[#190]5.10 Formations Breaking in High-attention

[LameFox]

Version 5.10 (479084) english
This is a custom start to reproduce formation bugs, hence the game considers it 'modified' but no mods are active.

First save: the fleet is sent to attack early Xenon spawns. They are set to V formation and each pilot is 2 or 3 stars. The escorts lag behind the lead ship, which is flying slower than the slowest escort. I *think* it is waiting for them to catch up, but all of this happens without using travel drive, causing the formation to move very slowly for a long time. If you break the fleet apart, box select the ships, and order an attack that way, they actually progress faster.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ekasnw ... 1IE1T/view



Second save, summarized from another thread: "Here you can see that one ship dropped slightly behind the others, some 10km outside their defend area. This again seems to slow down the whole formation, and it will take a while before that ship catches up, so they crawl their way to the destination. This appears to be the same issue that has kept them from promptly entering combat in my main game on several occasions, and probably a large part of why removing them from a fleet make them more responsive."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JU0OVP ... dAduk/view



Third save: "Here is another lone ship falling behind and slowing everyone down, but this time slowing them from entering combat."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xHc60J ... Oh7BN/view



On replicating: it's hard to predict exactly when the ships will drop behind, however it happens extremely often. A common case is that when I issue an order to move/attack, the lead ship (Minotaur) will enter travel drive, followed a few seconds later by the escorts (Kyd, Shih). Sometimes the escorts, upon catching up with the Minotaur, will drop out of travel drive and fall behind. It takes them a while to re-engage travel drive. If the Minotaur drops out of travel drive because it is nearing its destination or target, the escorts do not re-engage travel drive, even if they are left behind. This causes any escorts lagging behind the fleet to slow down the entire fleet for a long time as they return to formation in conventional flight.

Dragging the move order far enough away for the Minotaur to engage travel drive again will enable the escorts to engage their own travel drive once more, however the drop-outs continue and so it's very common that at least one ship is always holding up the fleet when the leader leaves travel drive.

In my testing, asteroids and AI ships in proximity seem to make the drop outs worse, although it does happen in plain open space too. I speculate they may not be entirely avoidable, but perhaps the fighters could be taught to catch up in travel drive after the lead ship slows down?