Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

It's an old problem. 2 ships/fleets trying to attack each other in adjacent sectors with the same movement per turn. They continually move into each other's sector (simultaneous movement) turn after turn without meeting.

What's the best way to resolve this? Better yet, how do you prevent it from happening in the first place?

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Stop your fleet and let the enemy attack?

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

I'm afraid if I do that and he decides to run on the same turn, I'll never catch him.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

I have only seen this happen with the AI in control of one of the fleets. In PBW games with two human players trying to attack each other, the fleet with the lowest ID ship in it will move first, the other fleet won't move at all, and they'll fight.

The only sure ways to prevent this in single player are to make your ships faster or slower than the enemy, or to let the enemy fleet come to you.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

God, I hate that. The sucker got away. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif I've tried all sorts of things. Stutter step, zig-zag, sending other ships as fodder to try to break the sequence, etc. I think breaking up the fleet would be the worst thing to do because he could take out my fleet 1/2 at a time.

I hope this gets fixed in SE5.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Leave one big fat engine destroying ship in your sector, then take the rest of your fleet and chase him. If you swap sectors, he will hit your engine ship and hopefully be slowed. Your larger fleet will then catch up. If he runs, you can chase him, then join up with your single ship(s) later.

This assumes you have something like this.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Ok, new question: Is there a limit to the number of fleets you can have?

The reason I ask is that I'm in a game now where I have between 30 & 35 fleets and a very wierd thing just happened. I assembled a fleet of about 35 ships at a training world and sent it on its way, but on the next turn all the ships had stopped after moving the expected distance but their "fleet" had disappeared. All the 35 ships were in the same sector awaiting orders. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif Then I had to send them back to my training world to become part of another trained fleet.

Anyone else ever see a fleet disappear from under its ships?

Re: Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

I've never observed that phenomena, but then again I've never had that many fleets before either.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Have you created a huge number of fleets in the game? I seem to recall a problem when the names start cycling from the beginning if there is an existing fleet with the same default name.

Re: Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

He said 30 to 35 fleets in his post...

Re: Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

Did you do some simulating of fleet battles that turn? The simulator doea a horrible job of distinguishing between fleets created in the simulator and fleets actually present in the game when it's time to get rid of them. I don't think I've seen it actually delete a fleet, but it's not at all uncommon to discover after simulating that a fleet has had all its ships removed. If you don't catch this and add them all back in, the fleet will be deleted in turn processing. For this reason, I always save before simulating with fleets and reload afterwards.

Re: Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

Huge number of fleets? I'm not sure I'd consider 30-35 fleets a huge number. Is that too many for the game?

Douglas, I did some simulator testing that turn before processing, but I didn't use any fleets in the simulator. Could I have messed something else up there?

Re: Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

It doesn't matter how many you currently have. What matters is how many you have created throughout the game. It takes a while to get the naming system to reset back to the first fleet name.

The simulator is a dangerous toy.

Re: Edited: Slick\'s question thread.
 

At most I probably had 5 fleets totally destroyed so let's conservatively say I made 40 fleets througout the game. Is that too many?

meaning...?

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Well I've never had that problem with my game and i've run my fleets all the way through to GAMMA GAMMA GAMMA (Seriously I had a GGG fleet in training once) Of course I tend to #/name my actual combat fleets which is something you may want to try.

The AI doesn't name it's fleets 1st 2nd 3rd or name so you won't have the problems of having 5 alpha alpha whatever fleets floating about in space.


As far as have i had any fleets disapear out from under my ships, no but I have had a fleet of ships disapear which was wierd because I had no combat reports but all 15 ships just vanished from my side of the game.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

There is a long-standing problem with fleets in SE IV. Since SE V is by the same programmer it may well have inherited the bug or some variation. All of the AIs use the same routine to create their fleets, and somewhere or other the AI sometimes gets confused about fleet names, or perhaps ID codes. It causes two different fleets to get identified together and locks them both up. It is entirely possible for one of the 'other' fleets to be a player's instead of an AI's fleet! The only way to 'fix' this is to disband one of the fleets. I described this problem to MM several times but he never seemed to be able to find the source of the screwup. So, he might have built in some 'automatic' failsafe to at least keep fleets from getting jammed. And that might have resulted in the accidental disappearance of one of your fleets.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

If it adds any data to shine some light on the problem:

- I did use the simulator that turn, which I only very rarely do; didn't use fleets in the simulator. I haven't seen this problem before either. Maybe the simulator does have some quirky side effects.

- I always rename my fleets using a pretty unique naming convention. I don't think that there was a duplicate name. As far as fleet ID, who knows how the game works in that respect.

- The fleet existed for some time before it disappeared. It was trained to 20% at a training facility.

- I'm pretty sure that the fleet in question didn't really do anything other than: get created at the training planet, get trained, get filled with ~35 ships, then move for a single turn (simultaneous turns). No combat, 1 warp.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Is there a way to use a treaty to trade research points? It seems that research points never get traded like other resources; rather technology gets traded instead.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

That's correct. There's no trading of research points.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Thanks. Where in the data files is the setting for how many units a planet can launch in a single turn?

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

Nowhere AFAIK. You can launch as many as you want.

Re: The infinite attack dance
 

It must be somewhere because sometimes not all units are launched in 1 turn (simultaneous).