automation settings, stances, and forgetful ships

[dostillevi]

I want my fleets to stay in orbit around the planets they are assigned to. I can't seem to make this happen though.. if an enemy enters orbit my ships will engage, but after engaging they often stay set with no orders and are left behind sitting in space while the planet continues to orbit. I've tried numerous variations of attack and defense as well as engagement range and with and without automation turned on.

Sometimes the ships will return to their base planet, and sometimes if they were set to patrol they will return to patrolling, but this only happens about 1/4th of the time. Its frustrating when supposedly automated ships aren't where they are supposed to be when a raid happens, and I am continually putting them manually back into orbit. The only time ships will definitely return to their base planet is if they are out of the planet's orbit. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

If this is a bug I'm not sure this is new to Shadows.. in legends there was much less combat and my planets were rarely attacked.

[scotten_usa]

It's not a Shadows bug, I've seen the same behavior across all versions of the game. I'm not sure a way around this except to micro your fleets.

[Canute0]

Did you assign the Fleet a Home Base/planet ?
Did you order them to Patrol the Planet or just Move to the planet ?
Did you enable Auto. after the order ?

[JDuff]

I think the issue is (and the fix is) that when a fleet has an Order set for it manually and it then reacts to an event, it should remember the Order and go back to doing it. I also think Orders to refuel and repair / refit when issued should also remember the last Order the fleet had and return to that when done. Especially as the fleet heads to the four winds of a system sometimes when refueling or even leaves the system they were set to guard.

[dostillevi]

@Canute yes I have done all those things. Initially I thought I had better luck with the patrol setting (and thus found a justification for burning fuel "orbiting" a planet) but the problem was still happening. I also tried this with and without automation turned on. Strangely, I found very little difference in behavior. Ships were still acting based on their stances regardless of automation, and the problem was still happening.

@JDuff I agree, and I think that is the intention as it happens sometimes but not all the time. It's really only been a problem for me since shadows due to the huge number of raids I am fending off. Even with a small empire it amounts to a lot of unfun microing, and its especially frustrating when I have a sizeable defense fleet (~10 ships) in place to protect a spaceport, yet when the attack comes the defenders are a quarter of the way across the system idling in empty space, still automated, still set to defend their base, still with a range of solar system engagement only.

Anyway, one more quick question. I'm assuming the difference between defend and attack is that the defend setting will only act if something is attacked whereas the attack setting will cause ships to engage any valid target within the range. Can anyone confirm this? I've been using the attack setting because of this thinking because it should mean a quicker response in certain circumstances, but in practice they seem to work virtually identically.

[Vedric]

A work around I've been using is to set the defending fleets home base at a mining station within the system. Since your colonies are most likely to be attacked, the fleet will be required to jump to the colony to defend. When the fleet is finished defending it will be far enough away from its "home base" that it will need to jump back to it. It's obviously not an ideal solution as it cannot be used for newly founded colonies. It also will fail when the home base is attacked because the fleet won't be far enough away after defending to automatically jump back to "home base", it will just drift in space until the next attack.

ORIGINAL: JDuff

I think the issue is (and the fix is) that when a fleet has an Order set for it manually and it then reacts to an event, it should remember the Order and go back to doing it. I also think Orders to refuel and repair / refit when issued should also remember the last Order the fleet had and return to that when done. Especially as the fleet heads to the four winds of a system sometimes when refueling or even leaves the system they were set to guard.

This is what is missing. It would relieve the player of tons of repetitive micromanagement. It's my #1 problem with this game and I have mentioned it before. It's really astonishing the game, after all this time, lacks this fix. I made the comment in another thread that playing Distant Worlds is like driving a beat up VW beetle with a Ferrari V12 under the hood. The game is so great in so many ways but the UI and the lack of obvious fixes like this can slightly sour the experience.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: Canute

Did you assign the Fleet a Home Base/planet ?
Did you order them to Patrol the Planet or just Move to the planet ?
Did you enable Auto. after the order ?

Why do you need to set Auto after giving a manual order?