Please Test

NEVARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*goes to test*

I looked into those ships once,

Hoshkio's die to quickly to work in battle

.....don't say it, I know, I know, the'r not supposed to be used in batles, but it just gets on my nerves havting to seperate them out and control them as a completly seperate fleet.

so I don't use them



tried comand cruisers, I liked them for a little while......untill I reaserched desginate target, it got on my nerves when it started picking targets for me. With fleets THAT big, I don't want EVERYTHING attakcing one poor little gauss cannon.

....so, I don't use them.



I will check the selection based tree out later tonight.

Don't do it that way. Just have them in the fleet, and disable their attack power (I never research it personally). Unless you tell them to attack something, they'll run around repairing damaged ships, helping them last forever.

With ceilos, its pretty much the same idea: have them in the fleet, let them restore shields and don't bother with their attack power except on manual.

Edit: And I'll be sure to start adding them into my fleets... as soon as I get into a game where I can use 'em!

Yes, hoshiko and cielo cruisers are boned by their researched abilities. This is particularly the case since offensive abilities cause ships to run around finding targets even when told to hold ground. I skip researching them too as a result.

I've been building large mixed frigate fleets with four command cruisers and eight repair cruisers with a single kol for an attractive target. They are nearly invincible against the ai in this format. I jump them in on hold with all abilities on autocast and just let them hammer away till the defenders are gone and then let them loose on the static defenses, the kol takes most of the fire with those souped up shields and I often don't have any casualties at all. It takes a really big fleet to run them down and kill them off, even with just a dozen cobalts and javalins. It's almost as effective as having a 6+ marza kill an entire fleet while a dunov restores it's shields and a sova keeps the enemy fighters down.

They definitely suck fully upgraded though, designate target is counter-productive half the time, the loss of anti-matter that could be used for more regeneration is probably more harmful than the damage increase from designate is helpful, and the hoshiko upgrades all get it killed and burn off anti-matter wastefully even when they survive. If it were a small scale tactics game I could see the uses, taking a cobolt offline is a waste though.

So if I'm reading this correctly, the autocast of the offensive abilities of the cielo and hoshisko override the 'hold position' order and thus get them killed so it makes them useless?

If the range settings took precedence over autocasting would they be more useful?

On some abilities, yes, on others no (if the repair power were overridden by holding position, that'd be the exact same problem in reverse).

Our real problem is that they run around doing things that they aren't terribly great at doing, instead of "focusing" on their primary jobs. Their offensive powers are useful (maybe), but they shouldn't use them if their defensive powers are usable. Really, the hoshiko's offensive power is a joke -- self defense if its caught alone, at most -- and the cielo, again, is more useful at restoring the shields on ships.

Oh, and I tried to play with them in game more, but our 3 way FFA degraded into "pile into Ron!" because I got into a strong position. 3 terran planets, but HORRIBLE positioning with 2 nuetral systems flanking my home world, forcing me to overextend in an effort to find a decent defensive position. Even if I hadn't been forced to overextend, I'd have still lost when they both piled into me at once.

They both have powerful offensive and defensive capabilities. If you had range taking precedence over autocasting travel then you could have them on hold position and autocast so they'd stay put and cast both abilities. Even better, you could have them on follow + hold position + autocast so they'd trail the attack force and cast as neccessary. In short, they'd never run off and they'd still be casting offensively and defensively.

That just aggravates the problem, it's not the entirety. The offensive abilities suck. Designate target not to much if it selects a good target, if it selects a not so good target, say retargets your fleet off the dunov and onto the boosted shield kol it's restoring, you're boned. The robotics cruiser is just plain bad, running around blowing buildings up is not a good thing for a repair cruiser. They come with a hefty price tag, and they are less than half as effective after you research their extra abilities. You end up needing twice as many of them to get the job done. Even if they stayed put, using the offensive capabilities is a waste of anti-matter most of the time. Disabling a cobolt is a very bad use of antimatter. They demand micromanagement, the abilities just aren't worth the research unless you micro them. Kinda like sticking a dunov in a fleet of peons and watching it restore the shields to full on one hit kills as your flagship drops like a rock.

I think you misunderstand how the abilities work for those two ships however your point that the target selection needs improving is still taken. I'll add that as a high priority fix along with the previous suggestion

from what I read here and from what my own impression is, I would rather say: you have repair cruisers in your fleet to repair stuff, destroying stuff is other ship's task. if they get an upgrade to destroy stuff as well and if that does not limit their ability to repair stuff, then fine, the better. but the point is that if they use their antimatter too much for the offensive capabilities we fear that they have too little left to use their defensive capabilites which is their raison d'être. of course I haven't been able to try them out as much as I want, but that is likely what the other posters intended to say.

in short: those ships' antimatter is too valuable to use for anything than the primary function.

I agree with most of the comments so far, repair ships need to repair, not go on offense, when they go on offense they tend to get away from the defense umbrella and they are toast. Same thing with the command ships. I don't think the alternate abilities are worth the weakness using them entails. Even when set to local attack, they still get too far away from the fleet, they see something at the edge of their envelope, go chase it, it gets killed, they see another ship at the edge of their envelope, etc. They get sucked farther and farther away. That's the problem with local in general, I think, the locus for local keeps moving farther away from what you wanted to be local. Either a reset to the original position or a "defend" mode so ships won't go running all over the grav well and not defend what you want them to defend. Actually, I was kind of surprised that there wasn't a defend mode. The hold mode is kind of useless.

pek

I have used the Hoshiko minimally and never employed the Cielo, games haven't really lasted long enough.

