A slight change in orders, please.

If we cannot make a weapon module that will only attack ships of specific classes, perhaps the orders can do what anyone playing at first would expect.

If you delete the order to attack a certain class, say “fighters,” the ship should refuse to attack fighters, PERIOD. Have the attack % slider go to “0%,” and act as it does now when the order is deleted, and have explicitly making the choice to delete the order mean that they will never engage that target type.

So, to be clear:

Attack order slider moves left to 0% instead of 1%. At 1% it acts as it does now at 1%, at 0% it acts as itr does now with order deleted. Delete the attack order for a class, and those targets are “invisible” as far as that unit’s AI is concerned. They ignore them.

Is this doable? Is it hard?

Cosign.
It’s frustrating to watch a cruiser spraying plasma at fighters when there is a flotilla bearing down…

I entirely agree that a mechanic to make your ships completely ignore specific classes (as opposed to just the driving AI ignoring them as we have now) would certainly make proper strategy easier to implement. I would make one slight modification though - in keeping with the gratuitousness of things, I would like the ship to go ahead and fire at say, fighters, only when there is nothing but fighters on the board. Please note that I don’t mean in range of weapons, but anywhere on the map.

Obviously this would not necessarily be a good thing if limited ammo was implemented as well. But as long as unlimited ammo is present, I’m cool with a huge spread of plasma and missiles being spewed at the enemy’s last remaining damaged fighters wandering along the edge of the map. There’s no kill like overkill, after all. :slight_smile:

I’d agree with your caveat, but only if there were ZERO targets on the map that the ship could engage under the orders given (ie: if no fighter attacks, then fighters only attacked if NO larger units are on the map at all). I want my torpedo planes, etc to work, and they simply cannot right now.

Remember, deciding to delete the order to attack a class is a CHOICE, since with this idea the game works EXACTLY as it does now if instead of deleting the order, you slide it to 0%. It can be written such that the new, “deleted” order is a new command in the deployment file. Right now “deleted” in the deployment is no order for a class.

For example, the stock game has this unit in scenario 1, aieasy:

[ship8]
shipid = 1
name = Cobalt squadron
design = _alliance scorpion fighter
pos = 1440,960
quantity = 16
angle = 270
behaviour_0 = ATTACK_FRIGATES,-1,0.86,300.00
behaviour_1 = ATTACK_CRUISERS,-1,0.24,300.00
behaviour_2 = CO_OPERATIVE,-1,0.00,0.00
angle = 270

It is set with the fighter order deleted.

If you edited this with the new idea, it might look like this (just the orders):

behaviour_0 = NOATTACK_FIGHTERS
behaviour_1 = ATTACK_FRIGATES,-1,0.86,300.00
behaviour_2 = ATTACK_CRUISERS,-1,0.24,300.00
behaviour_3 = CO_OPERATIVE,-1,0.00,0.00
angle = 270

Now it would NEVER attack fighters, under any circumstances. (obviously cliffski would come up with better syntax than my example :slight_smile: )

I’d frankly prefer this, as it is simple, unlike cliffski having to come up with a way to make them not attack Class_A unless yada, yada, yada. This keeps the extant orders as they are (only the slider need change, or in fact a new “never attack” order can simply be added, changing nothing at all about the current orders). I make suggestions, but I really do try and make them the most constructive, for the least work when possible (yeah, I want limited ammo weapons, but at least there is a (poor) work-around for that).