Hi!

Preconditions:
At previous turn, large cloaked enemy fleet was at planet 1. Fleet ID# was 97. This fleet was visible for me because battle. Without battle I would not see that fleet by scanners.

I set up my fleet to target cloaked enemy fleet.

This turn it appears that my fleet did not move at all!!!

What happened:
Cloaked enemy fleet moved to planet 2, and I see it there again because another battle. It's fleet # now is 41. Message for my fleet targeting it says "The fleet you were tracking with Fly+ #358, appears to have ducked behind Magellan. Orders for your fleet have been changed to go to that planet.". Cloaked fleet is still out of my scanners range.

Note that I targeted cloaked ships before. A single cloaked ship targeting worked good before, even if I have seen it because battle only.

So I assume that targeting here did not work well because split fleet dodge for cloaked ships that are out of scanners range.

Question: is it a bug, or it is a feature of Stars for cloaked ships (in favor of SS races)? I see now that I can fly by cloacked fleets untargeted unlimitedly by using split fleet dodge, if I out of scanners range. That looks terribly unfair, IMO.

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Hi!

Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 27 June 2006 10:37

Split fleet activities are perfectly normal for every player. However, in this case, you are dealing with an SS and fleet 41 may very well NOT be the same fleet that you had battle against as fleet 97 - he may very well have more than one fleet composed of the same ship numbers.

Nope. It was a single fleet. I can confirm the behavior because I got this few times in 2 different games. And it is not related to fleet targeting fleet targeting fleet (either circle or chain).

Quote:

If Magellan is your 'planet 2' then, it is possible that he split the fleet to give pieces of it different targets then changed his mind during his turn and re-merged it to go to Magellan. In any case, since the ID changed and it is not visible on scanners, your ships did not follow.

I understand why fleet did not follow (because not visible on scanners). Question is: is this behavior correct from the _game_ point of view? This is an ULTIMATE tool for pirating that you have no way to protect from. You can only hang guardians to every fleet and planet and built large number of costly scanners if you want to catch any such fleet.

Also, what about really _large_ fleet? You cannot have enough guardians against large fleets, and fighting against large cloaked fleets attacking you requires powerful penetrating scanners, which are often not available - no NAS means no double scanner range (that is bad against SS in space), and pen scanners are too weak to see 98% cloaked fleets on the neighbour planets.

Imagine following tactical situation:
Enemy builds large fleet. Attacks some planet and completely wipes it out. There are 4 more planets around. Which planet SS would attack next? Assume each planet have equal chances that it would be attacked next turn. Also, you have no pen scanners or they are too weak to see that fleet. You have your large fleet really close and capable to reach all 4 planets in 1 turn. Note that if you split your fleet, you would lose anyway because 1/4 of fleet is too small.

What planet you would send your fleet to?
The solution to above is obvious: _target_ enemy fleet. And, of course, it fails if fleet is cloaked well and changes fleet ID.

That's exactly what happened for me.

Inability to follow the target here is too powerful, IMO. This is not usual split fleet dodge where my fleets follow major enemy split fleets. This is split fleet dodge that causes completely no way to target, and, IMO should be banned in the game or warned about before the game start.

If leave this as a special SS feature, at least this behavior of targeting should be clearly described for SS race so everyone knows it and accounts it. Personally, I did not see mentioning of this _anywhere_ despite I read a lot of articles.

And, as a final note, SS seems is not that weak, from tactical point of view

[Updated on: Tue, 27 June 2006 04:22]

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My impression from a testbed a while back: you are targetting an opponent and a location, fleet number is irrelavent.

, not just for SS/cloaking split fleet method can be powerful.

From tactical standpoint with SS... if your ship died in battle turn before, and his ships are now cloaked too well for your scanners, why should you be able to see where they start moving to after waypoint 0 of turn?

I notice in a vote that SS is believed one of weakest PRTs.

[Updated on: Tue, 27 June 2006 08:22]

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Hi!

multilis wrote on Tue, 27 June 2006 15:10

My impression from a testbed a while back: you are targetting an opponent and a location, fleet number is irrelavent.

Might be, I did not test this. The fact is that split fleet should be made.

Today I got a situation that even more interesting
I see opponent SS fleet in scanners (both at location at prev turn and at location this turn). My 2 fleets (in space) target that opponent's fleet. Next turn that fleet arrives at my planet, and my fleets did not move!

The reason was that I pulled up population from my planet (I'm AR) and my scanner range decreased in such way that it no longer see that fleet at location of previous turn.

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