I agree that ships in orbit should automatically fleet up to your logistics ability. Ships in orbit already gain an attack bonus and the Omega Defense System provides a HP bonus, so I see no need to provide attack/defense/HP bonuses. Either scrap the Orbital Fleet Manager or have it boost your logistics ability to the ships in orbit (i.e., replace the Hyperion Fleet Manager).

The attacker has too much of an advantage. Attacker Advantages are Exploitable!

Umm, no. The current system is advantageous, actually. Orbital fleet managers just mean that a good fleet can wipe out a planets defense in one or two attacks, then land the transports. I love it when AI's build them for this very reason, it makes killing them that much easier. THe AI needs to learn to launch it's good ships, fleet them, and attack incoming forces before they hit the planet like a human would. Making planets I'm not paying attention to more vulnerable to suprise invasion is not my idea of a good change.

Perhaps it would also be sensible to end a fleet's movement after it has attacked an orbital fleet?

Under the current system, it's not sensible to put more than 2 defensive ships in orbit around every planet - it's too costly in terms of maintenance. Thus, planets you're not paying attention to will be defeated in one or two attacks anyway.

Since the proposed change would fleet your ships according to your logistics, plus a significant attack bonus for being orbital, being attacked while in orbit is by no means a bad thing, unless you were going to be handily defeated anyway, in which case it doesn't make all that much of a difference, either way.

Losing 3 ships a turn (or in the AI's case 5-6 ships a turn) is not a good defensive strategy!

It is if they're old, crappy, tiny fighters that are holding the line (poorly) until the real warships arrive.

It's not like this would be an end of the world change, but it'd radically alter some of the military strategy of the game for me. I've never built an OFM, as far as I'm concerned fleeted ships in orbit are just an invitation to invasion and nothing else. Any ship that's worth something in a fight isn't going to be in orbit in the first place. Ships in orbit are solely there to block invasions, this just makes it easier to clear them.

I think this is a bad, bad, bad idea.

90% of the time it is better for the AI to NOT have their ships in fleets in orbit.

In my opinion the problem for the AI is when they build a fleet manager because that makes it easier to take out their ships in fewer turns.

It would acually be easier to defeat the AI if all ships were automatically fleeted.

- Livonya

a rather obvious question: why put ships in orbit to begin with? do they repair faster?

If your ships are so overpowering that the 1 movement point is a greater cost than taking on the fleet, we've got other problems. I don't see why the whole fleet manager thing couldn't exist for ships in orbit, anyway.

P.S. Yes, ships in orbit do repair MUCH faster, but with the new defense that doesn't mean much.

yes, it's modable. if you copy the ability code from the OFM and paste it into a shipyard to colony/civilization, it'll work just fine.

i've actually done something similar; i copied it to the shipyard and made a later upgrade available - one that added the hyperion defense ability of infinite logistics. i made the omega defense system something you could build one of on any planet. i also made the hyperion shipyard a little more powerful, adding a military production bonus, +2 speed, and a +25% ship bonus. i'm considering toning it down just a little, but adding these bonuses into an additional standard upgrade for the shipyard, rather than a civilization achievement. basically, i realized with these that in a larger galaxy, having one special planet with some minor boosts isn't all that special. so i decided some of the civilization achievments deserve to be more common, and others deserve to be more powerful.

that's my style of play, and the mod-ability of GC2 is one of my favorite things about it.

i think this point of view is biased towards very good players. when the AI's ships are about as good as yours, it's better for them to be in a fleet. if all the AI's ships are like tin cans compared to yours, it means your a good player and the AI can't keep up with you. fleet or no fleet, you're still gonna win.

This sort of thing falls under the *by design* category. I'm sure the devs have a rationale behind why ships orbiting a planet do not automatically fleet up. One I can come up with off the top of my head is if you have to attack a planet 5 times to destroy the 5 defenders that takes up 5 movement points. I know thats a small thing but even so holding the enemy in place for another fleet to move in and destroy is a valid tactic. Its just the AI rarely has another fleet to come save the day .

The reason the AI doesn't build the OFM is because it rarely researches Planetary Defenses itself. However if you trade it to them they will start using it.

I myself use the reverse of this tactic against the AI. Since it seems to avoid planets that have an orbital fleet manager when picking targets I tend to build them on important worlds and then leave other worlds with minimal defense. By doing this I can usually predict where the fleets will be sent meaning I can plan my military star bases and fleet deployment around a set cluster rather then having to worry about defending my entire empire.

Also lately I've noticed the more aggressive AIs have been building upgraded military star bases around their home planets. With enough upgrades each of those 4 defenders on the planet suddenly fight like a fleet themselves.

