V0.75.016 - Fighter bomber behaviour

from Stardock Forums
While this patch did the job, they now fight appropriate targets. But, let's say you have a carrier with 1 fighter squad and 3 bombers and has been in a fight for a little while in a system. The fighter seems to forget to kill the bombers that is doing damage to their mothership and just shoot at whatever target is closest. The bombers are doing better, but should in some cases leave their target to come protect the mothership or any other capital ship in danger from another capital ship.

So, if no friendly capital ship is in danger from any bombers, the fighters can pick their targets freely. If not, protect capital ships.

And same goes for bombers, with just a little extra depth to it. A bomber should pick his target as usual unless a capital ships seems to be in overwhelming trouble from other capital ships. However, a small algorithm should also figure out if there's too many enemy bombers in the area, and if so, destroy a hanger and see what the situation is like after that. If needed, destroy another hanger. They should figure out which is the most danger to the capital ships, enemy bombers, or enemy capital ships.
5,549 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I'd rather see the F/B serve a more protecting role in general, and not just for Capital ships.
The Frigates/Cruisers are much more fragile then the Cap ships, and are in that much more need of protection from F/B squadrons. So perhaps if the F/B would prioritize opposing F/B targets near friendly ships first. But this should be possible already with the varied combat ranges I guess.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
What i mainly wanted to see was fighters engaging enemy bombers on sight which i saw with this patch. I also wanted to see flak frigs engage fighters, and bombers on sight, and that i saw too. So im a happy camper. It was a beautiful sight to watch an AI fleet with TWENTY SEVEN light carriers run away after all his fighters and bombers got mowed down within the 1st minute of the fight.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
What i mainly wanted to see was fighters engaging enemy bombers on sight which i saw with this patch. I also wanted to see flak frigs engage fighters, and bombers on sight, and that i saw too. So im a happy camper. It was a beautiful sight to watch an AI fleet with TWENTY SEVEN light carriers run away after all his fighters and bombers got mowed down within the 1st minute of the fight.


He he he, yes. Flak frigates are unbelievable strong against enemy fighters and bombers, if managed right. I.e. put them to fire only in weapons range, and place them around your fleet. After some seconds, all enemy fighters and bombers will be dead. Then is the time to charge to attack!

Btw. talking about light carriers, what's the enemies obsession with them and the Hoshiko robotic carrier? In my games to seem to nearly only build those...

And thanks to the flak frigate/fighter fix they are useless against me.


But back to topic, I agree. It would be nice if the fighters and bombers would prioritize enemy ships near to my own ships a bit more and not always fly away to kill enemy hangars on the other side of the planet while leaving the enemies reinforcements alive. But that's just a minor nitpick, imho.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
i think the flacks are overpowered a bit it should take a bit longer to take the fighters down not like 1second and 15 bomber groups are gone thats just dum
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
How many flaks were you using? i usually only have 6 im my groups
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
only like 3 and the mowed umm down in under 2 mins lol
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
In the early game I use 5 flaks which is usually enough to kill 5-10 fighters/bombers in less than half a minute (or at least to weaken them to the extent that they're unable to do damage to my fleet).

In the late game I use 10 flaks which is enough to storm enemy home worlds which have 10-20 fighters/bombers and kill them all under one minute.

So yes... maybe the flaks are a bit overpowered.

But on the other hand, I'm able to wipe out enemy attack fleets under 5 seconds and will destroy enemy home worlds defenses together with the enemy main fleet in minutes... so, maybe it's just the AI that is weak.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
LOL! I saved the replay of that huge fleet battle (huge for 20 planet 2 player game). The replay works too! ill snap some screens of it.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
While I really like how flimsy bombers are now, especially now that flack frigates work, I think that their damage output should be increased accordingly.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
this sounds a bit contrary to what I heard before that battles are rather slow. I mean, I like battles rather drawn out, long, with time to react. its not a problem if flak frigates totaly own strike craft - that's what they are supposed to do - but a) maybe not that extreme and b) not so fast. I mean ... such big fleets destroyed in under a minute? where is the epic in that? where is the "lust stop and watch the battle for a few seconds" effect? just my 2 cents.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

LOL! I saved the replay of that huge fleet battle (huge for 20 planet 2 player game). The replay works too! ill snap some screens of it.

Don't forget you can probably share your replay for everyone else to watch (assuming they have the same version that the replay was taken in).

 

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
this sounds a bit contrary to what I heard before that battles are rather slow. I mean, I like battles rather drawn out, long, with time to react. its not a problem if flak frigates totaly own strike craft - that's what they are supposed to do - but a) maybe not that extreme and b) not so fast. I mean ... such big fleets destroyed in under a minute? where is the epic in that? where is the "lust stop and watch the battle for a few seconds" effect? just my 2 cents.


There is an easy solution for that. Change the PlayerTech.entity in the GameInfo folder:
shieldData
shieldAbsorbGrowthPerDamage 0.001
shieldAbsorbDecayRate 0.0125
shieldAbsorbBaseMin 0.2
shieldAbsorbBaseMax 0.6

Change the first to about 0.0015, third to 0.4 and the last to 0.8.

Battles will now last quite a bit longer.

--------------

My examples were a bit harsh anyway. It's only late game fleets of more then 10 high lvl capital ships with 40+ frigates that shredder enemy attack fleets of 15 frigates plus 20 cruisers in this amount of time. And its only because the AI doesn't do a very good job of attack fleet compositions at the moment. Hoshiko Robotic Cruisers just don't have much of a shield and hp to survive for very long.

Battles with equal fleets can last quite some time. I had once a battle over an insignificant dead asteroid which lasted for more then 15 minutes, since the AI and I were jumping in reinforcements in at about the same rate and we both weren't able to make significant losses to the other one.

Imo if the AI gets better in fleet composition, battles will get to last longer (and be quite harder).