Can't get ship to attack!

[Nikratio]

Hello,

I found a derelict ship and repaired it. Now I'd like to use it to attack another ship, but it just won't obey me. It accepts the attack order for just a few seconds, and then switches to "escape" on his own. Automation for the ship is *off*. What am I doing wrong?

Adding insult to injury, my ship has also a lot more firepower and is in better shape than its opponent. But I think I should be able to tell a ship to fight no matter how hopeless it seems...

I've uploaded the savegame to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/115 ... escape.dwg in case hat helps. I'm talking about the "Scarlet Banshee".

[PsyKoSnake]

If the ship is set to evade when military in sight of when attacked or something like that, you can do nothing. Just keep clicking to force the order and it will semi-work

[Nikratio]

There's no way to tell it *not* to evade?

[Blackanvil]

I haven't looked at the save but if you select the design you can change the stance and save it even if its a design you can't build yourself.

[Nikratio]

Doesn't seem to work for me, it's not set to evade, yet it's constantly escaping:

[fruitgnome]

Refuel it and retry to attack something.

[Ralzakark]

Repair it also - think if it was changed in a recent patch, but it used to be that even with a single point of damage ships would avoid combat.

But it's probably the low fuel level.

[zoommooz11]

ORIGINAL: Ralzakark

Repair it also - think if it was changed in a recent patch, but it used to be that even with a single point of damage ships would avoid combat.

But it's probably the low fuel level.

Couple of questions

1. Can anyone confirm this? Playing with the latest patch and I have a ship that keeps fleeing, and it has only one armor component damaged.

2. Do you send special forces in first, by themselves to take down defensive structures, or do they go in as part of a larger force?

[Aeson]

Do you send special forces in first, by themselves to take down defensive structures, or do they go in as part of a larger force?

Depends on how much effort you want to expend on managing your transports to ensure that the special forces go in first. I don't feel that it's worth the bother to keep the special forces on their own transports or in a separate group of ships. I would suggest that your special forces are much more likely to survive if you send them in with a big group against a well-garrisoned world than if you don't, but whether or not that matters really depends on what you wanted to accomplish with them.

Can anyone confirm this? Playing with the latest patch and I have a ship that keeps fleeing, and it has only one armor component damaged.

If your ship is low on shields, it has most likely hit its flee trigger, as ships are normally set to flee when their shields fall below 20% of maximum strength. Ships will also typically attempt to flee from opponents which are well beyond their weight class, so that size-300 frigate with 70 firepower and 200 shields will likely run away from that size-800 pirate capital ship with 300 firepower and 1000 shields even if the frigate is undamaged and has full shield strength since your frigate is clearly outmatched.

It's not really an answer to your question, but it's something to check on before blaming the ship's damaged status for making it abnormally eager to run.

[zoommooz11]

ORIGINAL: Aeson

Do you send special forces in first, by themselves to take down defensive structures, or do they go in as part of a larger force?

Depends on how much effort you want to expend on managing your transports to ensure that the special forces go in first. I don't feel that it's worth the bother to keep the special forces on their own transports or in a separate group of ships. I would suggest that your special forces are much more likely to survive if you send them in with a big group against a well-garrisoned world than if you don't, but whether or not that matters really depends on what you wanted to accomplish with them.

Can anyone confirm this? Playing with the latest patch and I have a ship that keeps fleeing, and it has only one armor component damaged.

If your ship is low on shields, it has most likely hit its flee trigger, as ships are normally set to flee when their shields fall below 20% of maximum strength. Ships will also typically attempt to flee from opponents which are well beyond their weight class, so that size-300 frigate with 70 firepower and 200 shields will likely run away from that size-800 pirate capital ship with 300 firepower and 1000 shields even if the frigate is undamaged and has full shield strength since your frigate is clearly outmatched.

It's not really an answer to your question, but it's something to check on before blaming the ship's damaged status for making it abnormally eager to run.

Thanks for the reply.

My ship had full shields, and the target it was refusing to attack was an almost destroyed mining station, a station that it (by itself) had previously almost destroyed before a little escort showed up that I attacked. Because the escort was quite quick it dragged my destroyer away from the mine, and in the ensuing battle the enemy escort was destroyed, my ship got the aforementioned one armor destroyed. It was then that my ship refused to go back and 'finish the job', and would flee a second or two after I gave the attack order, aimed at a derelict (no weapons or defense) mining station.

[Aeson]

It was then that my ship refused to go back and 'finish the job', and would flee a second or two after I gave the attack order, aimed at a derelict (no weapons or defense) mining station.

The description of your issue makes it very likely, in my opinion, that you're having fuel issues. Does the ship describe its mission as "escape from (target's name)," or does it say "refueling at (nearby refueling point)?" You can see what the ship's current mission is by looking at the text just under its name in the selection details box in the lower-left corner of the screen (in the screenshot given in this thread, you can see that the Scarlet Banshee's current mission is "Attack Scarlet Firestorm.") It's rather unlikely that a disabled mining station would be threatening enough to trigger any of the retreat conditions on any ship, though I suppose it's possible that it for some reason wants to repair a single armor plate badly enough to cancel your attack order.

[zoommooz11]

ORIGINAL: Aeson

It was then that my ship refused to go back and 'finish the job', and would flee a second or two after I gave the attack order, aimed at a derelict (no weapons or defense) mining station.

The description of your issue makes it very likely, in my opinion, that you're having fuel issues. Does the ship describe its mission as "escape from (target's name)," or does it say "refueling at (nearby refueling point)?" You can see what the ship's current mission is by looking at the text just under its name in the selection details box in the lower-left corner of the screen (in the screenshot given in this thread, you can see that the Scarlet Banshee's current mission is "Attack Scarlet Firestorm.") It's rather unlikely that a disabled mining station would be threatening enough to trigger any of the retreat conditions on any ship, though I suppose it's possible that it for some reason wants to repair a single armor plate badly enough to cancel your attack order.

Sorry, I should have also told you, nearly fully fueled. That why I was so puzzled, as I did check all of the 'usual' suspects. In the mission box it clearly states that it is fleeing from the almost destroyed mining station.

[Aeson]

Sorry, I should have also told you, nearly fully fueled. That why I was so puzzled, as I did check all of the 'usual' suspects. In the mission box it clearly states that it is fleeing from the almost destroyed mining station.

Well, in that case, all I can suggest that you do is that you create a post in the tech support subforum (tt.asp?forumid=792) with the savegame attached and give some information about how to reproduce the issue, and wait and see if the issue gets corrected.

In the meantime, I would suggest looking into the repair technologies (Energy and Construction, upper half of the Damage Control branch of the construction size techs, or the special Ikkuro repair bots in roughly the same area). That way there, your ships at least won't have to go home for repairs unless they also lose the repair module(s) and you'll only be waiting a few seconds for a single component to be replaced.

[fruitgnome]

How many ships are in the fleet? Fleet settings overwrite single ship settings.

[zoommooz11]

There was only one ship in the fleet (Which particular setting would override/cause this behavior?).

What I did was edited the design, with never flee ticked, and problem solved. Read a bit about this on steam and what I could gather was that the 'flee when 20%' option causes the ship to flee when taking direct hull damage (I am fighting a race which is heavy with rail guns)

[johanwanderer]

Rail gun chases ships very well. That's why it's great to have them early game when you have to deal with frequent pirate visits. Even if you have auto-repair, get component damage and most ships will flee (unless flee=never) In that case, maybe set the wepon range to stand off / all wepons instead of point-blank may help. Or, better yet, redesign your ships to deal with the issue instead of relying on "found" ships, which maybe good at one thing but terrible at another.