Strange cruiser behaviour

Gratuitous Forum Support
1

With “attack fighters” deleted, my missile cruisers would sit off, and fire all their missiles repeatedly at escort fighter swarms… never getting closer, and never firing at the cruiser the fighters circles.
also at the time - they were set to either escort, or protect a PD cruiser sat in front of them. so they’d generally just sit behind out of weapons range and ignore all the enemies. engagement ranges were set to well under the missile range (target painter/decoy launcher range)

with attack fighters enabled, set to 0% and 100 range, they would nose right up to enemy cruisers until they’re inside each others shields… very very strange, but point defence didn’t do much at that point. nor did shields.

actually… “max range” in orders is really confusing. is there another way of phrasing what this means?

suggestion - re-order the ‘attack’ orders so they’re sorted top to bottom high to low priority.

2

I found max range to be the same as in similar games, such as Battleships Forever. (I use the word “similar” with a certain bit of leeway here.)

Basically it means that a ship sitting ANYWHERE within “max range” of an ordered target will be “comfortable” and thus standing still. This could easily leave you out of range of enemy ships.
(example: if your cruiser has max range of 800 and 90% of your guns hit only up to 400, while the enemy’s max range is more than 400, you will NOT be shooting 90% of your guns. You should probably set your max range in this case to be something more “comfortable” like 350, which will make your cruiser try and keep the enemy in your gun’s optimal.)