Strategic Combat bug

[JenMax]

Perhaps its time to retire that "loony" TF commander?

[Elmo]

His ship was the first to go down and we don't believe in escape pods.

[Taqwus]

What was the secondary movement strategy -- _Maximum Range_ (which it is if you use the default MR strategy, IRC), or _Don't Get Hurt_? If the former, you might want to try the DGH variation in the simulator.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Dravis]

Actually I think the default secondary strategy for Max Weap Range is point blank or optimal weapons range. That probally is the problem.

[Elmo]

Dravis

Could be, but why would the fleet abandon it's primary strategy in favor of the secondary when there is still a planet with undamaged weapons platforms on the combat display? It appears the combat algorithm isn't smart enough to look for other threats and instead blindly moves in on the original now helpless target. That would be a bug IMO if true.

I have another combat coming up. I'll make sure both primary and secondary strategies are max range and report the results.

Elmo

[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).]