Combat strategy's... are there?

The ship's combat AI attempts to do two things, which lead to certain stereotypical behavior. The first thing it tries to do is focus fire, this causes ships to tend to form clumps or arc-shaped lines at the maximum range of that ship-type's weapon. The second thing it tries to do is direct fire at "high priority targets", which is different for each ship. A ship considers a target higher priority if it has a damage bonus against it, and lower priority if its damage is penalized against it.

So this is why ships tend to form clumps, or sometimes arcs, and all unload on enemy targets one at a time until everyone is dead. This is also why newly arriving ships will tend to join in on the focus fire (it meets their criteria for high priority target) without automatically selecting a different target. The ships will however automatically switch targets with fatal shots flying through space, so as to avoid excessive overkill. They will also try to acquire a target physically near to the previous target to avoid unnecessary maneuvering.

You could order your ships to flank the enemy, but in fact its not an efficient maneuver to do just for the sake of doing it. You don't get any kind of advantage if you shoot someone from behind in this game. It would only result in unnecessary maneuvering, which is why the AI doesn't do it. Maneuvering to flank is a good idea only as a tactic to mitigate enemy Area of Effect attacks. This is quite important and the AI ignores it completely, so you should definitely order your ships to spread out more if your enemy has AoE attacks.

Ships do fire on the move, but at a significantly lower rate (and probably an accuracy penalty, though this is unconfirmed) then when they are at rest. I'm not sure why you haven't observed this, but all of my ships fire on the move automatically.

The ships can be told to "retire from battle" as you put it with a minimum of micro-management. If you click on the fleet management button of a ship there is a Retreat button which will cause the ship to withdraw to the nearest friendly gravity well. If you select a group of your damaged ships and click on the retreat button with that group selected they will all retreat.

But its up to you to order the retreat, if left purely to their own devices the ships will indeed fight to the death even if you could win the engagement without their dying. This is one of the many ways that human micro-management can greatly improve the efficiency of your fleet in battle.

transitive,
Thank you for your detailed reply, much appreciated.

From your reply I take it that essentially there is no combat AI and very little real tactics above the rock/paper/scissors and in the end we have a C&C style battle where more often than not more mean victory.

The high priority targets should be those that can hurt you the most and that you can hurt relative to proximity and/or battle orders.

A ship receiving fire should be less effective in attack, but that would appear not to be the situation.

It would also appear that a ships ability to inflict damage is not affected by its own damage.

My ships fire on the move, they do not fire when 'ordered' to move so as to flank the enemy and move out of his field of Fire.

The reduced rate of fire while moving is backward. Honestly why? Yes there should be a reduced chance of a hit but more importantly is would reduce the chances of being hit. If sailing ships could in normal conditions move and fire without a rate of fire penalty why in space with no sea swell should it be an issue?

For WWII aircraft, who could shoot at full rate of fire when moving, and especially smaller warships speed was something that could reduce his chances of hitting you, it was a battle tactic which is yet again not available.

I am aware ships can be told to retire, but that requires me to mother every ship and micromanage every battle.

Sigh....

Cheers,

Teddy Bär

Firstly, I defy you to effectively maintain a WWII fighter's maximum rate of fire in a combat situation WITHOUT it being moving.   

This is a grand strategy game, where strategy matters far more than tactics. The decision of what each individual ship is supposed to do is far less important then the decisions of where to send said ships. It's all about application of your forces, efficiently dedicating your ships to combat scenarios that can benefit your empire the most, and building up economic infrastructure to support said ships.

So combat strategies are not so much "flank the enemy with your cobalts," it's usually more "make sure that a decent amount of flak frigates are mixed in with your forces to counter strike craft," or "always make sure that border planets have lots of emergency infrastructure upgrades."

Veterans, feel free to mock those ideas mirthlessly if they're wrong, they're just the things that I've noticed playing the game.

No, you're right, and people who are looking for combat tactics and micromanagement are looking in the wrong place. This game is not only about the combat! Combat is only one part of the strategy of the game, and anyone spending a lot of time micromanaging combat is likely missing out on more important macro issues.

The devs tried to make this game playable on as many PCs as possible. So making the calculations on how to make battles more 'tactiful' would increase microing and processor requirements. Both bad.

Frogboy assured me that combat depth was the reason that the game is so lacking in empire management depth. Now people seem to be telling me that the game is lacking combat depth as a concession to empire management depth. Fascinating.

(to replies 3,4,5)

LOL. Why defend it? You are not disagreeing with the OP, only justifying his observations: "You're right, there is no tactical AI to speak of, but but but..."

