Special Weapon=change target?

posted on September 28th, 2010, 6:17 am

This is something that always has confused me, why when you use a special weapon does your ship change targets, and alternately, why when you are shooting a ship who then uses a special weapon, do you change targets?

To me this doesnt make any sense that it should happen, why would you star shooting a different ship, if you just used a sheild breaking torpedo and it didnt kill the enemy ship, and why would you target a different sip, just because the ship you are shooting used defense patterns? this doest seem very likely in real star trek.

Yes this has come into play in strategies i suppose, as when a ship im using is getting killed i toggle the special weapon, and run away, which usually works, as the enemy stops firing on that ship, however it is very annoying when that same thing is done to me?

So my question is, why does this happen?

Can it be changed?

And do you think it should be changed?

Personally, im not sure if it should be changed, its one of those bonus to me somtimes, bonus to them somtimes....

posted on September 28th, 2010, 7:15 am

The function you describe is called "replaceweapon"; the work horse of Fleet Operations.

Whenever you use a special that requires a new odf file (rhienn with phase plates, brel with weapon fatigue, etc.) it is in effect swapping out the old ship for a new one in its place, because it's using all new values.  Since every race basically has a number of these, it happens fairly often.  Just think of it as a game feature and you'll be fine.

posted on September 28th, 2010, 9:19 am

It's also the secret behind the total badassery of the Saehir.  Romulan unique mixed tech cruiser is a monster!  It really does have the superior firepower.

posted on September 28th, 2010, 10:52 am

I've often had ships change target when not using replaceweapons. The Intrepid's Tricobalt launcher in particular.

posted on September 28th, 2010, 11:02 am

we are working on it 

posted on September 28th, 2010, 3:17 pm

Yes that is also what I was refering to offense weapons as well change,

Good to know your working on it

posted on September 28th, 2010, 3:53 pm

I have also noticed that when a ship uses a replace weapon, any enemy ships attacking it will also switch targets.  This is almost an exploit in my mod because you can just use the Replaceweapon to get enemy fighters to stop swarming your ship.  

Good to know its being worked on though.

posted on September 28th, 2010, 3:59 pm

Yeah zaxxon, i belive i said that too..... thats why its one of those helps you sometimes, sometimes doesnt help,  because i have effectively used this to escape from battle when my ship really shoulda died....

posted on September 28th, 2010, 4:25 pm

Hmm ... Is that also the reason, why priority-repair issued ships, that rank up, delete the priority repair order (and get blown up subsequently)?

posted on September 28th, 2010, 4:28 pm

Yeah, it causes that too.

posted on September 28th, 2010, 4:33 pm

Yeah, replaceweapon maintainorders line doesn't work all that well...

posted on September 28th, 2010, 4:37 pm

Yeah, replaceweapon maintainorders line doesn't work all that well...

Yup, that's because it's constantly undergoing change. There were quite a few improvements from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3 for maintaining orders, but it's an on going struggle, like 'cloak follow'. For instance, cloak follow was fixed for a short time, but then it came back  . These hard coded glitches are always the most frustrating 

posted on October 3rd, 2010, 5:38 am

What he's talking about isn't a replaceweapon, it's just the AI's configuration.  If you give an attack order the ship will follow it, but if you give a move order or a special ability order, the attack order is overruled and the ship chooses an automatic target.

The thing is, making it persistent causes problems as well when you consider ships moving into range.  If you tell your ship to attack an enemy and that enemy falls back, you don't want your ship to follow it while not shooting the other enemies, so you give it a move order to override the attack order.  So either the devs make it so attack orders are persistent and you have to issue a new attack order to cancel the last one, or they leave it the way it is now.

Although I suppose they could make attack orders persistent through special attacks only...might be hard to code but I would like that.

An example of a game with persistent attacking is Mechcommander 1 and 2, where the move orders are independent of the attack orders.  However those games encourage fights that occur well within units' weapon ranges, and deal with smaller army sizes than FO.

posted on October 3rd, 2010, 12:53 pm

Everything he described was a replaceweapon, and the behavior he described was remarkably similiar to replaceweapon issues soooo