The Hoshiko seemed to be a waste of space, given the fleet room it takes up and the cost (both for research and to build). It certainly doesn't pay back itself in a combat fleet for 1v1 or 2v2 shorter games. It is definately a ship that you want to hold back in reserve and bring in later to patch up a fleet, however in that case you are likely better off building a repair platform nearby.

I would rather have extra firepower than a ship that adds little firepower and is likely to be taken out early.

I would need to do some more testing, however, their autocast ability doesn't seem to be that helpful. I have watched them die rather than repair other Hoshiko's or themselves for that matter. They need a lot of manual intervention.

One thing that could make them more useful is definable fleet formations. To be able to put your fleet in a formation and keep them in it, would allow you to protect fragile ships like these a lot better.

Yeah, the autocast priorities need tweaking -- we should have mentioned that, but I guess we kinda assumed the devs knew that about all AI functions already.

Frankly I think the Ceilo shield restore should be the tech for the Hoshiko, and give the Ceilo targetting ability a more general effect to the fleet; and give the Ceilo the timed explosive abillity as a upgrade.

Their roles would be better suited this way; the Hoshiko can be upgraded to be the ultimate fleet restore/repair ship; while the Ceilo is basically a 'Commando' Cruiser, all around deent, with a nice bonus to regulars and the ability to quickly take out a building or two... IE special forces.

I like that general idea -- and giving the scout the "disabling" power makes a certain degree of sense, too.

Just to make sure I repeat:

Currently all autocasting scripts are very bad and inferior to micromanaging.

A player that micros it's capital abilities will win easily over a player with equal capabilities, but who doesn't micromanage.

For some examples, the Dunovs shield restore ability is only useful for capital ships, but when used on them it can keep them alive for nearly forever.

The Kol's Gauss cannon (when you have 2 or even more Kols) can kill enemy capital ships easily (800 damage per shot). But for that, you have to have enough antimatter (since it costs 75 per shot). Which means you can never use the flak ability (doesn't do much damage to fighters/bombers anyway) and have to cast the shield ability manually (or your Kol autcasts it even when it doesn't get shot upon) and of course the gauss cannon ability itself (or the Kol wastes it on Kobalts and the like).

But you can't micro your Hoshikos and Command cruisers, simple because there are too many of them.

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The design of the Hoshiko makes it imho a repair ship. It's good at that. The command cruiser is a shield refiller, and it's also good at that. They are support ships which keep your fleet alive, ie. they should be stationed behind the fleet at best out of firing range of enemy ships (especially gauss cannons).

Now you introduce an attack capability to a defensive support vessel. Honestly that just doesn't work out. And that is why nobody wants to use the attack oriented capabilities, because nobody sees those two ships as attack ships. (At least, I don't know anybody how uses this ship for anything else then repair or shield refill.)

They have limited antimatter, so I want them to keep my fleet alive. Designate target costs like 100 antimatter. Antimatter I need to fill my ships shield. It gives an increase of 25% damage IIRC? That would be only useful against capital ships and to do that you need to deactivate the ability and micro it against capital ships. Boost morale on the other hand improves shield regeneration and boosts weapon cooldown by 10%, or in other words, 10% more damage for this ship.

The engine sabotage ability has a range of 3000, meaning when it's in range to do some damage, it's dead, since it's then in front of the fleet. I don't know how much slower it makes a ships, but even if it would force it to a standstill, it would only be useful against capital ships again. If I read the files correctly, it slows weapon reload by 0.75s, which is nothing.

Edit:



Best solution imho. Because mixing offensive and defensive capabilities in one ship just doesn't work out.

The last time I used hoshikos, they never even had time to be of much use. I went on to do other things, and came back to the fleet with hoshikos to find them all missing--built a few more and found out that the AI targeted them above anything else in the fleet, so they never stood any chance of surviving.

Which is probablly smart of the AI; they are just not really viable on the front line

Seconded. Whenever I build Hoshikos, they always charge in front and start attacking when the fleet comes out of phase jump. And they always get priority targeted (adding to this they're quite fast buggers and usually end up on the front lines quickly). I haven't experimented with giving them hold position orders, mostly because I only play small MP games and never make it that far up the research tree, but I'll give it a shot when I can.

Cielos suffer much of the same problem, they tend to get shot at frequently above most other ships, but I've been able to use them even less than Hoshikos.

Everything else (mainly auto-casting) other folks have mentioned in great detail already

You have to give them hold position orders. Problem is, somebody decided that support cruisers need weapons, so the got a peashooter (28damage ie. 4dps) with 2500 range (which is about as useless as a weapon gets in Sins (it's the same weapon the colony ship got ) so they charge in.

Problem is, if you remove that weapon, the AI can't use them anymore, since they then (much like light carriers) hang at the edge of the gravwell, doing nothing.

I really like the selection based empire window, I never used the other one after I found out about the selection based one...
One thing that could make it even better (I think...), is if we would be able to give important planets a permanent spot on the tree, something similar like the fleets. That way you have a quick way to jump back to that production planet, or that important choke point...

@ Scorpiana:

If you put your important planets in a hotkey group, you can select them easily and thus have them show up in the tree

I still would like to have an option to show also every place where a battle involving my ships is going on (excluding scouts, couldn't care less about what happens to them).

This would allow me to monitor multiple battles at once without the need to select them first.

I'll second the praise fot the selection-based empire window. Now that it's in, I never use anything else. The standard empire window just got too cluttered as the game progressed.

*too lazy to read whole thread*

end of the deal: regardless of any current orders you give them they get WAY too close to the action, players, AI, pirates all attack them first, and they FOCUS fire. so in the end the really arent worth it unless you desperately need to back stuff up.


what they need is a stance that has them FLEEING enemy ships (turning around if they get within a certain range and flying away if they're targeted) so that they can heal while avoiding being in the middle of combat.