AI Campaign mod question

[Prince Xizor]

Thanks, Fyron!

Ok, I'm almost four years into my new AIC game (patched to v1.91) and already the Huron have declared war on me. A dozen of their escorts are currently en route to my home system. Since I'm still pretty much a newb when it comes to strategic combat, I need some advice.

First, my ships are designed with a combined arms approach in mind. I have four defense escort designs, distinguishable by their principal weapon: capital ship missile, depleted uranium cannon, point-defense, and torpedo. Here's how I envision them functioning in combat. The DUC and torpedo ships are on the front line, bLasting away at the enemy from very close range. The CSM ships hang back in the rear and lob their missiles at the enemy. Meanwhile the point-defense ships are somewhere in between the front and rear, chasing down enemy seekers (and later fighters and drones).

I've read that you should set all your ships to break formation during combat so that they follow their individual ship strategy. How do I do this? By editing only the strategy that the fleet uses, or do I have to edit every strategy that my ships are set to?

Also, what's a good strategy for your point-defense ships? What I've done is created a custom strategy called "Point Defense - Seeker" which uses "Short Weapons Range" as the primary movement strategy and targeting priorities are: seeker(on us), seeker(on others), fighters, etc. How well will this work?

[PvK]

The fleet formation should be one where ships are set to break formation. The fleet strategy will be used on the first turn, and on later turns, the ships will break formation and use the strategy assigned to their design.

Each ship design needs its own appropriate strategy. The one you described for PD sounds good so far. Since you want them to pursue seekers and fighters, make sure that those target types are not specified in the list of "Don't fire on" types. Also, firing priority decisions can determine what gets attacked first.

For the missile ships I would use Maximum firing range as the primary strategy, and Don't Get Hurt as the secondary strategy. Oh, and target priority to Has Weapons, Nearest.

PvK

[ March 31, 2004, 18:32: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Fyron]

Make sure that your PDC ship has at least one actual weapon (capable of targetting ships, a missile would work), or it will run to the corners when it has no current targets (fighters and seekers).