Space Battles - do it yourself or not?

[Panda]

In space battles, do you command your fleets yourself or do you let the AI take charge? And more importantly, does the AI do a proper job with the fleets you give?

All my attempts of manning the commander's seat resulted in my detachments colliding with each other, turning them into sitting ducks for the enemy. Since then, I always press 'Cede Command'.

Your experiences?

 

[Lucky]

The AI does a proper job and usually is better or equal to your own command. This is also the effect of much less influence and decisions you have and can take of course.

In the beginning I controlled all my combats, but since the AI empires got better technologies and since you had to search a long while for the enemy before engaging due to cloaking, ECM and such, I often select cede or watch.

I cede the battle if there are clear odds, I watch a battle if it´s a bigger one and therefore interesting.

And I control battles against guardians or a New Orion fleet with my 68 ships against their 40 ships.

My guardian defeater fleet is rather specialized, with 5 TFs of scouts, 2 LR and 2 IF. So I control them, in order to keep the IFs far away from the guardian and to send my scouts in all directions to find it.

The main HUGE advantage and in my opinion a bug or at least something that makes controlling less fun is the point that when you cede or watch, all FIGHTERS and MISSILES are started immediatly and you fleet heads into the correct general direction of the enemy. So once that is detected, all fighters and missiles rush into the enemy fleet at once.
When controlling yourself, you can only fire once you see the enemy, which is a huge disadvantage I think.

But still, in major battles I love to take control. After all, it´s the only real part of the game you can control without (much) AI interference.

 

[DaEezT]

I never control the ships myself and only watch the big battles.
After all I'm running a huge empire and can't be bothered with puny things like commanding ships in battle and stuff

 

[bladester]

I always control my ships just incase I need to retreat my ships (I am still learning the game).

Does anyone know if the AI will retreat if losing?

 

[Lucky]

I don´t think so, at least I never saw him do that. Only things like enemy colony ships sometimes retreat if they are all alone.

Not even the scout entering Orion or a Guardian sector retreats automatically when in AI mode.

Imperium Galactica 2 I think had the setting to retreat once taking a certain percentage of damage, from 0-100%, that would be rather handy for MoO3, too.

 

[pterrok]

I ususally just watch the battles...

Did you 'controllers' ever hit the situtation where you may only control ONE battle on a screenful of upcoming one? The manual says that when you pick to control one, you get THAT one and all the ones lower in the list are AI controlled...just a head's up in case you wonder WTF is going on when you have a large, belligerent empire or neighbor!

 

[Lucky]

Nope, they took that out.
The original plans about MoO3 had something like "experience", so you as Emperor could only do so many tasks per turn. Yet they seemed to have dropped that relatively early.

Anyway, but there is another thing quite similar. You MUST "do" battles from top to bottem. If you select a lower one and press submit, all others above it will be made automatically. So be careful with that.

 

[bladester]

Originally posted by pterrok
I ususally just watch the battles...

Did you 'controllers' ever hit the situtation where you may only control ONE battle on a screenful of upcoming one? The manual says that when you pick to control one, you get THAT one and all the ones lower in the list are AI controlled...just a head's up in case you wonder WTF is going on when you have a large, belligerent empire or neighbor!

I had that happen to me when I elected to control the last battle on the list first. The others were controlled automatically then.
From now on I always control the battles from top to bottom.

Maybe that's what happened with you?

 

[Davour]

TIP: Always control fights versus guardian - then quiickly press the "RUN THE HELL AWAY" button

What i hate about controlling (i love to do it but i also hate it) is that you have no idea where the enemy is - you cant see them

The AI cheats, it must do because it heads right for them!

 

[pterrok]

Ah, but it turns out your ships are always pointing at the enemy at the start of the battle! So if you zoom-in enough to figure out which way they're pointing....by the time you zoom out you see a swarm of missiles coming at you anyway!

 

[allan2]

Just got this game about a week ago, and I must say this has largely replaced my Civ playing, at least for now. A very intriguing and engrossing game! I never thought any game could be MORE addictive than CivII!

Anyway, I've found that letting the AI run the battles can be a crapshoot. Yes, they have the advantage of being able to commence firing faster than you can "grab" a fleet manually. But there are times where they do stupid things like move your carriers to the front, right up close to the planet where they get shot to f*ck.

So sometimes, if you want the job done RIGHT, you gotta do it yourself. It's just a matter of getting yourself "coordinated" with using the grid and putting out your orders quickly--hopefully I can get good enough to do this almost as fast as the computer, and as skillfully as the computer USUALLY does it....