Armada Catastrophe (My personal experience with fleets)

[DryLeavesBoiled]

So I have recently started playing again since the latest update (fleets). I haven't been playing very long, perhaps a week.

I really wanted to see if many many small close ranged and unmanned ships were viable in a fleet.

Other topics have touched on the buggy AI and ships crashing into solid objects like planets and stations. What happened to me was slight different. Story is as follows. There is a TLDR at the bottom!

I made about 30 drone ships. (Small, but use up all my money because if it didn't work, I'd still have my massive mining ship to start over)
I added all the drones to a fleet.
I command drones to attack a pirate station. Typing in 8 5 5, they all begin moving en masse. Very pretty to watch.
I had deliberately made them all slower than my mining ship, so I could follow, I had shields coming out the wazoo so I wan't too fussed about getting hit.
After about 5 minutes I realize they are not taking the direct path, they started flying in the right direction, but kept taking odd right angled paths and changing direction eventually passing by the chosen sector, so I re-enter the coordinates and nothing changes. I double check a few things and eventually decide to keep following them to see where they end up. It's quite fun to watch 30 ships flying around on their own.

I eventually realize they are heading very close to the sun and not heading to the pirate sector after all. This strikes me as odd, since the route the took to get to the sector ended up more like a "C" shape than a straight line.

As I don't want to loose all my work with my drones burning up, I add my mining ship to the fleet in order to lead them manually using the "return to carrier" command.

Now. What I didn't expect, is my ship to start accelerating and turning on its own. Having not added a Bobby AI module to my ship, I assumed it wouldn't take control.

I was wrong.

Panic begins to set in as all ships turn towards the sun. Including my own.
I frantically start trying to manually wrest control of my pride and joy.
"Your fleet is taking damage"
I open up the fleet panel to try and fix the situation, the ship, now unhindered by my attempts, begins flying towards the sun at breakneck speeds.
Debris of my drones is flying everywhere, all around me drones are exploding expensive weapons systems.
My ship starts taking damage.
I mash fleet commands in the hopes something will make the nightmare stop.
"Sun intensity 6000"
I scream, both in terror and fury as everything I built combusts around me from a barrage of solar radiation.
All I can see is the sun.
Everything explodes.

So, no drones, no mining ship, back to square one!

I found the whole experience rather funny and had to share. Despite the setback.

I am not sure if this is a bug, or I was missing something rather vital. No, the coordinates were not incorrect)
Anyone else had issues with the fleet AI taking a very strange route?

TLDR: My entire fleet flew into the sun.

 

[Groovrider]

I just spit my coffee all over my keyboard. Thanks.

 

[GnomeKing]

ouch! - did you give new orders to your fleet ? (eg move elsewhere) - perhaps if you had done that first, then added your mother-ship, it would have taken you to safety.... weird AI routes through, did you have high ping? - could commands have been 'corrupted' ?

i am trying out fleets - a big problem is the massive ping spike when multiple ship are given a move order and all collide at single point in a big daft bundle :/ ...


Anyway , it sounds like Mothership control should maybe work like AI control - ie flight control instantly superseded when a player enters the core...


[Ps - here is another near disaster tale;

while preparing a powerful fleet around a newly built warpgate, i disconnected a frigate-type ship with standard active AI - it immediately began to attack a pirate station with homing missiles several sectors away - i did not notice this until, whilst still in astronaut mode, and with most AI inactive on ships and fleet not grouped , waves of pirate ships suddenly appeared at my construction site

alarmingly i was just floating in space - with my fully loaded construction ship sitting like a big green cake for a pirate party :/ > although i quickly assembled what i could into a fleet to protect the Gate and other soft targets, i could not get to the frigate which continued to attack the pirates base, spawning continual waves of pirates, whilst i tried to deal with those attacking my Gate !!! > the result was a rather tense 2hour plus battle as I wrestled to save key assets - eventually I got enough ships over to the pirate base to kill it,, but damn that was close ..... > all from one carelessly undocked ship! ]

 

[DryLeavesBoiled]

ouch! - did you give new orders to your fleet ? (eg move elsewhere) - perhaps if you had done that first, then added your mother-ship, it would have taken you to safety.... weird AI routes through, did you have high ping? - could commands have been 'corrupted' ?

i am trying out fleets - a big problem is the massive ping spike when multiple ship are given a move order and all collide at single point in a big daft bundle :/ ...


