Strategic Combat bug

[Atraikius]

I thought the strategies were based off the ships movement, with the ship initially moving for its primary strategy before firing, and then using the secondary strategy afterwards, but there are some combinations that don't make sense at all, or are exceptions to this.

This is easily seen watching ships armed with missiles only early in the game, where the AI will move within range to fire and then attempt to maintain thier secondary strategy while loading. If you watch a ship that has maximum weapons rang for the secondary strategy, the ship will attempt to maintain the maximum range of the missile; if its secondary strategy is Dont Get Hurt, it will continue to move away until it has reloaded.

Where it doesn't make sense is; giving a ship short or point blank for a primary strategy followed by drop troops, the ship should move into range of the planet, fire weapons, and then move next to the planet and drop troops. But with this as a strategy, the ship (and entire fleet if planet has no defenses) will not approch the planet, staying near its deployment zone. Also, if these strategies are flipped, then any ships carring troops will attempt to drop troops on the undefended planet, but will not fire at it, and and other ships in the fleet will remain near thier starting position regardless of their orders.

[Elmo]

Guys

I used another missile fleet to attack a planet and two moons and this time I set both movement strategies to max weapons range. This time the fleet stayed out of harms way and took out the planet/moons because my missiles had longer reach. The default secondary movement strategy for max weapons range is set to point blank?! That combination doesn't make sense to me at all if secondary movement is tied to reloading.

Also it does not explain why in the first battle my ships initially stayed at max weapons range and only moved in after the planet defenses were down. If secondary movement were tied to reloading then they would have moved in after the first volley which they didn't. Something isn't right but I'm not sure what yet.

Elmo

[This message has been edited by Elmo (edited 26 June 2001).]

[Elmo]

Fought another missile fleet vs planet battle and this time even with both movement strategies set to max range my ships blundered in too close (i.e. closer than max range) and got hammered. A bug IMO.

Elmo

[Seawolf]

Elmo,

Remeber the stratagies are based upon your target. If you have max range it will be max range from the planet. If the moon is farther out then you will get closer to it than max range. Not a bug persay, you need to clear moon first then planet or play with the straygy setting as far as what gets attacked first,

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Seawolf on the prowl

[Q]

Elmo did you check the target priorities?
If "largest" or "nearest" is at the top it may explain what you observed. But if "has weapons" is at the top and your ships still ignore the moon with the weapon platforms then you have found a bug IMO.

[geoschmo]

Instead of moving in to the sector by using the attack button and then selecting one of the planets, simply use the move too button and click on the sector. This should allow it to attack both planets without ignoring either.

Geoschmo

[Elmo]

Seawolf

In the first battle where I noticed the problem, the planet was closer than the moon. My ships initially stayed out of range of the planet, thus also out of range of the moon. As I mentioned, after the planet defenses were reduced my ships moved closer to the planet while continuing to fire on it. That brought them in range of the moon too. However in that battle I had the secondary movement strategy set to point blank (the default) so that may have caused them to move in.

In my Last battle there was only one planet and my ships ignored both sprimary and secondary orders to stay at max range and moved closer. I had a 2 "square" range advantage over the planet defenses so they should never have hit me, but they did when my ships moved too close.

Elmo