How to Make Destroyers use their Main Batteries

[Issart]

Please..

These snail head captains are always going CQC with target stations and pass away like popcorns. I really need a way to save their lives for their wives and children.

Seriously

Is there any way to order your destroyer captains not go YARRRRRRR!! on stations and give the enemy the pleasure of fire works? For example let them keep distance , use their main batteries to shoot from out range?
If I am asking too much here, at least let them face towards their targets and fight like a man. NOT just charge into station's red zone and perform some weird gyro dance facing main guns anywhere but their targets?

This Is Disaster When Comes To Siege!

[lordmuck]

Nope not really, they are just too dumb to wipe their own rear end.
However! broadside with all the turrets im sure would do much more damage (I think)

At the same time you could try some other tactic, like s ships with torps / even swarm missiles to take out all the surface targets (mostly the missile turrets and plasma) This will for sure help you out.

[leoriq]

Try to give the destroyer a "fly to" order that's 8 km from station, maybe it will do the trick. I definitely saw an Odysseus shooting at station from afar with his main battery only.

Regarding broadside - Rattlesnake has 4 L turrets and 4 main batteries to fire ahead, no broadside can match that

[martimus]

That's funny, when I tell my group of destroyers to attack a station, they only use the main batteries. It takes forever for them to actually destroy it because of that.

[Kintanar]

I have a fleet of 1 Colossus and 4 Behemoth Destroyers. When i order my destroyers to attack a station, they stay at range using their main weapons only, it take ages to destroy a station, but when they have destroyed enough defenses, i send my bombers (Nemesis Sentinel with light torpedoes) to finish the task. My captains exist since the release of the game, so they have more than 1 year of experience and currently are highly trained. I think the behavior capabilities relay on XP of the captain.

[Andrey12y]

... When i order my destroyers to attack a station, they stay at range using their main weapons only ...

Can you say how much piloting stars they have, pls

[Pauley Mccoy]

Yes this is very detrimental to the game - it takes so many hours to get a captain to high level that if you want a decent fleet of good captains you'll be doing nothing but training new captains. You should be able to order a ship to hold then fire at will without going full retard regardless of how many stars he does or does not have.

[bbn]

Interesting situation I observed. Early game (5:46 total time), I was cruising back to Argon Prime through 2nd Contact Flashpoint. HOP is attacking ANT Defence Platform with couple (8!) of Odysseus with escort of a few Ms (2 Gorgons, 1 Nemesis). Most of destroyers kept nicely out of range of DP turrets and M ships were distracting DP platform (drawing fire from turrets) with only occasionally taking a hit. End result: the platform is no more, HOP lost just one destroyer. I've scanned a few of the ships and their were all with captains of 3+ starts in both piloting and morale. I'm now on 3.2 Beta, so I don't know if that changed something, but the battle looked actually not "dumb AI ramming the station" but "good-enough AI taking down the station almost effortlessly and quickly".

Don't know if it's new beta thing, or early game thing (I suspect that with more going on in the universe the AI has less CPU time to do it's computations). Still a few things could be improved:
- a bit more use of main batteries
- moving further away (they were still in station gun range, even if M ships did really good job at distracting the station).

..but overall it was working as one would imagine it should be working....

[Imperial Good]

Possibly a fleet mechanics bug. Due to the new wings mechanic it seems that undocked destroyer subordinates do not bother to attack anyway, and instead still focus on staying in formation with their leader. As soon as one manually orders them to attack the target station they go all out unloading their main batteries on it when possible.

[Kintanar]

... When i order my destroyers to attack a station, they stay at range using their main weapons only ...

Can you say how much piloting stars they have, pls

All of my destroyer captains are around 4 and a fraction of a fith star, all of my 6 capital ships captains where my initial autotrader ships M class, they got enough experience there, later i placed them close to a K'hak station to kill and kill. I was using Behemoth destroyers, but now i just changed to Rattlesnake destroyers, i transfered captains and crew. But i think is not all about the captain experience, is the weapon setup iam using. Behemoths have 2 main weapons and 2 large turrets lodaded with L plasma cannons, the rest of the turrets are a combination of M bolt and flak turrets. So, in the Loadout tab, i set up the behavior of the turrets as follow: All L turrets just to shoot to capital ships, and all M turrets just to shoot to figthers.

If I let the M turrets to shoot to "all enemies" or "defend", captains will tend to get close to the target to use those weapons. So the idea is to limit the usage of M turrets to figthers and L turrets to capitals or stations to keep their range.

