Too many ship types?

[superking]

You could make it a Ctrl option behavior. That wold solve it both ways.

pretty pleeease

[wyvern83]

I've changed my mind a little after having my current game remind me of some technical issues. This intended behavior could be helpful but I'd rather guard posts were shot without having to recieve a direct command from me besides attack-move.

My games get very large and therefore laggy, and personally I'd rather only direct-click AI command centers, counter-wave posts and other special AIP risk structures. Giving a direct attack order to over 8,000 ships stalls the game for several seconds on my machine and siege ships are not always in the right spot to shot without being out of position with everyone else. I want all other things like guard posts and, I wish, Ion cannons, to melt away on their own by simple virtue of being in range.

A set of toggles in Ctrl would be very appreciated, there is a time and place for everything and I'd like to have the option of choosing when the time comes. (I'd like a toggle for shoot on sight for Ion cannons and AI Eye's as well.)

[x4000]

The direct-only thing has been removed, and instead we have this middle-ground which should make everyone happy:

* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on guard posts of the AI if those guard posts have not already been "angered."  This means that long-range human ships won't just snipe them without being told to do so, but as soon as the guard posts have entered the battle at all, they will fire at will.  Like the other change about low-power ships, this also doesn't impact the putting of guard posts into the targeting lists, so it doesn't hurt the first-mover advantage of the player ships.  Generally when players get at all in the vicinity of the guard posts the guard post gets angered, so this just prevents snipers and similar from alerting the entire planet without the player desiring for that to happen, for instance.

* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on guardians of the AI if those guardians have not already been "angered" AND they are on active guard duty. This works basically on the same principles as the above change to the guard posts, except for guardians that are already freely moving around it ignores them.

[wyvern83]

This version seems to cover the concerns I had, I'm in favor of this one.

[superking]

awesome 

[Signata]

This sounds great to me, too. There were two occasions when my Sieges took out a counter-attack post before I even noticed what they were doing.

Nice to not have to worry about that anymore.

[SRombauts]

That's it!
Now I'll try to attack some planets without siege starship to improve my strategy (on high level planets)!

I a agree that more guards should stay at their post, and or regroup before attacking to help another neighbor guard post.

They should also not leave their planet alone, it should be more or less "none or all" when crossing a wormhole to improve their efficiency, as we do as human, don't you think so?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Mm, Counterattack posts have never been auto-targeted afaik.

[Signata]

I've got 2,500 bombers that say otherwise.

[CogDissident]

Wow, I never expected my post to generate this much response, and this much dev attention. Very nice changes x4000, it really does address a lot of my concerns with how system-attacks were going. Thanks for listening and finding some middle ground

[Wingflier]

I agree, it really feels good when somebody listens to their fan base!

[x4000]

My pleasure!  This was one of those cases where I didn't agree with your assessment of why there was something wrong (e.g., too many ship types), but your assessment of what was wrong (strategy was recently degraded by the mosh-pit planets had turned into, making the specialization of the guard posts and their guards irrelevant) was right on the money.  So I'm really glad you brought it up, I hadn't really put my finger on that yet.