Now this meandering thread has turned more to the old fuel tankage of ships starting out as too much of a limiting factor.And the ai being more sharply impacted and less able to adapt than a human player.I have never tried to form a fleet from across my empire with the ai controlling its formation.I specifically build or assign ships in close promimity to each other into fleets.I then always have them stage from a spaceport and give a repair-refuel order before assigning them to any ops.
I never did either, the AI did.
The original points of the thread all stand. Ships ordered to perform a simple task that they can handle now spend a lot of time twiddling their thumbs and waiting to "assemble".
Tweaking the various ai empires to prioritize fuel tank research and upgrades isn't a bad idea.What i object to and think is a poor idea is spreading the impression "fleet cohesion" adds nothing useful to ai performance.I am saying in my opinion and from what I have observed the more coordinated attacks by ai ships is a significant plus.
Before 1.5 I DID see massive fleets attack me all at once. Start a game with AI empires set to advanced, where they start out with 60 planets and lots of ships. then go to war with them... I had my home planet decimated under these conditions, with massive (30+ ships) fleets warping in at once and laying waste to my defenses. This was before 1.5 patch.
While there have certainly been improvements all around, there is more improvements to be made.
The biggest problem the AI has is the inability to steamroll... after capturing a planet (and they do on occasion), they should immediately pick up the troops from that planet and move on to the next one. (they can leave a few troops there).
Not go home, wait for the troop transports to pick up more troops around home, then assemble and go on to next planet. That takes far too long. I can literally capture 50 planets at the time it takes the AI to capture 1. (but they do capture them).
The AI should switch between 2 engagement modes:
1. We are stronger: Engage enemy fleets with your own, stronger fleets and decimate them. Then blow up the spaceports with your combat fleets (with no "rest" between fights), while transports capture the undefended planets.
2. We are weaker: Avoid enemy fleets while performing hit and ran at their important planets with your fleets of combat and transport ships. capturing planets, destroying spaceports, etc. Also, build more ships, sell what they can (such as tech) for money to build more ships, etc.
But I went on a tangent. There are advantages to fleet cohesion, but it shouldn't be absolute. My suggestions thus far:
1. Ships should travel to a fleet and THEN join it. Never have a ship join a fleet (automatically via the AI) unless it is in the same system. If a human gives the order to join, interpert it as an order to intercept THEN join (aka, say "traveling to join 3rd fleet" instead of "none" or "3rd fleet")... until the ship is actually there it is not part of the fleet.
2. Fleets should only be composed of same hyperspace speed ships.
3. Transport ships should not be intermixed with a fleet of combat ships, they should operate as a seperate "transport fleet" that each collects troops independently (without being in any fleet), then when full join up to form a transport fleet, then go together to target planets and invade them... afterwards immediately collect the troops from the conquered planet, leaving only a few troops to defend it (say, 3) and go refill on troops / attack next target.
4. Transport ships under AI control should not be attacking ships and bases with their 1 single laser and no targetting system.
5. damaged ships should immediately drop out of a fleet.
6. The above is mostly for AI created fleets. Have seperate player created fleets with different set of rules. Let the player automate a player fleet or deautomate an AI fleet (I don't mean target control, I mean ordering ships to join, leave, etc.)
7. Fleets should have "inactive" and "active" members, so if you manually created a fleet and ships dropped out of it to either gather troops, get repaired, get upgraded, etc... they should be marked as "inactive" and ignore fleet orders.
8. Fleet orders should NOT, EVER cancel a command to retrofit. (which wastes money btw!). If you order a command to retrofit that means that ship is effective "out of the fleet" (aka, inactive) and ignores all orders... this btw means that the rest of the fleet does perform work, such as attacking planets. Rather then waiting for each and every ship.
I do not have a superman complex; for I am God, not Superman.