Everyone that's made a statement like that apparently doesn't understand how to use non-combat ships to delay an invasion force. Fleeting my space miner, freighter, and 2 constructors is NOT helpful to the defense of the homeworld.

This whole discussion is really about whether you think orbital combat is a delaying tactic or an actual means of defense. This in turn is really a question of where you tend to keep your good combat vessels. I get the sense that a lot of the "auto-fleet" crowd isn't using rally points, for example.

Choice is a good thing.

I personally want to choose when I want my defence in a fleet and when I do not.

The AI should be developed to do the same.

A unilateral change where all ships are in fleets reduces strategy and reduces choice.

Yes, there are times where an OFM will help, and in those situations the AI should use them.

When there is no advantage to a OFM then it would be better that the AI does not use it.

It makes no sense that all ships should automatically be fleeted, and like-wise it makes no sense that every AI or player should be forced to have their ships in fleets.

Why not argue that all ships in a square should automatically be fleeted?

Sometimes a fleet is a good idea sometimes a fleet is not a good idea.

The goal should to improve the AI to realize these difference rather than dumbing down the game so that the AI doesn't have to think.

- Livonya

PS: Personally, I would prefer that with a OFM you could decide to NOT fleet them. The AI would often be better off choosing to not fleet than being forced to fleet.

Except the AI *does* leave loads of ships in orbit. So this simple rules change, which is good for a bunch of other reasons as well (including just plain making sense), also has the effect of making the AI more competitive.

The fact is that without a *major* brain transplant, the AI sucks at manouver. Truly. It is just *not smart enough* to play an effective game of intercepting attackers, so it probably should leave some portion of its military sitting on its worlds to prevent players from simply seizing them all with very high speed transports and such.

I just played a game in which the Terrans were a pretty powerful neighbor and declared war on me. They were rated as #2 military in the galaxy. I flew around and started picking off the defenders around all their worlds, picking off their fleets flying around... and their military rating was still high. My transports took Earth itself. Why was their military rating still so high, I wondered? Then some of my cruisers went on a scouting mission toward one lonely Terran planet sitting way off in the upper right corner of the screen. They ended up in the middle of a HUGE armada. Battleship after cruiser after battleship. Seeing my ships seemed to trigger this armada, which promptly started to swarm all over the place. It took some real effort for me to take it all out. If the Terrans had that thing defending their worlds, or had thrown it at me in an attack or counterattack, I would have been in *trouble*. But it just sat in deep space twiddling its thumbs.

Turns out the far-off planet had some incredible bonus tiles that set it up as a *very* sweet manufacturing world. The Terrans were probably building most of their fleet there. But for some reason they just sort of collected it in space. Well *away* from their planets, but in what some piece of code might have decided was a geographically central part of their empire.

I've never had trouble outmanouvering the AI. Sometimes you can even just use a cheap decoy ship to lure them away.

Like it or not, the more this game encourages tricky manouvers the more the AI is screwed.




I can't think of when it'd matter whether I can take out the AI's ships in one turn versus two or three. On the other hand, there ARE cases when the AI will have several ships that could easily be picked off by one of my raiding parties (free experience!) but that would actually take out at least one of my attackers, or even require me to bring in a full-scale assault fleet, if they could fleet up.

It's not uncommon to have an AI declare war on me when I'm not actually ready for their total and brutal annihlation. In that case, a cheap and easy way to keep them down is to send raiding parties to pick off the non-fleeted ships defending their worlds.

Notice that the thread title starts with "for the AI's sake".

The AI isn't typically going to get any benefit from delaying an invasion force by a couple of turns, nor does it keep bunches of freighters and constructors sitting in orbit as far as I've seen.

And as for using freighters and constructors to delay an invasion, that's cheesy anyway. Unarmed ships shouldn't be able to delay an invasion for long periods of time.

I consider Orbital fleeting a liability in most cases. As someone else mentioned, if you dont have sensor nets in place so you cant see the enemy coming, you deserve what you get.

Since I can see the enemy coming, Im goign to sally forth and knock them out, if Im in the position to do so. If I NOT in the position to do so (they have a superior force), I then want to hold the planet as long as possible until reinforcements get there...In which case orbital fleeting is a liability. I want my ships to act as speed bumps, increasing the number of turns it takes to clear the way for troops invasion.

Not that I ever waste significant ships defending worlds, but thats another thread.

I love it it when the AI builds Orbital fleet managers on their worlds. I just means I can knock that world out and take it over in one turn, as opposed to 3 or 4. With the new speed nerfs, its tougher to clear the space of a "well defended" world in a single turn without one.


