I have experimented some with this and would like to have a discussion about balancing this better...
Now I do wonder why there is such a hard focus on attacking enemy Escort ship that usually have a low threat value, it makes very little sense. It also get worse when you figure in how this can be abused by an observant player.
In essence you can do an all fleet with only Escort and Guardian ships... due to how the priorities are constructed such a fleet will be completely OP in regard to a more balanced fleet against the AI. In this fleet Escorts have 90% defenses and 10% weapons while the Guardians the reverse. The fleet would then have about 1/4 escorts and 3/4 Guardians, or perhaps even less Escorts.
There is such a high focus on targeting Escort ships that by the time any ship want to target any of your Guardians the battle is practically over. The only ships that will go after your Guardians are Interceptors, but Interceptors start so well forward they they die first anyway and your Guardians are going to prioritize them first anyway.
There should not be such a high focus on targeting Escort ships.
Capitals should go directly against other Capital/Escort/Support/Assault and defend Capital
Assault ships should target Capitals/Support/Escort/Assault.
Interceptors should go for Support/Assault/Guardians/Escort.
Escorts should go for Assault/Interceptors/Escort/Guardians and defend Capital/Support.
Guardians should go for Interceptors/Assault/Guardians/Escort and defend Support/Capital/Escort.
This would make the battles less easy to optimize and Support ships would need to keep some defenses if they want to survive. It would also give some incentive to actually put weapons on Escorts and other defensive ship types while you will need defenses on your Capital and Support ships.
In the battle viewer I want to see a wave of Assault and Interceptor coming in and my Capital ships will direct their attention on enemy capital ships once they get in range not the enemies Escort ships. My Escort will most likely keep focusing their fire on enemy Assault ships who attack my Capital ships and my Guardians will attack any Interceptors that races for my Support ships.
The Battles would probably be more dynamic and chaotic and there would be much less focus fire on one class of ships throughout a whole battle. Since I figure that a ship will mostly target ships with a higher threat value if there are several ships to choose from these priorities will provide some more interesting results in my opinion.
Actually no... the Capital ships would shoot the Guardians first since they priorities them first and the defensive capital last while the offensive Guardians would shoot the the Escorts since they prioritize them higher.
Not sure if you are referring to the ship roles as they are in game right now or not... Capital ships currently prioritize escorts first, then capital ships. (Capital ships will not try to shoot guardians first, see ship roles at http://galciv3.gamepedia.com/Ship_roles
In your Capital/Escort fleet vs my Capital/Guardians fleet:
Your high attack capital ships would target my high defense capital ships. I win there.
Your high defense escort ships would target my high defense capital ships. Defense ships do very little damage.
My high attack guardians would target your high attack Capital ships (that also have low defense) thus tearing them to shreds.
My high defense capital ships target your high defense escorts. Defense ships do very little damage.
You can correct me if I'm wrong... but Guardians will defend capitals if attacked and that means they will get targeted before the capitals. That is how I understand that it works.
The defend part means that they will attack ships that are attacking the ship they are defending. This is why the guardians will target the capital ships that are shooting at its ally capital ship.
If that is so... then yes that would work... I'm not fully convinced yet that is how it work though and it does not change the fact you can abuse it against the AI. 95% or more of players play against the AI not in multiplayer and you can still sort of abuse it in multiplayer anyway.
There should be multiple paths to each and every ship getting attacked so it is more or less impossible to abuse the system. These rules should also include a weight system where endurance, value and threat played a big part as well not just type of ship role. There should simply be some random thrown in to the mix to chake it up some.
You are right... Just did some testing, and what I stated it not how defend works. I am not sure how defend works, but I have a saved game where I can do some testing now.
My fleet of (1 escort and 4 capital ships) went against enemy fleet of (1 assault, 1 interceptor, 1 escort, 1 support). All the enemy ships started battle targeting my 1 escort which I expected. But my escort started battle targeting the interceptor! I cannot explain why, but somehow, defending my capital ship caused it to go after the interceptor first. (I am discussing targeting as displayed on tooltip in game, not who actually gets shot at first due to primary target being out of range.) If I send the 1 escort alone against that same enemy fleet, my escort starts combat targeting the assault ship, not the interceptor. I do not know how targeting works for ships that are defending. They must be using a different targeting priority list when defending.
Also tested tonight 2 fleets: 1 capital/escort and the other guardian/escort... Everyone targets the escorts first. Not sure how defending works. But the capital/escort combo seems to be number one in terms of being able to focus defense on one type of ship.
