GOForce3

That's really cool! I haven't played Avorion in a while, but when I was playing my fleet AI ships kept automatically attacking unfriendly civilian ships without being provoked and trashed my rep with friendly factions, and repairing bad relations was rather difficult. It was mentioned that AI ships won't attack you on sight if not at war, so I hope that it also applies to your fleet AI ships. That right there should resolve that problem. I wonder what will happen if you or fleet AI ship attacks a civilian ship of a faction you're at war with. Destroy rep with other factions? Hope not.

Yes Yes Yes! FINALLY got the AI not shooting civil ships fixed. Thanks! That was really annoying. I agree that if you set AI to aggressive, they'll shoot anything that's not part of a friendly faction.

Are there any plans to fix a super annoying problem where my AI fleet ships attack Civil ships? I didn't see they mentioned. That really sours the game for me. This will really be bad if you send your ships to attack enemies in another sector and while doing that, they also destroy civil ships and ruin your rep with friendly factions. It happens a lot with some of my ships escorting me through friendly territory.

Awesome, thanks. I'll try that mod. The civil ship destruction is by far the most annoying bug to me. I hope the devs give fleet AI some love soon.

I haven't seen any mention in recent change logs about fixing the problems with fleet AI. Are the devs going to put any attention to this? I have to constantly babysit my ships when we're in friendly space because they will sometimes attack civil ships that are from unfriendly factions and if they destroy them, I get massive rep loss from all factions in the area. It would be nice to have a behavior setting to have your fleet ignore civil ships. Another problem I have is my miner or salvaging ships just freeze up and stop doing work. The only way I know how to get them working again is to ram them (I have collision damage turned off) and once they get straightened out, they'll start working again. Sometimes I'll tell my ships to escort me so we can get out of the sector and one or two ships will just ignore me and stay frozen in place until I ram them and "wake" them up. These issues are annoying and really need to be fixed. Many times I'll just go it alone and leave them in a sector because I get tired of them misbehaving.

Good idea. I've never modded this game before, but I'll take a look at that and see if I can figure that out. But for someone who's an experienced modder, this would be a pretty easy project, including adding the UI options.

One easy (or I think it would be easy) fix that would solve a major problem for me is if there will be a behavior setting to tell your ships NOT to attack civil ships that way if they're escorting you or your fighters are defending you they don't go off and destroy a civil ship and ruin your rep with a friendly faction. Kind of like the behavior setting in the inventory tab where you can choose whether or not to pick up stolen goods, but I would probably put the setting in question in the menu where you can see all your ships. It would also be really nice because you can tell your ships to patrol a sector and not worry about them attacking every transport from an enemy faction and wreck your rep, just attack military ships, Xsotan and pirate ships. Or maybe even have a third option to only attack Xsotan and pirate ships and not other faction ships.

Creating a fleet is a fun aspect of the game. I came up with a few things that could really help with fleet management, which right now, can be almost like herding cats. [*]Ship List Tab, ship list: In the list of ships, add a couple more columns. (1) Current ship orders, (2) Current ship status (idle, attacking, moving, mining, salvaging, etc...), (3) Hyperdrive charge status [*]Ship List Tab, ship details: Next to each ship, have a small triangle that you could expand the view of that ship to see detailed information about it, pretty much everything that the Ship Info Tab would show you [*]Ship List Tab, hyperspace with me checkbox: You can put a check mark on all the ships that you would like to hyperspace along with you regardless of what their orders are. Plus, the ships' orders will remain the same when you arrive to the new sector. Ships that have hangar bays and have launched fighters will only hyperspace once all fighters have been recalled. [*]Hyperspace Orders: In the orders menu, there'll be 3 additional options: (1) Recall Fighters (if it has hangar bays and has launched fighters), (2) Emergency hyperspace, will jump as soon as possible regardless of where its fighters are, (3) Hyperspace to me. The ship will immediately hyperspace over to your sector. This could take some time depending on how many jumps it needs to make and its hyperdrive cooldown Another thing that would be good is to have your ships reliably follow you through a gate. Or if you issue them an order to go through (in tactical view), they don't bunch up on each other when they arrive to the other sector. That could destroy ships because they're constantly hitting each other.

I noticed that if for some reason the AI ships become non-responsive, they won't jump with you. What I've learned to deal with this problem is to move and look back to see if my ships are in deed escorting me (of course, make sure you give them the command first). If one or more don't respond, then I have to go back and give them a little bump. That'll wake them up, and then I'll notice that they're now following me. That's the only way I've found to "wake up" a non-responsive AI ship. As long as the ship is following you properly in escort mode and has the proper jump range to make the jump, then you should be good to go. After I learned that trick, I stopped having that problem. I also make sure to have my fleet ships have a longer jump range than my main ship so I don't accidentally outjump them.