Anyway , it sounds like Mothership control should maybe work like AI control - ie flight control instantly superseded when a player enters the core...]

I had previously tried out some small scale fleets which reacted just as strangely when given the attack sector command. Moving at odd angles, but they eventually got to a pirate sector and attacked it, which lead me to expand unto my terribly downfall.

This was single player so no ping, no lag.

[Ps - here is another near disaster tale;

while preparing a powerful fleet around a newly built warpgate, i disconnected a frigate-type ship with standard active AI - it immediately began to attack a pirate station with homing missiles several sectors away - i did not notice this until, whilst still in astronaut mode, and with most AI inactive on ships and fleet not grouped , waves of pirate ships suddenly appeared at my construction site

alarmingly i was just floating in space - with my fully loaded construction ship sitting like a big green cake for a pirate party :/ > although i quickly assembled what i could into a fleet to protect the Gate and other soft targets, i could not get to the frigate which continued to attack the pirates base, spawning continual waves of pirates, whilst i tried to deal with those attacking my Gate !!! > the result was a rather tense 2hour plus battle as I wrestled to save key assets - eventually I got enough ships over to the pirate base to kill it,, but damn that was close ..... > all from one carelessly undocked ship! ]

Ha! That sounds like quite the epic battle. The game really needs more sounds, I too have missed some really key things just because I wasn't looking in the right direction.

I just spit my coffee all over my keyboard. Thanks.

You're welcome!
My coffee evaporated along with my coffee mug as I used it to shield my eyes from the solar radiation.

 

[Urza der Gehasste]

A tip for the next time:
Remove your ship from the fleet. Then you gain the control back and you can avoid the sun.
You would still lose your drones... but at least you wouldn't lose everything.

 

[terra mining corp.]

I was flying around my universe last night in sp with a fleet of 5 ships following my cruiser,it worked just fine(except 1 ship derping around but still following),I was in the cruiser controlling it as flagship with the others in formation seeming to work ok.I only tried the attack sector command once and never again until they fix it,all my ships turned and flew at full speed in the wrong direction,good thing they were larger ships so I could catch them with my fastest fighter(also good thin they didn't use the jumpdrives!)

 

[Inspired2150]

Yeah, the state of the fleets at this point leaves a lot to be desired. Pretty much nothing works. Thankfully most bugs have been reported on the bugtracker and hopefully they will be fixed relatively soon. I think AI in general needs an overhaul, because fleets are probably this dumb because AI in general is dumb. Beautiful story though, nearly had that happen to me, but managed to delete my mothership from the fleet in time to stop it. Not even setting it to idle did the trick, they were comitted at this point. :D

 

[StormWing0]

lol I've had stranger things happen. Was testing the mining command on the dev build and things went screwy on my way back from the mining site. It was funny though they were all mining backwards and just froze up when the first asteroid was done. I figure I'll just head back to base and all the ships ended up flying through the gate on the way back to the sector. >_>

 

[Inspired2150]

Wait what? You can have mining drones on the dev build?

 

[StormWing0]

Wait what? You can have mining drones on the dev build?

Yes but right now the second they get one asteroid done they refuse to mine again. >_>

 

[Inspired2150]

What if you do a carrier recall and then send them again?

 

[Dire Venom]

Yes but right now the second they get one asteroid done they refuse to mine again. >_>

They've had enough of the shitty working conditions : )

 

[StormWing0]

Wonder what a fleet of 1000 mining drones would look like?

 

[Inspired2150]

Even newly made drones refuse to mine. Even after server restart. Weird stuff.

 

[DryLeavesBoiled]

A tip for the next time:
Remove your ship from the fleet. Then you gain the control back and you can avoid the sun.
You would still lose your drones... but at least you wouldn't lose everything.

