Waypoints in General and Scouts in Particular

[yllamana]

Fiskbit suggested I post about this, so I am!

I have the occasional issue with queueing orders. Basically, if I queue some move orders and then an attack order, the move gets wiped out! That throws me off a little bit, though I tend to work around it with more micromanagement and/or how AI War lets my ships move and attack at the same time anyway.

The main time I seem to run into this, though, is with wormholes and scoutships. A move-through-wormhole order erases the previous move orders much like attack orders do, and I frequently find myself wanting to move a scoutship around an enemy shipping lane to move through a wormhole. Being able to queue different types of orders together would be really nice, there.

But thinking about it more, the real issue in that case is my having to micromanage scoutships. I'm finding in our current game that a fair bit of my time is taken up by scoutship micromanagement. I always want to:

- enter the system;
- move away from the wormhole and its attendant defenses;
- move through the system towards the next wormhole, but not along the direct route as that's where the AI ships move;
- enter the wormhole to the next system;
- repeat

The problem is, that sequence is pretty mechanical and time-consuming while not being very interesting. It'd probably improve the game for me if a scout could automatically move that way without my intervention, so I could focus on more entertaining things (like everything else! .

Thank-you for reading!

Executive Summary
- I would like to be able to put waypoints of different types (types being move/attack/enter wormhole, from what I've seen) in the queue together.
- It might be nice if scoutships could navigate through the universe competently themselves rather than needing micromanagement, as their micromanagement is relatively extensive and time-consuming and I think it detracts from the rest of the game.

[x4000]

Hi there, thanks for the post -- Fiskbit had asked about something similar in the past, so I have a feeling he's promoting his agenda with you as the unknowing pawn.

Just joking!  Anyway, the main thing is that move, attack, and wormhole-move orders are in three separate queues.  This simply grew up from how the game was originally designed, since it originally didn't support queuing anything except wormhole-move orders.  To change this, I'm going to basically have to rip out the guts of the move/attack/wormhole-move systems and redo them completely.  This is on my maybe-later list, simply because I don't think it's going to add a lot of value in the main compared to how much work is (and thus how many potential bugs it might add).  I'm not certain how many other RTS games support this, either -- SupCom might have, I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure that the likes of AoEIII and RoL did not.  But maybe I was just missing it!

As for the scouts, they can navigate on their own, but their navigation is not something that I want to make more intelligent simply because the exploration aspects are balanced around them the way they are -- I'd have to lower their health and shields or something if they were to be more intelligent in an automated fashion.  Essentially, at the moment each class of scout is likely to have a certain amount of penetration into enemy territory, more if you group them, and then the Mark IV scout can get anywhere but is just really slow. 

The idea is that most people should be sending out scouts in groups in an automated fashion (just giving wormhole orders from the galaxy map), and the scouts will get as far as they do.  By later having better positions, or better scouts, you can then get more intel.  Or, if you're really wanting intel on something specific, then giving some scouts specific move orders in a planet is also possible as kind of a "manual override" option, but that's not intended to be the primary way of doing scouting.  Basically, on an 80 planet map, I don't expect the human players to see all of it until 8-15 hours in, depending on how much focus they put on getting better scouts.  I feel like if scouting was so easy that you could just send out the basic scouts and see everything (or even 2x what you see right now), some of the "good" uncertainty of the battlefield would be lost.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, but let me know what you think.  Thanks for the suggestions!

[yllamana]

The idea is that most people should be sending out scouts in groups in an automated fashion (just giving wormhole orders from the galaxy map), and the scouts will get as far as they do.  By later having better positions, or better scouts, you can then get more intel.  Or, if you're really wanting intel on something specific, then giving some scouts specific move orders in a planet is also possible as kind of a "manual override" option, but that's not intended to be the primary way of doing scouting.

Maybe I'm the exception here, and I am a newbie but my approach so far has been to ignore the regular scouts entirely in favour of micromanaged scout starships. The only hassle is moving them around - once they arrive somewhere, I just park them somewhere obscure and they sit there until I want to move them again.

They take a bit of damage from systems that have tachyon emitters over the wormhole, but only a little, and since I maneuver them around the shipping lane they don't take any there. If they get low on health I send them back for repairs.

Sending multiple scouts in a group isn't something that had occurred to me. I'll try that out, but the starships are working fine for me so far.

I'm not certain how many other RTS games support this, either -- SupCom might have, I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure that the likes of AoEIII and RoL did not.  But maybe I was just missing it!

Yes, I think you were missing it. I can't really think of an RTS I've noticed not supporting it - these days the only trouble RTSes really seem to run into with respect to waypoints is that they often don't support adding instant, no-target abilities into a waypoint queue (which is sort of obscure - it usually comes up with units that have a siege mode-type ability).

