Is it a bug, when your fleet ship doesn't follow your 'retreat' command?

[Aldeveron]

This has happened to me a couple of times (once on PVE and once on PVP): At the start of the battle, I ordered my fleet ship to 'retreat'. The command shows as executed, yet my ship doesn't retreat. In fact it seems to want to hug the battle, getting in the way, etc. 

Is this a bug?

On the last occasion, the system crashed during the battle too. When I got back into the game and the battle, I found my fleet ship had been sunk.

Edited February 7, 2019 by Aldeveron

[Ink]

Captain, what kind of crash did you experienced? Crash to desktop or connection lost (drop to server selection screen)?

[Jan van Santen]

This happens quite frequently.. Often fleet ships dont retreat but sail closer to the ai and get sunk.

An extreme case cost me a kill on testbed:

I wanted to board a trader and had ordered my fleet to retreat. However, the trader bumped into a retreating fleet ship, which than boarded it....

Retreat means: get away from combat asap, nothing else. 

The next most annoying bug of fleet ships: They like to collide with their owner.

Fleet AI needs to do their job as ordered and stay out of their owners way.

[Hawkwood]

1 hour ago, Aldeveron said:

This has happened to me a couple of times (once on PVE and once on PVP): At the start of the battle, I ordered my fleet ship to 'retreat'. The command shows as executed, yet my ship doesn't retreat. In fact it seems to want to hug the battle, getting in the way, etc. 

Is this a bug?

On the last occasion, the system crashed during the battle too. When I got back into the game and the battle, I found my fleet ship had been sunk.

When the battle starts, your fleet ships "attack" an enemy, trying to help you. You need to "STOP" their actions first, and THEN give them another command.

[Jan van Santen]

8 minutes ago, Hawkwood said:

When the battle starts, your fleet ships "attack" an enemy, trying to help you. You need to "STOP" their actions first, and THEN give them another command.

Ima try that. If so,  it's a workaround for the bug. Still, the ai should do as ordered w/o having to stop or cancel prior orders. 

Edited February 7, 2019 by Jan van Santen

[Ortac]

I'm guessing that the fleet ship, if told to retreat, tries to find the best point of sail, and will simply continue on that path regardless of whatever obstructions exist, including you and the enemy ships.

[Ortac]

I would like to see more comprehensive retreat instruction options -

- go straight ahead and retreat

- turn left 90(degrees) and retreat

- turn left about (180 degrees) and retreat

- turn right 90 and retreat

- turn right about and retreat

.... although i suspect the coding of this might be somewhat complex.

 

[Jan van Santen]

just give them a timer. They sail away from enemy  asap and 2 mins after "retreat" they just vanish.

Edited February 7, 2019 by Jan van Santen

[Aldeveron]

On 2/7/2019 at 10:14 AM, Ink said:

Captain, what kind of crash did you experienced? Crash to desktop or connection lost (drop to server selection screen)?

Sorry; I am not 100% sure. If I remember correctly, I think it crashed to desktop and the server selection screen, but then it was unable to fetch shards list, so I restarted the game and then I saw the 'entering battle' screen and then found myself back in the battle (where my fleet ship was now in the process of sinking).

[Sea Archer]

Retreat should be sail away from enemy, regardless the best point of sail.

That should be easy to code. 

 

[Sparkydog]

I don’t believe it’s true that you have to tell your fleet ship to ‘stop’ before retreat- when you give it the command to retreat , the fleet ship will just head on its best point of sail and sail straight- sometimes you have to be careful because his best point might send him towards your enemy or into yourself. Fleet captains are not very smart- I think they hit the grog often.  I do wish we could train up our fleet captains a little and let them get better with some kind of XP?

[van der Clam]

Ya um, I've been asking for a year why our fleet ai is 100x dumber than enemy ai. But they insist they have the same coding... So, always at the beginning of a battle tell your ai to stop. Then after the 2 minute mark you can tell them to retreat and they won't even sail...they'll just disappear. (If they haven't been tagged.)

[Palatinose]

13 hours ago, van der Decken said:

Ya um, I've been asking for a year why our fleet ai is 100x dumber than enemy ai. But they insist they have the same coding... So, always at the beginning of a battle tell your ai to stop. Then after the 2 minute mark you can tell them to retreat and they won't even sail...they'll just disappear. (If they haven't been tagged.)

I wouldn't Call enemy AI smarter. Think of a trader AI. The same command is retreat. Think the most probate method is to order them to STOP and frag the battle away from them. All AI have (at least it feels that way) control perk. So to retreat they not only need not to be tagged but also to be about 750m away from an enemy vessel. 

Your own position towards your fleet ship matters: if you are right in front of it, you block it's escape route. 

So to drag away the battle from your fleet ship I would recommend to take some damage, get upwind of the enemy and sail parallel to it (AI is dumb and will stay in your broadside) away from your fleet. When you are away gar enough just press retreat and it will do so.

[Aldeveron]

On 2/16/2019 at 12:39 PM, Sea Archer said:

Retreat should be sail away from enemy, regardless the best point of sail.

I agree absolutely. "Retreat" should mean: "Keep as much distance as possible from the closest enemy ship". This really needs attention, devs.