I did think about that during my blind panic, but my initial thoughts were fleet commands would allow me to correct this minor mistake before it became a big one. My thought was "recall to carrier" would bring them all to he main ship and once that failed, idle would make them stop. Of course, when that failed, even telling them to navigate to a location in the opposite direction of the sun didn't work. This all happened in about 20 seconds so by the time I was on option three I was already very crispy.

I was flying around my universe last night in sp with a fleet of 5 ships following my cruiser,it worked just fine(except 1 ship derping around but still following),I was in the cruiser controlling it as flagship with the others in formation seeming to work ok.I only tried the attack sector command once and never again until they fix it,all my ships turned and flew at full speed in the wrong direction,good thing they were larger ships so I could catch them with my fastest fighter(also good thin they didn't use the jumpdrives!)

I am actually glad to hear I am not the only one witnessing the AI travelling in odd directions. It's easy to feel like you're missing something important with new features. I think having a slow fleet may be more sensible in future as they take longer to kill themselves.

Yeah, the state of the fleets at this point leaves a lot to be desired. Pretty much nothing works. Thankfully most bugs have been reported on the bugtracker and hopefully they will be fixed relatively soon. I think AI in general needs an overhaul, because fleets are probably this dumb because AI in general is dumb. Beautiful story though, nearly had that happen to me, but managed to delete my mothership from the fleet in time to stop it. Not even setting it to idle did the trick, they were comitted at this point. :D

Well it is a new feature in an alpha build, so I expected bugs. My initial tests were enough to coerce me into a false sense of security. AI in general is a nightmare to program from what I have learned. So kudos to the developers for doing as well as they have in the alpha. It's definitely going to need an overhaul at some point though, or at least considerable augmentation.

Yes but right now the second they get one asteroid done they refuse to mine again. >_>

Sounds like the AI manages to suck no matter what job it performs! Sounds exciting though. I look forward to playing about with mining drones.

 

[Keptick]

Hilarious story, that was an enjoyable read XD

I don't know why the drones decided to go sun diving, but I can explain the ship becoming AI controlled part. When you add ships to a fleet there's a bug that turns on AI and leaves it on even when a player is in the ship. Thankfully it's possible to just turn it off in the ship's AI menu (located the "ship" tab), and it won't turn back on if you give orders and whatnot.

So next time you'll know what to do! Also, giving controls to fleets is really clunky since coords have to be manually entered every damn time. Just give them the "idle" command, that'll make them float to a stop.

 

[Vader_is_Bored]

I'm sorry you lost your fleet OP, but that's a funny story!

I've actually had some good luck with fleets so far. Was out screwing around in a newly built fighter when I got ambushed by a bunch of pirates, so I order a fleet that was back at my base to come defend the sector I was getting killed in. A couple minutes later, my battleship and fighter escort pop in and start massacring pirates left and right. Saved my butt and was fun to watch!

 

[mptrace]

Hi,

has anyone still the same problems as i have with the fleets?
First i dock the carrier at my station - when i press the carrier recall button nothing happens (okay i think its intended because of the docking chain). After i undock the carrier from the station the drone flies into nowhere (unfortunately directly to a enemy station >.<)
Okay - after i press idle and then again carrier recall it seems that it gets the docking point again and returns...
But now instead of docking it begins spinning forever near the docking point. I actually have moved the pickup point very far away from the carrier (like two times the size of the drone) but it still doesnt change a thing.

I actually begin wondering if my universe is corrupted because i think noone else got this issues.
Yes this thread is more then 1 year old :/

Greetings

 

[Shaker]

Only the insane still use drones

 

[splatthecat]

As you can see from some previous posts of mine I have had fun with fleets and had a drone get stuck in the glass section of a shop before! Completely inside!

I too have, on more than one occasion vectored in an attack/defense fleet to help out another player on an MP server with great results, I also seem to have good fortune with mining fleets.

Bobby AI units are not required for fleet operations.