Too many ship types?

[Wingflier]

Oh I understand what you are saying now.  It would be nice to have a "hold fire" option for situations like the Siege Starships.

[Vinraith]

Oh I understand what you are saying now.  It would be nice to have a "hold fire" option for situations like the Siege Starships.

Low power mode pretty much serves that function.

[Signata]

That's true, I'll have to experiment with that a bit. I usually bind my Sieges to control 2, so it would be pretty easy to toggle them on when in an advantageous position.

[x4000]

I am going to make a few changes to some of the AI logic coming up, though.  This sort of thing always evolves, so we'll see where that takes us.

[Signata]

What would be great, I think, would be for Sieges and other ultra-long-range ships to heavily prioritise moving targets over posts---maybe not even fire on posts at all unless requested, as is currently the case for all ships and orbital commands/warp gates. This way you could keep your long range ships operational for long-range barrages on incoming Guardians and Starships without worrying about unleashing the hoards. The main reason why I even have Sieges bound to 2 at all times is because they currently require so much micro. Ironically, adding a forced limiter on posts would ease up the micro burden, by requiring you to take action on them specifically. I don't think this would need to be done for ships of ordinary range, say 10k or less. Once you are that close to a post, you've obviously committed and many of your ships will already be firing on the AI fleet ships at that point anyway.

[x4000]

In the next version, if you didn't see already:

* AI Guard Posts are now all only direct-only targeted.  Thus player ships (especially longer-ranged ones) won't accidentally free the ships around guard posts, and also won't accidentally set off any of the nasty special abilities these sometimes have.
** Thanks to CogDissident for inspiring this change.

* Human ships no longer automatically open fire on low-power AI ships, though they do still put them in their targeting lists as normal (so that as soon as the AI ship comes out of low-power mode, they are able to fire on them just as quickly as before).  This prevents long-range human ships from accidentally stirring up the guards of AI guard posts unless the player specifically orders them to.  In general this will make the AI guards bumrush the player ships a lot less frequently than they were recently doing, while not losing the first-mover advantage of the human ships against the low-power AI ships.
** Thanks to CogDissident for inspiring this change.

And this is coming also in that version, though it isn't on the wiki yet:

* On difficulty 7 and up, AI ships now spread out 2x as much as before.  AI ships that are waiting before going through a wormhole to a human planet now spread out 4x more diffusely to make them even harder for players to hit.

* The AI now uses the intel data it has about the relative strengths of planets (as human players do), when determining whether or not to send its ships through a wormhole they are waiting on.  This is different from the prior method, which was partly randomized, partly based on an accumulated number of 200 ships, and partly based on having a lot of ships incoming.
** This is a far-reaching change to the emergent behavior, which will have many effects on the gameplay, some of which are likely to be unanticipated at this time.  The general expected result is that the AI will not attack players with "trickles" of ships very often anymore, and will instead choose to build up before breaching.  The other expected result is the AI acting more sensibly when its command station has been prematuraly destroyed or when ships are freed from a guard post.
** On lower difficulties (<5), the AI actually overestimates its strength 5x, leading it to make dumber decisions.  On difficulties less than 6, it overestimates its strength by half, leading it to make occasional stupid decisions there.  Both of these are examples of the intentionally-sometimes-off decisions that make the lower-level AIs easier while also making reasonable mistakes a human might.
** On difficulty 9 and up, the AI actually underestimates its strength by half, leading to it to have a greater tendency to wait to strike with overwhelming force.
** These changes should also make the AI more effective in defender mode.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Siege Starships would still shoot the Tachyon guardians.

We'll see tho

[x4000]

Good point, those also need to be direct-only targeting.

[Lancefighter]

can we not make anything direct fire targets only pretty please? perhaps the absolute LAST priority to target, but not directfire only..

edit
some reasoning: aoe weapons ignore targetonly.. If you lighting missile a cluster of neinzul clusters, for example, nothing happens.
if my fleet is just coming through a wh, I want the tachyon dead soon to protect my scout starships/cloaker starships
if my sieges are sitting around, I dont want to have to babysit them to kill every single guard post on the planet.. micromanagement is bad we thought?

[x4000]

There's plenty of existing stuff that's directfire only -- command stations, anything that causes AIP increases, etc.  I think that will make good sense for the big fixed-position guard posts and the sole guardian type (tachyon) that doesn't move.  It's in keeping with the other large fixed-position stuff, a huge amount of which is also direct-fire-only.

In terms of the low-power enemies, the enemies go out of low power mode as soon as they fire on you, so if you are in firing range of them they'll come after your and your ships will autotarget like normal, anyway.

The idea here isn't to add micro, it's to prevent you from having to do micro to STOP your ships from enraging the AI ships.  Making something the last target wouldn't really help, as there are plenty of valid cases where a siege starship (for example) has no target except the thing you don't want them to attack until you're ready.  Siege starships are but one example on that, of course.

[Lancefighter]

well thats exactly the point - i want my siege starships to be firing on things. Thats their job, to blow stuff up.. the rest of my entire fleet is there to protect them while they do that.

In the case of aip changes, that makes sense.. however, this just feels like the wrong thing to do, as if your using napalm to kill the anthill in your front lawn.

[wyvern83]

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

[x4000]

The consequences of firing on a guard post are pretty severe, though: you stir up a ton of ships and sometimes even worse things happen.  I think your siege starships will be plenty occupied firing on guardians and starships, except on the occasion when you tell them to attack a guard post, after which they'll have even more stuff (guardians, likely) to fire at.

This should be a huge help to players all around, preventing them from getting overrun as often and actually making it more likely that sieges will be free to kill any guardians that would otherwise make a beeline for your planets.  Quite apart from the direct motivation from this change, I'm pretty sure the benefits are numerous enough and the downsides are almost nil, making this pretty win.  The sole downside is that you have to tell your ships when to engage a guard post, but those things are hefty enough that you should generally be doing that anyway.

[Lancefighter]

I disagree.. any guard post within range of my fleet dies momentarily, unless there is something more important around (like, say, an eye)

Not because i target it, because it dies.

If what you say is true, guardians will be in their low power state, and sieges wont shoot on them either. Unless, they ARENT in low power, which means making guard posts manually targeted is just a waste of time (you anger the post by shooting the guardians)

[HitmanN]

I think the guard posts (or guardians or whatever) requiring manual targeting might be unnecessary too. The problem here, at least for me, has not been the fact that ships automatically shoot things. It's what happens after that that has been the problem. Particularly the resulting AI mob following your ships through a wormhole to (their) certain death.

* The AI now uses the intel data it has about the relative strengths of planets (as human players do), when determining whether or not to send its ships through a wormhole they are waiting on. This is different from the prior method, which was partly randomized, partly based on an accumulated number of 200 ships, and partly based on having a lot of ships incoming.

If this includes events where the AI is deciding whether to follow the player through a wormhole or not, then that already should help a lot. Nothing else may be required. The AI keeps its ships on its own turf, where it often has an advantage. Better even if half or so of the AI forces remain at the wormhole you attacked from on the AI's side, so that you can't just keep going in and out, shooting a few ranged shots, because of the gang of AI ships waiting right at the wh. And even more better if the AI ships are widely spread on that side too.

Overall, I do still want my long-range guns shooting stuff on their own. I just don't want the AI to do stupid things because my ships do so. :]