How do you get your ships to protect a position but not react outside the area you designate to protect???

[Midnitewolf]

Ok at witts end here.

I am trying to build a defensive platform at the friendly gate side to block the Xenon from sending ships though. I have overwhelming firepower set to protect the unbuilt station but while were are waiting for resources to build it, the Xenon are sending Kamikazes through one after the other doing a few points of damage to the build storage each time they come though and it looks like they are going to pop it before I can get a start on building.

Ok so my thought was to go through the gate and hold it form the other side. Simple easy right? Wrong. They have a station I am going to guess is about 50-100 km away from the gate so I set my Fleet to "Protect" position with a reaction radius of 20 km from the gate itself meaning that they shouldn't react to the Station 50-100km a way right? Wrong. As soon as my ships get through the gate, have of them immediately beeline directly for the station and get fried.

What they hell do I need to do to get my damn fleet to just come thought the gate and sit on it without reacting to a station at least 30km further out than the reaction radius I set????

Seriously, I want to throw my keyboard across the room already. I have about 550 hours invested in this game and THIS STUPIDITY has me about ready to uninstall the game. What dev in their right mind writes a program that allows us to designate a reaction radius but then has the AI totally ignore the order and do whatever the hell it wants. So damn tired of fighting the fricken UI and Command system to the point the game isn't enjoyable at all.

FIX YOUR DAMN GAME EGOSOFT!!!!


Edit: Sorry for ending it in a Rant but my god how this game makes things so difficult for no reason what so ever.

The solution was to send them to protect an area of just 1km. That got the ships to jump in very tight, close formation and not aggro on the station. Of course the issue now was that my fleet wouldn't shoot at the big scary Xenon sitting 15 km away blasting at them, well none of them would shoot that were hit first anyway. This cost me a Destroyer before I realized what was happening and manually ordered my ships to attack. I then could slowly expand my protection bubble out a bit since all the ships were tucked in close.

Of course this leads to another issue as any fighter set to interception don't seem to recognize the reaction radius limitation at all and immediately exceed that radius chasing after anything they can see....WHICH tends to bring my carrier into conflict with the station at good 60-80 km away <sigh>. So I had to take my fighters off interception....except now they just sit on the carrier doing nothing, I guess because my carrier didn't aggro <sigh>.

Why does it have to be like this when it should be as simple as setting a reaction radius and nothing and no one will attack, chase or react to anything outside that radius?

[MHDriver]

This has been an issue since day one. I set the defensive perimeter to just 15km and set them to protect position instead of protect station but even with that they still wander off and invariably my build plot get destroyed by some single wayward Xenon M. Have to hand it to ES for making build plots destructible and only 20% structure when laid down. Perfect way to inject drama into the game and makes perfect sense that a point in space is destructible... no.. not really.

[Midnitewolf]

This has been an issue since day one. I set the defensive perimeter to just 15km and set them to protect position instead of protect station but even with that they still wander off and invariably my build plot get destroyed by some single wayward Xenon M. Have to hand it to ES for making build plots destructible and only 20% structure when laid down. Perfect way to inject drama into the game and makes perfect sense that a point in space is destructible... no.. not really.

I actually don't mind that part. I think it is pretty brilliant of the AI to do a series of suicide attacks to take out the build storage and prevent me building the platform. What I don't like is my ships not obeying my command, especially when each Cap ship has a minimum of 4 star captain in them. I mean if I was in command of a US aircraft carrier and I ordered my pilots to not engage any targets beyond 20 km away, chances are 99% of the time they aren't going to engage more than 20km. It is took damn hard to expect something similar in game even with the stars system used to simulate the skills of real pilots. I would have to say the Navy wouldn't even let a recruit into the cockpit if he couldn't follow basic orders reliably.

<Sigh>, this game is just so damn good and fun but it is constantly spoiled by these wonky mechanics.

[MHDriver]

This has been an issue since day one. I set the defensive perimeter to just 15km and set them to protect position instead of protect station but even with that they still wander off and invariably my build plot get destroyed by some single wayward Xenon M. Have to hand it to ES for making build plots destructible and only 20% structure when laid down. Perfect way to inject drama into the game and makes perfect sense that a point in space is destructible... no.. not really.

I actually don't mind that part. I think it is pretty brilliant of the AI to do a series of suicide attacks to take out the build storage and prevent me building the platform. What I don't like is my ships not obeying my command, especially when each Cap ship has a minimum of 4 star captain in them. I mean if I was in command of a US aircraft carrier and I ordered my pilots to not engage any targets beyond 20 km away, chances are 99% of the time they aren't going to engage more than 20km. It is took damn hard to expect something similar in game even with the stars system used to simulate the skills of real pilots. I would have to say the Navy wouldn't even let a recruit into the cockpit if he couldn't follow basic orders reliably.

