Matrix Games Forums

Can we have a hunter / killer fleet role for dedicated monster hunter fleets? I find most of my fleets wandering around deploying aimlessly, and I have to manually send them to kill space fauna. I want a designation that will kill things, repair refuel, upgrade, and kill more things.

Given that creature locations are mostly static, the programming should be much easier than trying to cover all potential AI threats. Might need a provision to increase fleet strength when faced with larger threats, such as the Hive.

+1. That's a good idea. Factions like Teekans who have a victory condition tied to creature hunting would benefit from the designation as well.

We can currently have fleets scour dangerous locations (though I'm not sure you can automate that behavior with much granularity), but such locations often include significant threats other than space fauna. If the option was granular "Seek and destroy [CreatureType/AllCreatures only/non-creature threats/any threat]", we could really hone our fleet loadouts for domestic housekeeping, which would be quite nice.

Thanks, we'll consider this for future improvement.

How responsive are your attack fleets when queue orders to attack and investigate threats? Do you have enough fleets available that are within engagement range and strength that they should be able to reach your targets?

MaximKI wrote: Mon Jul 06, 2026 7:44 pm Thanks, we'll consider this for future improvement.

How responsive are your attack fleets when queue orders to attack and investigate threats? Do you have enough fleets available that are within engagement range and strength that they should be able to reach your targets?

I play on large maps, so no. They are not responsive at all, and they keep moving around rather than settling on a planet / starbase and killing everything in sight they can before moving on. They also prioritize patrolling my borders over cleaning up my interior (AI focused, not creature stomping focus). And they keep running off to refuel, or staging, or waiting for fuel tankers half way to their target. Sensible behavior in an aggressive war, silly behavior when weasel stomping.

How many defense fleets do you have, and what are the engagement settings set to on your fleets?

MaximKI wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 5:17 pm How many defense fleets do you have, and what are the engagement settings set to on your fleets?

No defense fleets, they stay to close to home / too short ranged. When I did build them, I changed their engagement range to max, and then changed them to attack fleets, and they swapped to the attack fleet template and started building more ships and doubled in size (my attack fleets are twice the size of my defense fleets, but lack transports and fuel tankers). I still had to manually have them kill things, but they would often refuse to do so, wait to stage from, wait for fuel tankers, or disengage to refuel. Like all my fleets, when I automate them they spend all of their time wandering around, deploying against AI nations, and refitting. When I automate fleet creation, I get way too many fleets that are too small to do anything useful.

One of the reason I asked for a long range fuel setting was it increased engagement range of my fleets.

Xmudder wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 9:24 pm

MaximKI wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 5:17 pm How many defense fleets do you have, and what are the engagement settings set to on your fleets?

No defense fleets, they stay to close to home / too short ranged. When I did build them, I changed their engagement range to max, and then changed them to attack fleets, and they swapped to the attack fleet template and started building more ships and doubled in size (my attack fleets are twice the size of my defense fleets, but lack transports and fuel tankers). I still had to manually have them kill things, but they would often refuse to do so, wait to stage from, wait for fuel tankers, or disengage to refuel. Like all my fleets, when I automate them they spend all of their time wandering around, deploying against AI nations, and refitting. When I automate fleet creation, I get way too many fleets that are too small to do anything useful.

One of the reason I asked for a long range fuel setting was it increased engagement range of my fleets.

From my testing and working with AI and modding AI behaviors the AI work really bad with large fleets, you are better off with smaller AI fleets. The AI will coordinate attack and invasion fleets for the threats and needs and send multiple fleets. If you have just a few large fleets the AI will likely send the entire fleet to repair/refit or refuel wasting allot of time for ships that don't need repair or refueling.

If you allow the AI to set the home base you also want more fleet not less... otherwise you are likely to see the AI move around the fleet too much.

If you use the fleet management tools and set the fleet settings it can be good to set the fleets to fixed ranges that are about 20-25% of their fuel capacity or at least to 33%... even at 33% I often find attack fleets to run out of fuel too much with fleets sitting and wait to refuel or running back to a spaceport to refuel.

AI designs need to have at least 500M range to work properly at all in AI fleets, around 1000M is preferable for attack fleets. If you designate home bases on your own and individually control fleet settings you can get away with much leaner fuel capacity for AI ship range.

Jorgen_CAB wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2026 8:51 pm
From my testing and working with AI and modding AI behaviors the AI work really bad with large fleets, you are better off with smaller AI fleets. The AI will coordinate attack and invasion fleets for the threats and needs and send multiple fleets. If you have just a few large fleets the AI will likely send the entire fleet to repair/refit or refuel wasting allot of time for ships that don't need repair or refueling.

If you allow the AI to set the home base you also want more fleet not less... otherwise you are likely to see the AI move around the fleet too much.

If you use the fleet management tools and set the fleet settings it can be good to set the fleets to fixed ranges that are about 20-25% of their fuel capacity or at least to 33%... even at 33% I often find attack fleets to run out of fuel too much with fleets sitting and wait to refuel or running back to a spaceport to refuel.

