Boarding parties
 

This is getting extremely annoying.

I make boarding party ships, put them in a fleet..

..and they always RUN AWAY. The fleet proceedes to kill the enemy, denying me their tech.

I've tried all stratagies, both for the fleet and the ship. I've tried armed/non-armed ships. I've even tried calling the boarding ship an attack ship. Always the same. The boarding ship will only attack ships with no weapons, and even then it usually arrives too late. ARG!

Phoenix-D

Re: Boarding parties
 

you can create a custom strategy for your ships to 'fire until all weapons are destroyed.' under the 'firing' section of strategies.

that should do it.

Re: Boarding parties
 

Placing shield depleters/destroyers on your boarding ships also are a big help for getting the boarding ships to hang around.

Also, is your fleet strategy set to "capture enemy ships"?

LL
http://seiv.pbw.cc/

Re: Boarding parties
 

It was, and it wasn't. Didn't help either way. The friggin ship STILL runs away.

Phoenix-D

Re: Boarding parties
 

Did you check the Breaks Formation settings in Strategies? I always change the default settings for that. (Planets and satellites can't join fleets; why are they even on the Breaks Formation list?) I know I've successfully taken planets with my strategy settings, but I don't remember offhand what settings I use.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Boarding parties
 

I thought I heard earlier on this board that if you give Boarding ships at least one offensive weapon (aside from PD weapons) this would help give boarding ships more control and keep them from fleeing the the battle. I could be wrong though.

Re: Boarding parties
 

I think the deal is that boarding ships will only try to board ships without shields. If they have no other weapons, then they have no reason to close on enemy ships that have shields.

Giving them shield depleters generally gets them to try to remove the enemy shields... I think... experiment with boarders + depleters using Board Ships primary strat and max range (or optimal or point blank) secondary strat.

PvK

Re: Boarding parties
 

i seem to remember, at least back in 1.19, that even if you gave a boarding ship shield depleters, the boarding strategy would cause it to hold back until the shields were down. I think i had to put shield depleters on the rest of the fleet so they would not destroy the target.



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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: Boarding parties
 

As I pointed out in another post a long time ago, you have to set "capture enemy ship" as the SECONDARY strategy. Give it a normal strategy like "optimal weapons range" for it's primary strategy. Then, when the target ship's shields are gone, it will switch strategies and board. Or at least it used to. I haven't used boarding in strategic combat for a long time now. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 14 July 2001).]

Re: Boarding parties
 

D'oh!

Despite the title of the thread and virtually every post in it including the phrase "boarding parties", my previous reply was talking about using troop transports to drop troops and capture a planet. I haven't had an opportunity to use boarding parties in a simultaneous game.

I've had troop transports run away from the planet they were supposed to take recently in one of my solo games, which is probably why I got the two problems confused.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Boarding parties
 

I have done some tests too, in the combat simulator. One ship design has only engines, armor and boarding parties. The ship strategy is "Capture enemy ships".
This works as intended in the simulator.
Another ship design is same as first but now with a shield depleter added. This won't work, my ships will run away. This is against enemy ships with NO shields. I tried it with both the settings of having "board ships" as the primary OR the secondary movement strategy. (the other was optimal range).

What worries me is that you can't add fleets to the simulator. So if an individual ship's settings work in the simulator, that will only work in fleets the moment the ships orders kick in (overriding the fleet's orders). It is still a mystery to me when exactly that happens.

And I'm worried that if I set fleet orders to Capture Ships, all my other regular attack ships will sit around doing nothing...

Can anyone shed some more light on this? I'm getting more and more confused...

Re: Boarding parties
 

You can use fleets in the simulator. There's a set fleets for players button.. problem is right now there's ALSO a bug where the fleet (if you make a new one for testing) disappears when you try to add ships to it.

Phoenix-D

Re: Boarding parties
 

Once again, the solution for the Simfleets bug is to open the "fleets for player" window, close it, then open it a second time. It will now work OK, but you must do that each time you open the simulator window.

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Re: Boarding parties
 

I'm sorry, but I still don't get it. Opening the "fleet for player" window a second time gives me the same results as opening it the first time. I can *see* my existing fleets but not add them to the list of things to be used in the simulator. Nor can I add single ships through that window (which is OK cause I can add them through the normal window)

Wish there was an easy manual explaining how to use existing fleets (with their fleet orders) in the simulator.