<Sigh>, this game is just so damn good and fun but it is constantly spoiled by these wonky mechanics.

Yes it would be fine if that is in fact what they do but it isn't. NPC do not attack the build storage, they completely ignore the ware containers of the build storage and attack the build plot. A spot in space where an unrendered initial structure sits that is vulnerable to attack and destruction with minimal firepower. Attacking and destroying the wares at the build storage would be sensible and cause you to lose wares and increase the cost of the construction but destroying the plot not only causes you to lose the build storage but that particular spot in space can not be used for several hours. So ship wandering out of their assigned zones and allowing build plot to be destroyed is a PItA and not sensible. Imo of course.

[Midnitewolf]

This has been an issue since day one. I set the defensive perimeter to just 15km and set them to protect position instead of protect station but even with that they still wander off and invariably my build plot get destroyed by some single wayward Xenon M. Have to hand it to ES for making build plots destructible and only 20% structure when laid down. Perfect way to inject drama into the game and makes perfect sense that a point in space is destructible... no.. not really.

I actually don't mind that part. I think it is pretty brilliant of the AI to do a series of suicide attacks to take out the build storage and prevent me building the platform. What I don't like is my ships not obeying my command, especially when each Cap ship has a minimum of 4 star captain in them. I mean if I was in command of a US aircraft carrier and I ordered my pilots to not engage any targets beyond 20 km away, chances are 99% of the time they aren't going to engage more than 20km. It is took damn hard to expect something similar in game even with the stars system used to simulate the skills of real pilots. I would have to say the Navy wouldn't even let a recruit into the cockpit if he couldn't follow basic orders reliably.

<Sigh>, this game is just so damn good and fun but it is constantly spoiled by these wonky mechanics.

Yes it would be fine if that is in fact what they do but it isn't. NPC do not attack the build storage, they completely ignore the ware containers of the build storage and attack the build plot. A spot in space where an unrendered initial structure sits that is vulnerable to attack and destruction with minimal firepower. Attacking and destroying the wares at the build storage would be sensible and cause you to lose wares and increase the cost of the construction but destroying the plot not only causes you to lose the build storage but that particular spot in space can not be used for several hours. So ship wandering out of their assigned zones and allowing build plot to be destroyed is a PItA and not sensible. Imo of course.

Yes you are right of course though I am pretty sure you lose everything in build storage when they shoot the empty spot in space that magically stops your construction.

[af_2017]

fleet configuration:
- some large ship (raptor)
- subordinates in attack role, also large ships (raptors)

order first one to protect position, adjust radius, position, make sure the bubble does include only objects you want

works for me always.

[MHDriver]

I actually don't mind that part. I think it is pretty brilliant of the AI to do a series of suicide attacks to take out the build storage and prevent me building the platform. What I don't like is my ships not obeying my command, especially when each Cap ship has a minimum of 4 star captain in them. I mean if I was in command of a US aircraft carrier and I ordered my pilots to not engage any targets beyond 20 km away, chances are 99% of the time they aren't going to engage more than 20km. It is took damn hard to expect something similar in game even with the stars system used to simulate the skills of real pilots. I would have to say the Navy wouldn't even let a recruit into the cockpit if he couldn't follow basic orders reliably.

<Sigh>, this game is just so damn good and fun but it is constantly spoiled by these wonky mechanics.

Yes it would be fine if that is in fact what they do but it isn't. NPC do not attack the build storage, they completely ignore the ware containers of the build storage and attack the build plot. A spot in space where an unrendered initial structure sits that is vulnerable to attack and destruction with minimal firepower. Attacking and destroying the wares at the build storage would be sensible and cause you to lose wares and increase the cost of the construction but destroying the plot not only causes you to lose the build storage but that particular spot in space can not be used for several hours. So ship wandering out of their assigned zones and allowing build plot to be destroyed is a PItA and not sensible. Imo of course.

Yes you are right of course though I am pretty sure you lose everything in build storage when they shoot the empty spot in space that magically stops your construction.

Everything that is currently in the build storage will remain there. You can find orphaned build storages all over the galaxy where station build plots were destroyed leaving unused wares behind. You can shoot the build storage containers and loot all the wares with a large freighter and use them yourself or sell them. Good way to speed up you own builds is to loot surrounding orphaned build storage.

[Maebius]

Everything that is currently in the build storage will remain there. You can find orphaned build storages all over the galaxy where station build plots were destroyed leaving unused wares behind. You can shoot the build storage containers and loot all the wares with a large freighter and use them yourself or sell them. Good way to speed up you own builds is to loot surrounding orphaned build storage.

Yes but then you realize you can't filter the map to see them(or loot containers for that matter) so.... what? Visually scout for them? They even took our video enhancement googles away!