to make drones work?
 

Dmm:

It's *technically* not a bug, but the the add cargo function needs to be improved in the simulator certainly. It should be on the to-do list.

Drones with warheads are not working properly in the demo. If they have regular weapons they should work ok.

Re: Question: How to make drones work?
 

They don't. They'll shoot, but they won't move.

Design Flaw: Sucker missile ships
 

Missiles can't target drones, and drones can outrun ships. Therefore, ships with only missiles are easy prey to drones. The obvious solution is to put a few PDC or direct-fire weapons on the missile ship. Here is the design flaw: A crucial advantage of missile ships is that they can stay out of range of direct-fire ships. But if you have such weapons on your mainly-missile ship, it will use them to attack any drones EVEN IF THAT BRINGS THE SHIP WITHIN RANGE OF ENEMY MAIN GUNS (thus violating the "Maximum Range" orders). It's like bees to honey; they can't help themselves. And, to make matters worse, the drones can have few engines and lots of armor. So they quickly fall behind the main enemy fleet, causing the mainly-missile ships to run RIGHT THROUGH the line of enemy capital ships, subjecting themselves to devastating point-blank main-gun salvos in their mindless hatred of drones.

Note that you only need one drone, and that it has no purpose other than being bait, so it only needs one engine.

This exploit probably works with fighters and sats too. Sats would be particularly cost-effective.

Note that I am also assuming that the drone-launching fleet has sufficient PDC (or sufficient ships) to withstand the initial missile onslaught.

Re: Design Flaw: Sucker missile ships
 

That can be remedied by adjusting the strategy for missile ships to target only other ships.

Re: Design Flaw: Sucker missile ships
 

Wouldn't that prevent the point defense from working?

Re: Design Flaw: Sucker missile ships
 

Good question. If so, how about this instead: remove the point defence entirely, create a ship with only point defence, set it to defend (picket?) the missle ships. Would that work?

Re: Design Flaw: Sucker missile ships
 

A ship will NOT fire at anything its told not to engage, even in self-defense. So your missile ship PDCs would hold fire except at incoming missiles.

EDIT: if you stick seekers, drones, and such at the bottom of the priority list and make sure Type is one of the targeting priorities, the ship should stay away, though..

Re: Design Flaw: Sucker missile ships
 

sounds like the targeting priorities need to be split into "targets of opportunity/in range targets" and "primary/actively pursued targets"... (not to mention different targeting priorities for different weapon types). Of course, I could be very wrong.