[Bug]? or not? Carrier Oddoties

My capital ships fight just fine together with the fighters and drones

Are you capital ships classed as support ships? Have you looked at ship classes?

I see Interceptors as the ships in front, then capital and assault next, escorts somewhere and support ships hanging at the back.

At least that's what I think happens.

Done more testing and its very random honestly... Sometimes the ships fight with the fighters/drones sometimes they don't.  I cannot seem to find any reason on why it occurs sometimes and why it doesn't.  The only thing I have noticed is it happens more often when you don't have fighters, but only interceptor drones.  This is potentially very problematic when it occurs as a fight you probably should win you could take casualties or even lose.  I also did specifically mention having combat ships, which wouldn't be support, in the mix.

For Orion: Support ships AI is the exact same as any other ships ai, in terms of watching battles play out, it says it behaves differently when reading its description but its just fluff.  Support ships just charge in like everything else, watch some time with a pure weaponless support tagged carrier it will charge in and fly into enemy ships.  Its misleading so I understand the thought though.

Ship roles?

I've only been in battles against pirates so far but I haven't had your problems. When a battle starts my carriers are hanging in the back, capital ships slightly in front but moving up, assault drones way up front and unloading. Once the capital ships are in range they shoot at the pirates too.

well when I watch the fight, my interceptors start in front, then the fighters and escorts, then capitals, with support ships at the back.

By the time the support ships get to the firing line, normally the enemy is dead.

Eh well then you wouldn't see it i guess... when you fight against fleets that don't get steam rolled, you will see, your support ships just charge with your assaults escorts and capitals.  Yes when a battle starts the ships look nice and ordered according to their roles, but aside from targeting role has no bearing on what a ship actually does during a fight, aside from the initial fleet positioning.

My post was mostly a response to your OP about how the rest of your fleet doesn't attack until the drones die. Even if only pirates, my capital ships do attack once they're in range even with drones still alive. They don't simply fly in circles ignoring everything.

The issue here is that carriers are supports. As that, they don't approach the enemy and stay at range, or even move in opposite direction. After battle with front line ends, enemy then cases the support ships, but they are usually far away so it takes some time. I think the distance is actually not properly displayed. It seems the ships flee "up" but "up" is not properly displayed direction.

I feel you didn't read my post at all... skimmed it decided I didn't understand fleet roles and posted this.  As I said in the original post... there are combat classed ships... that are not in the support role in the fleet.  It does not happen all the time, but for whatever reason it occurs occasionally, and most noticeable when using interceptor drones not accompanied by the carrier assault fighters.  For some reason having a fighter carrier module in the fleet seems to alleviate the issue.

well the developers have said that galciv is a empire game not a fleet game, and all battles are "to the death" so hence all ships charge at the enemy regardless of weapons load out and all the settings of interceptor to support do is to determine where they start.

i.e. interceptors in the front, support ships at the back.

To the OP, I am seeing what you said now in my current game.

My carrier launches Fighters and Drones, the drones attack, but the Fighters do not attack until the drones all die.

When looking at the fighters they say target not in range even though they are right next to them.

Most annoying, I've now given up having the smaller drones as they change the way the fleet works.

many turns later, and a few restarts, the bug went away and everyone started to fire properly.

Ok glad someone else is seeing it, though it doesn't seem to be super common as not seeing reports everywhere about it.  As you said orion its very spotty.  Most of he time it works fine, but sometimes it just flat doesn't.  Seems really random too in how it works.  Have played about 4-5 games since I posted this originally, and have seen the bug pop in and out which might be why people have trouble detecting it.  As an example have had my capitals fire, and my assaults escorts and guardians just fly in circles with the out of range bug despite some of those being missle boats, the ships that weren't firing did nothing until all the ships that were firing died then they engaged.  Have seen just one class of ship (random which one) not fight, while the others fight.  Have even seen it affects starbase encounters where the starbase won't shoot or be shot at for a prolonged period of time.  Eventually the game sorta reset itsself i guess and the 2 sides fought.  I get the feeling this bug isn't super uncommon... but because of the nature of how it works unless you are paying close attention, when it DOES occur, you can easily miss it.  It is just at its most noticeable when you have 6 capitals/assaults/escorts circling the enemy while they watch the entire opposing fleet fight the drones.

