Build version: v1.3.0.4 Beta + Expansion and all DLCs (started with 1.3.0.3)
Severity: Low
Annoyance factor: Medium
Saved game:
This report is about 2 things:
- An advisor suggestion that, if accepted, results at best in a complete waste of time and resources (because it's obvious the fleet wouldn't be able to accomplish its mission) or, at worst, in the fleet's destruction
- The advisor message not having enough information to directly evaluate if it’s a good suggestion or not, and forcing the player to jump through UI hoops to figure it out.
- Sadist Advisor.png (142.5 KiB) Viewed 369 times
One of the problem with the message is that it mentions only the asteroid name where the Vordikar is located, not the system where it’s located (Varacta). Another one is that it doesn’t indicate, in the message, how strong is/are the Vordikar(s) in Varacta, despite the fact that the information does appear in “Dangerous Locations” (Vordikar(s) at Varacta 3, with a strength of 3,000, currently visible).
So, when getting the message above, either I accept or decline without having enough information to take an informed decision, or I need to:
* Zoom-in on the ping on the galaxy map, to identify the system’s name, so I can then get in “Dangerous Locations” to avaluate the advisor suggestion
* Go into “Dangerous Locations”, set the filter to Vordikar, and scroll until I see the Varacta 3 entry
* Only then am I able to decide if the advisor suggestion make sense or not (in this case, it doesn’t).
And if I was a new inexperienced player, would I know what to do to get those infos? Not sure...
In isolation, that’s not a big thing. But repeated a huge number of times in a game (not only for “Dangerous Locations”) is tedious. And tedious isn’t fun. For these particular messages, a simple solution would be to include the strength of the suggested target in the message. One should be able to decide to accept or decline the advisor suggestion with the info shown in said suggestion, without having to jump through hoops before being able to do so.
Now the advisor’s suggestion itself: sending a fleet of strength 1,815 to attack a Vordikar of strength 3,000. While my policies are set to an attack overmatch factor of 1.5. So not only the suggested fleet does not satisfy the 1.5 overmatch, but it is itself overmatched by the Vordikar by a factor of 1.6! In other words, the Vordikar(s) overmatch my fleet instead of my fleet overmatching the Vordikar(s).
As a test, I've accepted the advisor suggestion and let the game continue. And, unsurprisingly, as soon as the fleet (Strike Force 4) "saw" the vordikars in the system, its mission changed to "Move to Drogarus" (which in that case was the right decision: flee that location). But during the time it took the fleet to go there, and then to come back, it could have done something else that would have benefited my empire instead of just burning fuel.
Unless it's programmed to be terminally stupid, the advisor should have been able to predict that result from the info available to it when it made that suggestion.
