Still need proper "Retreat" better than "Detach" AI

[brygun]

One of my BB at 68% damage with ongoing torpedo flooding and slowed to 17 kts that I had manually detached and been steering for coast just decided to rejoin its sister ships in attacking the enemy. 

NO. BAD BB! GO HOME! NO COOKIES FOR YOU!

The programming recommendation for this would be similiar to the existing detach logic with a change that a retreating shift NEVER tries to rejoin battle groups.

[brygun]

And...

an 84% damage down to 12 knots BC just decided to rejoin its still making 22 knts 40% damage sister ship.

Go home! No cookies!


In both these cases by the time I noticed the crippled ship had already turned 180 degrees from the fleeing course to rejoin. The sister ship had moved "nearby" in order to draw enemy fire so the cripple could escape. Its being mistaken for a rejoin formation opportunity.

[brygun]

Perhaps we can have the functions of:

"Retreat" = moves away from enemy ships and if possible toward a friendly base with no attempt at rejoining formations. Priority is on away from enemy.

"Retreat slow" = as retreat but limits speed to no more than 10 knots to keep down water pressure against flooding.

The AI could make use of these. A "detach" (current code) could evaluate its over all damage and if it is over more dangerous thresholds go into "retreat" or if under dangerous flooding "retreat slow".

Players could set their manually detached ships to these functions. It would remove player frustration at trying to rotate our battle lines and seeing the repeating issues of ships insisting of coming to battle for cookies*.

* : Im using cookies for a polite way to express.

[akosjaccik]

While I'd not shell out ideas about exact method (since I don't have any), I can easily get behind the notion. Perhaps with a sub-option for carriers to even shut down flight operations completely and just book it. In some cases it would be beneficial for the player for example to call for land-based CAP and just let the CV to beeline towards the port.

[wlbjork]

I agree. My recent suicides have, fortunately, "only" been DDs but it is galling when you issue the detach order when they are relatively safe and they proceed to squander the chance to escape.

[williammiller]

Some good suggestions above, thank you all.

[rimbecano]

I'll note that equally annoying is the tendency (sometimes) for ships detached for other reasons than returning to base (for example, sending a ship that can no longer maintain the speed of the lead division to the back of the line), or automatically detached due to "heavy" flooding that the player does not regard to be an actual threat, to keep on trying to RTB.

EDIT: I think that part of the reason for the behavior I'm observing here is that a ship under AI control that cannot keep up with its lead division will often hare off in a completely different direction (trying to catch up by going the long way around the Earth? Heading for a negative speed intercept solution in the past?) rather than following its lead division.

[cabalamat]

May 11, 2020 18:31:01 GMT -6 brygun said:

One of my BB at 68% damage with ongoing torpedo flooding and slowed to 17 kts that I had manually detached and been steering for coast just decided to rejoin its sister ships in attacking the enemy. 

NO. BAD BB! GO HOME! NO COOKIES FOR YOU!

The programming recommendation for this would be similiar to the existing detach logic with a change that a retreating shift NEVER tries to rejoin battle groups.

The fix for this is to give ships mission-type orders.

E.g. "protect" (similar to current screen") tells ships to protect other ships, e.g. a convoy. the ships being protected would not have to be part of the same fleet, e.g. they could be an invasion convoy.

Other mission orders should include "return to base" and "pursue enemies" (in which case a particular enemy group is pursuedv until it is destoryed, without the user having to enter load of tedious course corrections.