Yeah, I know
.
This problem really arose in 1.012. It was so bad you could rely on it to break up powerful enemy forces and save you from impossible situations, but you had to constantly watch for your own ships going nuts as well. It was so much less common in 1.015 that at 1st I thought this bug was mashed, but I've seen it a few times now
.
For some reason known only to the AI, a ship will sometimes decide it's about to collide with the next ahead when there's absolutely no reason to think that way, such as when they're going in a straight line or in the middle of a perfectly normal turning maneuver. At that point, the ship plots a circular course off to 1 side and back into line, but this circle fails to take into account the ships behind. Often, the ship in question realizes it's being stupid before starting the circle, and so nothing happens. But when the ship does start the circle, all those behind follow, and if the line is long enough, the leader of the circlejerk will threaten to collide with the 4th or 5th ship behind. That ship then swings out of line to avoid the wreck but then goes back to trying to follow the circle of those ahead of it, and more ships behind enter the collision zone and everybody goes nuts. In the end, you have all the ships behind the leader doing the Hora or a square dance or some such thing.
This REALLY needs to be looked at. To begin with, the whole thing about wanting to go in a circle to avoid a collision is just flat wrong by real world standards. If the ship really thinks it needs to avoid collision, it should just angle off by a point and perhaps slow down 1 knot temporarily, then turn back onto the proper course. That way, it would stay in line without totally hosing the whole formation.
But the real problem is that ships panic way too easily. Obviously, they have to be able to avoid collisions with their next ahead due to the certainty of battle damage at some point. But the criteria for taking evasive action need to be tweaked so they do not trigger during the mild and temporary oscillations normal to any group of ships in formation.
