Posture Frustrations

[MartialDoctor]

After a couple week hiatus, I came back ready to play some Distant Worlds. Unfortunately, upon loading up my old game, I've become extremely frustrated.

The AI keeps overriding my commands and getting my units killed. I set the posture to defend system while I move into an enemy system. The idea being I don't want the AI to go running and attacking the heavily fortified planet in the system. However, that is what the AI continues to do! Not only that but, when I manually tell them to move elsewhere, the AI will override my command and go back and attack the station again! [&:]

I thought postures were supposed to fix this sort of situation. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong here? Is there a different posture that I should be taking?

[Nedrear]

Am I hearing right? You are DEFENDING an ENEMY system? Of course they would try to kill all enemies there!

[MartialDoctor]

And thus my question remains. [:)]

What sort of posture would you have it set to so that they don't do what is occurring.  There are only two postures... attack and defend.

[w1p]

MartialDoctor

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong here

Nedrear

Am I hearing right? You are DEFENDING an ENEMY system? Of course they would try to kill all enemies there!

[Nedrear]

Just tell them to do nothing! If you just want to play police and mess with the enemy... but that will hit your reputation. Deactivate automatic.

[MartialDoctor]

They aren't on automatic.  I am simply moving them to a system with the intent on attacking the mining bases and patrolling ships that I see fit.  However, the AI keeps overriding my commands even if I tell them to stop and do nothing.  And so I am asking how to get the AI to stop doing that.

Changing posture, engagement stance, it all does nothing...

[Nedrear]

Tell them to HALT ACTION and park them in a opposite area in the system. Tell them manual commands - fleet and ship alike - and monitor it regulary while deactivating the AI movement of fleets. As long as the AI is allowed to move them it will do it after the last order is finished. This will happen if your ships are attacked and kill the enemy!

[spacht]

I'm also a bit confused about the postures. It's also not clearly documented in the manual where it talks about a "middle ground" between automatic and manual control but doesn't say if you have to enable the fleet ai or not to get posture settings to work.
According to my observations Fleets in defense posture with ai on seem to work as intended but in attack posture the ai constantly overrides my homebase and target settings.

Adding to the confusion is the relation between posture and engagement stance and the fact that engagement stance gets changed depending on the order you give your fleet as per your empire settings. For a new player it can be hard to get your fleets to do exactly what you want them to do.

[theonlystd]

Yea the whole posture thing is confusing and a total pita so far


I find my fleets wondering all over..

And of course without fuel half the time

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Nedrear

Tell them to HALT ACTION and park them in a opposite area in the system. Tell them manual commands - fleet and ship alike - and monitor it regulary while deactivating the AI movement of fleets. As long as the AI is allowed to move them it will do it after the last order is finished. This will happen if your ships are attacked and kill the enemy!

As I said, this is what I was doing. Sometimes the AI would even override my commands after I gave them.

[MartialDoctor]

Ok guys, I figured out a bit of this after some tinkering around.

If you go under options, Empire Settings, you will get a whole list of useful settings for default stances.

Apparently, what was happening with me was, even if I changed my stance, it would be changed back to whatever the settings are here once I gave the fleet a new order.  So, the default for "other" seems to be "Engage System Targets."  So, if you move your fleet somewhere, they will then change to "engage system targets."  This explains why my fleets would then change their stance and go attack the highly defended colony.

However, I found a couple of small annoyances with these stances.  The stances are taken on a ship by ship basis, not a fleet basis.  So if in a "Engage when attacked" stance, only the ship that is attacked will respond.  Your other ships in the fleet will sit around unless they are, individually attacked.  For the "Engage nearby targets," one ship may break off and attack a ship(s) while the others sit still.  And for the "Engage system targets," ships may break off into groups and attack different areas in the system.

Hopefully, this can be changed so that the fleets will act together as a fleet rather than individually.

[Johnnycai]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

Ok guys, I figured out a bit of this after some tinkering around.

If you go under options, Empire Settings, you will get a whole list of useful settings for default stances.

Apparently, what was happening with me was, even if I changed my stance, it would be changed back to whatever the settings are here once I gave the fleet a new order.  So, the default for "other" seems to be "Engage System Targets."  So, if you move your fleet somewhere, they will then change to "engage system targets."  This explains why my fleets would then change their stance and go attack the highly defended colony.

However, I found a couple of small annoyances with these stances.  The stances are taken on a ship by ship basis, not a fleet basis.  So if in a "Engage when attacked" stance, only the ship that is attacked will respond.  Your other ships in the fleet will sit around unless they are, individually attacked.  For the "Engage nearby targets," one ship may break off and attack a ship(s) while the others sit still.  And for the "Engage system targets," ships may break off into groups and attack different areas in the system.

I changed that Empire Settings option to 'Attack nearby targets' and it addresses both issues you are addressing here. I often warp in and attack a mining station within an enemy system and then await the enemy response/fleets and my fleet does what it should. It works for me.

Have fun!

[Gelatinous Cube]

tm.asp?m=2973167

I worked pretty hard on this quick little how-to for fleet postures. It may solve some of your problems.

[MartialDoctor]

Just wanted to point something else out.  Not sure if it is intended but maybe someone can elaborate.

