Blockade strategy?

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by oleg:
Did you set the "blockade" strategy to all ship designs in the fleet ? I have no problems blockading planet if all ships have individual "don't fire on planet" strategy.

No, I think that is what I was doing wrong. I had the fleet set to Blockade, but with everyone set to break formation, and the ships were still on Optimal.

SpaceBadger

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Capture planet is the exception to the rule that ships that break formation follow their own strategies. [...] It's a hard coded exception to the normal game logic to make planet capture work right.

Thanks, Geo. I'm sure I would have gone nuts trying to figure that out by experimentation, not knowing that it is coded differently from the rest.

SpaceBadger

[DavidG]

If anyone has manage to blockade a planet without every single ship with indivitual 'don't hurt me' orders. (or a similar orders not to fire on planets) I'd like to know about it.
Ships in a fleet with "don't hurt me" orders do not obey them despite being told to stay in formation. It is a bug.
Just as well blockading is for woosies. Nuke it man!

[geoschmo]

As Fyron said though blockading is easily accomplished by setting the do not fire on planets option on for whichever strategy is controlling them. This will prevent your ships from glassing the planet, but will still allow them to defend themselves if attacked by ships or fighters. The one draw back is that if attacked, your ships will persue the attackers. This can bring them in range of the planets defenses. If your priority is not to damage the planet and you don't care about losing a few to weapons platform fire this won't be a problem though.

Unfortunatly another problem is that you can't make your ships attempt to capture the planet with troops, and if the invasion fails have them restrain themselves from glassing it. If you set the do not fire on planets, they will not fire, and the transport will not approach the planet because of teh waepons platforms. If you turn off the do not fire, the ships will eliminate the weapons plats and then stop firing. But if the invasion is repulsed they will begin firing again even though the planet is unarmed. What we need is an option to not fire on planets with no weapons platforms, like we have one to not fire on unarmed ships.

Geoschmo

[Parasite]

Originally posted by DavidG:
If anyone has manage to blockade a planet without every single ship with indivitual 'don't hurt me' orders. (or a similar orders not to fire on planets) I'd like to know about it.
Ships in a fleet with "don't hurt me" orders do not obey them despite being told to stay in formation. It is a bug.
Just as well blockading is for woosies. Nuke it man!

I believe I have had fleets set to "Maximum Range", and I set this to not attack planets. The ships in the fleet did not attack the planet. I would have to check to be sure because the individual ship orders may have also been set to MR, so they could have been following that too.

[Fyron]

Some of the stratagies in USM were written before the Last patch (or maybe a few patches ago) when ships that broke formation still followed the fleet stratagy. I think that I prefered it that way, because ships are often most effective when they are not locked in a formation, and you probably want to determine stratagies for a FLEET rather than an entire class of ships.

Ships have always followed their design strategy instead of the fleet strategy when breaking formation.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Ships have always followed their design strategy instead of the fleet strategy when breaking formation.

I think you are incorrect there. I think that is what people thought was supposed to happen, but prior to 1.67 patch it did not work right or something. Hence this entry in the history.txt file:

code:

---

Version 1.58:

10. Fixed   - If a combat piece was in a fleet it would always use the fleet strategy,

              even if it had broken formation.

---

I believe that's what Puke was refering to.

[Asmala]

How can I destroy a planet from the maximum weapons range? Even if I select Maximum weapon range for tactic the ship still goes near the planet. It's really annoying when you have better range than weapon platforms.

[Alneyan]

Originally posted by Asmala:
How can I destroy a planet from the maximum weapons range? Even if I select Maximum weapon range for tactic the ship still goes near the planet. It's really annoying when you have better range than weapon platforms.

I have the opposite problem, as my missile ships tend to attack the planet from too far. They launch their missiles at say, range 8, but the seeker does no damage on the planet. Strange.
I tried to destroy a planet from afar, but my ships closed in with the planet as well. Don't ask me why though. (They should not close in, as they will always hit or so even from range eight, given the planet penalties to defence)

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by Alneyan:
I have the opposite problem, as my missile ships tend to attack the planet from too far. They launch their missiles at say, range 8, but the seeker does no damage on the planet

Are you sure they are doing no damage? I have noticed that sometimes my seekers hit the planet, and there is no explosion so it looks like no damage, but they still manage to destroy the defending weapon platforms. Not sure why this is, haven't really made note of when/why it seems to happen.

SpaceBadger