Post by orlunu on Jul 31, 2020 16:39:03 GMT -6
So, AI-controlled divisions are given a degree of play with their orders, a certain independence of action. Depending on the type of ship, maybe more, maybe less. This is intentional and understandable. It's been pointed out a good many times to people I've seen who've mentioned thinking that their units are acting a little oddly in game.
It is also, as currently implemented, absolutely the worst thing in game. Almost all the frustration I experience in game is because of my own divisions behaving in ways that are either straight up disobedient or almost unbelievably stupid - and I'm not talking about when signalling errors have occured. I just had a game where my carrier unit, having taken itself well beyond sight of the flagship, of course, took off in a direction about 120 degrees deviant from my line of advance, saw a cluster of enemy shore batteries in the dusklight, and decided to grind itself up against the shore as close as it could to them. I tried flipping it few various orders, and it twitched around a little, but no matter what it was determined to ram those shore batteries. The only outright losses I took in that battle, which would otherwise have been a collosal victory, were because of the carrier being utterly determined to sit with its escorts in the single most dangerous square mile of the sea.
Anyway, just two recent and grievous samples for illustration. Really, it happens far too many times for me to even try communicating in a qantitative way. These aren't "initiative in positioning" cases, these are "officers were court martialled and executed on return to port" issues.
It is also, as currently implemented, absolutely the worst thing in game. Almost all the frustration I experience in game is because of my own divisions behaving in ways that are either straight up disobedient or almost unbelievably stupid - and I'm not talking about when signalling errors have occured. I just had a game where my carrier unit, having taken itself well beyond sight of the flagship, of course, took off in a direction about 120 degrees deviant from my line of advance, saw a cluster of enemy shore batteries in the dusklight, and decided to grind itself up against the shore as close as it could to them. I tried flipping it few various orders, and it twitched around a little, but no matter what it was determined to ram those shore batteries. The only outright losses I took in that battle, which would otherwise have been a collosal victory, were because of the carrier being utterly determined to sit with its escorts in the single most dangerous square mile of the sea.
Most units have a fairly liberal interpretation of the "core" order to try and keep them in the line of battle, and this is one in particular where light units are supposed to be allowed a degree of their own initiative. Below is a screenshot of a convoy raid. Highlighted you can see my flag division. About 100 kiloyards away, rough guess, about 55 miles from where their orders and the objective are, you can see the second destroyer division which has been set as "core" to the primary division for the entire battle. I lost that convoy raid because the primary half of my force ran out of munitions and the secondary half were almost a hundred kilometers away from where they were told to be and moving even further away.
Anyway, just two recent and grievous samples for illustration. Really, it happens far too many times for me to even try communicating in a qantitative way. These aren't "initiative in positioning" cases, these are "officers were court martialled and executed on return to port" issues.
Am I missing something here? Is it something I'm doing terribly wrong? If I'm not horribly misusing the game in some way to cause this, there needs to be a "do what you're told" mode that can be enabled in game, which makes the AI do something approximate to actually following orders it's been given. Core causing an utterly slavish need to sit exactly in position in a battle line for all types of ships would be a very significant improvement over this behaviour. In the meantime, is there a way that I can work around this and get something vaguely passable out of these units without having to do the complete manual control micro route?
Anyway, sorry if the criticism seems too harsh or rude, but I think that it's necessary to point out just how egregious this issue is.
) The main advantage of this position is better fleet CAP, while either carrier or line may hide from enemy bombers. Note, that if they meet two enemy forces coming from different directions at once, they'll confuse as any other AI-controlled division and would likely be victims.
