Often it's an escort carrier that very carefully puts itself out front so as to get blown up before the thing it's escorting even starts shooting. I've seen this repeatedly and it never makes any sense. Small flimsy charges into the enemy fire, fluxes out, blows up. Friendly bigger is retreating, shields up, no flux, in no immediate danger. Really big enemy is approaching, launches a hellstorm of missiles and gunfire. Small flimsy is assigned to escort something bigger, is already at high flux. It's as if flimsy expects heavy to get out of its way. Sometimes it goes from full hull to boom in a matter of seconds. Continues attempting to retreat through friendly heavy until fimsy blows up. Small flimsy attempts to retreat through friendly heavy, bangs off shields. Friendly heavy is coming up to engage said force. Small flimsy is retreating from overpowering enemy force. No one could have predicted this! Small flimsy tries to retreat but blows up. Keeps moving forward until suddenly it is taking massive damage. Gets body-slammed by heavy, taking significant flux and/or hull damage. Flimsy has plenty of time to move out of the way doesn't. Drifts in a direction that will place it in front of friendly heavy. Small flimsy ship, in general vicinity of friendly heavy with burn drive. (I have done this repeatedly when flying an Onslaught. Friendly heavy can either not shoot at all and wait for flimsy to blow up, or shoot through flimsy and blow it up directly like it deserves. Maneuvers to place itself directly between the heavy friendly and the primary enemy target. Small flimsy ship, in a furball in general vicinity of heavy cruiser or capital. Small flimsy ship sits behind larger ship and does absolutely nothing while larger ship eats repeated Reapers and Atropos. Small flimsy ship, assigned to escort larger ship. I can sort of see how under some (very specific, very particular) circumstances some players might want to deliberately kite enemy support away from the heavies (although my experience is that it is nearly always better to quickly pop the support and then gang up on the heavies), and maybe there's some concept of attempting to envelop the enemy fleet and attack from all directions, but that needs to be an option or the consequence of specific orders, not a default behavior - and definitely not default when backing away from superior forces. It's such a deliberate thing there has to be some sort of specific logic in the code that is making them do it, and whatever that logic is, needs to be ripped out and electrocuted and totally expunged from the face of the universe. And they always die unless the player micromanages them. There is absolutely no possible outcome to this except the destruction of the frigate to no benefit - as such, this behavior should never, ever intentionally happen. Or worse - I've seen frigates move in on enemy destroyers, move past the destroyers, and then lead the destroyers AWAY from the other friendly forces, WHILE deliberately staying within weapons range of the destroyers. It's like they're deliberately trying to do it - the frigates zoom in at maximum speed, separating from the main body, then when engaged, they retreat off to the sides, away from the friendly heavies, rather than back in the direction they came from to get help. Small flimsy ship has the maneuverability to get to support but instead moves away from friendies to make sure nothing can possibly save it in time. Multiple friendlies are nearby - not close enough to assist directly, but close enough to reach in time for support. Small flimsy ship, engaged with something that will eventually overpower it.
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