I too have had this problem cost me several ships and a couple of good relationships with previously friendly factions. One of them went from Admired to Abhorrent in one horrible case of this. This erroneous behavior is the only thing that really aggravates me and something that should be patched as soon as possible. I've found ways to deal with the other AI idiosyncrasies, so they aren't too much of a problem. One of which is when an AI ship is non-responsive I found that just giving them a nudge wakes them up and they'll obey your commands again. I also found that if any of your ships are in this non-responsive state and you jump to another sector, they won't jump with you. You'll have to "wake" them up before jumping.

A "jump to me" or "jump to sector" command would be awesome! There are several times where I've jumped to a sector and one or more of my fleet ships didn't make the jump with me. It would be a huge time saver to just tell that ship to jump here. I would also like to be able to see the cargo manifest of any of my ships regardless of where they're at. Another cool feature is to be able to take control of any of your ships regardless of what sector they're in.

+1000 ;D

I agree. It has its share of bugs and issues, but overall, I'm having a lot of fun with it. I really like the build your own ship (or fleet) and do whatever you want aspect of it. You're not tied to a certain story line, ship design or method of play. This game is very well made, especially considering that it was made by a one or two people and still in early access. Kudos to the developers of this game :) Keep up the good work guys!

I've also had fits with losing rep with friendly factions for stupid things. One idea that I have is for the ship talking to you to offer a chance to buy a license. That license will only stay in effect while you're in their territory. Once you leave their territory, it'll expire and next time you reenter it, you'll need to buy another license. If you choose not to buy a license, you can allow them to confiscate the goods and pay a lesser fee, and lose a little rep. Of if you ignore them completely, you lose a lot of rep, and the ship becomes hostile, like it does now.

Good idea too. Maybe in the diplomacy tab in the player menu, there's a way to offer a tribute for a recent infraction to say "Sorry, my bad, here's compensation. We good?". What's really annoying is that if you destroy a fighter from a friendly faction, you lose tons of rep too. I was attacking a pirate, and no other ships in my firing line, and all of a sudden I lost around 50,000 rep to the friendly faction. I was like, WTF?!? When I got closer, I then noticed that there was a swarm of fighters attacking that pirate too. I didn't even see them, as I was around 4 or 5km out. That was VERY annoying, and something that needs to be fixed too. When I see friendly fighters near me attacking pirates, I just move to another target or just go away so I won't accidentally swat and kill a fly (fighter) and pay dearly for it.

Really, all that needs to happen is add a scroll bar to the cargo menu and also the cargo transfer menu. I went to a station that was buying HCLs, and it showed that I have them, so I didn't lose them, just can't see them. That's sort of a relief. The major problem is when I go to craft the weapons that require that ingredient. As far as I know, you need to have that item in the ship that's docked to the turret factory, correct? If that's the case, and there's no way to transfer the cargo from my transport ship to my main ship, then that's the dilemma lies. I can try transferring all my cargo to the transport ship, if it'll let me and dock to the turret factory with it instead. I'll have to try that. One cool thing that would make it much easier to manage cargo is if you're dealing with stations or merchants, you can utilize the cargo of any ship that's within 1km of your ship. That way all you have to do is have your cargo ship escort your main ship to the depot and you won't have to hop ships or shuffle cargo around. That'll be cool, right? I really don't want my main ship to have lots of cargo space because that'll make it big and sluggish.

Inventory management needs a lot of work. The biggest issue is with things missing in my ship's inventory. I bought about 100 High Capacity Lenses from a factory (over $400,000, btw), and when I went I was looking in my ship's inventory, they were nowhere to be found. I went back and bought some more HCLs, and again, completely missing from my inventory. They're neither in the list nor the small graph on top. I hope I didn't throw that money away, that was a lot of $$!! Secondly, I noticed that I can't transfer everything in my cargo holds between ships. When I go into the menu to change items and not everything that's in my cargo holds are listed. Not sure if there's limitations on what can be transferred or not, or if that's just a bug. The workaround that I use is that if I can see the items in the cargo list in the ship menu (see 3rd item), you can dump the cargo, quickly move out of the way, and get into the other ship and have it suck up the cargo. Thirdly, in the ship's cargo menu, this list doesn't show everything there. I think there's some page navigation controls missing. However the small graph on the top does show the items that aren't displayed in the list. But you can't dump cargo that's not on the list. Fourthly, transferring cargo between ships using the transfer crew/cargo menu is tedious if you're transferring a lot of items. You can only transfer one thing at a time, which leads to a lot of mouse clicks and time. I've used the workaround in #2 to help with this too, if I the items are listed in the ship's cargo menu. I'd welcome any workaround that any of you have thought of. So far, the biggest problem are the 1st two that I listed. The 3rd & 4th are not too bad, just a little annoying.

What's weird is that I remember seeing the bolter turret available at more than one of the turret factories that I've discovered. Once I got the materials, I couldn't find it again. I checked EVERY turret factory that I discovered. However, you are correct, because just a little while ago, I did find a turret factory for bolter. Maybe the latest patch adjusted the distribution of turrets in the factories. I finally crafted the best ones, and they are amazing! The best bolter I had before crafting was about 105.4 DPS, the crafted ones are 290.77 DPS, almost triple the power, and much longer range (6.5km vs 4.5km). So, I'm a happy camper now. If I can only find some lead to craft the cool chainguns. I have the rest of the materials.

