Targeting Priorities

[Admiral]

I would imagine my playstyle would change without parasites. Since their range is so short, the "move through the enemy formation" method is very useful, since that way they hit a lot of things along the way.

Then again, without parasites...

[Haagenti]

#5, for me, is to keep fighers comingled with my cruisers, and to keep a reserve of bombers directly behind the cruisers.  Then when the enemy fighters start heading in, I briefly bring the bombers in and take them out, then retreat them until the enemy cruisers are dead.  Then sending my fighters forward is often a really quick way to slice up the enemy cruisers (while also losing a lot of my fighters, but they are oh-so-cheap).  In the end, the cruisers then finish mop-up while taking very few losses, and the bombers are free to come in and beat the heak out of whatever big structures are there.

Now if only the AI started doing this......

[x4000]

#5, for me, is to keep fighers comingled with my cruisers, and to keep a reserve of bombers directly behind the cruisers.  Then when the enemy fighters start heading in, I briefly bring the bombers in and take them out, then retreat them until the enemy cruisers are dead.  Then sending my fighters forward is often a really quick way to slice up the enemy cruisers (while also losing a lot of my fighters, but they are oh-so-cheap).  In the end, the cruisers then finish mop-up while taking very few losses, and the bombers are free to come in and beat the heak out of whatever big structures are there.

Now if only the AI started doing this......

Well, recall that the AI logic is all emergent, so it can pull off a number of things differently to what we can do as humans.  I just need to make something equivalently smart, is all.

[Echo35]

You guys are so much more advanced than I am. My way of handling battles:

1) Build a fleet of mixed ships
2) Give move orders to move through the enemy formation
3) Win

I don't think I'd have the patience to micromanage a battle like that. That turns the RTS game into more of an RTT game!

That's usually what I do, lol. Its been working so far. Not that I don't enjoy micro in some degree, but there's just too many ships. I usually play tactics games, so I'm still getting used to controlling a few thousand ships at once.

[x4000]

You guys are so much more advanced than I am. My way of handling battles:

1) Build a fleet of mixed ships
2) Give move orders to move through the enemy formation
3) Win

I don't think I'd have the patience to micromanage a battle like that. That turns the RTS game into more of an RTT game!

That's usually what I do, lol. Its been working so far. Not that I don't enjoy micro in some degree, but there's just too many ships. I usually play tactics games, so I'm still getting used to controlling a few thousand ships at once.

And I really don't see any reason why this isn't okay.  People should be able to play the game as they want.  If you want to micro more and play higher difficulties, then cool.  If not, then you can just enjoy the larger aspects of the strategy and play on a lower level (like around 7, where I tend to play).  I don't enjoy having to be completely "on" for hours at a time after I've already been in that state for working and coding the game, etc.  So mostly I tend to play a little bit less micro -- still using the tactics I mention, but that's pretty second nature to me so requires less thought now.

[Velox]

     I ran a bunch of trials on a couple of different savegames last night and never did come to a good understanding of how the targeting works - in one case a group of cruisers left a few bombers for last on every run, and in one case prioritized killing a newly-warped-in tank and two fighters over five bombers that had been sitting within range for several minutes.  But, you're right about different playstyles - if I really want to watch the missile-vulnerable ships die in a glorious firestorm then that's my style and I'm totally willing to pause/queue to get it accomplished.  (Plus, it suits my antique computer well - once the fleets get big, the only time I can really meaningfully interact with a battle is on pause, so double win!)  I think it speaks very well of the game design and balance that people really do play it in so many different ways and enjoy it.
     Speaking of playing and enjoying... time to go do both!

[x4000]

I ran a bunch of trials on a couple of different savegames last night and never did come to a good understanding of how the targeting works - in one case a group of cruisers left a few bombers for last on every run, and in one case prioritized killing a newly-warped-in tank and two fighters over five bombers that had been sitting within range for several minutes.

Are you talking about how your ships are targeting, or how the AI targets your ships?  The AI uses a lot of more complex rules and fuzzy logic for what it does, so it's very hard to predict what it is going to do.

For your ships, mostly it tries to do the maximum damage to enemy ships while also minimizing the damage possible from enemy ships.  This may make cruisers target on ships that are non-ideal targets to hit more out of fear of the damage those ships can do to the cruisers than anything else.  It may be leaning a bit too much in that direction, I will have to look at that.

But, you're right about different playstyles - if I really want to watch the missile-vulnerable ships die in a glorious firestorm then that's my style and I'm totally willing to pause/queue to get it accomplished.  (Plus, it suits my antique computer well - once the fleets get big, the only time I can really meaningfully interact with a battle is on pause, so double win!)

Hopefully some of the performance improvements in K will help.  It should be around a 40% bump in speed in big battles.  At least, that's what I was measuring in my test games.

I think it speaks very well of the game design and balance that people really do play it in so many different ways and enjoy it.
     Speaking of playing and enjoying... time to go do both!

Thanks!  I've been really happy to see how many different playstyles are out there, too.