RESOLVED - Almost impossible to hit enemy targets.

[Bansheedragon]

I'm playing a game where I'm at war with the Lezgoon.
I have the targeting tech to level 9, and the ECM tech to level 8

But despite this its almost impossible for my ships and stations to hit the enemy targets, I'm lucky if my ships or stations can hit with 1 equipped weapon, much less 2 or more.
The enemy on the other hand practically cant miss, maybe 1 in 10 to 20 shots from the enemy miss.

I just dont understand what it is that makes it so damned hard for me to hit anything while I'm practically just a sitting duck to them.
It makes it damn near impossible for be to defend my planets unless I got a massive fleet there.

A single enemy ship was able to bypass my defenses in a few turns
They destroyed the starbase in 2 turns, doing massive damage each turn while my starbase could not even hit.
My missile base was useless because the enemy ship shot down most the missiles before they hit the ship, only damaging their shields, which would regenerate again next turn negating any damage done and making it impossible to take down the ship.

[keller]

Do you have a saved game file that you could upload somewhere? I would like to test this out.

[Bansheedragon]

I have a savegame file thats no problem, I even saved it manually after reading your post, but dont have anywhere I could upload it to.

[keller]

you could use firedrive.com
Haven't never tried them myself but heard they were a good file sharing site.

[Xyquas]

I had this problem in one of my games too. There is a third tech in Electronics that is important to boost: Signal communicators. This is the ECCM technology which will counter the electronic counter measures (ECM) of your enemy. I'm sure when you boost this one, you'll get better hits.

Additionally I noticed that the different weapons seem to have different precision no matter what their tech level is. My first game was with Humans having the laser as their standard beam weapon - this seems to be a very precise weapon. I then played as Barsig whose standard weapon is the ion cannon - this seems to be like a space shotgun (meaning it isn't 100% precise even on level 10).

You could also try to equip your ships with cloaking or stealth device, which give a good bonus for evading enemy hits while active. Try to let the enemy fire first with these techs and then strike back.

And at last there may be some race traits which affect the battle luck? Some races have bonusses on ship attack and defense and others have a malus at these points (Barbeck for example). Which races fight against each other in your constellation?

[Bansheedragon]

I had this problem in one of my games too. There is a third tech in Electronics that is important to boost: Signal communicators. This is the ECCM technology which will counter the electronic counter measures (ECM) of your enemy. I'm sure when you boost this one, you'll get better hits.

Additionally I noticed that the different weapons seem to have different precision no matter what their tech level is. My first game was with Humans having the laser as their standard beam weapon - this seems to be a very precise weapon. I then played as Barsig whose standard weapon is the ion cannon - this seems to be like a space shotgun (meaning it isn't 100% precise even on level 10).

You could also try to equip your ships with cloaking or stealth device, which give a good bonus for evading enemy hits while active. Try to let the enemy fire first with these techs and then strike back.

And at last there may be some race traits which affect the battle luck? Some races have bonusses on ship attack and defense and others have a malus at these points (Barbeck for example). Which races fight against each other in your constellation?

I never heard of this signal communicator, though I had a pretty good idea what it was, I still had to look it up to be sure.
Its hailing communicator its called, and after reading the description and looking at the tech levels for both this and the ECM jammer,I can see how it is a problem.

I thought hailing communicator was only for the comm system and didnt think it had anything to do with ECCM, as such it was only at level 4 since I had not prioritized it.

I have started a new game since I had come to a point where the game had slowed to a crawl, it takes about 30-60 seconds just to complete a single turn.
Now that I know how it works I'll put more research into it.

Thanks for the help.

[Xyquas]

I never heard of this signal communicator, though I had a pretty good idea what it was, I still had to look it up to be sure.
Its hailing communicator its called...

Obviously, just translating backwards (German -> English) won't always hit the original word. If this happens again, I could try to lookup the corresponding line in the language XML files, but I'm happy you found it anyway.

Thanks for the help.

My pleasure.

[Bansheedragon]

I got an update on this one.
It seems its not hailing communicator that affects hit chance but scanners.
I started a new game and got scanners at 7 and hailing communicator only at 5 and I got a much greater chance to hit now than I did before.

I did find it a little strange that communications should have anything to do with hitting a target.

As for translations, dont worry too much about that.
The exact wording is not important as long as the message comes across.

[Bansheedragon]

Another update.
I now got Scanners, Targeting computers, ECM and Hailing communications to level 10 as well as the weapons I use to level 10, despite this my weapons cannot hit no mater what.

I just had a group of 3 enemy ships attack a planet of mine, where I have starbase, missile base and planetary beam cannon.
in 20 rounds I was only able to destroy 1 of the 3 ships, I could just as well not shoot at all for all the good it did.

I would really like to know what the cause of all these damned misses are.
Between ships that cannot be hit and an AI race I'm at war with having the resources to build 5 ships in the time I build 1, it will be impossible for me to defeat them in any way.

I could understand it if I was playing on the harder difficulties, but this is on very easy, which makes me wonder if there is a bug somewhere that causes my planetary defenses to miss every damned time.


Racial Template: Human Custom.

Government: Unification.
Planet size: Small
Special Abilities: Creative
Farming: Poor
Industry: Good
Trade: Average
Research: Average
Boarding: Poor
Ground Combat: Poor
Morale: Good
Finance: Good
Ship Attack: Good
Ship Defense: Average

Edit: For the record, I will try to send in a bug report on this one as I cant think it being anything but a bug when it happens in every game where I get to late game with high level techs.

[keller]

A most puzzling thing. Of all the games I have played I have never had one where I could not hit the enemy.

[Bansheedragon]

A most puzzling thing. Of all the games I have played I have never had one where I could not hit the enemy.

You're not alone in that regard, I can honestly say I never encountered an issue like this before.
Sure some shots will miss thats to be expected, but in this case we are talking a starbase with only beam weapons (6 in each bay and every other regular or light).
A planetary Beam Base.
A planetary Missile Base.

In 20 turns you have almost all those weapons fire each turn and none of them hit.
That is why I suspect there might be a bug somewhere, and as such I have sent in a bug report using the reporting tool.

Hopefully the devs can figure out what the cause of the problem is and come up with a solution, because right now I'm unable to continue playing because of this.

[Xyquas]

Another update.
I now got Scanners, Targeting computers, ECM and Hailing communications to level 10 as well as the weapons I use to level 10, despite this my weapons cannot hit no mater what.

That's really odd. I didn't try very easy difficulty, I always play on normal. But your selection shouldn't make the game harder. Humans use Lasers as beam weapons and from my experience these are very precise weapons with really good hit chance.

Do your enemies use stealth or cloaking device? And do they have the same tech levels at targetting and ECM? As far as I could see, hit chance is calculated by adding the factors. So if player A has ECM on 10 and player B has targetting on 10 there will be about 50% misses unless ECCM of attacking player is higher (which is not possible at level 10).

I never fought enemy empires that were at even or higher tech levels - always tried to keep technical advantage. Because whenever I was trying to eliminate an attacking force of higher techs it was very very expensive (lost many of my ships just to kill one of theirs).

Anyway, your race traits look fine - I can't think that the problem's there.

[Bansheedragon]

Planetary Beam weapon is Lasers at level 8.
Starbase uses lvl 10 weapons, dont remember name right now, but not lasers.
But still at 8 lasers should be sufficiently upgraded to hit at least 50% of the time, especially if I have the other mentioned techs at 10.

And even if I had lower tech, the higher racial trait should compensate for that at least to some extent.

I dont know what tech level the AI had, but as you said at level 10 it should be at least a 50% chance to hit no matter the AI tech level not a 100% miss ratio.
And with my higher racial trait, I should have a higher than 50% chance to hit as well unless the AI has a higher defense trait, which would bring it back to 50% again.

Any Stealth or cloaking devices the enemy may use would not affect the hit ratio in this case since the enemy had already fired at me.
As I'm sure you know, the effect of those devices are "disabled" once you fire your weapons, requiring 1 round of not firing to be activated again, and the enemy ships fired every round.

