Attacking question

[Boris Balaban]

I had 21 UAV bombers (2 class) attacking 13 enemy ships. I did this over several turns, I did get some hits.

I did not have one sinking but lost bombers and took hits.

Why?

I am just noticing this for my drone misslies attack a pile and if the one ship is sunk the other drones blow up and the rest of the ships donot get attacked.

I noticed the computer does not group ships most of the time. Does this have a bearing on attacking?

How does one get drones to attack land units in a city?

[hoolaman]

Your UAV bombers (not tact bombers?) have a defence rating of 17 and most high level ships have an attack rating of 20+ vs Air.

Your UAV bombers have an attack rating of 2 vs ships, where most high level ships have a defence rating of 4.

Already on paper there is a big advantage to the ships. But they also have an attack radius against air so they are hitting your bombers from a distance too, and generally have a lot more hitpoints.

Tac bombers would be better off but still would have a hard fight. Of course aircraft only do one turn of combat so very likely they won't be destroyed in one sortie, so you can do some damage to the ships which your opponent will find harder to repair than your bombers.

The drones I assume only get one turn of combat and then self destruct. It might be a bug but it might be that you really do need a big stack to sink one ship, the rest are being fought off or are exploding because they would need multiple turns of combat to attrit away the hitpoints of all the ships.

edit: I can't see ay reason why drones won't attack units in cities. Possibly the damage they do to the city itself takes precedence over hitting units. I'd love to see an option for a choice of which improvement or units you want to target in a city, it would make for some fun strategic choices.

[rich12545]

edit: I can't see ay reason why drones won't attack units in cities. Possibly the damage they do to the city itself takes precedence over hitting units. I'd love to see an option for a choice of which improvement or units you want to target in a city, it would make for some fun strategic choices.

I haven't looked at the ruleset in a while but I believe you can set your prefs in there.

[hoolaman]

My understanding is that any unit that can attack the a unit outside a city should be able to attack the same unit inside.

I don't know how it works when you combine that with the ability to damage population and improvements.

[Lt Belenko]

Obviously, the ship vs plane numbers are heavily in favor of ships. I haven't played with the editor at all, but is it possible to create a plane that could do better against ships yet do poor against land targets? The simulation would be using something like a torpedo or harpoon missile at advanced tech.

[hoolaman]

Yes you could easily create an aircraft that has higher attack vs ships.

I think in EoS terms the staying power of ships is a good thing. They are expensive and form the core of game strategy and should not be disposable.

Also it is only in specific situations that it would be so unbalanced. Higher level tac bombers are quite effective against lower level or smaller ships. They can also be repaired more easily and head out again to knock off some HP.

All this stuff can be tweaked but I think it is ok as is.

[Brit]

I had 21 UAV bombers (2 class) attacking 13 enemy ships. I did this over several turns, I did get some hits.

I did not have one sinking but lost bombers and took hits.

Why?

They were UAV Bombers, and not UAV Tactical bombers? (UAV Bombers are specialized for attacking cities. UAV Tactical Bombers are better against ground-units and ships.)

Update: Okay, I'm looking at this now, and here's what I saw: I grouped my 8 UAV Tactical Bombers (Class 2), and gave them orders to attack 6 enemy Destroyers (Class 2). (What was actually happening here was that I setup my UAV group to attack one of the enemy's destroyers even though all six were in the exact same location.) My UAVs were coming in and sinking a destroyer on each strike. The UAVs were also taking a few hits.

I am just noticing this for my drone misslies attack a pile and if the one ship is sunk the other drones blow up and the rest of the ships do not get attacked.

Sounds like a bug. I'll run a test.

It looks to me like you had a similar order problem that I did above - your drone missiles are all being setup to hit one enemy ship. When the enemy ship is destroyed, your other missiles no longer have a target. I'll need to do something about this.

I noticed the computer does not group ships most of the time. Does this have a bearing on attacking?

No. Update: Actually, when units are grouped together, attacks get randomly distributed among the units. If you don't have units grouped together, units can be attacked directly, which concentrates damage on one unit. Because of this, it is actually better to group units because it's better to have 4 tanks with 1 damage than 3 tanks with 0 damage and 1 tank that's dead (4 damage).

How does one get drones to attack land units in a city?

Are they hitting city-improvements instead of going after ground units? I'll run a test.

Update: okay, I looked up the attack settings for drone missiles. They have cities (i.e. city-improvements, population, items in production) as their first priority. This is why they aren't attacking ground units in a city. It would be better if players could adjust the priority during their game.

[Boris Balaban]

Thanks Brit.

[StellarRat]

I gave the ships anti - missile ability at level 3 or 4 and higher. They can shoot down missiles on the way in. If you're a custom ruleset you might be seeing proper results.

[Brit]

I had 21 UAV bombers (2 class) attacking 13 enemy ships. I did this over several turns, I did get some hits.

I did not have one sinking but lost bombers and took hits.

Why?

I am just noticing this for my drone misslies attack a pile and if the one ship is sunk the other drones blow up and the rest of the ships donot get attacked.

I noticed the computer does not group ships most of the time. Does this have a bearing on attacking?

Okay, I tracked down this problem (i.e. the problem with aircraft and missiles only targeting the first ship in a stack of enemy units) and fixed it. It'll be in the next update.

[Boris Balaban]

Okay, I tracked down this problem (i.e. the problem with aircraft and missiles only targeting the first ship in a stack of enemy units) and fixed it. It'll be in the next update.

Thank you.:)