I'd love to see a script-able AI for a game like this. Players write engagement scripts for the AI, and the game auto-downloads them on performance. But barring that, even a rudimentary set of movement tactics would be really nice. See: Total War. Some day... some day.

BTW, flanking does help in some circumstances, even in Sins. Two weaker but faster ships/groups vs. a larger but slower ship/group can achieve some advantage through maneuver. That is, if the larger ship doesn't have turrets on all sides. The point is that the AI doesn't do this, and microing it is best done with one hand on the pause key.

There's plenty of strategic depth to combat, just not micromanagey tactical depth. And thank goodness for that, because I for one do not want to micromanage hundreds of ships at once, thank you very much.

You're right. There's no tactical AI to speak of, because there is no tactical GAME here to speak of. People who are looking for tactical gameplay in Sins are barking up the wrong game. It's not about that. You don't play Civilization for the squad warfare, do you?

You certainly don't play Civ4 for its combat, as I remember it all you did is blob your guys togather on one square, send them to attack, and watch animations play over and over again untill the units were dead.

As Smacksim said, sometimes flying around behind can give you an advantage. LRMs for example turn slow, you can fly behind them and they'll have to slowly turn around. If your ships turn around quicker than they do you can get a few shots in and then fly behind them again. It will take a long time, as far as I know they may even regenerate the damage you do while your flying back and forth(depending on how many ships you have, maybe you have assliants that arn't moving and arn't being attacked by the lrms)... but its something. The problem is, when you get lots of ships togather, the lrms will form a sort of circle(arc). What this causes is that some of the lrms at the edge won't have to turn as far to keep shooting at you. So in larger battles flying around like that doesn't help much.

Soemtimes I'll fly my Marauder around a grav well in circles if I see them trying to focus fire on it(using distort gravity to outrun them) while my ships trail along behind firing away while their ships do nothing. The smarter players will stop targeting the cap ship and return to shooting my other ships though.

I am most willing to listen and learn i.e. not arguing for the sake of it.

I also do not want to micro manage the battles, but I am forced too, that is one the issues. Otherwise my forces fight like zombie's and throw themselves to their deaths without question.

I am asking seriously, where is the strategic depth in combat?

I do have an issue with the pace of the game and the time scales used in it.

For example a battle can last long enough that I can pump out another 10 units and have them travel over to the adjoining planet to join the battle!!

I can build additional weapon platforms whilst under attack and then have them join the battle?!!?

These time scale issues take away from the epic feel and bring in a fastest click feel to the game where pumping out the most units the quickest gets the victory.

What I miss most about the combat is the Combat Mission's implementation of fear and overwhelming odds on your troops performance. So sending in a single group against overwhelming odds will have them curling up in the foetal position crying for their mummy.

As to the greater strategy of where you send your ships, I am not sure about that.

Every hop location has something for you so no real exploration needed to find the precious metals etc.

There is no scope to move without bumping into someone being either a mass of pirates/rogues or another civilisation all which for some unknown reason always shoot first ask questions later.

I have limited pathways between planets with closer planets not directly linked and long way away one are, what is with that?

Civilisations Make silly demands or we will hate you even more.

I do not see a grander strategy under the hood. I obviously missed it, maybe because the demo is long enough for me to see it.


Cheers,

Teddy Bär

In Sins you're effectively playing the role of a commanding general, at least for the military part of the game. Commanding generals don't get down in the weeds of tactics in battles, they deal with the larger issus of strategy and policy. It would be nice if in a future version we were given some policy options. For example, it would be nice to be able to have a policy that all ships of X type will retreat from battle if their hull strength falls to 50%. Or that all LRMs will retreat at 25% shield strength if the enemy fleet has more flack than the freindly fleet has LRMs.

1) Every hop location has something? Maybe you haven't been playing on the right maps, but on the random maps there will be space junk and things that don't have anything. Or there will be dead astroids which have no resource income. So there isin't always something at the end of the line, its just that the maps are created so that you always seem to have a starting astroid and a starting planet near by. If one guy got 2 astroids and the other guy got 2 plasma storms, I wonder whose going to win, hmmm.

2) I don't know how you "bump" into the pirates. They never seem to leave their base unless they are raiding you, but even then if they arn't coming for you they'll fly right past. The Militia are there, as far as I can reason, so that you can't rush a colony ship to the planet right outside of someones base and build up a few frigate factories. After you kill them they don't come back, no you can freely move between planets along phase lines.

