Follow orders - please follow **** orders

[letsplay]

Not sure, again, whether the inability to give ships definitive orders is deliberate design or incompetence.

I am at at war with the teladi. So lots of red throughout the map.
I have given ships orders to protect stations and to patrol
Of course they go off mission, end-up several hex away, and I cannot persuade them to return.
At every opportunity they turn to attack a 'red' target, of which there are many, even if I sit their cancelling the 'attack' in the order queque on the ship's information screen. It is almost imediately reinstated.

Similar experience when trying to get ships to travel from A to B to join an attack force or defend a station.

Why is there no way to give a ship a definitive order that it follows, come what may?
Without it, this aspect of the game is unplayable.
Hopefully I missed something simple.

[pref]

Hopefully I missed something simple.

Yeah, i wish there was a checkbox hidden in the menu which says "make the game work", and ticking it would solve all issues

[CataLYTic]

Hopefully I missed something simple.

You didn't.

[graphicboy]

I've intentionally not purchased yet because of posts like this. You seriously can't give a command like "dock at" and have the ship immediately go dock? And are you in v2?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I have had a station trader that reported being accosted by Pirates, I told it to escape, but it kept reporting "awaiting orders" every couple of seconds. On closer inspection it was auto-attacking, stopping, reporting awaiting orders, then repeating. I eventually broke the cycle with a direct order to dock at a station.

This NEVER happened with 1.60, though I did get awaiting orders notifications on occasion for no apparent reason - possibly after killing something that attacked the given ship.

[lordmuck]

I have had a station trader that reported being accosted by Pirates, I told it to escape, but it kept reporting "awaiting orders" every couple of seconds. On closer inspection it was auto-attacking, stopping, reporting awaiting orders, then repeating. I eventually broke the cycle with a direct order to dock at a station.

This NEVER happened with 1.60, though I did get awaiting orders notifications on occasion for no apparent reason - possibly after killing something that attacked the given ship.

I told them they broke it more in 2.0 yet I guess they thought I was referring to the normal stuff we had before -.-

[Empyrion]

got to agree with the OP, orders are completely broken, ships will not obey and hold position, will not def the station, instead they go off into deep enemy territory and get killed. Same with traders, refusing to follow routings, simply they change and route through enemy territory and die.

I mean I don't mind fighting but if the game is over ruling my commands, what's the point?

I've lost 2 carriers and now 4 destroyers plus numerous medium and small ships to this. I've stopped playing X4 and will not recommend the game until this is fixed. Its a complete game breaker.

[Player]

Incredible ability to worsen what was no longer good. The game is completely broken.

[sh1pman]

In threads like this one there’s always people suggesting to try using a better skilled pilot. Or crew with more stars. That’s why I hate the experience system, it’s great at causing the most amount of frustration possible. Skilled personnel are a pain in the *** to get, they train exceptionally slowly, and the effect of experience on their AI is not clearly described anywhere: it may or may not make pilots stupider than they should be. Perfect mix.

As a result, there are THREE possible reasons explaining r******* NPC behavior every time it happens: their incompetent AI (working as intended, may be improved in 6.0 if we keep asking), artificial handicap from the awesome experience system (not going anywhere anytime soon), and finally, bugs (fix is not guaranteed, and may actually make things worse, lol).

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

• Give us a definitive list of commands and their expected behaviour.
  Allow the player at least some control over the commands so we can refine the behaviour.
  Let the player decide if a command goes to the top of the list or the bottom.
  If the player overrides an order and there are no other orders in the list, ship returns to default behaviour.
  Stop fighters on patrol from attacking non-existent station parts.
  Allow the player to issue an imperative command that overrides all others. Such as the attack / attack multiple commands.

Example Defend Position:

Simple really, the ship/s remain within a predefined area. Any enemy entering this area is attacked. If the enemy moves out of the predefined area it has escaped and is not pursued.
Ships defending an area do not under any circumstances leave the area. They most certainly do not enter highways, accelerators or gates.
To help refine this command allow the player to define the position and size of area to be defended.

[Socratatus]

Incredible ability to worsen what was no longer good. The game is completely broken.

I think they concentrated so much on the damned shipyards and missed the little important stuff (like AI) that everything else is busted- and some now want the Devs to work on improving big ship weapons even more?? Let`s fix the main game first eh?

I don`t do any of that big fleet stuff and 2.0`s bugginess has forced me to completely restart the whole thing. I had this Save since release.

Is there even any point? I might just shelve it and see what happens by August... if I am even able by then. I am reminded of No man`s Sky at release. It took 2 years for them to fix that.

[GCU Grey Area]

You seriously can't give a command like "dock at" and have the ship immediately go dock?

No, that's overstating it. Basic commands such as 'dock at', 'fly to', 'follow', 'attack' & 'upgrade at' (i.e. ship flies to equipment dock to restock missiles, change equipment, etc) work fine. Have also found some of the default commands (orders which occur in the absence of basic commands such as those above) quite useful. 'Dock & wait' in particular has proved very handy - after my fighters have finished their attack orders they automatically fly back to their carrier & dock.

The problems are with the more complicated stuff, in particular commands which permit ships to select their own targets. Wing implementation is a bit rubbish at present - can't stand the way subordinates wander off on suicidal solo attack missions (I manage my fleet with explicit 'follow', 'fly to', 'attack', etc orders instead). It also appears from posts on the forum that 'patrol' & 'defend position', etc orders have serious issues, though have not needed to make use of these commands myself. Most of my freighters are L class (i.e. have sufficient firepower to look after themselves in most situations) & my stations have orders of magnitude more guns than my entire fleet, so don't feel any need to assign ships to protect them either (indeed tends to be the other way round - I dock ships at the stations when I'm not using them so they're protected by 100s of station guns).