As an aside I believe I have an educated guess on the cause after seeing this enough times now.  I believe there is supposed to be a script fired off that signals all ships to engage, and then there is a redundancy back up that fires off again for ships to fight when they are triggered via their or the enemies attack/defense priorities.  IE, it would look like this.  Interceptors are positioned forward of the fleet (this is what the one of the drone specilization carriers gives you)  They will always get shot at first regardless of targeting priorities by enemy ships, this is because they are always in range of the enemy at the start of the fight.  No ship has a priority to defend interceptors, so its possible that they don't triggered, the same happens for assaults, though ships do have priorities to attack them.

Where this becomes important is the guardians escorts and capitals.  A capital has no assist priorities, which makes them one of the most likely to fly around doing nothing, this causes the guardian to also be a prime culprit.  Escorts are set to defend capitals, but capitals will never be attacked until escorts are down, so they will be triggered generally right after the assaults, as they are the next target.  Once escorts are down capitals are typically the next target, this will trigger your guardians, as well as they have a defense assist trigger for capitals.  So if your capitals attack guardians will always fight too. 

The chain mentioned above can break at any of the links above, or not break at all.  So fights can appear to go completely fine one time, and the next your capitals fly in circles with (out of range) while the rest of the fleet fights.  If you say only have 1 ship tagged as a capital and 6 ships that aren't its very possible not to notice that one of your ships isn't fighting.  I have noticed this bug doesn't seem to affect the AI and I believe the reason for this is the AI only uses two classes of ships generally.  They only produce escorts or supports, so as there is only 1 possible trigger to occur, in their fleets, they will always function appropriately.  As the game will always successfully activate the first link in the chain on both sides.  I get the feeling this will be a very hard bug to track down, hope they can manage it.

I have that too, and its occasional but noticeably often.

I'm talking of the "out-of-range"-bug where all ships fly in circles and apparently do nothing until some magic trigger/fallback kicks in and they start fighting.

I have seen this bug when the enemy ships contain a mix of escorts and support ships.

My assault ships move in, destroy the escorts, then close in on the support ships which are hanging out in back. My ships and the enemy support ships circle around each other for 10-15 seconds, then finally they start shooting at each other.

Ya that fits with my hypothesis, there is no priority for supports to attack unless attacked, and there is no priority to kill supports, the 10-15 second delay is probably a failsafe check to make sure combat is happening.  This is what happens with starbases sometimes too.

new game, first fight.

I have a carrier with 3 fighters, and a medium corvette with beams set to assault.

The corvette fights... the fighters and carrier watch flying around been "out of range" until the corvette dies then they decide they should fight and blow up the enemy.

Gah humbug !

Maybe I should have set the carrier to assault too?

Huh, this is strange have not seen this, and it is a strike against my hypothesis.  What I have encountered is if one of a ship class is fighting, all others in that ship class should be fighting as well, as well as any that trigger off of that ship class being hit.  The fighters are going to be interceptors or assaults, and both of those I believe should trigger before or at the same time as a medium assault.  Though it potentially stays in my hypothesis if the corvette assault managed to get into range before the fighters, just... it occurs in a way I didn't believe was possible.  That is to say I didn't believe that you could only have 1 ship out of multiple in a given class trigger while not causing others to trigger.  I am going to take some video of this and post it.  This thread doesn't seem to be getting any dev attention and this needs to be looked at.  Maybe some video evidence will help them diagnose it.  Shouldn't take to long to get a video of it, it happens at least every 4-5 fights.

On the carriers being set to assault I don't BELIEVE that would have an impact, it would just get your carriers blown up.  I think the more ship classes you have though the more likely you are to get this bug, as it creates more links in the chain which mean more chances for it to break.  This might be why drone carriers seem to break it more than assault fighter carriers.  People tend to use interceptors less then assaults, so if you had 2 escorts 2 assaults, a support (drone carrier) and a capital you have 5 ship classes making drones carriers seem to create the bug more often.  Its all guesses at this point though.

fighters say they are escorts? do I have any control over this?

