SSD's Unplayable?

[Zardnaar]

 As the title says. I am having a huge amount of trouble using jinj and an Executor on most of the planets I travel to. They ether spin or get stuck and refuse to move or shoot stuff very close to them. If the AI YOLOs into them at the start of the battle they seem to work ok and on the defensive where you don;t have to move them they can be ok but on the offensive they seem barely usable with the other 25 points of the fleet either carrying the battle or getting chewed to bit.

 I don't expect them to be sed on Vergesso asteroids but on Kuat in particular which seems reasonably wide I have a huge amount of trouble trying to get one to move in a straight line and I had on get stuck just over the middle of the map. Antemeridas is almost 100% open an I could not get one to go from A to B either, same deal on Centares and Thanos.

 Zsinj has been relegated to parking in orbit over Kuat whlie the other one is having a holiday in Thanos and I am fortifying the system. 60k for a defensive emplacement seems a bit steep.

[Ordo]

This is a pathing issue that was always there, ssd's are actually better now. Just don't move them a lot.

[Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus]

Yeah, it seems like you're far too demanding to SSDs. Their pathfinding is a slight issue, but their firepower is still unparalleled, so it's absolutely worth it, as long as you can protect them from fighter/bomber swarms. As for them spinning, just press S as soon as you see that it starts to turn into a different direction to what you want, and it'll stop immediately. Then, just keep pressing on the map, where you want the SSD to go, and press S every time it doesn't want to, until you find a pathway that suits it. You can also literally mark where you want it to go, just look at the command bar on the bottom left on the UI. But the best way is to just drop your SSD as close to the enemy ships/stations as possible, so that the SSD doesn't have to move a lot. And it depends on maps, too. Some, especially those with lots of asteroids, are unfit for SSD use, like Vergesso or Roche.

[Mord]

I think the single biggest reason for the problems with SSD-size vessels in Thrawn's Revenge is that for some reason the team moved them to <Space_Layer> Capital </Space_Layer> instead of the original <Space_Layer> Super </Space_Layer> that the vanilla Executor was on. This means that the enormous SSD-size vessels have to pathfind around other capships such as ISDs and MC80s instead of just going "under" then. The <Layer_Z_Adjust>-1200.0</Layer_Z_Adjust> doesn't mean anything because regardless of where the vessel is rendered as being depthwise, the layer value is what actually determines its pathfinding.

The vanilla Executor also has

Custom_Hard_XExtent
Custom_Hard_YExtent

I think these also have something to do with pathfinding, because when I took them off for my mod the Executor just kind of spun around helplessly...

[Lord Xizer]

As the title says. I am having a huge amount of trouble using jinj and an Executor on most of the planets I travel to. They ether spin or get stuck and refuse to move or shoot stuff very close to them. If the AI YOLOs into them at the start of the battle they seem to work ok and on the defensive where you don;t have to move them they can be ok but on the offensive they seem barely usable with the other 25 points of the fleet either carrying the battle or getting chewed to bit.

 I don't expect them to be sed on Vergesso asteroids but on Kuat in particular which seems reasonably wide I have a huge amount of trouble trying to get one to move in a straight line and I had on get stuck just over the middle of the map. Antemeridas is almost 100% open an I could not get one to go from A to B either, same deal on Centares and Thanos.

 Zsinj has been relegated to parking in orbit over Kuat whlie the other one is having a holiday in Thanos and I am fortifying the system. 60k for a defensive emplacement seems a bit steep.

It's how you use them my friend,

Don't jump the SSD in initially, use another ship to clear fog of war first then drop the SSD in either the middle or right beside the main enemy fleet. Jump in support ships around it when the enemy focused on the SSD. The SSD can both take and give a tremendous amount of punishment allowing you to focus and pick apart the enemy. Instead of clicking a target to 'attack' click a destination slightly away from it. While not foolproof this does help with the pathfinding. Because if you click to attack something it will try and bring all weapons to bear and this confuses it since by turning half turn away so it spins or rotates.

[tlmiller]

It's how you use them my friend,

Don't jump the SSD in initially, use another ship to clear fog of war first then drop the SSD in either the middle or right beside the main enemy fleet. Jump in support ships around it when the enemy focused on the SSD. The SSD can both take and give a tremendous amount of punishment allowing you to focus and pick apart the enemy. Instead of clicking a target to 'attack' click a destination slightly away from it. While not foolproof this does help with the pathfinding. Because if you click to attack something it will try and bring all weapons to bear and this confuses it since by turning half turn away so it spins or rotates.

The one thing I would add, is if you're going agsainst a fleet with a LOT of bombers, DO NOT drop the SSD in.  Bombers will shred the shields in milliseconds, far faster than an entire fleet could ever hope to.

[Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus]

The one thing I would add, is if you're going agsainst a fleet with a LOT of bombers, DO NOT drop the SSD in.  Bombers will shred the shields in milliseconds, far faster than an entire fleet could ever hope to.

Yep, you should always bring in loads of screening corvettes, and drop them right beside the SSD. You will lose some if there are enemy cruisers or frigates nearby, so my advice would be to drop 5 or 6 of them, and replace losses, if necessary. And you'd have to have 20-25 of them in the fleet, or 10-15 at the very least. In extreme cases you can drop every corvette you have. Playing against Maldrood and Pentastar I've noticed that Arquitens are especially keen on killing your corvettes, so you have to keep that in mind, and sometimes drop your corvettes directly in behind of the SSD, so that Arquitenses, Strike Cruisers, Vindicators, Gladiators, Nebulon-Bs, etc. (depending on the faction) will be killed by your SSD by the time they get to your corvettes. Don't forget about your other support ships, ISDs, VSDs, Procursators, etc., which can do the job of protecting your corvettes as well. I know that whoever is reading this probably knows all of this already, all I'm saying is that it's very much possible to keep your SSD relatively protected even against the worst of fighter/bomber swarms. You will lose some corvettes, for sure, but that's about it, if you play it smart.

[Zardnaar]

I'm very cheap with my ships lol I often think of any ships being lost as a failure and the loss of say 20 ppints worth a mini disaster. Unless I am attacking Dathomir. I dont really care to much abou corvettes and strike cruisers losing a Victory is a pain;).

 How do you get the choice to bring in the SSD? I usually only use 60 point fleets only going above that if its a fortress world (Kuat, Dathomir, Coruscant etc) if needed. If I mass 2 fleets together I expect a tough fight, 3 fleets massed is almost unheard of.

[Ordo]

...........You don't use pathfinder units?

[Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus]

How do you get the choice to bring in the SSD?

Well, using SSDs without pathfinder units is utterly ridiculous and pointless, so there you go. If that's the case, you didn't really have to start this thread in the first place. This is like basic EaW 101 stuff.

There's a square in the top left corner of each fleet slot. If you put any unit in that square before attacking an enemy planet, that unit becomes the first (and the only one) to enter the battle. Every other unit in that fleet will remain within your reinforcements bar, and as soon as the battle starts you will have a choice to bring whichever unit you want, placing them whereever you want on the map (as long as these's no FoW, and the stations also have a reinforcement prevention radius in bright red), until you get to the unit limit of 60 total points. This way, you can jump in with a corvette, for instance, and drop your SSD as close to the enemy base as possible (reinforcement prevention radius is not that big, especially for the SSD range of fire). That's basically it.

[Zardnaar]

Well, using SSDs without pathfinder units is utterly ridiculous and pointless, so there you go. If that's the case, you didn't really have to start this thread in the first place. This is like basic EaW 101 stuff.

There's a square in the top left corner of each fleet slot. If you put any unit in that square before attacking an enemy planet, that unit becomes the first (and the only one) to enter the battle. Every other unit in that fleet will remain within your reinforcements bar, and as soon as the battle starts you will have a choice to bring whichever unit you want, placing them whereever you want on the map (as long as these's no FoW, and the stations also have a reinforcement prevention radius in bright red), until you get to the unit limit of 60 total points. This way, you can jump in with a corvette, for instance, and drop your SSD as close to the enemy base as possible (reinforcement prevention radius is not that big, especially for the SSD range of fire). That's basically it.

 Lol all this time. I got the game in hard copy years ago and never read the instruction book. Or posted on forums never knew it.

[Slyguy3129]

Just got my Executor today after saving up in game. I see no problems with it at all. Put a Corvette down as your path finder, keep a few VISDs and some ISD2s along with a few anti fighter ships and you should be golden. The thing is a beast, and I use it to clear out strongholds the enemy has built up. Mainly their capital ship locations that have defensive structures. Haven't faced an Ion Cannon with it yet. And I just discovered that Empire's End GC has 20 more planets and two more years over Art of War. So I most likely will switch to that.

[Lord Xizer]

Just got my Executor today after saving up in game. I see no problems with it at all. Put a Corvette down as your path finder, keep a few VISDs and some ISD2s along with a few anti fighter ships and you should be golden. The thing is a beast, and I use it to clear out strongholds the enemy has built up. Mainly their capital ship locations that have defensive structures. Haven't faced an Ion Cannon with it yet. And I just discovered that Empire's End GC has 20 more planets and two more years over Art of War. So I most likely will switch to that.

Just wait until you get your hands on the Night Hammer of the sub mod I am helping with.

[Slyguy3129]

Ok I stand corrected. Ysanne Isard's SSD definately has some pathfinding issues. Just got her today at week 81. Seems you can't have anything warped in with her or she just spins. The regular Executors work really well, she seems to have issues.