Colonizer frig behavior

Can someone explain it to me?

from Sins Forums

So I play a game online last night.  Game starts, I send out the scouts, build a colonizer frig, queue up my capship, blah blah.  My scout finds the connecting roid, so I do what I always do - I click on my colonizer frig, turn on autoattack (so that it attacks the siege frig after it colonizes), and send it to the roid.  Then I go on to do other things for the next few seconds - things that needed to be done.

I didn't hear the "new colony acquired" message I usually hear which then alerts me I need to upgrade the 'roid, micro my colonizer out of there, drop a turret to kill off the militia, etc.  So I look at the roid, and it is the color of my ENEMY and I am in a whole heap of trouble.  As it turned out, in this 5v5 I was connected to my enemy's HW through nothing but this 'roid - the only connecting 'roid I had - and he took it.  Since my enemy was a good player, this allowed him to subsequently beat me.

So throughout the entire game, and then after, I was kicking myself saying "Why was I so slow at colonizing that 'roid?  Why did he get to colonize it before me?"  At the time I told myself that it must have been the fact that there were 4 phase lanes going out of my HW, which meant I had to queue up two more scouts to cover all 4.  "The last phase lane I explored must have been the 'roid.  Poor dumb luck, I guess" I told myself.

So I wake up today and load up the replay to confirm my theory on what happened.  The connecting roid was the FIRST phase lane I explored, not the last, and my colonizer frig arrived there BEFORE his death egg.  I should have taken the 'roid, not him.  So what happened?  Well, the colonizer frig jumped in, and... (drum roll please)... attacked the militia!  It didn't colonize!  It was just one phase jump - it had plenty of antimatter.  It should have colonized first and THEN attacked the militia.

I have played hundreds and hundreds of games.  I do it the same way every time.  Set to autoattack, send to roid, colonize.  Done it so many times I could do it in my sleep.  I've NEVER seen a colonizer frig attack the militia first, and THEN colonize.  Every time, they colonize first, and THEN attack the militia.

Has anyone else seen this?  Does anyone know what the heck is going on here?  If someone tells me these things will generally attack militia first, not colonize, I'm gonna start beating my head against the keyboard because I have NEVER witnessed this.

10,036 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

When you have multiple abilities on autocast, attack orders should be interrupted for them, but it doesn't always happen.  I don't count on autocast doing what I want it to do, and I make a point of checking in on my units rather than leaving them to their own devices. 

On the flip-side, it's unlikely that this would have changed matters.  Unless the enemy's egg was very late in arriving, your colony would have been easy prey to bombardment and quickly destroyed, and you might have lost your planet upgrade investment.

 

The one thing that bothers me here is that you didn't realize he was right next to your asteroid until he had already captured the thing.  You probably didn't build enough scouts at the start of the game and as such missed out on this absolutely critical piece of intelligence.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Darvin3, reply 1
I don't count on autocast doing what I want it to do, and I make a point of checking in on my units rather than leaving them to their own devices.
End of Darvin3's quote

I try not to ever rely on autocast either, but it's news to me that a frigate will not colonize automatically.  Sure, if I had the luxury I would hit pause every few seconds of the game and tend to everything that is going on manually, but as you know, in an online MP game this is impossible.

I have many things to do in the opening moments of the game.  I have to drop labs, I have to queue up research, I have to scout, build some units, build a cap, colonize, yadda yadda.  Your attention can't always be at every place at every time.  The damn frig should have colonized.

The one thing that bothers me here is that you didn't realize he was right next to your asteroid until he had already captured the thing.  You probably didn't build enough scouts at the start of the game and as such missed out on this absolutely critical piece of intelligence.
End of quote

Built enough scouts - 4 phase lanes so I built 2 scouts, and thus had 1 for each phase lane.  The reason I didn't know he was right next to the asteroid is that I quite literally didn't have TIME to know he was next to the asteroid.  When a scout uncovers a connecting roid, you send the colonizer immediately.  That's what I did.  By the time my scout arrived at his homeworld, my colonizer was already either in phase jump or had already arrived at the asteroid.  But like I said, I was waiting for the message "colony acquired" or whatever, and if that had happened I would have looked and seen his egg in the grav well, and would have seen that my scout had just uncovered his homeworld.  Of course the damn colony frig didn't colonize, so....

Either way, like I said my attention has to be in multiple places at once in the opening phases of the game.  It is quite easy not to realize someone is on top of you the very instant it is possible to know it.  What if you are ordering your capship to another planet?  What if you are trying to busily manually scout with 4 scouts at once?  What if you have to drop some labs or do some research?  Plus, apparently I'm supposed to micro the colony frig to do its job?  On and on.  At the speed the game was running (quite fast), I was doing about all I could possibly do at one time in the opening moments.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Maybe you should take your colony frigates off auto attack so they won't do anything except colonize? They aren't good for much anyways.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Ah, I've been in that situation HW-'roid-HW although I lost that b-c I chose ion bolt instead of colonise...And then the guy got two capships in five minutes and I ended up believing I was beaten (when he had no other fleet) purely due to those shock and awe tactics.  Then I was on the back foot from there so you can guess the result of that.

 

I prefer never to turn auto-attack on with my colony frigates anyway - as said its more "auto-annoy" than auto-attack.  If I want to kill the Krosov I send stuff in with/after the colony frigate and manually tell the colony frigate to attack it.  That is the only time I'd ever have one of them attack.  That said, abilities should ovveride attack orders.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

and would have seen that my scout had just uncovered his homeworld.
End of quote

i take it you play with the sound muted? because the sound the game plays when you discover an enemy planet is nearly impossible to miss...

i do however agree that there needs to be some priority list of which announcements should be played... for instance, i dont care what my ships said when i selected him, or planetary development complete, i care that a pirate raid is about to be launched and i need to pay the pirates off NOW.

anyway... its possible the militia was REALLY close to the colony frig or even started attacking it before the frig managed to colonise the asteroid... i realise you said youv'e done this hundreds of times, but maybe this was just the one time it screwed up...

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I think I will not use autoattack on the stupid frig anymore, but thing is I hate jumping back to my planet and seeing the frig just sitting there getting fired right in the face and not doing anything about it, and also believe it or not if you forget to pull the frig or are just too busy to deal with it, it will kill the siege frig so you don't lose your planet.