First time I've seen this too.

I'll see if I can vid it tonight.

The major reason for why you observe lulls in the fighting is because the battle viewer is not live... it is just a replay of how the fight is calculated which is done before the viewer is even loaded. I believe they will fix these issues sooner or later.

All ships have attack priorities on ALL ship roles, you just see the top two in the GUI... the rest you can see in the XML files if you care to look there.

For example... if you designate all your ships as either Capital or Escort you will ensure that your Escort will always be targeted first (except assault, interceptors from carriers) and the capitals second. Since the Escorts start ahead of the Capital ships you will make sure they get targeted first and they always have a higher priority from all ship roles.

This is also true even if you only put defenses on your escort ships and only weapons on capital ships. Also remember that ship roles have nothing to do with ship hull type or even what is on them, you can freely choose the role on any ship you create.

Ships may look as if they are in range while they are not, that is why they can look like they are circling each other for a while and no shots are being fired.

Yes... it is a replay of the battle which is instantly simulated.... however.... that doesn't inherently mean its operating correctly now does it?  I promise you if out of 9 ships 5 don't fire for 45 seconds of the battle, til the other 4 are dead, it affected the outcome.  This is true for the simulation whether you watch the replay of it or not.  The replay is showing an issue, you shouldn't choose to ignore it and just say its working as intended, because a medium ship with thrusters and missiles shouldn't take the length of time that 5 large hulled with health bonus kinetic ships and no thrusters take to die to a relatively equal force, to make it into range.  You also cannot say that said ship with 30+ missile firepower wouldn't have affected the outcome of the fight, had it been firing.  The stats of health left tell me that watching the battle or not.  This is especially true as the ships most likely to be affected by this tend to be your hardest hitting ships.  Further, the ships all start close together at the outset of a battle as they are in  fleet, watching or not this SHOULD be a truth. 

If it was merely a factor of truly being range then the ships most affected by this should be kinetic... this isn't the case kinetic is honestly the least affected that i've seen though this could be a bias in my ship design class selections when using kinetic.  I have had kinetic ships firing who started further than missile ships that started closer just based on a fleets starting formation.  I have also tested for this as it was my initial guess, by using thrusters, thrusters does not affects this in any way shape or form, can put thrusters on missile ships starting closer based on fleet formation, than the kinetics and they still won't fire sometimes, while the kinetics do.  The issue lies with the simulation, yes its a replay... that doesn't mean the replay isn't giving you information that the simulation is bugged.  Can guarantee it affects you watching the battle replay or not.

The reason for mentioning just the top 2 priorities is it is a reasonable bet that these are the first checked either/or statements in the code.  If these aren't firing off then this is the logical place to start looking in the code to figure out whats going on.  I understand ship classes quite well at this point, suicidal AI is a cakewalk in this game, made more so by abusing ship class priorities, and the AIs refusal to use density tech.  Believe me when I say this truly affects outcomes of fights.  Can fight a battle with a fleet take no damage or casualties, same ai fleet is  right next to it, fight that battle, and you lose 2 assaults.  Now why is that you may wonder, sure there is some variance and randomness to a fight, but not enough to win a fight with no damage taken and no casualties and then win a fight vs the exact same fleet make up to lose 2 large assault ships.  This isn't scenario I have seen play out just once either... there is an issue with their simulator and it needs fixed, regardless whether you watch the replay or not.

I'm not even sure I said that there might not be an issue. I was merely stating that we can't rely too heavily on the battle viewer representation of the fight since it does not always give a very clear picture.

I have not experienced this issue personally as of yet, but then I have not used carriers very extensively either.

In short... I'm not arguing there may be an issue with the battle calculations at work here.

I understand I was just presenting why I don't believe what you listed to be the case here.  I am just blunt if you read into it something else I am sorry.