First time poster, and normally I wouldn't bother but I ran into something I find somewhat bazaar in Distant Worlds Legends, and I wanted to check-in with the fan base to see if A. I am being a newbie or B. it is a bug.
First off, only had the game a very short time and so far, simply awesome. I was a big time MOO1/2 and *cough* 3 fan who migrated to Galactic Civilizations 1/2. But to me DWL is what true 4X Space Strategy should be about. Praise to one side, here's the problem I am facing.
I have played 2 games so far and not till now have I had an issue of any kind with the game. The issue I am now getting is that I am in a war with a neighbouring civilization for a while now. The fighting has been going back and forth and I have finally decided to go on the offensive. Now, the game is pretty good in allowing me to make decisions like for example, when and how I go to war. But it has a serious issue in executing what I am telling it.
2 examples spring to mind that illustrate my frustration thus far with the AI;
1. My colonies are getting constantly ambushed by my enemy, so rightly I put a small strike fleet into play at the planet, 5 ships, all set to posture :- defend = home colony and stance :- attack - nearby enemies. Now to me this means stay near the colony and attack all hostiles within the local planetary range but defend the colony as a priority. So when I watch a enemy troop ship fly right past all the ships and invade the planet, you can probably understand my frustration. The times I have found my defence fleet either attacking enemies on the other side of the system, sitting there doing jack or actually dropping orbit to sit in the middle of space somewhere along the orbit line is unbelievable. I found clicking the automate button seems to help keep them grounded to the planet they are suppose to be defending but not always.
2. As I mentioned above in my current game I went on a massive offensive, I built a 32 ship fleet to take out just one colony. I equipped the fleet with a resupply ship and 2 dedicated troop transports and flew across the entire map to strike at my enemys' homeworld. A brilliant strategy I had in mind when I launched the invasion, but which quickly turned to poop in a bag, all because of the AI. The strategy was simple, any fleet travelling from my homeworld to theirs would be left with only 10% fuel. I knew I couldn't afford to engage their homeworld directly from my own, but I could create a supply line on the edge of their home system to refuel the ships and then attack. My fleet drop out of hyperspace at 0 on a gas giant mining station and leveled it. Now this is where it all went poop... I assumed my fleet admiral wasn't a dumb a$$. Apparently for his +25% bonus in everything he was pretty dense. Even after setting my fleet to patrol/move/refuel at the resupply ship at the planet several times, half my fleet immediately without as much as a "hey sorry bud we're off" hyperspaced straight into the enemy homeworld. I watched in horror as 16 of my best ships randomly at various speeds and without accepting my orders to "get the f**k back here", dropped right into the middle of the enemys' homeworld fleet flanked with 3 defensive stations and a large starport. Suffice to say the invasion ended rather quickly. After which my fleet at the resupply point were overwhelmed and ganked. Within minutes, with insufficient numbers my invasion and 75% of my total empires ships were dead.
Now my question is why are my ships disobeying me, what do I need to set them to, stance, posture, whatever, in order to have total 100% manual control. Because if this is what they are going to constantly do in my games I can't see me playing this for too long.
