Fleets & Task Forces are way broken

MisterBenn · #1 November 22nd, 2006, 09:49 AM

Slick: I have tried to determine the Task Force leader with no luck. Even if you remove all ships from the task force except for the single ship you'd like to be leader, I found when re-added they retake the same positions in the task force as before they were deleted. I got the impression that maybe the first ever ship added to the task force determines the leader... if so then maybe deleting the task force and recreating it may help, if you add the intended leader in first and your left button holds out for all the clicking required!

Q: I've experimented quite a bit so far, and I believe that Core, Picket and Escort merely influence the positions within a task force formation, and have no bearing on engagement behaviour - they just all follow the Task Force strategy and more or less stay in that position unless that tactic includes "Break Formation Immediately".

In general I have much less success with formations compared to breaking formation. While in formation the edge ships obsess over maintaining the shape of the ranks while the front craft get hammered by the enemy; when the formation is broken your starting formation degenerated into a big clump of ships that while is as ugly as hell, concentrates so much more firepower on the enemy at any given time. I hear adjusting the tightness of ships within a Task Force formations is possible, and without doubt the introduction of area-effect weapon types would quickly deter people from clumping their ships together like that.

Slick · #2 November 22nd, 2006, 12:08 PM

Incredible. The whole point of a task force is to stay in formation with the leader (if not breaking formation). At first glance, it would seem to be a good strategy to put non-combatant ships in a separate task force and designate them as Core ships and add some tough hombres assigned to Escort duty - with the task force having the strategy of "Don't Get Hurt" or some custom non-combat strategy. But you can't specify the leader; *you can't even tell who he is*. The Leader is probably one of the Core ships, probably the first one listed, but who knows.

What the UI needs is an in-game Formation/Task Force interactive placement screen. Drag & Drop ships (or Task Forces) as desired for formation, then designate Leader, Core, Escort or Picket. It would also be nice to save these formations for use in the same or other games.

MisterBenn · #3 November 22nd, 2006, 12:23 PM

Yes, this is one area where a UI upgrade would make so much difference.

Another frustration here: the AI players rarely if ever create fleets. So they generally attack with the clump of ships I mentioned above. This means if you experiment with formations you will be punished by coming off worse in those fights!!!

Having said that - it has been mentioned that UI upgrades are likely to be worked on at some point in the future, albeit at a lower priority than game killer bugs or AI improvements. That's fair enough, and we'll just have to cope with these niggles for the time being.

The combat simulator has brilliant potential though! It'll be far better in the long run that it has been vastly improved from 4, but currently has some quirks. It wasn't practical or enjoyable to watch combats in SEIV, which for me detracted from the fun a lot compared to the memories of Orion 2 (despite its simplicity). Being able to watch the combats play out in front of you makes researching all those ship technologies worthwhile!

Slick · #4 November 23rd, 2006, 05:46 PM

I changed the title of this thread because I didn't want to create another thread, but here's another thing that is fubar with fleets:

If a task force retreats, then the fleet is split up. There will now be 2 (or more) "versions" of the original fleet - and yes, they all have the same name too. The original task force assignments in the original fleet are all messed up now and can be reassigned to other random ships which now occupy the same slot(s) in the fragmented fleet(s). Further, each fragmented fleet with its task forces can further fragment if it gets into battle and part of them retreat - their orders are still based on the orignal fleet orders.

I haven't tested this thoroughly yet and some of the above may be a little inaccurate, but the general problem exists. This is based on a single game, having 2 separate fleets get fragmented and trying to figure out what was going on.

Sheez. It's not gonna take much more before I give up on this game for good.

Captain Kwok · #5 November 23rd, 2006, 05:53 PM

Perhaps e-mail Aaron your observation plus maybe a recommendation or two about it - after all this is a relatively young addition to the game. You can also remind him about choosing task force leaders etc. as well.

Slick · #6 November 23rd, 2006, 05:58 PM

I'll probably do that later. I don't want to sound so negative in an email. But for the life of me I can't understand why Aaron doesn't care enough to occasionally check out this forum. Spending 10 minutes once a week lurking to get feedback can't be that hard. It's like, "If they don't email me, then it must not be that important; and I sure won't go looking for feedback on my own."

Fyron · #7 November 23rd, 2006, 06:10 PM

I bet that the se5.com forums have scared Aaron away from forum reading forever...

Arkcon · #8 November 23rd, 2006, 11:52 PM

Slick said:
If a task force retreats, then the fleet is split up. There will now be 2 (or more) "versions" of the original fleet - and yes, they all have the same name too.

I notices the same thing. I was hoping to see it fixed in the latest patch.

Sheez. It's not gonna take much more before I give up on this game for good.

I'm sad to say I very much agree. There's no point in playing. My fleets constantly appear outside the retreat circle. I get repeated combats that I have to ignore (I know this was fixed in the latest patch) Then I get a scattered fleet I have to "pretend" to move all to the same hex, before I restart combat.

I have some computer maintenance to do, and after a week or two, I'll re-install SE5, with whatever is the latest patch, and try again.

AngleWyrm · #9 November 26th, 2006, 05:47 PM

The lesson here is that a game must be something that developers enjoy playing and so spend time playing it.

Raapys · #10 November 26th, 2006, 06:05 PM

As unfinished as the game is, I think it's sort of neat that you can send Aaron an email about something and watch him fix it the day after. The problem, of course, is that many of these fixes we request create other unforeseen issues which in turn must be fixed; for instance with the retreat thingy.

If Aaron's thinking about keeping up this sort of patching for months still, though, I think it's safe to assume the game will be completely awesome in half a year or so. Too bad they didn't wait to sell it until then.

As much as I dislike the UI and such, it's really the unintelligent AI and a bit too slow turn processing that kills the game for me at the moment.