Basically, on an 80 planet map, I don't expect the human players to see all of it until 8-15 hours in, depending on how much focus they put on getting better scouts.

I don't know how many planets we're playing with, but I don't think it's 80! We're quite a way in, but I'm pretty sure I could've scouted it all by now if I wanted to. Then again, we're only playing on difficulty 5, so I might not be able to get away with what I am on a higher skill level.

Anyway, I completely understand about the waypoints, and I'm sure I'll be able to live without them until whenever it is they arrive, if at all. Thank-you for your comments!

[x4000]

Maybe I'm the exception here, and I am a newbie but my approach so far has been to ignore the regular scouts entirely in favour of micromanaged scout starships. The only hassle is moving them around - once they arrive somewhere, I just park them somewhere obscure and they sit there until I want to move them again.

They take a bit of damage from systems that have tachyon emitters over the wormhole, but only a little, and since I maneuver them around the shipping lane they don't take any there. If they get low on health I send them back for repairs.

I think this is a very valid thing to do, it's not newbie-ish at all, it's just going to be micro-heavy by nature.  My tradeoffs with the scouts are that you can either expend knowledge to get the higher-level ones, or you can do micro-heavy scouting if you really want to.  I don't want heavy micro to be a major feature of the game at all, so it's balanced around the idea that people will use a certain amount of knowledge in unlocking the better scouts, but for those who prefer to save the knowledge for something else this is certainly a route that can be taken, if the tradeoff in micromanagement is acceptable at the time.  I think it makes for an interesting decision, at any rate, and I'm all about those.

Sending multiple scouts in a group isn't something that had occurred to me. I'll try that out, but the starships are working fine for me so far.

Ah, gotcha -- I thought I had a line in the tutorial about that, but maybe I forgot to add it or maybe it just slipped past you.  There's a lot to absorb in those!  I'm recently told that using group-move is also really helpful for scouting, aka grouping a number of other ships with some scouts and sending them all out at once.  Great way to slip past ion cannons in particular.  I thought that was another interesting strategy that I'd never thought of.  I love it when people find stuff like that.

Yes, I think you were missing it. I can't really think of an RTS I've noticed not supporting it - these days the only trouble RTSes really seem to run into with respect to waypoints is that they often don't support adding instant, no-target abilities into a waypoint queue (which is sort of obscure - it usually comes up with units that have a siege mode-type ability).

Ah, fair enough.  I play a lot of RTS games, but I know that I don't use all of their features (any more than any other single player is likely to).  So I can definitely see that I might have just missed something like this.  Well, this is in my queue, I think I can handle this a bit easier than I was thinking before if I make all of the non-wormhole commands happen before the wormhole commands.  In other words, it would do all of the moves and attacks first, then go through the wormholes after that.  There would never be a way to give attack or move commands after a wormhole command is done, I wouldn't think, just because you can't select a unit on one planet while viewing a different planet.

I don't know how many planets we're playing with, but I don't think it's 80! We're quite a way in, but I'm pretty sure I could've scouted it all by now if I wanted to. Then again, we're only playing on difficulty 5, so I might not be able to get away with what I am on a higher skill level.

Well, I think that's the key thing -- if you had wanted to.  In other words, if you took the time to really focus on it and babysit it, then you could.  But that comes at the opportunity cost of not being able to do something else.  Same as the knowledge of the higher scouts is an opportunity cost of not being able to spend that knowledge elsewhere, but at the same time it gives you the freedom of more time.  That's what I meant by interesting decisions, they are not foregone conclusions one way or another: the answer varies by situation and player, and so it is actually a legitimate decision rather than just something that gets optimized out to the point where every expert player always does the same thing, making it not really a decision at all.

Anyway, I completely understand about the waypoints, and I'm sure I'll be able to live without them until whenever it is they arrive, if at all. Thank-you for your comments!

Of course!  And, glad to hear it's working well enough for you, if not completely ideally, already.  This is one of those requests that makes a certain part of my brain itch, however.  My subconscious won't stop running through the code, looking for ways to do this in a simpler-yet-more-effective manner.  I've had a couple of flashes of inspiration from that already, and I imagine that itch won't go away until I've coded this out to a larger degree.  We'll see, but I imagine this will come a lot sooner than I had been thinking before.  I hadn't expected my brain to latch onto this feature like that, but it did -- sometimes it has a mind of its own!

[yllamana]

My tradeoffs with the scouts are that you can either expend knowledge to get the higher-level ones, or you can do micro-heavy scouting if you really want to.

I mostly looked at the scouts, didn't see a reason to use the non-starship ones, and ignored them. Speaking as someone newer to the game, I don't really get the cloaking mechanics beyond "you usually can't see cloaked stuff, and tachyon whatsits decloak cloaked stuff within some range somehow." I know there's also something that causes ships to show up as little blue circles, but I don't really know what that is, so I just assumed it's what happens when you move close to a cloaked ship. Based on that, it didn't really seem like the T3 scouts would offer anything that my scout starships don't.

I'm guessing there's something wrong with my mental model, there, that's causing me to not understand cloaking and making me underestimate the cloaking scouts.

Ah, fair enough.  I play a lot of RTS games, but I know that I don't use all of their features (any more than any other single player is likely to).  So I can definitely see that I might have just missed something like this.

I'm a big fan of waypoints. IIRC, Total Annihilation had the most comprehensive waypoint system of anything I've played. It would let you form a multi-point patrol route, so your ships could patrol in a square or whatever, and you could combine other waypoints however you wanted with whatever you wanted. I might just not be remembering the ways to break it, though. You could also assign factories to a subgroup to have units built by that factory automatically placed in the subgroup, which was pretty cool.

One other very common way for waypoint systems to fail is to not give you the correct commands you need to set up all the waypoints. A common example is transports, like dropships in Starcraft. They have commands to pick up units and to drop off units, but the drop off units command is unavailable when the dropship has no units in it, which prevents you from setting up an order to pick up some units and drop them off somewhere else unless there's already at least one unit in the dropship. I'm pretty sure you also can't queue up dropping off one unit, or any number of units less than the maximum, but I could be wrong! (Ooh, I haven't seen the 1.007 transports yet! )

That's what I meant by interesting decisions, they are not foregone conclusions one way or another: the answer varies by situation and player, and so it is actually a legitimate decision rather than just something that gets optimized out to the point where every expert player always does the same thing, making it not really a decision at all.

I think this one is tricky. I agree to an extent, but I'm not convinced this is really an "interesting decision" rather than a management tax. That will definitely depend on the player, but personally I think I'd micromanage away until I was just too sick of it to do it anymore rather than seeing it as a decision or tradeoff. With your perspective on it I might not, but I'm not even sure about that!

Part of that is that I don't like losing the starships. I don't really mind sending the little scout ships off to inevitable doom, since I imagine they're robotic, but I imagine the starships as having all these little people on them and don't want to blow them up for no reason. I know that's sort of silly, but there you go.

Well, this is in my queue, I think I can handle this a bit easier than I was thinking before if I make all of the non-wormhole commands happen before the wormhole commands.

That would make sense, but I'm not sure how intuitable it is. Of course, as you noted it doesn't really make much sense to have waypoints on other planets without a way to select ships on them! Maybe that's just something that doesn't fit too well with the current selection method.

I hadn't expected my brain to latch onto this feature like that, but it did -- sometimes it has a mind of its own!

hehe!

(This is probably obvious, but I love your forum's smileys!)

[x4000]

Speaking as someone newer to the game, I don't really get the cloaking mechanics beyond "you usually can't see cloaked stuff, and tachyon whatsits decloak cloaked stuff within some range somehow."

This is a great point, I don't know that the specific cloaking mechanics are really explained anywhere.  I've added that to my list to put into the wiki in detail, but here are the basics:

1. If a ship is cloaked, it normally can't be seen or targeted by enemies at all, not even the little purple circles.
2. If a cloaked ship fires its weapons, it becomes completely visible for around 8 seconds or so.
3. If a cloaked ship comes within range of a tachyon beam emitter, it becomes visible as a purple circle only, which lets enemy ships fire at it but doesn't let players tell what kind of cloaked ship it specifically is.

I'm a big fan of waypoints. IIRC, Total Annihilation had the most comprehensive waypoint system of anything I've played. It would let you form a multi-point patrol route, so your ships could patrol in a square or whatever, and you could combine other waypoints however you wanted with whatever you wanted. I might just not be remembering the ways to break it, though.

I'm less a user of waypoints in most cases, but SupCom also had all of the above features (being effectively the sequel to TA).  I really liked how it did patrols and such in there, too.  But with the AI War model of movement and fog of war (per-planet, not based on smaller sight lines), it just didn't make sense to go too overboard with that as a feature.  Also because there are typically fewer things you need to go around, no mountains or rivers or whatever in space.

You could also assign factories to a subgroup to have units built by that factory automatically placed in the subgroup, which was pretty cool.

Yeah, some other players mentioned this one -- I hadn't been aware of it.  Since version 1.006 or 1.007 (I can't recall which now), this is also a feature in AI War.

