If the Admiral only has one target ship on his enemy llist and fails to scan it on entry to the battle area, and his flotilla all have support/defend the admiral's ship, none of the ships in the group join the battle.
If the admiral has more than one position on his enemy list his supporting ships shoot at one of them, not all at the same one and not necessarily the one the Admirals is engaging.
If the Admiral has ALL ENEMY Affiliation on his enemy list the supporting ships shoot at an enemy ship but rarely the one the admiral is shooting at.
An option is needed that will guarantee that the ships supporting an Admiral's ship will always engage the same TARGET as the admiral and will only fire at something else if the Admirals ship is destroyed.
Support/Defend My Admiral & Support/defend My Affiliation on the same list should really do this, but does not. Can the support and defend checks be made selective, giving preference to positions before affiliations?
The present system is OK for the second day onwards as you can get selective from day 2 onwards as all ships involved in the battle are sensor "transparent" once the battle has started. It is a complete foul up for Shoot and Scoot operations.
Geoff
I'd also like to see targetting options such as :
Enemy List = IMP
Only attack ships over 75 hulls
Only attack light or xlight hull ships.
This will give an advantage to pirates in that they will only attack cargo ships and not their escorts (as an example)
In full scale battles these options could be used instead of specific position numbers.
Andy
Adding options to the offense side of the game without adding a defense to the tactic is unfair.
Nic
CAP ships, attack the designated target given by Admiral. If it's a single target and they miss the scan tough! They would just end in a melee.
However selecting a ALL IMP Vs a ALL DTR (to use a rather common example these days) we'd CAP ships shooting at whaever the flasgship is shooting at, BUT after a stack of X ships firing at the same target no safe shooting solutions would be found (too many friendlies in front of you) and would select as option an enemy with the closest resemblance to the target the Admiral is using and if possible one that would target the flagship.
Carriers would of course have no such problem and would fire at the flaship target.
In order to force affs to use all ranges of ships, there should be role smaller ships, like destroyers,which would preferably shoot at missile, torpedoes or fighter formations. To use a Star Wars example, ISD were crap t shotting down fast fighters, thus carried lot's of fighters, but still it was found there was a need for a frigate capable of hunting down the fighters, the Lancer.
As a side note, maybe there should be a review on what's called CAP ship to each aff. Hive for one has such problems! I mean we have the Invader, the Baseships and still a ship the size of a Human main warship is designated CAP ship!!! No fun!!!
all is needed is a more simple solution of actually attacking who you said you were going to attack and the rest of the battle group "following orders".
at the moment, fire spreads all over the place.
that isnt too bad to program, what everyone else is suggesting i would contemplate being a programming nightmare.
Would a compromise be for each supporting ship's targetting routine have a weighting towards the admiral's chosen target? That way more ships attack the designated target than before, but there is some kind of limitation on a huge fleet's ability to do so....
Dan
It is quite logical that ships in a sqadron would manoever so that they could obey the instructions of their leader.
Programming for such an event is not that easy, the Admiral's ship must select a target before the others can follow suit - this has an impact on processing order or would need a conditional loop to stop processing the current ship if the ship it is supportsing/defending has not been processed. and then the system goes through all the ships and does the stopped ship(s) when it gets back to it/them.
I said I wanted it, not that it would be easy to impliment <g>
Geoff
Weighting based on
Surface area (ignore with option ?)
{A} * Position is on person target list
{B} * Position is on superior officers enemy or target list
{C} * Position is locked by superior officer
{D} * Ship Type preference
{E} *Chance of hiting target (if option selected)
There are maybe more but this is the general idea. So it depends a lot on what A,B,C,D are set
to. {B/C} would most likely depend on the max rank that dictates the target (most for admirals)
Now this does not guarentee that all the fleet attacks the admirals current target and i don't want to do that (i don't like the idea of picking 1 ship off each round).
This does allow the admiral to put the whole enemy AFF on his enemy list and a few positions that he wants taken out. I can make A,B,C,D,E dependent on the number of ships in the target list and maybe allow the factor to be set.
I'm cooking the idea of quantizing the target weighting and only using a random factor on the weights in the top quantized band (best targets) - you could then add the retarget option, if the your best target list changes - which moves more towards picking off single targets.
Have a further discuss and i will consider it some more also.
| QUOTE |
| Programming for such an event is not that easy, the Admiral's ship must select a target before the others can follow suit - |
I think its one of the programming problems that goes way by sorting the positions into rank order, not sure without really thinking about it.
Whenever a position ends its turn and has changed its location, the game should assign it a random 'Encounter Code'. This represents the knowledge of the exact location of the position. Whenever the position is scanned this Encounter Code is shown. It only changes if and when the position moves.
I suggest the introduction of a new Scan type order for, say, 10 TUs:
Encounter [position] [Encounter Code]
This will automatically force a scan of [position] if
a) it actually is at this location
the correct encounter code is used.A possible result is that the position is pinned.
