Strange battle ... why this?

[Beorne]

I'm mp gaming with vanilla seiv.
I'm at war wit another player. He jumps out from the warp point in my system with 6 destroyers each one with 3 cmissileII and some shields. In this sector I have 20 small satellites, 5 with ducV and 15 with cmissile II positioned near the jump out hole. Neither of us has point defense. Battle results: perfect, I have wiped out all the destroyers without a single loss. Then I watch the replay: the enemy destroyers don't fire a single missile and stay around my missiles and duc range waiting to be slowly annihilated. Why?
I',m almost sure my friend tactics is the default tactic, we don't are enough skilled and experienced to design custom tactics.
I'm asking myself the reason, I fear to see this behavior with my ships ...

[Randallw]

Missiles can not target satellites. So that's why they wouldn't fire. It's possible the AI froze since it couldn't fire.

[Beorne]

The answer was so simple,
neither my poor friend nor I knew this ...
Thank you!

[Randallw]

If you look at the descriptions for weapons you will see an entry saying what it can shoot at.

For PD (point defence) it will say seekers. Units really, so missiles, fighters. Satellites as well.

For missiles it will say ships\planets. Satellites are units so you can't attack them.

energy weapons will say any but seekers. As a result it fires at anything but missiles. This is a bit confusing as I know they can shoot at fighters, though not with the bonus dedicated PD gets.

Edit: I really should have said direct fire weapons, not just energy weapons. This means depleted uranium

Torpedoes, though direct fire, are ships\planets like missiles.

[dogscoff]

energy weapons will say any but seekers. As a result it fires at anything but missiles. This is a bit confusing as I know they can shoot at fighters, though not with the bonus dedicated PD gets.



What's confusing about that? Fighters aren't seekers, and seekers aren't fighters. Therefore "anything but seekers" includes fighters.

[Randallw]

It's getting late and I got confused http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

edit: no wait this is why. It classes fighters as seekers when PD shoots at fighters even though it says only seekers.

If I'm still confused. Well as I said It's late. I'm going now.

[douglas]

Randallw said:edit: no wait this is why. It classes fighters as seekers when PD shoots at fighters even though it says only seekers.


No, stock PD targets "Ftr\Sat\Seekers\Drone", and can therefore shoot at fighters (Ftr), satellites (Sat), missiles (Seekers), and drones.

[NullAshton]

I think the reason why it stayed around and waited to get killed is because of the default strategies. It couldn't complete it's primary strategy, so it went to the secondary strategy which was probally point blank. Not sure, but having the secondary strategy be "don't get hurt" might work well with missile ships.

[Beorne]

Yes. Probably this is the reason, the secondary default is point blank.