Entire fleet escorting 1 ship

[jacozilla]

So for most part, I've got defense posture fleets working great. They are incredibly useful to help defend my empore at scale in auto mode while i manage my attack fleets manually.

But every now and then, especially when I am marshalling multiple fleets at a staging area before i commence an attack, one of the defense fleets - ghe entire gigantic assault fleet - will be assigned an escort mission for one lowly freighter or like that.

These staging fleets are still set on defend because what I do is pico 3-4 fleets from other areas of my empire, plus a few transport fleets, then set them all to defend - home base at system used for staging - and they all start to marshall at the staging system with auto move orders to get there, including refueling if necessary

So far, awesome - it makes set and forget very easy, i can issue string of these orders and start setting up multiple staging areas for multiple war fronts and relax or do other things.

But like i said. Every now and then, i would best call it uncommon - not super rare but not common either - one of the just arrived defend fleetes will go off station to escort 1 single ship. Normally, not as issue if multiple fleets in system, but sometimes it is only fleet there while others still intransit. That means it abandons the system and ive had pirates instantly attack and destroy a base still being built when this happens.

I think the automation considers all those fleets stationed there and thinks, silly human, so many extra fleets - i can just take one and do great things with it - but doesnt factor that fleets assigned there does not equal fleets not yet predent there and in transit.

attack posture i am still trying to get hang of, they seem to not work well at all, vs defense which other than uncommon minor examples like this work great

[Bingeling]

I think you are on the right track in understanding why the AI uses the giant fleet to escort a freighter.

How it should be working is:

1: The AI ranks the value of various defense objectives.
2: Escorting a freighter is low value, defending a gas mine is higher value.

3: The AI ranks the power of a defensive ship. A cruiser is way more powerful than an escort.

4: The AI tries to put less powerful defensive stuff to defend the less important stuff.
5: If the AI finds no escort or frigate to escort a freighter, it may end up telling a fleet to do so.

So considering the above, do you have a small swarm of automated ships flying around? To be assigned tasks like this?

Personally I live by the rule: Never leave a military ship to the AI, it will mess it up. Management of the military is one of multiple areas where the player can outclass the AI.

Looking at attack suggestions of the AI can be interesting. Imagine two types of fleets, "Large" and "Small". Large fleets are there to defeat large AI fleets or to destroy colony defenses, Small fleets are there to destroy mines and such minor tasks.

The AI has attack suggestions. For a Large fleet to kill a mine? Or for a Small fleet to attack a Large Pirate Spaceport? Never mind wanting to send my Large fleet 7 sectors away to kill that mine?

The AI does not seem "more sensible" if it has to try to do its attack orders using your custom fleets. For instance, the AI have no notion of "a fleet with only troop transports" and will happily suggest to use "this idle fleet" to attack some mine or other.

[jacozilla]

Right now i play a mix of AI and me controlling ships. I consider fleets i setup but set on automated defend postures to be 'controlled' by me. The posture is just to help until i can react manually.

What i do is:
-enable automation on all ships when created option
-disable automated fleet formation, i prefer take care of that myself
-will design all military ships myself
-set construction level for ships on Normal and all construction only as suggestions
-set ratio for adviser suggestions to roughly 15% escorts, 20% frigates, 20% destroyers - the rest dont matter for reasons below

Then:
-all escorts, frigates and destroyers are left as roamers, never in fleet (except very early pre warp or until i get cruisers unlocked)
-i build whatever number of cruisers, capital ships, carriers, resupply, etc as i feel i need
-whenever adviser suggestion pops up, i just accept whatver number of escort, frigate, and destroyers it wants me to build

So to answer question - i shoukd always have enough non-fleet AI fully controlled units to escort (escort and frigate classes), wait at / protect target locations (destroyers), as at any time due to adviser ratios i've set, more than half my entire empire ship roster should be escorts, frigates and destroyers.

As i understand from expeert posts, while class design doesnt matter for size, the automation does use them for role. So generally only escorts and frigates are usually assigned escort dtuies, while destroyers and cruisers are assigned wait at and protect missions.

Just my escorts and frigates are 35% of my total ships so i thought that should be enough, and i took thise numbers from the rough default policy settings each race gives.

At time my massive assault fleet of 12 cruisers and 10 capital ships and 10 carriers went on lowly escort duty, i had roughly 200 escorts/frigates, 130 destroyers, and 300 heavier fleet ships. (I was at 2/3 stage of conquering galaxy on 10x10 700 system map)

I will try an experiment game where i build a much higher proportion of escort classes, say 50% total in just escorts and frigates, and see if that eliminates my fleets simetimes getting assigned escort duty. That seems to be reasonable assumption why a fleet would be picked if for some reason usual escort ships were not around.