I noticed that the AI tends to shoot at the range of their shorter range weapons allowed to the task, so with the Behemoth Main Battery they have around 10km of range, but with the argon L plasma cannons they have 8.9km of range. With the mentioned setup they will shoot at the max range of the turrets, which is 8.9km, not at the main weapons range. Now with my new Rattlesnake, their main Main Battery have a shorter range of 6.69km, and 5 L turrets loaded with split plasma with a range of 6.8km or so, and they are shooting now at main battery range. Applying a modifications to the main weapon which increase the projectile life time will increase the range they fire, but then i would need to do the same with the turrets. other option is to use argon L plasma cannons with more range but a bit less damage, and modify main weapons with "projectile life time" mods (exceptional ones). For now, iam happy with the Rattlesnnake, (still not modified), indeed are less durable but can kill faster.

I got a Raptor carrier also, loaded with L Argon Plasma for the range (but more for the sound FX of argon L turrets ), instead of a bit more damage with split plasma cannons, because the raptor will tend to get so close to the target.

My retired fleet was 1 Colossus carrier, with 4 Behmoths for attack. My tactic against a Xenon I (for example) was facing the target with the Colossus, while moving from distance my 4 Destroyers to the side or to the back of the Xenon I, when i get to weapon range with the Colossus and start shoting with its single L Cannon (doing meaningfull damage to the I) but geting the attention of the Xenon I, (With the Colossus i always try to not let the enemy to get to my back, if not they will destroy my engines and i will be a sitted duck, always face to the front, the cannon is on top so i keep the enemy above, and the colossus can keep shooting and moving backwards if necesary), then i order my destroyers to attack from the flank, Fortunately the Xenon I have a slow turn rate, so my destroyers shooting from distance will destroy it, some times they take damage and then i withdraw the hurted destroyer, and keeping the bombardement. }of course, killing an I take ages.

Now with the Raptor is a different tactic, is not so viable to face the Xenon I, because the setup of the L turrets to the sides, and the Raptor cannot tank the Xenon I like the Colossus, so now i move the Raptor from port to starboard and keep moving backwards, and now the damage from the raptor is nothing meaningfull but can be destroyed faster, but now the Rattlesnake even when can be killed with a few shots from the I, they can kill it a lot fasters, the firepower of one Rattlesnake equals abit more like two Behemoths.

An example of this with my former fleet: https://youtu.be/JyiWKKogc8s

In the video i was testing with the Colossus a dumbfire L turret with heavy dumb fire missiles, dindt like me.

[Andrey12y]

Thank you, such a detailed answer!
Also, remark on the influence of the minimum range of turrets are very important.
I'm too set medium turrets to attack small ships but for reasons of ability to hit target.

And actually when it comes to K

Show

I just watching on map how my fighters killing him OOS. Sometimes just need to withdraw to a safe distance medium ships which are the only ones who get [hull]damage. At first it was fun to go and disable mighty destroyer personally and make a good target practice for my pilots (in the hope that they will earn that 1/3*). I even rearmed my miners and mobilized traders in honor of such an event.
Now I just watching on map.

[Derp]

I've been wrestling with this problem as well. I always seem to have one Rattlesnake captain who demonstrates admirable Split courage by attempting to run down an I and its escorts at point-blank range by themself.

I've noticed the biggest factor is the use of travel drive in the approach. If a ship is fast-travelling to an attack order, it tries to come out of drive close enough to spit at the target, regardless of how stupidly suicidal that may be. Whereas if it slowboats its way over, it'll halt at a reasonable distance even if you really do want it to get stuck in to draw fire from a more vulnerable ally.

My station-popping strategy: start with a carrier or other beefy ship with a handful of destroyers fleeted to it. Personally fly it to just outside of engagement range and wait for your escorts to catch up. Target the station, give them an "attack my target" order. Watch as they hang back and unleash hell.

I'd like it if there were a "back away slowly" order to allow a specific ship to retreat under fire while otherwise holding position.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I made a test on the matter, yesterday. And just wrote a post about that.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=427547

[JMCorp]

try not equipping them with turrets. not sure if that works but it's something to try.

a very effective way i do it, and i have not lost a capital ship since i started doing this, is use 80+ destroyers at a time. they destroy the stations defenses so fast it can't fight back. even xenon shipyards keel over without trouble. it's a little pricey but it works.

[Thufar]

I started a new game after SV came out. I just yesterday capped an Odysseus that was pummeling an Argon Defense Platform with its main guns only. It wasn't using turrets at all. Perhaps this is a piloting experience level thing... I didn't notice how skilled the captain was.

Regards,
Thu