Ships do not engage hostile surface targets unless assigned ASuW missions :(

[JCR]

I tested it.
Put a hostile aircraft near a ship and the ship will fire upon it even if the aircraft does not attack the ship.

However, put a hostile ship in effective weapons range and nothing will happen, even if the ship does engage and hit the hostile ship.

This seems like a serious bug to me.

[Dimitris]

This is by design. Only air & sub hostile contacts are engaged automatically.

[JCR]

Why?
This makes any sort of surface engagements all but impossible, because you're going to have a free run with torpedo boats etc.
Please make this switchable, or at least make them engage ships in gun range.
I can understand that this would cause problems with missiles but guns should engage automatically.
This makes creating gun engagements utterly frustrating due to AI passivity and turns surface craft into some sort of exploit as they can sneak in and attack without any resistance.

[thewood1]

I question this design decision also. If anything should be documented, it is this.

This answers a ton of questions for me. I was starting to get frustrated with a couple scenarios I am building.

Does this mean if I assign a ship to ASW patrol, it won't defend itself from a surface threat?

[jdkbph]

Wow. Yeah it does explain a bit.

I think the logic should be adjusted so that any unit assigned to any type of mission can react in a reasonable and logical way to the presence of any type of threat. I can see where at times this may not be desirable, so I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to include options for this in the mission set up dialog. Eg, check boxes for auto-engage air and auto-engage surface when an ASW misison is selected, and so on.

JD

[mikmykWS]

Hi guys,

Agreed. I've logged this a something to be looked at soon.

Mike

[mrfeizhu]

The more you play the game the more you see there is weak documentation for more advanced play. This is not a game of discovery and quests its a game to simulate warfare. Most of the advanced games published by matrix games have very good documentation.

[mikmykWS]

I don't agree with that at all. The manual is pretty good considering the complexity of the game. There is also a considerable amount of videos out done by us and the community as a whole. Its definitely is not perfect but a considerable amount of effort went into it. If it wasn't we would have seen many more posts and would have responded.

I think the clear shortcoming is we've continued development and haven't updated it yet. We are planning an update once we wrap up the next update or so.

If you do see some specific clear misses in the manual post them in troubleshooting and we'll address.

Thanks!

Mike

[jdkbph]

Yeah, I think so. The CMANO documentation, while a bit fragmented here early on, is at least as complete as other similar products through the years. I hope we're not confusing product documentation with Tips and Strategy guides. That would be unfair ($$)... although I'm sure that will come eventually.

JD

[jdkbph]

Note to forum administration.

Can we add that little 5 or 10 minute delay before <Message edited by jdkbph -- 11/17/2013 12:34:23 PM> like most forums have? I mean 10 seconds after I post I always seem to find a few spelling/grammatical errors, and being "retentive", I MUST correct them. The number of my posts with this <Message edited> tag is getting to be a bit embarrassing!

Thank you.

JD

[mikmykWS]

Doubt it.

Mike

[smudge56]

Lol yep that's me bad smeller [;)] I mean speller.

ORIGINAL: jdkbph

Note to forum administration.

Can we add that little 5 or 10 minute delay before <Message edited by jdkbph -- 11/17/2013 12:34:23 PM> like most forums have? I mean 10 seconds after I post I always seem to find a few spelling/grammatical errors, and being "retentive", I MUST correct them. The number of my posts with this <Message edited> tag is getting to be a bit embarrassing!

Thank you.

JD

[jomni]

I dunno about you guys but I figured this out a long time ago and accepted the limitation.

[thewood1]

This is one that I have a hard time working around. A ship that won't defend itself is absolutely crazy. I figured I just didn't know the proper settings. There are somethings I can rationalize away, but a ship that comes within meters on an enemy without reaction concerns me. Think about all the scenarios where you don't see what the AI is doing. I now question any scenario that has any ships and the ability of the AI to react.

Frankly, this has been driving me crazy for a month. I was building scenarios where ASW ships get surprised by enemy ships and couldn't get them to react. Now I know why. IOW, I know I can work around it, but can the AI. Now I also suspect why some scenarios were easier than I expected, considering the forces against me.

[mikmykWS]

We know is important to you guys and we're looking at a fix.