AI & UI is just killing me...

[Hangar181]

I cannot trust my fleet to do anything safely without micromanaging to the nth degree and the UI makes this as hard a task as is possible. I'd challenge anyone to design a more cumbersome UI - quite a feat I reckon. The latest point of frustration was in attacking a Xen defence platform. I flew directly above at 20km it in a battleship...dropped a laser tower simply to act as a beacon for the rest of the fleet to follow (when ready).

Then went through the laborious find the "L turrets" cycle exercise to snipe them one at a time (Q. is there an easier way to find the L turrets - I've tried 3rd person camera angles but the controls make it impossible and cant seem to move along instead of rotate/pan). Anyhoo, having eliminated the turrets from the top end, I call my fleet to the laser tower (because the UI makes it nigh impossible to summon them to anywhere outside the 2D plane. Then I say attack thinking they will just attack directly down on the station. But no, what do they do? They go out of their way to fly down to the 2D plane and attack from the frigging side getting obliterated by L turrets that are in range.

I know the AI is dumb but come on!! One brain cell would be nice, two would be a real treat and three...well I shudder to think.

[GCU Grey Area]

That sounds complicated & I certainly don't have the patience to snipe turrets first. My standard procedure for station demolition is a bit different.

(1) Shift-select destroyers & give them all a fly & wait order (at around max range for their guns) followed by an attack order on the station. Then I drag the fly & wait orders into an arc with the concave side facing the station:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w8ssze2g05nnw ... 1.jpg?dl=0

(2) When they've dealt with most of the modules on the near side of the station I split them into two groups & repeat the 'fly & wait, then attack' order sequence to guide them into flanking positions on the far side of the station:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/86o63fbbvjyrb ... 1.jpg?dl=0

(3) End result:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6dknsm7tq6ri0 ... 1.jpg?dl=0

[dtpsprt]

I cannot trust my fleet to do anything safely without micromanaging to the nth degree and the UI makes this as hard a task as is possible. I'd challenge anyone to design a more cumbersome UI - quite a feat I reckon. The latest point of frustration was in attacking a Xen defence platform. I flew directly above at 20km it in a battleship...dropped a laser tower simply to act as a beacon for the rest of the fleet to follow (when ready).

Then went through the laborious find the "L turrets" cycle exercise to snipe them one at a time (Q. is there an easier way to find the L turrets - I've tried 3rd person camera angles but the controls make it impossible and cant seem to move along instead of rotate/pan). Anyhoo, having eliminated the turrets from the top end, I call my fleet to the laser tower (because the UI makes it nigh impossible to summon them to anywhere outside the 2D plane. Then I say attack thinking they will just attack directly down on the station. But no, what do they do? They go out of their way to fly down to the 2D plane and attack from the frigging side getting obliterated by L turrets that are in range.

I know the AI is dumb but come on!! One brain cell would be nice, two would be a real treat and three...well I shudder to think.

Above or beyond the elliptic? that's a great NO No No!!!

Always keep in mind that the AI being a computer algorithm is just binary. Only 1s and 0s. Where are they going to put the third dimension? The mess of the axis naming says it all!!!