Fleet Battle AI: pick on someone your own size!!!

from GalCiv2 Forums
The fleet battle AI needs to learn the phrase: pick on someone your own size!

So two fleets with dreadnoughts engage. You are attacking, and what does your dreadknought do?

It empties its arsenals on 1 or at best 2 medium hulled near-top-of-line enemy ships! This is really a terrible tactic. While your fleet tackles all the enemy small vessels, enemy dreadnoughts sit there safe and sound and pick off your dreadnought one at a time.

And please, if you have a fleet with 5 dreadnoughts, it is so very wrong to see on the open salvo, it wastes all that firepower on medium-hulled under-gunned vessels posing no mortal threats and score only 5 or 6 kills, watch in horror as enemy dreadnoughts sit back and pick off your dreadnoughts.

This is so wrong on 2 levels
1) the threat assessment is wrong; kill off big dangerous ships first; if I am going to lose the engagement because of ship-counts, I rather see 5 dreadnoughts nail some enemy dreadnoughts than NONE.

The truth is, I have engaged in battles with enemy fleets (of the same tech) with and without dreadnoughts. If the enemy fleets have no single dreadnought, my fleet wipe out enemy fleet (with higher logistics count) without losing any ship. If there is even just 1 dreadnought, I watch in horror as that enemy dreadnought goes for my dreadnought first.

2) a dreadnought with attack rating of 200+ should not be wasting its entire salvo on a medium-hulled enemy ship with hp of 25.
7,477 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
hmmm, a thought, the battles are made in that way, that the biggest firepower, smallest HP/DEF ships are attacked first, but, what if they are not a threat at all, like 25hp 0 armor and 10 lasers, while you have 10 shields; while his capital ship have 100hp, 15 mass drivers and 10 armor (you have 15 mass drivers), those small buggers are not realy as big threat as the big capital ship is, even with their combined firepower against your shields...

didn't realy tried it, but is this balanced/correct?
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While we're on the topic. Capital ships with high Attack numbers SHOULD attack multiple targets at once, especially if they have multiple weapons mounted on the hardpoints. I mean it's reasonable to assume, not all firepower is concentrated in one big gun, that shoots in a single direction.

That's the whole point of capital ships - > multiple weapons, multiple targets -> supression, while the smaller ships outflank and pound them to dust..

Or?
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If capital ships could attack multiple targets the game would be unbalanced.

Capital ships are already better then their logistical equivalent in smaller ships, so what's the point in making them stronger?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
hmmm, a thought, the battles are made in that way, that the biggest firepower, smallest HP/DEF ships are attacked first, but, what if they are not a threat at all, like 25hp 0 armor and 10 lasers, while you have 10 shields;


Yes, I think the priority formula could be a lot smarter. It's pretty easy to figure out any given ship's expected damage against any other. That can be folded in for a better priority. Say, attack the ship where the expected damage it can do this turn, divided by the number of turns expected to kill it, is maximum. That would focus fire on the ship whose defences are weakest against your attacks and whose attacks are strongest against your defences.

If you want to get into things like preventing overkill, or which or your ships should fire first, or considering independent targets, it could get a lot more complicated.