Yes... I believed that defense worked as you explained at first but experimentation seemed to indicate otherwise. Which is why Escort/Capital seem to be the optimal configuration. With escort just fully defense and capital just pure offense. Although I usually put at least one or a very small amount of weapons on my escort ships, but only the bare minimum.
I did some extensive testing last night and updated the Wiki Page for Ship Roles with the new information.
Defend priority causes a ship to stay near an ally ship that it is protecting. It does not affect the primary target of the ship but only whether or not the ship is willing to move forward towards its primary target. If the ship it is defending has started moving forward, so does the ship defending it.
Because of the defend priority, a guardian will not move forward and join the battle until its support ship starts to move forward. (Support ships remain at zero speed at the map edge until all ally interceptors, assault ships, and capital ships have been eliminated.) It will however attack any enemies that come into range.
An escort will move forward and attack enemies if it is defending a capital ship. An escort that is defending a support ship however will remain in the back out of combat, similar to the guardian as described above, and the escort ship will only move forward once the support ship starts to do so.
Note that the in-game battle viewer (as of patch 1.03) shows all ships as moving forward towards the center of battle, so it may appear as though support ships as well as ships that are defending those support ships are moving forward, but if you select the ship and view it, you will see that its speed is zero, and the ship is not really moving. This causes a discrepancy between where the ships appear in the battle viewer versus where they really are on the battle map.
Very interesting, so if I understand this correctly, I should make missile boats support ships, this will cause them to stay in back and maximize their range.
Well, they will only stay in back if you have any assault, interceptor, or capital ships in your fleet. If you have none of those remaining, the support ships will also charge forward.
Also support ships will not move forward at all if you have these attack ships in your fleet. The beginning position of support ships is really far back, out of combat range from where the main battle is probably going to take place. This means they will likely be out of range for even their missiles to be of any use until either enemy ships get closer or all of your attack ships are destroyed.
I also dislike how the Escort/Capital combination can be abused. It feels like the only viable strategy against a difficult enemy, but it comes close to cheating. It could of course be a deliberate design choice, but I don't really believe that.
Like others, I too spent time trying to mod the battlebehaviour, looking for an anti-abuse fix. The only fix that seems to work so-so is to have each role prioritize itself, because then they can't hide behind any another role. But that makes the role name seem silly, since they actually don't mean what they are supposed to mean anymore. And a player can still abuse it, by putting "just guns" ships in a role that the AI never puts anything dangerous in (like guardian). I am beginning to think that there is no satisfactory solution from just fiddling with the battle behaviour.
Instead, I think that the complete freedom of picking roles is the problem. Problem examples: Huge hulls as Interceptors, Tiny hulls as Capital ships, and ships fitted with weapons in the support role. If this freedom was restricted, it would be easier to create a battle behaviour that is hard to abuse, and still have the role names mean what they should mean.
Example of how restrictions can help:
Assume these limitations:
Interceptor (tiny, small)
Guardian (tiny, small, cargo)
Support (any size but no weapons)
Escort (medium, large, huge, the assault drones from carriers)
Assault (medium, large, huge)
Capital (medium, large, huge)
And a few words about the battle behaviour. The ships are basically divided into two different groups. The first group (escort, assault and capital) have big ships. The second group (interceptor, guardian and support) have small ships. And then each group will go for the identical group on the enemy side first. This seems like the intended behaviour based on the role names, it's not something I made up. What it boils down to is that a fleet can loose its support even though they won the battle, and that is a pretty cool way to stop an invasion fleet.
Target priorities (changes: The top three targets their own role first. Interceptors kill support immediately after guardians)
Capital (starts @ 1400) -> Capital, Assault, Escort then Interceptor, Guardian, Support
Assault (starts @ 1500) -> Assault, Escort, Capital then Interceptor, Guardian, Support
Escort (starts @ 1600) -> Escort, Capital, Assault then Interceptor, Guardian, Support
Interceptor (starts @ 1100) -> Guardian, Support, Interceptor then Escort, Assault, Capital
Guardian (starts @ 1100) -> Interceptor, Escort, Assault, Capital, Guardian, Support
This isn't perfect. But there are no role-combinations where a ship will be safe. And Tiny and Small ships will fill a function late in the game too which i think is nice and adds diversity. It should also be possible to make the AI deliberately protect or attack the support role, just by adding small ships to a fleet.
edit: minor tweaks
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