3 questions about Patch 1.20 - Ship defense, attack, shields?

[kreep69]

As of 1.20 patch ... 3 questions.

1) Do ships defend themselves when attacked?

2) Do capitals and other ships in your group attack if set to attack?

3) Do capitals have anything resembling shields or is it by design that engineers on board will just repair components and the hull up to 75% and that is the way it is going to stay?

[Margarine]

I will have a go at answering these

1) As far as I can tell yes. Only when a Defense Officer is present on the ship.
2) Sorry, I don't know.
3) My understanding is groups of components (such as turrets) have shields around them but the ship itself doesn't (See this link for an example http://roguey.co.uk/xrebirth/ships/arawn/) I am unsure where there are any exceptions to this.

[kreep69]

Thanks for the answer so far. If anyone else knows more, please post.

Going to go do some experimenting tonight to see how it all plays out.

Kind of pointless trying to build an empire if you can't defend it. When one lone trade ship or fighter can wreak havoc with impunity on any of your property what's the point.

[KopiG]

Yea I also hate that Engineers not repairing hull past 75%. Very annoying since the hull itself can be damaged very easily. Then you are forced to spend a ton of money on repairs IF the ShipDealer can build the ship you want to repair.
For a Taranis "special" trade ship (which you can commandeer from the Reivers) you cannot even repair the ship. It wont recognize the materials required so you cannot continue with the repair process (talking about the HULL ONLY).

Suggestion: They should make engineers to repair EVERYTHING on a ship even hull itself. Of course this repair should be slow and please do NOT require Cargolifter drones or Construction drones for this.

[djnjc]

There are mods available that deal with both of those issues. unfortunately that is the way the cap ships and engineers are set up at the moment

[Dygaza]

1) Do ships defend themselves when attacked?
2) Do capitals and other ships in your group attack if set to attack?
3) Do capitals have anything resembling shields or is it by design that engineers on board will just repair components and the hull up to 75% and that is the way it is going to stay?

1. Has been answered, seems to be working fine. I prefer to use aggressive defensive officer so he shoots before npc fighter can do damage.

2. Yes and No. Defence officer will do it's work fine by default on both orders. But it doesn't control where the ship goes. Player itself doesn't have commands to tell captain to engage targets. So only way to get Captain in attack mood is to assign it to $random$ station's defence officer, who will give it that command. They seem to give orders to attack only capital ships and stations, ignoring fighters (which is quite logical for capships).

3. As it was answered, shields only work for weapon and engine hardpoints. So hull is always open for damage. Will we get upgrade later on for this, who knows. Do we really need it?.

[kreep69]

I can live with 75% hulls around on capitals; that is ... as long as it's not necessary to personally fly around and babysit/defend trading vessels, capitals, and stations from being destroyed by a single fighter while they sit there and do nothing I can live with that.

Thanks Dygaza, think I will give it another go then ... ... maybe after a few more patches come out .

[brammie]

Some more info:

1) Under ship details/defence officer/details you can set how the ship reacts to NPC's
defend = if hit then shoot back
attack = hunt enemy down and kill it
you can also set there if the DO uses assigned cargo vessels to replenish drones and missile's (i have not tested this yet and i dont know how good this works).

The navigation of the Captain is messed up though, i jumped a taranis in the Xenon sector with the rest of the fleet there and it just floated there killing fighters while the belly of the ship was exposed to the guns of the station.


2) Yes, if the DO is set to attack. But it needs more commands or management like target priorities. Same goes with navigation, i would think that 'follow' means something like stay in a 2 km range, not float around in the same sector 50 km away.

3) Correct, the shied components share the damage (some shield of the shield comp is gone after killing a shielded turret) The guns are mostly grouped with a shield comp next to to it. Kill the shield comp and the turrets can be killed in one shot. The engines and jump drive have one shield comp to.

Dunno about the hull though and i don't mind just repairing the ships at a station for some cash. I would like the managers of ships to send them out for repairs to though (with a damage % set by the player, e.g if a ship is under 60% go for repairs else just keep on trucking).

[Mark Laiho]

If a defence officer is on-board the ship and set to attack. The ship should open fire on any hostile that comes in range. However there is not many ways you can get a capital in to range of something since there is no attack order. They boost to where you were and stop there. You might be able to use the manual command mod to ask them to manual move to where you are. Of course that requires your ship to stop there when giving the order....

The manual command mod has a patrol and escort command. Haven't tested escort. But I have ordered arawns into patrol. Its just for a zone so they wander about but they don't seem to move towards any hostiles just wander about. I'll have to assign some to station defence officers. Meanwhile while checking on hostile Titurels I see in the save files there normally on patrol but can switch to attack orders when something is close enough. I noticed the attack fedhelm(mine) order on a Titurels info when it was closing on mine.

On the plus side my freighters usually carry combat drones the defence officer does launch these to attack hostiles. And if you have a pile of mining ships in one sector they launch a few each as long as they all have defence officers set to attack.

One downside is the random enemies you find in the mass traffic. Not only do you have to beat the cops to them. Your freighters with defence officers set to attack will also launch drones to attack them. Also there not so careful about not hitting friendly stations I've taken some temporary standings hits from that. Thankfully its only temporary hits I'm told.

All in all getting the ships to fight back means you don't have one tiny fighter killing your mining vessel who just sits there and mines while dying.

[dijital]

A great mod to compliment MCE is Ultimate Fleet Overhaul, they work well together but MCE is no longer supported, sadly...

To address the ships not staying put with the Move to my Position command, try commanding them to a location, then giving them a Hold Position command, works perfectly for me.