I'm having a problem in version 4.77. This may be an actual bug, or it may simply be something I'm missing. The situation is as follows:
Fleet "A" consists of fifteen cruiser sized missile ships and thirty two missile defense escorts. The commander of fleet A had reason to believe that his fleet would soon come under sustained missile attack, and also suspected that the attack would be heavy to overwhelming. Therefore the commander divided up his fleet as follows:
Central Group: This is the main group, with fifteen cruiser and three escorts. This group has orders to maintain the range to the enemy fleet, which has a speed advantage of approximately 600 kps;
Anti-Missile Group #1: Eighteen escorts. This group is stationed in direct line to the enemy fleet, two mkm's astern of the central group;
AM Group #2: Eleven escorts. This group is stationed four mkm's astern of the main fleet;
The escorts are equipped with three twin 12cm laser turrets with a ROF of five seconds and a range of 240,000 kilometers, and ten AM launchers with a cycle time of 10 seconds and a maximum range of 2.5 mkm's. The cruisers have three triple 35cm laser turrets with a ROF of 35 seconds and a range of 320,000 kilometers, and ten AM launchers with a cycle time of 10 seconds and a max range of 1.1 mkm's.
Under this deployment scheme the incoming missile salvoes could be engaged beginning at 6 mkm's, all the way to impact on the main group. The fleet commander also waited to detach his escorts until he was fairly sure that the enemy had already launched, to avoid having the enemy target the detached escorts rather than the cruisers.
This deployment scheme worked well, but wasn't all I had hoped it would be. I had set the two detached escort group's AM firecon's to 1v1 targeting, in the hopes that they would thin out the incoming missile salvoes, which would be thinned out even more by the escort's lasers before being eliminated by the central group’s AM defenses. Unfortunately, I realized that my concept wouldn’t work as given the way Aurora works the outermost escort group would keep launching against the incoming missile salvoes until they were destroyed, and would eventually run out of missiles, even on 1v1 targeting.
What I wanted was for the outermost group to launch against an incoming salvo once, then engage the survivors with lasers, leaving the remainder for the next group of escorts. That was unworkable under the current targeting orders, after dealing with the first two missile salvoes I decided to change things up. I cancelled the outermost group’s AM targeting, leaving their laser targeting orders intact. The inner group of escorts retained its AM targeting orders. With these changes I hoped to have the outermost group engage and thin the incoming missile salvoes with its lasers, after which the inner group would finish off the incoming missiles with their anti-missile missiles.
Here is where the problem arose. After removing the 1v1 AMM targeting orders for the outermost group all firing ceased. The next wave of missiles sailed right by the outmost group without being engaged by its lasers, and is now within the missile engagement range of the inner group, which has not launched against them. I have triple checked the firing orders of all three groups and the two outer groups should be engaging the missiles that are within range.
I don’t know if I have revealed a bug, or if I’m missing something easy. There are two groups of incoming missiles within range of the inner escort group’s AMM’s, and one within range of the outer group’s lasers, and none are being engaged. I suspect there is something within the point defense targeting orders that became “broken” when I cancelled the outer group’s 1v1 AMM engagement orders.
Help!