I've noticed that an action taken by the AI due to a fleet stance will override a command that you personally give.  For example, I recently told a fleet to move to a system.  However, after giving this order, an enemy ship came into range of one of my ships.  That individual ship cancelled it's move order, that I had given, and instead went to attack this ship.

The AI's orders should never override your own orders, correct?  Is this a bug?

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

Just wanted to point something else out.  Not sure if it is intended but maybe someone can elaborate.

I've noticed that an action taken by the AI due to a fleet stance will override a command that you personally give.  For example, I recently told a fleet to move to a system.  However, after giving this order, an enemy ship came into range of one of my ships.  That individual ship cancelled it's move order, that I had given, and instead went to attack this ship.

The AI's orders should never override your own orders, correct?  Is this a bug?

If your ship is set to Auto AND has a valid fleet posture/stance, they will do whatever is best for the posture nearly always. It is a third level of control, in that sense. The up-side is that by manually attacking something and then clicking auto AFTERWARDS your ship will complete its mission before going back to its duties. That is, unless it needs to refuel, or needs to flee, or whatever--in which case its not the posture at fault, but rather the bahavioural settings for the ship (or the empire-wide cautionary settings).

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

Just wanted to point something else out.  Not sure if it is intended but maybe someone can elaborate.

I've noticed that an action taken by the AI due to a fleet stance will override a command that you personally give.  For example, I recently told a fleet to move to a system.  However, after giving this order, an enemy ship came into range of one of my ships.  That individual ship cancelled it's move order, that I had given, and instead went to attack this ship.

The AI's orders should never override your own orders, correct?  Is this a bug?

If your ship is set to Auto AND has a valid fleet posture/stance, they will do whatever is best for the posture nearly always. It is a third level of control, in that sense. The up-side is that by manually attacking something and then clicking auto AFTERWARDS your ship will complete its mission before going back to its duties. That is, unless it needs to refuel, or needs to flee, or whatever--in which case its not the posture at fault, but rather the bahavioural settings for the ship (or the empire-wide cautionary settings).

It's not an auto. It's doing this when I'm manually controlling the fleet.

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

Just wanted to point something else out.  Not sure if it is intended but maybe someone can elaborate.

I've noticed that an action taken by the AI due to a fleet stance will override a command that you personally give.  For example, I recently told a fleet to move to a system.  However, after giving this order, an enemy ship came into range of one of my ships.  That individual ship cancelled it's move order, that I had given, and instead went to attack this ship.

The AI's orders should never override your own orders, correct?  Is this a bug?

If your ship is set to Auto AND has a valid fleet posture/stance, they will do whatever is best for the posture nearly always. It is a third level of control, in that sense. The up-side is that by manually attacking something and then clicking auto AFTERWARDS your ship will complete its mission before going back to its duties. That is, unless it needs to refuel, or needs to flee, or whatever--in which case its not the posture at fault, but rather the bahavioural settings for the ship (or the empire-wide cautionary settings).

It's not an auto. It's doing this when I'm manually controlling the fleet.

In which case the problem has to be somewhere in your empire settings. The caution and flee settings in the policy menu, and some of the sneakier options in the actual options menu can affect this. As well as custom settings in ships you designed.

I'm no expert on ship design, and I usually leave my ship behavior settings (in the policy settings) on the default, and I've actually managed to eliminate most of the issues I used to have with fleets disobeying my orders thanks to being able to have an extra level of control with postures. Wish I knew what your problem was... I'll keep an eye out in game.

[feelotraveller]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

Just wanted to point something else out.  Not sure if it is intended but maybe someone can elaborate.

I've noticed that an action taken by the AI due to a fleet stance will override a command that you personally give.  For example, I recently told a fleet to move to a system.  However, after giving this order, an enemy ship came into range of one of my ships.  That individual ship cancelled it's move order, that I had given, and instead went to attack this ship.

The AI's orders should never override your own orders, correct?  Is this a bug?

It's not a bug. It has been this way since before this expansion.

When you give a ship/fleet an order it is also given an 'engagement stance'. You can cycle through these when giving the order with "," from memory. There is a setting in the options which specifies the default engagement stance for particular mission types. This will override the mission, at least temporarily. So you gave a movement order, probably with a default engagment stance of 'attack nearby targets'. Your ship saw a nearby target and attacked it. Hopefully, after completing its attack it will continue with its 'move' order (but it depends on the outcome of the attack).

It is working as designed - whether we like it or not is another question. What you can do is change the options settings, but beware this applies to all missions of this type. You should also be able to manually specify an engagement stance when giving the order but I am not sure how this works out in practice. (I seem to remember problems in RotS with this being overridden by the default engagement stance... but I coudl be wrong.)

[MartialDoctor]

This is really, really annoying.  Why would anyone want the AI to override an order that you personally gave?

I think the idea of stances are great.  But to override orders given by a player.  How could this possibly be a good thing?

[HectorOfTroy]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

This is really, really annoying.  Why would anyone want the AI to override an order that you personally gave?

I think the idea of stances are great.  But to override orders given by a player.  How could this possibly be a good thing?

I have all my fleets on manual and they always sit where I tell them and defend themelves and needed, works perfectly. If I put some ships on auto then they can do their auto thing and I'm happy with that .

If you have ships on auto then they will listen to your last order and once that is completed they will go off on their own as they are on auto.