3) I would say the reason the planets are linked the way they are is... well maybe there are smaller astroids or something drifting around that can't be phase jumped through? Its been discussed before that the game would be very slow if ships couldn't phase jump. If they could just phase jump wherever they wanted well... I think you can see the problems that would arrise from that.

Creating ships during a battle is the advantage of a stronger economy. The defender has his defense structures(repair bays) and can build ships, if you have a better economy then you'll be able to send in more reinforcements than he can, and will win. It doesn't take 10 minutes to build a turrent because... well thats just silly. If you want an explanation then "its the future." Zoom in and watch something being built, it isin't built by constructure crews wearing little space suits, a laser comes out and it just sort of materializes.

References to WWII and what not are also a tad irrelivant. A ship that has to travel through water can't turn on a dime. Its engine is behind it, to turn around it has to do a little circle as far as I can tell. Thats why getting behind an enemy ship or what not would provide an advantage. In space, you arn't limited in that way. If your enemy tries to fly over you, you just turn to look up. If your enemy is behind you, you just flip around and fire away. I'e already mentioned turn rates though so I'm not going into that again.

As best I can tell after several dozen hours of playing the full game trying to find it, it's just not there. I wish it were, and I think the main reason I still hang around these boards is because I really want to be missing something.

Ummm...Sins is not a hardcore strategy game. You will not find Combat Mission style game mechanics here. Believe it or not, many people do not like Combat Mission or games like it. There's a reason the "hex-based wargame" is effectively not a genre anymore. Personally, I tried hard to be a "grognard" and like those games, but I just couldn't do it. I'm sure someone has a good computer version of Squad Leader 2 or something, but Sins is not that game.

The simplest answer to avoid micromanagement, is to make a large, varied Advent force (with a goodly number of anti-matter stealing Disciplies, and some Iconus Guardians), with some decent damage and shield upgrades, containing atleast one Progenitor Mothership with the Shield Regeneration ability trained, and one Radiance Battleship with Animosity. Enable all auto-cast, set agression radius to Local, and make the Progenitor your flagship. Click-to-move *only* the flagship near to the enemy, everything else will follow in formation.

Enjoy.

That is about the most anti-micro friendly fleet you will find in this game.

Although, I've noticed in 1.03, that Animosity doesnt seem to work anymore... So, you might want to wait til they fix it before giving things a shot. If you dont know what Animosity does - it makes every ship in the area attack the Radiance for about 15 seconds or so, unable to target anything else - atleast on the frigates and cruisers, I'm not sure if it affects Capital Ships. But again, the whole thing seems broken atm.

Come to think of it, I'll go make a separate post on that incase it's slipped by people's attention somehow.

With the ranges on cap ship abilities you also want to keep your ships in nice neat rows i agree though that there should be a better fire on the move system.

There are some strats but nothing really complex in most cases. As you play around more and more with units you get a better idea of what you want to micro manage and what you want to leave up to the AI. And what you build and put in your fleet will determine how your fleet behaves in combat.

A good example is if you make a lot of Illuminators they will tend to target capital ships first since they do 100% damage there and light frigs last since they have a penalty... if that is not working because the enemy masses light frigs then make heavy assault as they will carve though all the light frigs first with a nice 150% damage ratio. Fleet composition is key to fleet behavior. in that sense there is more a strategy to fleet composition instead of a tactic to fleet control.

Another good example is rather than focus firing your LRMS it is some times preferable to just park them at longer range so they do mostly attrition fire... this works well if your using AOE abilities... or for instance if your pretty sure your enemy is going to run because he is our numbered badly ...LRM's turn like pigs so you might want to park them back a ways or near a gravity well edge to maximize fire and avoid the huge turn arc.

Flanking is most effective with capital ships and larger ships like heavy cruisers... if you can make them turn back and forth using for instance the above mentioned Radiance battleships... keep one or 2 in your formation and sail one or 2 through to the other side then alternate the taunts. Works pretty well on things like Kodiaks as they can lose a few seconds of fire time in the turn. Some things like Illuminators or flak you don't want to flank... it actually gives some of them an advantage when you flank. Small advantages like that really help sometimes.

Nothing really complex just minor details to make decisions about. I am hardly some huge veteran player thought so I could be wrong about all of that.

My main problem with the combat is that the ships are all boring: To win you build lots of the main damage dealing ships with some spellcasters to buff them -> yawn.

I was fed up with the combat balance & complete simplicity of the combat overall, so in my own mod I added a critical hit system (damaged ships have a chance to lose engines, weapons, abilities, or hull strength).

