Ships Orders
 

Time and time again I give a ship orders and they get ignored! I give a ship 'Capture ship' as the classes default orders put it in a fleet with 'capture ship' orders and what does it do? Run away. (No the enemy did not have shields) Same goes with Ram orders and Don't Hurt me orders' (except with don't hurt me they don't run away) you would think Ram orders should be simple to program. Move towards enemy and ram. Similar with Capture ships orders. This is so frustrating I wonder why I even bother playing. And I know I'm not alone in this as it has happened to those I play with.

Re: Ships Orders
 

David, I agree wholeheartedly. This is by far the flakiest part of the game. I don't think it will ever be fixed because it would require massive reprogramming. The three items you mentioned are only the highlights. Many other items work in confusing, illogical or contradictory ways. Yes, there are some bright spots, but they hardly make up for weaknesses. Sorry, Aaron, just had to say it.

However, I have learned to work with what's there. It's hardly satisfactory, but I can play a reasonably strong game by avoiding the flakiest orders.

Kim

Re: Ships Orders
 

I've learned to play by the ways of the game, i dont count much on parts that are weak. i have been trying to find the ways around the bad sides of strategies -- dont put weapons on ramming and/or capturing ships, thats one lesson i've learned.

Re: Ships Orders
 

What’s the problem exactly?
Ramming strategy does not require any weapons on board the ramming ship.
When you use capture enemy ship you will need a weapon to stay at the front line. The ship will try to capture an enemy ship even without weapons but the enemy shields must be lowered by another ship. As soon as the shields are down, the capture ship will head for its target but most of the time the target ship will be blown up when the capture ship arrives. but if the capture ship has a weapon it will stay at the front all the time and might be on time to catpure an enemy without shields.
It is not a bug that ships without weapons or weapons that won't work against the enemy (i.e. boarding parties against ships with shields) try to disengage from the enemy IMHO. Who really wants his maybe even damaged ships to sit in front of the enemy unable to do anything and wait to be blown to pieces by him?

Re: Ships Orders
 

The problem with the Capture ships was they did not move towards the enemy (unshielded). These ships had swashbucklers and their only 'weapon' They instead either milled around or moved away. The ram thing was the same although this happened to a friend in the game so it may have been incorrect orders. Fleets with Don't hurt me orders I have found never worked since Gold came out. The ships always revert back to thier class orders.

Re: Ships Orders
 

Were you fighting a Psychic race, by any chance? Or perhaps a Cruiser or larger?

Psychic races get double the normal boarding defense, and swashbucklers are not very strong.

If you ship will not overcome the defenders, it won't attempt to board.

Re: Ships Orders
 

Psychic No. The enemy was mostly Battle Cruisers though.

Re: Ships Orders
 

I once had been using ship capture strongly and used CRs armed with two shields sapper, double shield and the rest loaded with boarding parties. THey just sapped the shields and ran to the corner, only to die there. The enemy was not psychic and did not have any boarding defense.
Same with ramming - tried putting weapons on them, and they dont ram but dance around firing weapons instead.

Re: Ships Orders
 

The frustrating part is that it seems to me that it really shouldn't require 'massive reprpgraaming' I would think orders like Ram, Capture and Don't hurt be should be the easiest to program.

As far as ways around these things. What are they? I don't understand the 'not putting weapons' on ramming and capture ships because the latest incidents that prompted this thread were with ram ships that had no weapons and capture ships that had no weapons. The weird thing is that in the game I'm currently playing I have has a lot of success with capturing ships then comes the big combat against the megaevil human and poof they all die without even an attampt to capture.

Re: Ships Orders
 

Well, either the problems arise with the MODs you are using or there is just something set wrong in your strategies. If you don't touch the strategies (i.e. out of the box) and obey the need-weapon/no-weapon outlined below it will work every time both in my regular game (1.78) and beta (1.81). In short, I wouldn’t blame it on SE4 in general but to some screwed up settings in your games or some variables we all overlook in your examples.

Re: Ships Orders
 

David, did the enemy ships have SDD's? This will cause your boarding ships to not try to board. It's like they know if they board they die, so they don't attempt it.

Geoschmo

Re: Ships Orders
 

SDD's??? Good thing that Acronym thread is here. No I don't think they had them. Howver they were all CA's or BC's. I gathers from SJ's post that my ships would probably not have had the boarding strength to take these ships thus did not try. If this is the case a message from the ship captian would have been nice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

One thing I am 99.99% of certain of is that there is a bug with fleets not obeying their 'Don't Hurt Me' orders.

I'm not sure I understand the weapons/no weapons comments. With Ram and Capture orders does it make a difference if the ship has other weapons on it?

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm playing a solo game at home. I just sent three newly constructed capture ships after three lone enemy ships (three separate battles). As it turned out all the enemy ships had SDD. There are now six less ships in the universe. My ships attempted boarding without hesitation after using their shield depleters to bring down the shields.

Its this type of inconsistency that drives me nuts. One person says black, the other say white and they are both right!

Kim

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">First known published example of the Acronym thread being used http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Incidentally, it was SDD acronym that got it all started. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Ships Orders
 

Another thing I've just had happen the Last 2 turns in my current game is missle ships not firing their weapons and getting killed. (crystalline type missles) They had suppies (1400 about) and they did not have any orders that said do not fire on a certain type. So they get killed by 3 ships that had no point defense and should have been an easy kill.

