Cathryne

Join Date 09/2008

Some thoughts on autocast and intelligence

Hi everyone!

I would like some autocast abilities to be used by the ships more intelligently.

- colonize: a colony cap-ship should always wait until all bombardment frigates have been destroyed, to auto-colonize a planet. Even better would be, if my ships would attack those at first (the attack priority for the colony capship in particular could just be changed to siege frigates). Another nice little tweak would have a colony cap-ship save the amount of antimatter needed for colonizing, so it wouldn't waste it on other abilites (which also are on autocast). The improvement for the player would be that, I don't have to micromanage the acquission of a plante (esp. a neutral one).

- Advent carrier: The telecinetic push ability acitivates as soon as one fighter or bomber squad enters this abilities range. So just the first squad gets repelled, right? Intelligent behaviour would have the carrier wait until more strike crafts are in range. Maybe wait just until the first squad that has entered range is about to leave it again. So the carrier would let some strike crafts attack in order to hit more of them with the repell forces ability. Question just out of interest: Is even possible to muster such a massive force of bombers that would destroy a carrier (or any other capship) in just one strike run?

- planet intelligence: The game can alway tell me what and how many ships and structures have been in a gravity well the last time I gathered intelligence. Now if I also have the monitor phase space research (2, or for vasari every jumps) the game should add the detected ships to the last intelligence data. Of course if the opponent build new ships and structurs around said planet I wouldn't know that. Also Advent and TEC might not see enemy ships jumping back. So the intelligence report might (or most certainly will not) be exact, but a better estimate than the game gives me now.

What do you think?

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Is even possible to muster such a massive force of bombers that would destroy a carrier (or any other capship) in just one strike run?

I've not seen it, but I'll be damned if I don't try it tonight.

In most cases, the estimate given is referring to ships that were and will be in that gravity well indefinitely. If the AI works as predictably as I think it does, those ships won't be going anywhere. Ships that enter the gravity well from outside it will almost always be on their way out of it again. Thus, I think the way the information is displayed now is more likely to be accurate that updated information.

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theres little point in having such "intelligence"..mostly becuase not everyone likes abilitys not autocasting on for example a planet.... thats where autocast is for, if u dont have enough time to click on a colony ship and disable autocast then maybe u should take a quick lesson in fast-clicking.. or send in in after you know its safe

if i had to choose between what you have just stated i prefer it the "old" way mostly becuase i dont use autocast on abilites such as telekenetic push (im fast / organized enough to have al ability ships stationed in a group, then using tab to quickly cast what i need)

the ship amount on a planet actualy is given, just not it's positions, .... but nonetheless.. this is a valid statement, it does give a (if minor.. but valid) strategic advantage by sending not jsut ship amounts... but also ship locations

the problem however is that whenever your scout ship enters the grav well, the ships will move to kil your scout, so when your scout dies you see the ships closeby your scout, as soon as its dead and no orders have been given to the stationed fleet they return to their old positions... so #1: theres enough reason to add it #2: theres enough reason NOT to add it... it would only be used in rare occasions

a good way to counter the fact that u cannot see ship locations is to just fear the worst... always jump when youre ready, when u know u stand a chance even when (for example) a line of 20 kodiaks backed up with 50 lrms stands right on front of the grav well edge (or 20 carriers at the far side....)

and yes it's very possible to have so many bombers (i doubt fighters) that they'll kil a capital ship in 1 run.... however, if you did your homework... or in this case.. the oponents homework... you should know he has so many.. and you should have at least some anti fighter frigs / caps and alot of fighters... if u didnt already lost (fighters are for hunting bombers... Flaks are for denying bombers acces into your fleet and if they do they'll get hit pretty hard (so spread flaks.!!!!)

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Is even possible to muster such a massive force of bombers that would destroy a carrier (or any other capship) in just one strike run?

Quoting horneraa,

reply 1

I've not seen it, but I'll be damned if I don't try it tonight.

Here it is, as promised:

Notice that I have 15 Carriers, each sporting 4 bomber squadrons. I had 16 but I don't know where the straggler went... Either way, the bombers were more than enough to insta-kill the cap ship I pitted them against in the first run, as you can see from these pictures:

ScreenShot2

ScreenShot3

ScreenShot4

It is officially dead in ScreenShot4, but I was too stupid to hover over the cap ship while I was doing the caps so we could see its Hull/Shields. Just trust me, he was done before the first pass was over. I should note I was fully researched in thisgame.

Here are some other screens for those interested:

My conclusion: My next game will feature hordes of fighters. They are faster and they clearly pack a punch in these numbers. The best part: the carriers make new ones after they die! Keep those carriers out of the battle and you are set.

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Actually... I would prefer that SOME autocast powers used a little bit LESS attempts at intelligence.

If ANY Vasari craft I owned with integration would autocast it the MOMENT they hit, say, 50 HP under max, i'd be happy. Similarly, if they autocast it based on ANY hull damage that was not AoE i'd be absolutely thrilled. No attempts to wait until they're in real trouble. By that point, they're not going to get 40 seconds of healing done before they blow up. It's just how concentrated fire works.

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Quoting FelixDrake,

reply 4

Actually... I would prefer that SOME autocast powers used a little bit LESS attempts at intelligence.

If ANY Vasari craft I owned with integration would autocast it the MOMENT they hit, say, 50 HP under max, i'd be happy. Similarly, if they autocast it based on ANY hull damage that was not AoE i'd be absolutely thrilled. No attempts to wait until they're in real trouble. By that point, they're not going to get 40 seconds of healing done before they blow up. It's just how concentrated fire works.

For repair abilities you should actually be able to change it, if you don't mind making the tiny mod. I didn't look at all of them, but a few I did look at:

Vasari carrier:

onlyAutoCastWhenDamageTakenExceedsPerc 0.000000

is the default setting, which is why it can't stop autocasting.

Hoshiko:

aiUseTargetCondition "HullDamageExceedsAmount"
onlyAutoCastWhenTargetHullDamageExceedsAmount
Level:0 150.000000

And of course the Skirmisher:

onlyAutoCastWhenDamageTakenExceedsPerc 0.500000

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50% *cringe* no wonder 90% of the time it's used, i'm activating it manually (at great cost to screen space if there are like 50+ of them). By the time it's at 50% hull, the writing is on the wall, it's a splat mark waiting to happen. I shall have to change that.

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