Fleet posture--defend not working

[morik]

So I have automation disabled for pretty much everything.
I manually hit "automate" on certain fleets.

Some fleets I have set to 'defend' with a range of sector, and have them on automate. I have set a home base for them.
These ships never do anything other than move back to their base if they weren't there when I start automation. Pirates attack a nearby mine (in the same system)--the fleet does nothing. Yes I double checked the range I have set on the fleet posture--defend home base and sector.

Pirates also attacked a nearby system, within the blue circle from 'show fleet postures'. No response.

On the other hand, if a fleet has an attack posture and automate on, they do fly around attacking stuff... what gives?

Changing engagement stance from "when attacked" to "system targets" helps a little, but doesn't solve the problem.
Now ships will engage targets within the system (showing 'no mission, engage system targets'), but still won't go defend nearby systems.

I want to post guard fleets in several sectors, but they don't respond to anything .

[Antoon]

Just disable automation on those fleets with postures and everything will be fine.^^
The manual says: "Fleet postures allow the player a middle ground between full automation
and manual control."
And that's the way it is.

[Hikikomori]

Automation off, setting to defend, next to the defend/attack button the range(system/sector/anywhere), and then at the bottom right corner of the info screen the other stance button set to the same(i.e. not attack if attacked).

Then they usually do attack in their system/sector or whatever i set.

[morik]

Hmm, so I asked this question on the steam forums as well and someone said my issue was that defense postured fleets don't care about pirates, so won't do anything when pirates show up.

Disabling automation makes it so they won't even go back to the system they are supposed to defend...

Also, if engagement stance is 'engage system targets', it seems they only engage in that system--not in the sector they are supposed to be defending.

[Hikikomori]

Bothered me also, they fly to defend something, and then just sit there until something else in their area shows up, instead of going back to their home base and wait there.

I am pretty sure my ships have flown to other systems with the settings something like defend, sector, system targets, but i could be mistaken. I rarely ever play with anything automated.

Otherwise my blood pressure is going through the roof every time the AI does anything.

[Retreat1970]

Defend posture works well, but it isn't instantaneous. Imagine a defence fleet in a nearby system, gets a call from another system that they're under attack, realizes it's in it's defence zone, ramps up the warp drives, warps to the system, amd the enemy is long gone. I've never had a situation where defence postured fleets never respond eventually, but usually they're useless if the threat is too far away (sector and nearby sometimes). Most times I try and make overlapping zones of coverage so I can get at least one group to react fast enough. There is a sense of realism here though. How quickly could you respond, and would it be worth it?

[morik]

Hmm, so it is always faster if, as soon as I get attack notification, I pause, grab the fleet manually, and send them over?

If I wait for an automated reaction, it seems like whatever the target was would be blown away before they get there...

[silentdeth]

I believe the idea is to not just rely on fleets, but also have a bunch of automated frigates running around to hold off any attack long enough for the fleet to arrive.

[morik]

As in, build a bunch of frigates and don't put them in a fleet and automate each of them?
Manually have a few patrol each individual sector I have stuff in? (That would be a HUGE pain)
Something else?
I'd rather not for various reasons. (I like having all my military ships in a fleet so that when I build new ones and want to assign to a fleet, it is easy to get them all in a row by sorting military ships by fleet... then I can just assign them all to a fleet really easily. For instance.)

I'd rather my defending fleets just instantly start up hypderdrive and jump to defend locations... I can do so manually; its frustrating if the automation won't do so as well.

So just to confirm, it sounds like people are saying:
- I am not misconfiguring my fleets.
- This is working as intended--the intention is for the automated fleet defense postures to delay response, and if I don't like it I either have to handle this manually, or I have to pay a bunch more maintenance and probably fuel costs to have a bunch of automated frigates run around doing what the defending fleets should be doing in the first place?


Or is it that they will in fact go ASAP? I assumed they weren't doing anything as they still showed 'no mission'--thus I didn't wait to see if they were in fact spinning up hyperdrive. I assumed that 'no mission' meant they hadn't started the hyperdrive at all, and were planning on just sitting on their asses. (Should I expect to see a mission show up on them indicating they are on their way to defend stuff?)

[fruitgnome]

Do my defending fleets start to defend if something is detected to be attacked or not until something is attacked. With other words do my fleets start if there is the pop-up a fleet is on their way to attack someting?
Or do they start not until something is attacked?

[Retreat1970]

I've only seen them react once something is attacked. The way I look at it is, I am the Empire leader. I set the general orders. How they play out is, well, undesirable sometimes, but I like it that way. Just how I play. If you want a perfect outcome all the time then you will have to micromanage.

[Antarian]

This same problem existed with the previous version, in fact it was worse.

You can either have your ships automated and patrol themselves, in which case they will defend their system well, against military as well as pirate and monster types.

...Or you can full control and get the job done properly with a fleet.

Never found any middle ground. The AI fleets seem have been handed the gold plated automation, and we humans get stuck with the lead plated version.

In the previous version it was worse, in a big battle you had to constantly re-assign targets to ships. Recently I had a big fleet attack one of my defended bases, and I was very pleased to see my ships constantly acquire new targets and attack as previous ones were destroyed. That is light years ahead of the last version, you often had to micro-manage the ships individually or they would just sit there on coffee break as their buddies were blown up right beside them.

Two things this game needed right from the beginning and still need today:

- Ability to turn on target tracking in a battle to show all of your ships' current targets.

- Ability to have battles carried out in 'slow time', so that months don't go by outside (that you need to be managing) while your trapped in a huge fleet battle.

So at some point on zoom in, or perhaps entering some sort of battle mode, time slows to minutes passing instead of days, as per the default clock.

You will see the true benefit of this when you get into 3 major fleet battles simultaneously. You will feel like the clown on stage running around trying to keep all the plates on sticks spinning.