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mea Culpa Grandpa Kim. I was incorrect when I made that statement before. I was going by something I had seen in a game a few weeks ago, and I just figured out that what was really happening is the attacking ships were not attempting to board because the defending ship had security stations, not because of the SDD. As you have seen they will attack in spite of SDD, and both will be destroyed.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sj this is incorrect. Psychics do not get any advantage in boarding or defense against boarding. Unless you are talking about something specific to a mod? If so how were you able to do this?

I have done some analysis and come up with the following definitive results regarding boarding:

</font>

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ships will calculate the "attack strength" of boarding parties and "defense strength" of target ship, and will not attempt to board if they cannot achieve success.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Boarding ship will achieve success if attack strength is greater than OR equal too defense strength of target ship. </font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Attack strength of boarding ship is total number of Space Marines of all Boarding party components on ship.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Defense strength of target ship is total turrets from security stations + total strength of boarding party components (used for defense) + 20 for each crew quarter component.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Master Computers, Life Support, Bridge, Aux Control, and troops in cargo offer no assistance to Defense strength of target ship.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ship size does not factor into Boarding defense, other than the fact that larger ships require more crew quarters.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Increasing the size or structure of crew quarters through a mod has no effect on boarding defense. Their strength is 20 per component, regardless.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Racial characteristics do not appear to have any effect on calulation of boarding succes, for either attacker or defender. (85% sure on this Last point)
  </font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I do not have any idea whether or not the various racial faciliites that offer bonuses to weapon damage in system have any effect. I would guess not, but I have not confirmed it.
Hope this helps.
Geoschmo

[ October 27, 2002, 21:23: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Ships Orders
 

From Geoschmo:
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No worries, Geo. I made a mistake once myself, back in 1950.... er, no it was my parents that made the mistake! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Geo, based on your analysis, it would be better to use security stations rather than SDD. You would be much more likely to keep your ship intact and end up destroying the boarding ships. This would be an especially good idea if your ships are large (and expensive) and the boarding ships are small (and cheap).

Kim

Re: Ships Orders
 

GK, the security stations do not destroy the boarding ship. Interesting analysis, geo.

Re: Ships Orders
 

Grandpa Kim if your enemy is using cheap boarding ships to get your vessels to self destruct, then yes Security stations would be better than SDD. Security stations are the same size and cost as boarding parties of the same tech level, and between 2 to 3 times as effective, depending on tech level.

However one 10K SDD will stop as many boarding parties as the enemy puts on their ship. And it has another use, eliminating those pesky maint costing ships that are out of fuel or damaged and out of reach of a yard. So like everything else there are tradeoffs. And there is nothing stopping you form using both. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Also, as discussed in another thread recently, shields and one shield regenerator comp will prevent boarding, at least until the regenerator comp is destroyed.

Geoschmo

Re: Ships Orders
 

Nice info Geo!!!

So in my P&N game a ship with one Swashbuckler would have an attack equal to 12. (40 guys at 30% effective) and thus could not capture any ship with a crew quarter. So if I put 2 of then on I could capture a ship with one crew quarter but not one with 2 or more. This could certainly explain all my problems.

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">G...how does it eliminate the main costing ships? Can it auto-destruct?

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">G...how does it eliminate the main costing ships? Can it auto-destruct?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I just mean that if you have a ship that's incapacitated and no space yard handy to repair or scrap it, you can end up paying a lot of maintenance while for a useless piece of scrap metal. If the ship has the SDD device on it you can give it orders to self destruct. The only time it does it automatically though is if a boarding ship tries to board it.

Geoschmo

Re: Ships Orders
 

Have you confirmed this via a test? That is, the fact that "don't get hurt" orders for a fleet are ignored and the ships execute according to their own rules?

EDIT: I posted this after reading p. 2 im not really awake.

[ October 28, 2002, 03:27: Message edited by: Skulky ]

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is confirmed. Swashbucklers have an attack strength of 3. Crew quarters have a defense strength of 4. Ties go to the defender.

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is confirmed. Swashbucklers have an attack strength of 3. Crew quarters have a defense strength of 4. Ties go to the defender.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually what I found was that ties go to the attacker, but in this particualr case it wasn't a tie right? The defender had more strength?

EDIT: Of course that's assuming I am correct about the defense strength of the crew quarters. You appear to be saying equivalent to 16 marines (4 ability value), not 20 as I thought. I think I just confirmed that the ties do go to the defender though, so most likely you are correct. Would you care to commatn on any of the other points I mentioned and tell me if they are correct as well SJ?

[ October 28, 2002, 04:02: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Ships Orders
 

A single swashbuckler is not useless, it just requires a weapon to be used along with it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Space the crew by shooting a hole in the crew quarters, and then board the ship and take the bridge (if it is still there) with much less resisitance.

You can't win against trained crewmen, unless you have numbers, or they're in disarray and mostly dead/wounded from bombardment.

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yea, I can confirm this. I have sent Aaron a bug report about it.

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yup. I have tested this many times. It is easy to test. Start a new game build a couple small ships with DUC's, put em in the fleet with the Don't Hurt Me orders and attack the nearest planet. Then watch em die. Now try again and give the ships class default 'Don't Hurt me Orders' and it works OK

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is confirmed. Swashbucklers have an attack strength of 3. Crew quarters have a defense strength of 4. Ties go to the defender.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Is there a reason for this? It would seem then that a single swashbuckler is pretty much useless?

Re: Ships Orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Aaaha! Slowly the fog starts to dissapate. Another 20 or 30 questions and I'll have these guys all figured out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif