Capital ship targeting and movement

[wedge2211]

Do capital ships deal with movement and attack orders separately? I've noticed in a few of my more recent space battles that if I give a Star Destroyer an attack order (right-click on an enemy vessel), and them give it a movement order, the destroyer seems to continue concentrating its fire on the ship I targeted. In other games, the move order would supercede the attack order and the destoryer would start picking its own targets.

 

I know that the capital ships are capable of targeting more than one enemy at once, so I might just be making this up; but it sure seems like fire is concentrated on the ship I ordered attacked. Has anyone else noticed this? Do capital ships actually behave this way?

 

...If so, I love it. That behavior would add to players' tactical options and make flanking maneuvers easy and accessible. It would also distance EaW from other RTS games, where you issue an attack order and your unit stops and shoots until it or the target dies, because jockeying for position during combat would become a valuable tactic.

[MistenTH]

Yep, if you issue an attack your ship will continue attacking. However, any guns that cannot target due to the angle will then resort to opportunity fire. Unfortunately, the base EAW ships don't have enough health to make full use of flanking.

[BuCkEt!]

I've found (only against AI) that running my Mon Cals straight through the middle of their fleets leads to victory more quickly then micro managing them to take out specific targets.

 

Just set a move point behind their fleet and let them go, then use smaller ships to target specific threats (like gunships and bombers).

 

Flanking does work to an extent in that no cap ships have rear facing turrets, so if you can get your units behind them they have to turn which takes precious time.

[wedge2211]

I've been playing with this some more in-game, and it's really cool. A great departure from Blizzard's "standard" RTSs. I wish they'd highlighted the fact that move and attack orders don't supercede each other in the game manual. I've gotta build this into my tactics now...