[pref]

You seriously can't give a command like "dock at" and have the ship immediately go dock?

No, that's overstating it. Basic commands such as 'dock at', 'fly to', 'follow', 'attack' & 'upgrade at' (i.e. ship flies to equipment dock to restock missiles, change equipment, etc) work fine.

Not really.
I lost 2 ships on an upgrade command which queued an attack on its own.

[GCU Grey Area]

Not really.
I lost 2 ships on an upgrade command which queued an attack on its own.

Surprising, will have to watch out for that. However, it's certainly something that's never happened to me - even when I've sent fighters for repair from the middle of a battlefield (involving flying right past numerous active hostiles), they've never once spontaneously switched to 'attack'. I keep a close eye on damaged ships until they're clear of the fighting & would certainly notice such a thing. Are you positive those ships didn't have potentially offensive default orders set (e.g. patrol, defend, etc), or were perhaps part of a wing? Those are the only circumstances I've observed my commands being superseded by self-generated attack orders.

[pref]

Are you positive those ships didn't have potentially offensive default orders set (e.g. patrol, defend, etc), or were perhaps part of a wing? Those are the only circumstances I've observed my commands being superseded by self-generated attack orders.

Yes, they had no commander and had dock or hold default behaviour.
Think fly to and perhaps dock at are the only "safe" command in this regard. But possible that i just got lucky with those so far. Scripts are event driven, even if normally they work fine occasionally an unexpected condition can get fulfilled i guess and so they just wander off.

But even in case those conditions are true such commands should get executed without AI overriding it.

[GCU Grey Area]

Think fly to and perhaps dock at are the only "safe" command in this regard.

'Dock & wait' also seems to be a fairly safe option so far. Even when new hostiles have flown into radar range after my fighters have started on their journey back to the carrier they've always continued on & docked. Indeed it's proved quite difficult to get them to attack in such circumstances & has required switching orders round individually for every single fighter (24 currently). Generally found it best (i.e. more convenient) just to let them fly to the carrier before commencing the new attack orders - 90% of the time 'dock & wait' is sufficiently handy I'm not going to get too annoyed about the 10% of the time my fighters are being stubborn.

[pref]

'Dock & wait' also seems to be a fairly safe option so far. Even when new hostiles have flown into radar range after my fighters have started on their journey back to the carrier they've always continued on & docked. Indeed it's proved quite difficult to get them to attack in such circumstances & has required switching orders round individually for every single fighter

That's an issue as well, behaviour should be overridden with any direct order every time. Weird that you try to describe this as if it was a positive thing.

[GCU Grey Area]

That's an issue as well, behaviour should be overridden with any direct order every time. Weird that you try to describe this as if it was a positive thing.

Well it's far better than them deciding on their own not to dock after all & go chasing other ships instead. I would find that much more annoying - at least they're being stubborn in a way I sort of approve of. Stubbornly flying away from danger annoys me far less than the sort of suicidal activities I've encountered with wings, for example. Agree though it is an issue it would be good to have sorted out.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

behaviour should be overridden with any direct order every time.

I disagree - there are times you want a direct order to override, and times you don't. The situation is anything but cut and dry but the current approach is a better option than having direct commands ALWAYS overriding.

With the current system, if you want a direct order to override immediately you clear/cancel current orders then issue the order you want executed now.

The ideal compromise would be to add some way of issuing priority orders that inject themselves into the order queue at the most appropriate point - Not necessarily immediately, but a lot would depend on the order chain in progress. However, such a solution is likely to require a lot of time and effort to do properly.

Currently, it seems at least some orders are completely broken, some others are flawed but workable, and a handful work reasonably well. Some of these orders seem to have been broken or made worse in 2.0, others have always not worked well.

Where the AI is concerned, 2.0 is essentially a broken mess and worse than 1.6. Egosoft need to concentrate more on their software quality - as it stands their general approach to quality is up the creek without a paddle. The seem to have the ability but their management of quality of their releases is decidedly flawed - better to release late, than release a poor quality article.

[pref]

Well it's far better than them deciding on their own not to dock after all & go chasing other ships instead. I would find that much more annoying - at least they're being stubborn in a way I sort of approve of. Stubbornly flying away from danger annoys me far less than the sort of suicidal activities I've encountered with wings, for example. Agree though it is an issue it would be good to have sorted out.

Yeah, a bit like one less bad bug hiding a worse one.

I'm afraid ES will never get this done. If you think about X3, all the scripts that turned that game from a spreadsheet microhell were the community scripts like ST/CAG/CLS, fleet and combat related ones, and so many other fixes and QoL features.
They somehow don't feel the need to implement the proper means to interact with the game world and assets - only the bare minimum gets done and even that in low quality so it doesn't even work in many cases.
Then either you mod in the rest, or the game will not offer more then basic asset hoarding and will be just plain frustration at the point it should start to feel like a game that you play with/against the rest entities.
2.0 is a clear example, they release some flashy stuff and no means to make use of it - it looks good on the store page, but all the changes that are essential to make use of the things you gather while playing and cannot be advertised in a clear strong way are just forgotten.