Mircro-Management

[jeanlucpickacard]

How can I manage 20 ships in the battlefield without clicking for hours every single ship? I am almost afraid I cant :/

Is there a patch coming for a better micro-management in the battles?

[Lithari]

I am not good at it myself, I only hope they can put in a system that allows you to use different tactics, instead of overwealming numbers.

[jeanlucpickacard]

well if there is no intelligent micro-management tool to come, then it is just no game. no fun, no game! :/

[Lithari]

well, technically, being able to manage 20 ships in combat will be challenging, what is it that people say? challenge = fun?

[Fairin]

loosing = fun!


no wait thats dwarf fortress...

[jeanlucpickacard]

well, technically, being able to manage 20 ships in combat will be challenging, what is it that people say? challenge = fun?

whats the challenge about moving 20 ship from the border of the galaxy to an undefended planet? its just time wasting. imo its no good micro-management. the game should apply the standard of the time.

i remember the original dune1 having no group building button. but this was fun because it was real-time gameplay!!

[Zaimat]

Can you describe the scenario where you had to click a lot so we can understand the scenario you were in? Did you try to orbit a planet? Attacked while moving?

There are many improvements to come but the more info we have the better.

[Lithari]

Have you tried combining them into a fleet, you can have 10 ships in a single fleet, while this doesn't help with combat scenarios, this helps a lot with travelling throughout the galaxy.

[Madbiologist]

I had similar scenarios (in combat), where I have to manage a large number of ships manually, and if I didn't it would end badly or do things I didn't want them to. I am going to eventually do a feedback thread, where I post my feedback and observations. (Playing the game a lot, and testing so many things with it).

[frostlad]

Have you tried combining them into a fleet, you can have 10 ships in a single fleet, while this doesn't help with combat scenarios, this helps a lot with travelling throughout the galaxy.

It took me a long while to figure out that you could combine the ships into a fleet. I was trying to shift click instead of ctrl + click.

It's much easier for the star map (I haven't tried battle with a fleet yet). I hope it means that they move as one in a strategic battle as well. The battle micro-management is the part I am worried about with this game. I love the rest of it so far.

[ronan]

I've been playing my first game and I think this issue is a huge one.. first fleets are too small and while they are useful in terms of moving between sectors, it's a mess when it comes to combat.

So in my playing style, I brought a stack of motherships, several fleets of fighters/scouts and a number of other fleets... okay it's my first game but if you are taking out a planet with a starbase, defences and with a few ships in orbit, you need that level of force. So what I had was 60-70 ships in my attacking fleet... so yes a LOT of clicking..

some observations

1) if I go auto, then the computer doesn't seem to utilise all the available resources. definitely motherships that were stuck in a corner where not called into the fight, sometimes the planet did not fire it's missiles (when in def). I can't trust auto for the complicated battles.

2) someone's suggestions of being able to tell someone to GO TO THIS SPOT over a number of turns would have been very useful in getting them into the combat zone.

3) being able to declare some ships as not participating in the battle would also be useful.. I might decide that my ground assault ships are irrelevant to attacking space fleets... so i'd like to tell them to retreat and not participate in the fight... that way i'll have less to micromanage. it might be a nice button to have in general.. a run-away button if you get in over your head.

4) the COM button is very confusing... when you start having LOTS of ships. it might be beter if it suggested sectors rather than ships,

5) it's really confusing when ships wander out of your sector with the enemy into the neighbouring sector. this should not happen, the distance between stars is many many times that of the size of a solar system... more importantly it is confusing as you suddenly seem ships in a sector which you did not put them in, and doing combat with no enemy in sight.. for combat.. the boundaries should be fixed and no-one allowed out unless they are retreating.

on a related note... when I am producing my ships, I get a nice long conga-line of ships... but then when I am assigning them to fleets, I have this little 5-picture menu and I have to scroll for 50-60 clicks to get to the ship I want... then I assign it, and I go back to the start and have to do it again... some suggestions on how it might be improved

1) have a 5x5 (for example) selection grid... that would at least help make it easier

2) perhaps have a box for each TYPE of ship with a NUMBER indicating how many you have... then you could click each time you want to add a ship in (or allow a selection box for selecting multiples)

3) auto-assign to fleets would be nice... but ideally ships need to be larger


some thoughts. hope it helps.. but I have to agree.. I am beginning to hate this element of it...

[ronan]

duplicate post

[johanwanderer]

Can you describe the scenario where you had to click a lot so we can understand the scenario you were in? Did you try to orbit a planet? Attacked while moving?

There are many improvements to come but the more info we have the better.

One scenario was in my early game. I have mixed fleet, with a Mothership (carrier), two Cruisers, three Frigates (armed transports) and five Fighters (small ships, not the actual carrier-launched fighters.) I thought I was being clever but it ended up causing the click-fest described above.

I have the fleet travel diagonally to a different system. I forgot if I needed to attack or to defend, but the result is the same.

Due to their speed, one of the fighter detects the enemy first, and the tactical turn begins. Now, with their speed differences, my frigates are not yet in the sector, but is in the adjacent sector. The cruisers are half a sector behind that, and the motherships are elsewhere.

I had to hunt them all down one by one, slowly (and blindly, since I can't tell which directions I have to move my bigger ships) grouping them back to a cohesive fighting force. It was very frustrating. To me, the fleet should move at the speed of the slowest ship, so they can all join the battle as one unit.

Back to my scenario, I ended up losing all of the fighter class ships because every time I "comm" to a bigger ship to move it, the small ships would automatically try to attack and get killed.

Nowadays, my fleets contain a single class of ships. Even then, they are still strewn across the boundary of 2-3 sectors when the first ship detected an enemy. At least the mothership-class ships can withstand enough punishments until its peers show up -- for now.

It would be much more desirable to that the ships move in formation while not under attacks. That way, the whole vanguard of the fleet can face the enemy at once, not just a single ship.

[CellNav]

I've had the game for a week now with several plays. I have experienced the problem with having large fleets as posted above. I would like to share a rule-of-thumb with everyone that could help your current game play experience ... that is, until the devs fix it. These are my personal rules and procedures but mostly it helps me play the game (for the moment) with the minimum of fuss ;

(1) Fleet Size ... No more than 5 ships.
(2) Fleet Composition ... Like types based on size of ship, ie small, medium, large, mother.
(3) Rally Point ... When my final destination is an enemy colony, I will first select a destination one sector away. When the fleet arrives, I will order them to 'Patrol'. This appears to naturally form them up but it does cost one turn. Think of it like a bivouac area before you begin the battle.

I would like to see 'Formation' commands to take of this automatically, especially during combat because it is indeed a "click fest" as mentioned above. Again, my own rules shouldn't change the fact that something needs to be done with large fleet sizes. Hopefully we'll see something soon or at least a simply command to start the ball rolling.

[CellNav]

There are many improvements to come but the more info we have the better.

When I first played the game, I viewed the "Task Force Lock" button as a function to ;

(1) Move a fleet with one click.
(2) Target another fleet with one click.

If you added a tag to one of the ships (Flag Ship), then we could perform combat with less clicks controlling that ship alone. Target priorities would be assigned to each ship in that fleet. Think of it like a semi-automatic control, a cross between hitting the space bar (auto-resolve) and manually controlling a ship.