Orbital fleeting is for suckers.

All I know is that when I attack an AI planet I *hope* they have an OFM, because it'll mean I can invade them that much quicker. I've never run into a situation where an OFM helped the AI, but I have had times where the absence of one allowed a powerful AI fleet to disrupt my invasion plans because of the 2 turn delay.

I agree that the AI needs to be better about defense, I just don't think your proposal is an effective means to that end.

Hi!

Have you ever tried to disband your fleet after it destroyed the real ships in orbit, and then attacked those remaining puny defenders with each of your ships separately?

BR, Iztok

Well, I have played game where if they did have an orbital fleet manager I would probably be toast. These are games when I'm seriously behind in military tech but have to conduct an offensive anyway. It's painful enough tackling one Yor ship with 100 missile attack. Going after 6 at once I would just be tossing my fleets away.

I'd say that if you would rather attack a full fleet of AI ships than individually, then you are going to win regardless of whether they are fleeted or not.

Hmm, that's clever, I never thought of it. Meh, maybe it really doesn't matter then.

Not really. The AI's generally smart enough not to have it's better ships in orbit in my experience.

Don't confuse faster with easier. If the AI ships are crappy then you will will be able to clear them out faster. However, if the AI has decent ships you won't be able to exploit 1 HP rule for 1 on 1 ship battles! How about only combat ships are auto-fleeted in case you have multiple non-combat blockers? Attacker Advantages are Exploitable!

All advanced players agree it is usually better to defend planets with nearby fleets rather than ships in orbit. I only place combat ships in orbit:
(1) to heal or
(2) when I'm capturing the AI planets, if I capture a planet near an AI planet with a troop transport which I don't have enough movement left to destroy


The ships in orbit gain an attack bonus so fleeted in orbit they may fair better then attacking especially if the planet has the Omega defense system. For the most part I agree orbital defenders are a waste but that is the strategy the AI is using and we are aiming to help the AI and new players.

This is a good idea, and if Stardock doesn't make it canon, I will mod for my own games. IME, the AI does keep its best ships in orbit as often as not. Mascrinthus is correct, when both sides have the strong military tech the 1 hp rule reigns supreme. Aside from the fact that it is currently bugged and often heals victorious ships when the 1 hp rule is invoked, it is quite exploitable. As already mentioned, the player can always out think the AI when it comes to maneuvering.

In most games, AI's would fare much better with automatic orbital fleets. True, it would likely hinder AI's destroying each other, but they aren't very good at this anyway. It usually takes them a long time to take out minor races, and they very seldom completely eliminate major races in my games on huge maps.

Sure...when Im attacking with fleets. But Since High defense mega ships rule the game, I freqently attack with a single ship. If I need a fleet to take the world, yes, Ill fleet up to punch out the toughest defenders, and split up to take out the weak ones, if thats appropriate to the enemy mix.


But we're splitting hairs here. Orbital fleeting is a complete waste of time. If you are actually in the position to have to defend your world with the ships in orbit to any attacking force where youre in damnger of losing...most likely because youve failed to build proper sensor net and been caught by suprise... youve already lost that battle.


At this point, youre better off scrambling your ships out of orbit so they survive and regroup en masse somewhere else, and just kill the troop transports ( the only kind of ship thats any real danger to you) as they come in, which the AI still doesnt defend worth a damn, despite promises made.


You have to have done so many things wrong to put yourself in the position of getting into a meaninful orbital battle over one of your worlds, your strategy needs evaluated far before the issue of orbital fleets comes into play. The OFM is routinely one of the first thigns I destroy upon taking over a planet, and I can only hope the AI builds them to facilitate their assimilation into my empire.

Bingjack, you may want to revisit the thread title. The point was to help the AI and make conquest more challenging. I'm finding it hard to imagine under what conditions not having AI fleets in orbit would be an advantage for the player.

I'm playing a game where the Drengin have at least two medium hull ships with > 100 attack in orbit around most planets. I can pick them off one by one with my large hulls, only losing one when the math behind the 1 hp rule somehow ends up in the Drengin's favor. If only two of these ships were fleeted, I would be faced with much heavier losses and lose one of my expensive ships for each planet. It wouldn't stop me, but the Drengin would be drawing some blood in exchange for their expensive ships.

You know, the mere fact that there's as much disagreement as there is is a rather solid endorsement of leaving it free choice. The AI needs to understand when it's advantageous to build an OFM and when it's not (and no matter what the detractors say, sometimes it's definitely not). Forcing fleeting upon it in all circumstances doesn't solve anything.