I FINALLY got the materials to craft bolter turrets (managed to avoid getting my explosive charges confiscated), and got to the turret factory, and what?!? No bolter turret listed to craft. I went to every turret factory (around 6 or 7) in the sectors I've discovered, and none of them have the bolter available to craft. I know that a couple days ago, it was there. What's up with that? Was that removed intentionally or just a bug? VERY annoying. If I can find some lead, I could craft chainguns instead, but no luck there. That's the ONLY ingredient I need for them.

That makes sense. I think the AI will just need to be tweaked. One possible solution that I came up with is if your AI ship is in escort mode, if someone hits my ship, it checks to see what that ship is actually targeting. If that ship is targeting my ship, then yes, attack it. If not, then it's a stray shot and ignore it. Same principle goes for other modes, just the criteria may have to change a little. Basically, check to see what the offending ship is actually targeting and base its actions on that instead of automatically marking it as hostile.

That's cool. I didn't know there was such a thing. I'll try that. Just zoom out huh? Thanks for the pro tip. I got my fleet set up with +6 jump range, so I can get around quickly too. I also made a 3rd ship just for mining. As soon as I get to a sector and the coast is clear, just send the little guy out and he gets me free materials.

I like the inertial dampening, but I do wish that you could just turn off the auto-braking. In actuality, without the auto-brake, you won't have to constantly hold down the 'W' key to keep moving forward. In space, if you keep applying thrust, you'll keep accelerating until you either run of out fuel, time, or reach light speed, and you won't slow down unless you hit something or apply retro thrust. It's funny that right now, once you turn off your afterburner, you quickly go back down to your rated top speed. A second suggestion would require you to apply braking thrust manually, but you can add retro thrusters that face forward to help you brake. They could be a separate block that only face backwards. But on the flip side, main engines and retro thrusters use energy when you use them to accelerate, but once you're at speed, you maintain that speed unless you activate the opposite direction or hit something. The energy usage will gradually increase the longer you hold down the button like afterburner, but to a lesser extent. Afterburner would just use a lot more energy than regular thrust.

I'm just starting out with making a fleet for myself. I'm having two major issues with them right now. First, I've lost A LOT of diplomacy standing with a couple of factions because of them. I'd have them escort me into a battle trying to help a friendly faction, all of a sudden, I get a notice that I'm losing diplomacy points with the faction I'm trying to help. I look around and I see one of my ships ATTACKING a friendly ship and when it destroyed it, I lost over 70,000 points from TWO factions because apparently a ship from another faction I had a good relationship with witnessed that. My home faction went from admired to good, and the faction I was helping went from admired to neutral. Another time I had one of my ships attack a fleet of pirates for me and things were going well, gaining diplomacy, and all of a sudden again, 50,000 points lost. That same faction went from good to mistrusting. Another time I had 2 of my ships escorting me, I happened to notice that ship #2 was attacking ship #3. I told it to stand down just before it destroyed it. So this is how I deal with the situation: First of all, I lost my 2nd fleet ship, so instead of building a fighting ship I made a "pack mule", or a cargo ship that's unarmed but tough. When there's a battle, I tell it to chill out away from the action. I still have 1 fighting ship that I usually have escort me into battle. However, once friendly reinforcements arrive, I leave the battle and when my fighting ship is away from the battle, I tell him to chill out there (idle) and go back into the fray and finish off the baddies. The AI is great for helping you in a battle, but apparently it loses track of friend or foe and can really mess up your standing with friendly factions. My second major problem is if I have 2 fleet AI ships and I go through a gate, almost every time 1 ship will make it through and I'll get a notice that my other ship lost track of me and is just hanging out on the other side of the gate. I have to tell ship #2 to stay put and go back through the gate, tell ship #3 to escort me and go through the gate again. To deal with this situation, when I have 2 ships, I don't even use gates anymore, I just jump wherever I need to go instead. The only exception is if I need to cross a chasm that I can't jump through, I'll go through the gate 3 TIMES to get all my ships through. I'd like to know how any of you deal with the limitations or use fleet AI ships, other than for mining. I don't really do any mining. I made my fortune by scavenging wreckages, which my escorting ship helps out with too.

Thanks for the info, good to know. I'll try that so I don't lose my valuable cargo and lots of $$.

It is HARD to gather all the materials to craft those weapons, and are expensive to buy, so it kind of makes sense that they're amazing. Also, if you're wanting to beef up the bolters, be careful when carrying the explosive charges. They'll confiscate them from you. I was helping a friendly faction fend off some raiders, and all of a sudden, one of the corvettes tells me that I have dangerous cargo, and don't have a license to carry explosive charges. I'm not sure what happens if you just ignore them (get fired upon and/or lose standing with the faction), so i complied and lost my stash of expensive explosive charges. I'm still struggling to find freakin' Aluminum and Lead, LOL. I also need servos, the factories that make them are either out of stock or are controlled by a hostile faction.