[jacozilla]

Update - this must be a bug because I just noticed my fleet that wasn't set to automated at all - on pure manual - somehow automatically assigned to escort duty.

I had just invaded a planet manually. Left the fleet on manual, engage when attacked manual stance, and left to do some other things. Came back to check on that fleet and I noticed it was moving in deep space, between the system I left it at - the info pane still showed it as on manual - and yet it was saying escort nameofship [engage when attacked]

Pretty bizarre that a non-automated feed will still act with automated orders by the empire AI sometimes.

[Bingeling]

As far as I know, manual ships still act according to defense postures. So I always put them on defensive stance with minimum range, to remove any hint of own initiative from them.

[jacozilla]

Tried an experiment where out of my 300+ ship military, i only built like 10 total escorts and frigates (the preferential escorts the AI wants to assign escort duties), and 100+ destroyers to be (hopefully) core of my automated defense via its role as AI preferred class to assign protect planet / station duties.

And then like 200 cruisers i had manually organized into defense posture fleets around every sector of systems I had.

I once again noticed entire fleets being assigned escort duty - and bizarre ones at that. Playing ring map, AI chose one of my critical defense posture fleets in exact middle of map where I'd gotten foothold into the center from my homeworld rim position, and assigned it the long, loooong range escort of one single freighter from the center to one of my rim worlds.

Dont know if this was due to not having barely any escort classes (escort / frigates) or just the random quirk like I saw before in other game when i had huge amounts of escort / frogates available. Was hoping to test here if lack of traditional escort classes would trigger this odd behavior more, but so far it seems about the same.

What I'm hoping to do is figure out some way that i can 100% guatprantee that fleets i organize into defense postire fleets with range X - whetehr system, nearby, or sector - stays for sure only on defense, and only 100% in that range,

Right now, as noted, it's bit annoying that i cant count on my posture fleets to a) stay on defense - sometimes it goes off on attack missions i did not approve via advisor popup suggestion, or b) as noted here, goes off on escort missions.
* made further annoying ny prefiously mentioned fleet set on manual also assigned automated escort duties

What I'm hoping is i dont have to turn off 100% the automation support. I assume of i change my game settings from all options set to suggest only, to all control manually then i wont have this weird automation override happening,

But that seems like overkill as i generally do like advisor suggestions speeding up my play - not all make sense but i can just click no.

I'm also going to try another game where all i do is build escort/frigates in massive amount very very few, only capital ships in my organized fleets to see if that keeps the dirty AI paws off my fleets.

[Bingeling]

Was the posture of the fleet modified when it went on escort duty?

That should be ruled by the "Fleet formation" AI setting.

[jacozilla]

I already learned that the hard way, that if I leave Fleet Formation on auto, then it will override my fleet posture settings - so no, it was and always is disabled ever since I learned that. I put fleet formation, research, and diplomacy to control manually, with everything else as 'suggest' only - nothing full automatic except ship design as hybrid where it is set to automate ship design, but I uncheck every class on the list other than private ships.

When I've seen this happen 3-4x now total - so not a huge number of times, just couple times a game, the fleet posture still says something like 'defend Varunat 1 and system' - the fleet defense posture I had desired and set it on - but at top where it says what the fleet is currently doing - it would say 'escort freighter-name (engage nearby targets)'

[Bingeling]

That sounds like a bug to me. A fleet on a defend mission that has a valid defense target, should not pick up escort jobs.

[Twigster]

Interesting- I play full manual and have never seen this as a problem.

In my current game, I have run into a "really, after all this time I might lose this game?" moment. The problem is that where so far my fleets of 18 ships (1 CV, 2x Capital, 4x CA, 5x DD, 6x FF, my own designs, tech maxed out) have dealt handily with the smaller races I have fought. Now, I am rated the #4 most powerful military and one of my fleets just got WIPED by some 46 ships of the # 7 most powerful military. The problem- I am realizing that I might die economically before I am able to conquer the galaxy. This is a sandbox game of Icemania's Extended AI Improvement Mod 1.05, 1000 stars, 10 sector Ring galaxy, Late era start with 19 races (now up to 38) Extreme, Chaos, etc.

I am 175 years into the game. I might lose.

[jacozilla]

I'm still working up through the normal difficulty modes. I can handle normal easy now, and play on hard as my new-normal. Once I get past the final level as getting pretty easy, then I'll try the AI mod.

Although to be fair, if I turn off pirates I could prob do 1-2 levels higher, but pre warp start is my norm and with pirates on normal or harder (number, strength, etc), it seems for most part they are the toughest, not the actual AI empires.