Say a passing DTR patrol ship scans a PIRate Courier in Venice q/o Alpha 15. Obviously we will want to dispatch a fleet but it is very unlikely that any ship in the fleet will scan the pirate.
In this case, using the Encounter Code obtained earlier, it should be possible to determine its location even without a trillion sensors. The first ship in the fleet would force the Encounter and pin the pirate so that it becomes sensor opaque, the remainder of the fleet could then engage normally.
The same option would allow for improved targeting options on raids such as the IMP visits to Straddle. At least you can be reasonably sure that you will Encounter your intended target(s). You still have the option to update your lists after this order and scan your location for possible alternative targets.
Other uses for deep-space encounters could be cargo transfers between positions.
It is thinkable that the Security Code of a position can always be used as a generic Encounter Code - say you can use it to make the target ship emit a homing beacon.
on entering the location last week i attempted to scan my target, but this order sits in the pending orders list because ive been engaged before i can carry the order out,
its also very silly that people cant specify the platform as you say because that vessel cannot move and everyone should have the right to target that automatically, because they know the exact position automatically, therefore the same as planetary bodies, this should become position information (on political) so everytime one of my positions enters the location i see it, Also then this info can be transfered to the rest of us. only logical isnt it.
everything else that moves would need a seperate order as you stated
| QUOTE (Gandolph @ Jan 13 2004, 10:13 AM) |
| its also very silly that people cant specify the platform as you say because that vessel cannot move and everyone should have the right to target that automatically, because they know the exact |
Platforms (unless landed) are capable of limited movement, eg: changing orbital height/path. Benefits of this include being able to freely attack any ship also in orbit with direct fire weapons, and I would of thought shifting position so that fleet Y cannot automatically find a stealthed platform that ship X found a week earlier.
>i don't want to do that (i don't like the idea of picking 1 ship off each round).
This is a very sound tactic that is now used by most affiliations in major battles. Day two onwards it is simple, as you can do it by clearing the targets off everyone's lists, selecting the admiral's target and having the rest support/defend him.
It is day one that is the problem.
I don't know if the DTR just got lucky in the test of the new combat engine effect run recently
but they set a new record by being the first affiliation to blow up a 100 heavy hulled ship in one day's battle. I would like to see every battlegroup doing that.Geoff
Surely for a fleet to target the enemy Flagship they would have to fight their way through a screen of destroyers, cruisers etc before getting to the heart of the fleet. Otherwise no Admiral/Flagship should hope to survive past day 2 of any combat.
Is there any way of assigning ships to a battle position as part of the combat settings? So position 1 is the front line (i.e. scirmishers, pinning ships, destroyers etc), 2 the next (cruisers) up to say something like position 5 which is the tactical heart of the fleet containing Admirals, Carriers and supply ships. Thus if you weigh likelyhood of targeting a ship by which position its in you can have fleet formations. Is this workable in any way?
| QUOTE (Sam_Toridan @ Jan 13 2004, 05:19 PM) |
| To turn this on its head, should it not be possible for your fleet to defend certain ships? The Admirals ship and carriers are prime examples of ships that the fleet should go out of its way to protect. Surely for a fleet to target the enemy Flagship they would have to fight their way through a screen of destroyers, cruisers etc before getting to the heart of the fleet. Otherwise no Admiral/Flagship should hope to survive past day 2 of any combat. Is there any way of assigning ships to a battle position as part of the combat settings? So position 1 is the front line (i.e. scirmishers, pinning ships, destroyers etc), 2 the next (cruisers) up to say something like position 5 which is the tactical heart of the fleet containing Admirals, Carriers and supply ships. Thus if you weigh likelyhood of targeting a ship by which position its in you can have fleet formations. Is this workable in any way? |
Most of the weapons used are ranged weapons. Why fight your way the enemy ranks when your missiles can pick up a target 10,000 Kilometers away - and I cant even begin to guess at the range of a photon weapon.
The enemy just gets a distroted sygnal emanating for the cap ships in rear, if they use jammers?
But I can see your point and agree! However something must be done to give some sense of Fleet actions as opposed to a rabble of warship firing in a given general direction, or not at all.
There should be a role for all types of ships. If interceptors engage incoming bombers, why not having frigates and destroyers to pick out incoming missiles and torpedoes and protect their designated escort?
| QUOTE (Avatar @ Jan 13 2004, 07:51 PM) |
| There should be a role for all types of ships. If interceptors engage incoming bombers, why not having frigates and destroyers to pick out incoming missiles and torpedoes and protect their designated escort? |
This is sort of what we already have with the defend option.
The only thing is the combat system assumes that attack is the best form of defence. If a ship is defending it's admiral, rather than supporting it, then maybe it should use it's phalanx etc to do just that?
Of course, then the enemy will just start identifying and taking out the defenders since they'll be too busy supporting their admiral to defend themselves properly
