Am i doing sth wrong, or are the ships just stupid

There is one problem i encountered several times, when im playing multiple star systems.

I have one medium defend fleet in my home sun, and having some battles in the other systems i have to take care of. Now i see a fleet of multiple bombers heading to my sun. They arrive and my defending fleet starts taking care of them. And there are more than enough of mine to destroy them. So i let them do their job, because i have more important battles to take care of. A min later i loose a planet. Look back to my home system. what happened. the bombers passed through to one of my asteroids. And my fleet just keeps on sitting in their orbit, letting them blow up the whole thing. And this happens often. That they dont follow.

I did put the whole fleet on "All-auto-attacking", but they still dont follow.

My question:
Is there a option to make them auto follow, that i dont know of. Or any other way so they keep tracking them?
Because this really gets on my nerve.My 20 ship fleet is taking a break when a 10 bomber fleet that passed through them takes out planets in the next orbit.

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The AI is smarter than you would think... if you have all your fleet concentrated on the star they will try to bypass the fleet with faster ships and go straight for your homeworld; so put up some defenses do mitigate this or spread out your star defense fleet more.

I tried the second tactic and it takes a LOT of ships to fully defend an entire star.

Your 20 ship fleet is amazingly strained to defend a star, even if it has only a single phase lane, anything within 90 degrees to either side of the phase lane line can phase jump as long as its out of the gravity well.

I tried this out on Systems of War, 4 phase lanes, took about 100 ships to ensure NOTHING got by, its way easier to just fortify a choke point planet.

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I understand your case, the enemy does like to "blockade run" a lot, with little that can be done about it without wasting a ton of time microing after them every hop. We do have fleet options for area of engagement (up to a max size of within the grav well), but it would be kind of nice if we could bump it up a step further to include puruing any enemies encountered through the star system.

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hmmm.... this is just a though so take it easy. If you want to have an auto follow feature to another planet because you don't like checking in on your fleet real quick to see their progress what's going to happen when they do follow and another player the same player sends a second fleet to the sun and goes another direction? Or just takes the choke point? What I'm saying is that it seems less micromanaging to NOT have an auto jump/follow feature especially in MPO games, or just MP games with the AI. If your ships abandon planet, the AI will pick up on it and send another fleet through completly unopposed and since your happily distracted cause you know your fleet is on auto follow, a whole enemy fleet could pass right under your nose. Does that make any sense, or did it jsut kinda seem like a ramble?

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@Diggz

Its not about defending the whole star. Its that they didnt follow up. Even when i tell them to attack they just didnt care to follow when the enemy popped away. So in my sun had been 20 of mine, astroid beside 10 bomber. Not taken care of. And this could be easily done when they just followed up after i told them to attack.

I though have all defenses. but they dont help much in an astroid belt when a bomber sqaud is flying in. And setting up ships in each planet around the sun is hard when u already have four suns under control. Cuz then you might run out of ships where you actually need them. Cuz of fleet logistics.

I know 20 ships aint enough. But they only are the arrival welcome. I have two big backup squads ready to jump between my suns, As soon as I see the enemy is going for one of my stars.

@yilmal
I know what u mean. But the auto follow could be restricted to the fleet/ships you are pointing to. Means optional. Attack with follow/ Attack without follow. And when follow its has to be clicked/ pointed to. So you would follow only fleets you want to follow and which you know of. So nothing will get messed up

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Stars are really bad places to defend from. They have massive circumference, so it's hard to navigate around them to jump, and they give an antimatter boost to ships.

Also, ships will not jump out of a gravity well to pursue enemy ships. There's no current way to change this, unfortunately.

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I have seen them just use some of their ships as cannon fodder to attract your ships to fight at your home planet then sending in lots of seige figates and taking down the home planet

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I did put the whole fleet on "All-auto-attacking", but they still dont follow.

Probably a stupid question, but what is the fleet grouping option for jumping?

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RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

I did put the whole fleet on "All-auto-attacking", but they still dont follow.
Probably a stupid question, but what is the fleet grouping option for jumping?

Doesn't matter; ships will not (and should not) jump out of a system unless either ordered to do so, or part of a fleet with a ship that was ordered to do so. (Even the latter bugs me sometimes, when "free" ships get swept up into the fleet whether I want them to or not!)

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