I have noticed, especially when using battle stations (i.e. ships without any engines) that enemy ships will approach until they are within range of their weapon with the the furthest reach, and typically no further. It is a good strategy, and one I wish I could figure out how to replicate, even with my moving ships. It drives me crazy when a long range missile cruiser will continue advancing on an enemy fleet, which gains me nothing, and exposes my ship to ever-increasing firepower. I feel like my AI Ship Captains are either morons or suicidal. I can think of some cumbersome tricks to keep a ship from overcommitting—but they involve putting a tank in the field (which is expensive and will not survive a retreat) or deliberately going into battle with damaged ships.
I have tried deleting all the “attack” orders, but that doesn’t seem to help. A “Hold Back” order. Or a “set minimum range” order would be really useful. I just feel like there must already be something that would do this, if I only knew what it was.
The ships will approach to HALF the range set forth in the attack range from what i have seen. If i set the attack range to 1000 the ships will pull up to 500 and stay there or if it is set to keep moving it may still move forward and pass the ship it was shooting at. I do not think there will be any new commands added to this game as Cliff the maker of the game has moved on to another game and is mostly only putting out small quick updates.
Actually ships should stop the moment they reach the set maximum range you AIed, resulting in the boring 1050 MWM wars. The question then is which ship is the drive AI targeting.
The 50% mark is when ship will start actively retreat, which is not as good as it sounds due to the huge turnaround time.
What determines the actual positioning besides attack probability set during deployment? The ship choosen as target to be approached? The nearest ship? The most dangerous threat?
I’m new to this game, but during the design of the O4C fleet I have seen my plasma cruisers stopping in the correct distance after the first approach.
But then, after destruction of the first opponents sometimes 2-3 cruiser captains seem to be confused and start to advance out of the line of battle. This happens not in a direct rush but more in a erratic movement, as if they could not decide where the nearest oppenent is. I filed this under “information overload in the heat of a battle”.
Which ever ship with at least 1 weapon, which you have any priority to, that is closest to your ship at the start of the match. A new target is selected if
The target is destroyed
Your ship just broke Escort/Formation because the leading ship die.
This makes luring and counter luring possible. You can read more about that at the “lure and counter lure” section of my guide.
The random movement you see however has 2 possible explanations.
If you left “attack fighters” in the command, even at 1%, it will drive toward it. So removing attack fighter completely is essential if you want ships to remain in line.
Ship will “attempt to retreat” when all their weapons are destroyed, which involves moving forward to turn. It’s one terrible AI mechanism that can be fixed with the “Last Stand” command.