Along with removed shield mitigation, a simplified damage/armor system, and more decisive combat, this really adds some tactical depth: You can flank a ship whose engines are out, or target a different ship if your current target has lost its weapons. If your capital ship has lost engines or phase jump, do you abandon it with the rest of your fleet, or do you stay and fight and hope it lives? Tactical decisions like this make the game more interesting for me.. and if I don't want to deal with it, the AI manages just fine on its own.

I might consider using your idea of giving ships that are taking fire a reduced chance to hit... it makes sense that under heavy attack, a ships accuracy would decrease temporarily.

Also, by disabling focus fire in the unit files, ships now do select their own targets instead of focus firing... this is a more optimal strategy with critical damage, as the more ships you hit the more chances you have of making them have critical failures...

thecaptain_ps,
Say what?

I am interested to hear more about what you have done.

Can a ship be undamaged/lightly damaged to have a chance to loose a critical system? Would make combat a very unsure thing.

It sounds as if things were originally designed for a reasonably sophisticated combat system but was not implemented?

May I also be so bold as to suggest if it is possible to reduce the ships ability to stop on a dime? Going so far to say that maybe even having it so that they are always ever so slowly moving?

I can also presume that the game could be slowed down where you are unable to manufacture 10 ships while a battle is happening so you have to live with what you have and thus be more tactical/conservative?

Is this to be a public mod?

I could go on and on.

Cheers,

Teddy Bär

Yes. Only hull damage triggers critical hits. Not all ships have shields, and some ships have weapons which punch through shields automatically (like TEC beam cannons). Ships have a small chance to lose a critical system every time they take about 50 damage: I think it's 25% for frigates, 15% for cruisers, and 5% for capital ships. Critical damage is not permanent: as is, frigates lose systems for 30 seconds, cruisers for 60 seconds, and capital ships for 90 seconds (temporary values). This is enough to have a noticeable effect on play without being too annoying.


The combat system is sophisticated, with many interrelated systems (8 damage types vs. 6 armor types, shield mitigation, many weapon types, 15 ship classes per race, etc). But for me the end result is too simplistic: build lots of basic ships to win. Battles involve little to no maneuvering, as ship survivability is very high and movement very fast: it takes seconds to close to firing range (which is roughly equal among ships anyway; about 4-5000) but minutes to kill opponents. This makes maneuver far less important in battle, as ships don't need to worry about closing to firing range and staying out of enemy's firing ranges: you simply move to range and pound away. Weapon systems are not very lethal at all, which is strange considering how inhospitable an environment space is.. most human designed combat weaponry is designed to kill quickly under ideal conditions, yet the sins weaponry is designed to prolong combat as long as possible, not conclude it. I think the devs didn't intend to include a significant layer of tactical complexity or depth, which is a shame as the game descends into medium tank rushing with spell casters firing largely ineffective spells.


Done. Rates for linear and angular deceleration now match acceleration (previously ships could decelerate at 5:1 and change direction at 10:1). This adds more movement in combat.


This bugs me as well (I fight a battle over the course of 5 minutes, look up, and have 10,000 credits... enough to replace the fleet I'm fighting with. With more attention spent on each tactical battle I might want to slow down the economic and production aspects of the game somewhat, but I don't want to mess with that part of the game yet. I'm just focusing on combat balance.


You can follow my progress in this thread: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/303645

There is a lot of combat micro management in the game but I find it lacking real combat tactics. As other people said, there is no reason to flank, or to protect your archer equivalents from melee equivalents. Instead, it is all about focus fire and kiting. I run my ships around and kite because it works amazing well at messing up opponent DPS, and it's one of the few useful things to do in combat.

Tactics in this game is about timing on spell casting, timing on retreating capital ships, and getting your lights onto their carriers and your CA onto their LRM. I think that is sufficient. It isn't quite WarIII, but micro does get your somewhere with particular abilities. Dunov stands out in my mind.

There are reasons to flank. LRMs for one.

The only micromanagement I ever do is focus fire on caps and the composition of the fleet itself.

One thing I enjoyed doing in my last game was I had 3 fleets with three different tactical purposes. The first or my "Assault Fleet" was a battleship, a support battlecruiser and a slew of cobalts, kodiaks, and a couple command cruisers and robotics cruisers. The second fleet or "Support Fleet" would consist of a carrier, carrier cruisers, and a ton of LRM ships with a handful of cobalts, kodiaks, flak frigs, and support cruisers. 3rd fleet or "Cleanup Crew" would be ~10 siege frigs and a dreadnought.