Is it possible to set an order that attempts to keep a ship at a specific range from the enemies. I’ve got some fast frigates with long range missiles. They should be fast enough to prevent cruisers and most frigates from closing in on them. However, I can’t get them to behave like this. If I use the 1200 range missiles they sometimes do this but sooner or later they end up flying right into the swarm of ships when there are clear escape paths available.
Any tips? I’ve tried setting the range and playing with keep moving order.
Ships appear to try to distance themselves from their current movement target whenever it reaches 50%(?) of the set engagement range. So for a 1200 range setting, they will only begin to start turning around at the 600 mark.
Try making a small cloud of fighters with high priority 2000 range attack orders on cruisers to see this behavior.
Dogthinker has a ‘cowardly fleet’ challenge up if you want to see an implementation - he had to get creative with his orders to get his ships in range.
This is my experience… So by setting an maximum range of 2000, you can make ships that move away if they get within 1000 units. It’s not that effective, since you need to ‘tow’ your formation in, if you want them to actually approach into firing range at the start.
If I had to pick one item from my list of wants, it’d be the ability to set a minimum range seperately from the maximum. (With being able to set movement targets seperately to firing priorities as 2nd, and being able to assign ‘keep moving’ as a order to fall back on once the target of formation and escort orders die, as my 3rd biggest want.)
We’re in the same boat, dogthinker. The mini/max combination is a concept that I lust after, lol. It would be the solution for many kinds of deployment awkwardness, and I find its absence in GSB to be more and more irritating as time goes by. >:(