AI designs need to have at least 500M range to work properly at all in AI fleets, around 1000M is preferable for attack fleets. If you designate home bases on your own and individually control fleet settings you can get away with much leaner fuel capacity for AI ship range.

What Fleet Template settings do you generally use? Are you also using the fleet Template Upgrades?

From my testing and working with AI and modding AI behaviors the AI work really bad with large fleets, you are better off with smaller AI fleets. The AI will coordinate attack and invasion fleets for the threats and needs and send multiple fleets. If you have just a few large fleets the AI will likely send the entire fleet to repair/refit or refuel wasting allot of time for ships that don't need repair or refueling.

If you allow the AI to set the home base you also want more fleet not less... otherwise you are likely to see the AI move around the fleet too much.

I've noticed that, which is why I keep my big fleets on manual. But if I have small fleets they are too small to do their job, especially once the rift striders arrive, or the 30k hive fleets. Also, the financial problems are getting worse, not better, so I can not afford multiple fleets anymore. Each game I start with each new build ends up even more strapped for cash, and with smaller fleets than the last game, and even more sluggish mining base building.

I will try reducing the size of my automated fleets, once their firepower gets above 5k or so, so I can have more of them.

arvcran2 wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2026 4:01 pm

Jorgen_CAB wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2026 8:51 pm
From my testing and working with AI and modding AI behaviors the AI work really bad with large fleets, you are better off with smaller AI fleets. The AI will coordinate attack and invasion fleets for the threats and needs and send multiple fleets. If you have just a few large fleets the AI will likely send the entire fleet to repair/refit or refuel wasting allot of time for ships that don't need repair or refueling.

If you allow the AI to set the home base you also want more fleet not less... otherwise you are likely to see the AI move around the fleet too much.

If you use the fleet management tools and set the fleet settings it can be good to set the fleets to fixed ranges that are about 20-25% of their fuel capacity or at least to 33%... even at 33% I often find attack fleets to run out of fuel too much with fleets sitting and wait to refuel or running back to a spaceport to refuel.

AI designs need to have at least 500M range to work properly at all in AI fleets, around 1000M is preferable for attack fleets. If you designate home bases on your own and individually control fleet settings you can get away with much leaner fuel capacity for AI ship range.

What Fleet Template settings do you generally use? Are you also using the fleet Template Upgrades?

That depends what you mean... for modding it is about how the AI use their fleets and then I certainly used the upgrade feature of the fleets in the templates xml files... in game I don't tend to use AI automation that much other than defensive fleets and I always station their home base as well... so I don't use that much AI automation when I play, this is mostly for AI empires I have done testing and modding.

Xmudder wrote: Mon Jul 13, 2026 6:34 pm

From my testing and working with AI and modding AI behaviors the AI work really bad with large fleets, you are better off with smaller AI fleets. The AI will coordinate attack and invasion fleets for the threats and needs and send multiple fleets. If you have just a few large fleets the AI will likely send the entire fleet to repair/refit or refuel wasting allot of time for ships that don't need repair or refueling.

If you allow the AI to set the home base you also want more fleet not less... otherwise you are likely to see the AI move around the fleet too much.

I've noticed that, which is why I keep my big fleets on manual. But if I have small fleets they are too small to do their job, especially once the rift striders arrive, or the 30k hive fleets. Also, the financial problems are getting worse, not better, so I can not afford multiple fleets anymore. Each game I start with each new build ends up even more strapped for cash, and with smaller fleets than the last game, and even more sluggish mining base building.

I will try reducing the size of my automated fleets, once their firepower gets above 5k or so, so I can have more of them.

Well... I never personally allow the AI to manage attack and invasions fleets... only raiding and defence fleets at most. During a war I tend to take control of some defence fleets as well.

I still keep fleets rather small, defence fleets are usually 3-5 ships at most while attack fleets are about 10-15 ships or so depending on their specialization and the size of the ships. I then coordinate fleets manually so this is not a good example of how AI or automation handles things.

Automation attack fleets need to be relatively powerful but defensive fleets should be weak (cheap) and mainly for skirmishing enemies and combat pirates. But even in automation you still need to keep the attack fleet not too big, the AI simply don't handle it well and will coordinate several smaller attack fleets to one target if necessary.

Do not keep many single military ships patrolling, these really don't help much. Better to form your frigates and escorts into small defence fleets of 3-5 ships and have the AI move them around and then perhaps set your attack and invasion fleets on manual if you find the AI don't do what you want. But you can get the AI to work fairly well by tasking them and using the tools given to you... but do not give the AI huge fleets, it will only work in the short term not long term as fleets get scattered and go back for repair and refuel and leave other fleets to fend for themselves etc. But you also need to allow the AI to peel of wounded ships, that reduce the likelihood that a fleet go back to a base. Automation and AI will never be as good as the player to judge when it is time to withdraw a fleet or move them away, refuel and where to do this. The AI simply work with threat levels and thresholds and act accordingly.

My attack fleets are usually 8 frigates, 8 destroyers, up to 4 cruisers, 4 fuel tankers, and a troop ship. Sometimes a battleship or carrier. Defense fleets are half that. Sound like I should trim that back.