Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

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villert
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 10:27 pm

Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

Post by villert »

I think I'm going insane. I'm trying to get my fleets set up as sector defense fleets so they can guard/react to any hostiles that attack me. The problem is, they just sit around and don't do anything...

Hyper-capable fleet full of fuel Posture:
Defense Range: Sector
Home base: Set to either colony or mining station or whatever
Automation: Either way, it doesn't do anything.
Default Engagement Stance (through options): Engage system targets

Still, nothing. They sit with (no mission) (Engage system targets) but don't do anything. The overlay on the map comes up for fleet postures, but they don't react to anything that happens within it. I can set it to any range, and it just does not work.

What am I missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Aeson
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:36 pm

RE: Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

Post by Aeson »

I don't know what your issue is; the last time I paid any significant attention to what the ships were doing, the postures appeared to be functioning properly. However, I will say that in my experience, ships with anything slower than a Torrent Drive or an Equinox Jumpdrive II are not sufficiently fast to respond in a timely fashion to anything beyond "nearby systems" (i.e. the situation resolves itself for better or worse before the fleet arrives), and even the edges of "nearby systems" can be pushing it, depending on what you're using, unless the ships were able to get moving before the attack hits (which essentially requires long-range sensor coverage of the area) or unless whatever is being attacked has a lot of staying power relative to the attacker's offensive power.

It's also possible that the computer may be looking at your fleet and going "these ships are too valuable to waste responding to an attack on some remote mining station." In theory, the computer assigns missions according to the value of each ship, with escorts being less valuable than frigates, which are less valuable than destroyers, which are less valuable than cruisers, which are less valuable than capital ships, and I would expect that lone ships tend to be less valuable than fleets. An attack on some mining station half a sector away just might not be worth sending the whole sector defense fleet, and I don't recall ever seeing the computer disperse a fleet over more than a single system (not counting the occasional ship that runs off to refuel, ships which get left behind due to destroyed hyperdrives, or ships jumping out of a battle because their flee trigger has been tripped; the latter tend to end up dispersed just beyond the edges of a system, at least until the fleet regroups or they have to go refuel, while the former tends to be rare and it isn't usually a long-term dispersal when it happens). It might be worth using more smaller defense fleets which each cover less area.
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Retreat1970
Posts: 1125
Joined: Wed Nov 06, 2013 11:09 am
Location: Wisconsin

RE: Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

Post by Retreat1970 »

Postured fleets don't react to pirate attacks in my games.
Seraph86
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat May 25, 2013 8:05 pm

RE: Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

Post by Seraph86 »

did you switch into the defense mode? the standard fleet stance is attack stance! and yes they have to be automated (blue circular arrow).
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Max 86
Posts: 698
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:54 pm

RE: Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

Post by Max 86 »

Try attack posture. I never use defend posture. Set fleet to attack, current system and set to patrol a planet in that system, you end up defending with the attack posture. If near by system is attacked, tell fleet to patrol a planet in that system and it will attack any bad guys there once it arrives.

If range is set to near by systems, I found it will sit there unless you provide it with a target in another system. After that it will seek out targets to attack going from system to system until it refuels.

I don't think the ai knows what to defend regardless of range when in defend posture.
No problem Chief!
EvilTom84
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 7:55 am

RE: Going insane with defensive fleet posture - please help.

Post by EvilTom84 »

I've never had problems with it.

I set a fleet to defence stance, and set to system etc and then set it to automate. then they sit around the homebase I've set for the fleet and will respond to threats in the defined radius. otherwise they just sit there. It's more efficient I find then setting them to patrol as if you patrol them they are moving and using fuel, when if they're stationary they use their energy collectors.
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