How can I auto target astro trains?

[Spaz]

Pretty straight forward question. I want to know if there is SOME way to get my turrets to automaticly target astro trains.

I set up a "choke" planet, a 1 entry point between me and the majority of the AI on the other side, but since i still have a lot of ai to clear on my side.. i have tons of trains running through. I set up a huge deffensive system there, more turrets than i can count. good thing is. the turrets CAN kill the astro trains.. but i have to manually target the larger ones, it only auto targets the cargo trains. Is there any way i can set these to automaticly fire upon the trains? They even avoid minefields for the same reason, they arent immune to them but they have to be manually targetted.

Any advice?

[Bognor]

There was a suggestion a while ago to make autotargeting Astrotrains an option, but see Techsy's response here.  I'm not sure if the suggestion made it onto Mantis.

[Spaz]

Ahh i see thank you. I tried to look earlier but i didn't find it when i searched.

[Bognor]

No worries.  By the way, shooting every Astrotrain is probably not the optimal approach.  As I understand it, each AI tries to maintain some number of Astrotrains (or is it a number of convoys?) based on plot intensity.  As you destroy trains/convoys the AI just spawns more.  So it's better to take out only the most dangerous trains, leaving relatively benign trains to fill up the AI's quota.

[Tridus]

No worries.  By the way, shooting every Astrotrain is probably not the optimal approach.  As I understand it, each AI tries to maintain some number of Astrotrains (or is it a number of convoys?) based on plot intensity.  As you destroy trains/convoys the AI just spawns more.  So it's better to take out only the most dangerous trains, leaving relatively benign trains to fill up the AI's quota.

Exactly. I learned that in a similar type game with a central chokepoint. Actually killing every train just means more trains. It's best to whittle down the really bad ones and ignore the others, that way you wind up with entire convoys of mildly annoying instead of "oh god stop that!"

[Kahuna]

just re route the trains

[Draco18s]

just re route the trains

With the way Trains work right now, this isn't viable.  If you rerout trains it means that you don't see/fire on the cargo trains, which has hugely devastating consequences in the end-game.

[Kahuna]

in that case the trains need to be changed back to how they were.

hell.. I haven't played with astro trains enabled since they started throwing golems at me.

astro trains have nothing to do with golems. not sure what was the point of that change.

[TechSY730]

Or simply remove cargo trains until a better "reward distribution" for cargo projects can be made.

Most of the other trains are more nuisances, as they should be, instead of being game changers. (Yea, EMP and Nuke trains are exceptions, but thankfully, those are gated at high levels of the plot)

[Draco18s]

Or simply remove cargo trains until a better "reward distribution" for cargo projects can be made.

Quite.  On low intensity values (e.g. 2/10) all you get are cargo trains, but there are so few train stations that it's actually worse than if you have it on a higher intensity (e.g. 5/10).  Coupled with the fact that a train can deliver cargo to the station it left from makes it impossible to shut down the deliveries if one station has evaded your detection (unscouted planet, missing the last glowing [1] on the galaxy report screen for an 80 planet galaxy, etc).

[TechSY730]

Hang on. Cargo trains are appearing at intensity 2? I thought they were "gated" starting at intensity 3 or something, and the other more "annoying but not a huge deal" trains like speed boosters and attack boosters were all that were around for 1 and 2.

[Draco18s]

Hang on. Cargo trains are appearing at intensity 2? I thought they were "gated" starting at intensity 3 or something, and the other more "annoying but not a huge deal" trains like speed boosters and attack boosters were all that were around for 1 and 2.

Cargo Trains are 2.  I have an unfinished game that I started with trains at 2 and most of them were cargo trains.

[Spaz]

That what i have been doing mostly, I only care about killing those damned widow and tractor trains and maybe radar jammers. Since with the ammount of traffic i have comming through 1 planet makes it EXTREMELY difficult to get my fleet in there without a widow train walking by and stealing half my ships. especially when its the only path to the other side of the galaxy. I'm only on difficulty 4 or 5 i forgot.

In regards to the golems, i think its a nice touch. hell it sure made me panic, but they honestly are not that hard to deal with. they all have their hp halved at least.

[TechSY730]

I'be petitioned in the past that widow and tractor guardian trains should be auto targeted if and only if the widow or tractor train is already in range (this includes being "in range" due to being tractored by said unit) and an auto-targeted attack order to such trains will NOT cause the ships to move to follow it (to keep attacking)*.

Unless both conditions can be implemented in the auto-targeting logic, I would rather the widow and tractor trains not be auto-targetable, as otherwise your ships would gladly throw themselves into range to just get taken by the train on their own accord. :/

Actually, given the severe effect tractor type things have on the game (alert mechanics and stuff), I would also like to have widow and tractor trains be gated at a plot intensity > 4.


*or preferably, not do so unless that train already has captured stuff, but this not being implemented should not block the idea

[Histidine]

I've found that the only winning move is to not play with Astro Trains.