Edited: Slick's question thread.

[Slick]

It's an old problem. 2 ships/fleets trying to attack each other in adjacent sectors with the same movement per turn. They continually move into each other's sector (simultaneous movement) turn after turn without meeting.

What's the best way to resolve this? Better yet, how do you prevent it from happening in the first place?

[Fyron]

Stop your fleet and let the enemy attack?

[Slick]

I'm afraid if I do that and he decides to run on the same turn, I'll never catch him.

[douglas]

I have only seen this happen with the AI in control of one of the fleets. In PBW games with two human players trying to attack each other, the fleet with the lowest ID ship in it will move first, the other fleet won't move at all, and they'll fight.

The only sure ways to prevent this in single player are to make your ships faster or slower than the enemy, or to let the enemy fleet come to you.

[Slick]

God, I hate that. The sucker got away. I've tried all sorts of things. Stutter step, zig-zag, sending other ships as fodder to try to break the sequence, etc. I think breaking up the fleet would be the worst thing to do because he could take out my fleet 1/2 at a time.

I hope this gets fixed in SE5.

[Parasite]

Leave one big fat engine destroying ship in your sector, then take the rest of your fleet and chase him. If you swap sectors, he will hit your engine ship and hopefully be slowed. Your larger fleet will then catch up. If he runs, you can chase him, then join up with your single ship(s) later.

This assumes you have something like this.

[Slick]

Ok, new question: Is there a limit to the number of fleets you can have?

The reason I ask is that I'm in a game now where I have between 30 & 35 fleets and a very wierd thing just happened. I assembled a fleet of about 35 ships at a training world and sent it on its way, but on the next turn all the ships had stopped after moving the expected distance but their "fleet" had disappeared. All the 35 ships were in the same sector awaiting orders. Then I had to send them back to my training world to become part of another trained fleet.

Anyone else ever see a fleet disappear from under its ships?

[Renegade 13]

I've never observed that phenomena, but then again I've never had that many fleets before either.

[Fyron]

Have you created a huge number of fleets in the game? I seem to recall a problem when the names start cycling from the beginning if there is an existing fleet with the same default name.

[Renegade 13]

He said 30 to 35 fleets in his post...