[keller]

Ah after another day of gaming I have discovered what I believe is the solution to this problem. Your fleets were the unhappy victim of targeting system disrupting weapons. It is possible that there is a little imbalance on it because when I got the weapon and took it into battle the enemy missed at point blank range 80% of the time when the weapon was around level 2 or 3. (once it hit them then 4 out of 5 of their shots missed)

Now to bring this into perspective. I decimated a cruiser with two scouts ( I lost one scout of 2)

[Xyquas]

Ah after another day of gaming I have discovered what I believe is the solution to this problem. Your fleets were the unhappy victim of targeting system disrupting weapons. It is possible that there is a little imbalance on it because when I got the weapon and took it into battle the enemy missed at point blank range 80% of the time when the weapon was around level 2 or 3. (once it hit them then 4 out of 5 of their shots missed)

Now to bring this into perspective. I decimated a cruiser with two scouts ( I lost one scout of 2)

Yeah, right - that's a great explanation. Maybe Bansheedragon could compensate this with another special weapon that makes the enemy miss the targets?

To Bansheedragon: if still does not solve your problem, please try to play a game at normal difficulty. As I understand you've played 4X games before so it should still be fun. I for myself don't increase difficulty to a point where the game is just a bunch of work and no fun anymore so I can ensure you that for me normal difficulty works perfectly fine. I found Barsig where really easy to play as they have lucky hands with money and tech - this will boost your empire in the starting phase as you get all the fine techs and soon can build starbases.
Maybe there's a problem with the easier difficulty settings because in another thread somebody wrote to have big problems with diplomacy (look here).

[keller]

Yeah, right - that's a great explanation. Maybe Bansheedragon could compensate this with another special weapon that makes the enemy miss the targets?

You only need to one on your ship to hit them to do the job. The rest of your weapons can be something else. Additionally, outfitting your ships with missiles will help a great deal because it keeps them from firing at your ships. (AI will concentrate the majority of its firepower on any incoming missiles)

[Zaimat]

I am looking into this with a test scenario (L10 techs) but could not exactly reproduce the issue. It would be great Bansheedragon if you can send a report from the launcher or the saved game zipped (or rar'd) to support @ horizongame.com

To clarify the disruption rate (photon disruptor weapon) is 25% and does not stack with itself. This can certainly be very effective when there is a wide level difference but not if both races are fairly close to each other.

Also Hailing Communication doesn't help or hinder. Hit rate is affected by Attacker Targetting systems, enemy defense/ECM, stealth/cloak, racial bonuses + crew level, and weapon tech level (continuous firing).

Stealth technology will remain active during attacks (unlike cloaking device defense bonus).

[Bansheedragon]

I am looking into this with a test scenario (L10 techs) but could not exactly reproduce the issue. It would be great Bansheedragon if you can send a report from the launcher or the saved game zipped (or rar'd) to support @ horizongame.com

To clarify the disruption rate (photon disruptor weapon) is 25% and does not stack with itself. This can certainly be very effective when there is a wide level difference but not if both races are fairly close to each other.

Also Hailing Communication doesn't help or hinder. Hit rate is affected by Attacker Targetting systems, enemy defense/ECM, stealth/cloak, racial bonuses + crew level, and weapon tech level (continuous firing).

Stealth technology will remain active during attacks (unlike cloaking device defense bonus).

I already sent a detailed report from the launcher about this, so you should have it.
It should have a detailed description of the problem and include the racial template as well.
If not let me know and I'll send the savegame

[keller]

To clarify the disruption rate (photon disruptor weapon) is 25% and does not stack with itself.

Thanks for confirming that the effect does not stack.

This can certainly be very effective when there is a wide level difference but not if both races are fairly close to each other.

Yes very !!!

[Zaimat]

After extended testing of the saved game here are my findings:

The combination of Disruptors + Stealth was providing a highly effective defense for the Kamzak as expected. The chance could drop as low as a few percent for normal/heavy mount weapons after being hit by the debuff (once your shields were down). While your techs were at level 10, your weapon was level 7 or 8 (I forget). Had you got it higher for the extra +25% chance to hit it would have raised your chances.

Still, with the last patch (1.0.0.94) we have increased the base chance to hit for normal/heavy mount weapons by some ~25% overall.

Thanks for providing the saves (it had gotten stuck in the spam folder, didn't see it immediately).