One other very common way for waypoint systems to fail is to not give you the correct commands you need to set up all the waypoints. A common example is transports, like dropships in Starcraft. They have commands to pick up units and to drop off units, but the drop off units command is unavailable when the dropship has no units in it, which prevents you from setting up an order to pick up some units and drop them off somewhere else unless there's already at least one unit in the dropship. I'm pretty sure you also can't queue up dropping off one unit, or any number of units less than the maximum, but I could be wrong! (Ooh, I haven't seen the 1.007 transports yet! )

Yeah, I don't see the waypoints system in AI War ever becoming that robust.  Simply because the interface and everything else is just not designed around that, I would have had to have that as a design assumption from the start, like TA or SupCom presumably did.  I've really been more mirroring what you can do in games like AoEIII or the others, in general as far as waypoints go.  Just based on the flow of AI War, it just isn't something I feel like will add a lot; most of the problems that are solved by waypoints in TA/SupCom are solved in other ways here (such as having constructors be cheaper, and not require upgrading, and quicker to build / build from, so there's no reason to have all your constructors at the back and ferrying things forward, etc).  And there are other examples, too, but that's the big one.

The new transport for 1.007 is something that is really only intended as kind of an "armored shell" for temporary use to get past difficult planets.  It doesn't have any of those automatically load/unload features of TA/SupCom, or any of the ferry abilities that were so cool in those other games.  Here again, this one is just more of an ancillary feature for a specific strategic solution, not something that will be used in every game or on most planets.  It makes me hesitant adding a feature like transports, when I'm adding them for one specific use, but people immediately have assumptions that it will also come with a bunch of ancillary features...

I think this one is tricky. I agree to an extent, but I'm not convinced this is really an "interesting decision" rather than a management tax. That will definitely depend on the player, but personally I think I'd micromanage away until I was just too sick of it to do it anymore rather than seeing it as a decision or tradeoff. With your perspective on it I might not, but I'm not even sure about that!

That's a valid point, but I really see the "micromanagement tax" option as just being a one-off thing in a very occasional situation.  Usually there is just not that much time available to spend on managing scouts to that degree (the AI is busily reinforcing while you're doing that, and/or attacking you), so it's just an end to check out a specific planet or two when it's really needed, not something to do overall.  It's one of those cases where if you don't like the micromanagement, just get the better scouts (which is what is intended) -- if the lower-level scouts were more effective, there would be no need for higher-level scouts, after all.

Part of that is that I don't like losing the starships. I don't really mind sending the little scout ships off to inevitable doom, since I imagine they're robotic, but I imagine the starships as having all these little people on them and don't want to blow them up for no reason. I know that's sort of silly, but there you go.

I imagine most of the ships as robotic, but it's definitely ambiguous on purpose so you can picture it how you want.  See this about Scout Starships, though:  http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Starships#Scout_Starships

That would make sense, but I'm not sure how intuitable it is. Of course, as you noted it doesn't really make much sense to have waypoints on other planets without a way to select ships on them! Maybe that's just something that doesn't fit too well with the current selection method.

Yeah, and I really don't intend to change the selection method so that players can select ships on multiple planets at once.  That would just break the feeling of separation between planets, in my opinion.  I think it kind of makes since that if you have a "leave this planet" order, any other orders on the local planet would happen before you leave.  It might surprise a few people at first, but hopefully that will be an easy thing to understand after the first time they see it.  It's certainly a step forward from the current model, at least...

(This is probably obvious, but I love your forum's smileys!)

Haha, yeah, I like them too.

[yllamana]

...but here are the basics: ...

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. That wasn't really obvious to me because the only cloaking ship I've used is the Scout Starship, and they're dumb and shoot at things for no reason.

I'm less a user of waypoints in most cases, but SupCom also had all of the above features (being effectively the sequel to TA).  I really liked how it did patrols and such in there, too.  But with the AI War model of movement and fog of war (per-planet, not based on smaller sight lines), it just didn't make sense to go too overboard with that as a feature.  Also because there are typically fewer things you need to go around, no mountains or rivers or whatever in space.

I'm not sure it made that much sense in TA, either. I just liked it because of the freedom it gave me.

Yeah, some other players mentioned this one -- I hadn't been aware of it.  Since version 1.006 or 1.007 (I can't recall which now), this is also a feature in AI War.

That's very cool! I'll have to start using that.

Yeah, I don't see the waypoints system in AI War ever becoming that robust.

hehe! I'm just talking about it at that point, really, not saying it should be in AI War. I'm a big fan of games giving players the tools they need to avoid a lot of micromanagement chores, mainly.

I definitely get what you mean about the transport - it was really apparent in the patch description.

That's a valid point, but I really see the "micromanagement tax" option as just being a one-off thing in a very occasional situation.  Usually there is just not that much time available to spend on managing scouts to that degree (the AI is busily reinforcing while you're doing that, and/or attacking you), so it's just an end to check out a specific planet or two when it's really needed, not something to do overall.

The AI hasn't been much of a threat to us yet. We're playing really conservatively on the strategic level and being very careful about what we attack. Maybe my view of the scouts will change if the AI level ends up increasing more.

Yeah, and I really don't intend to change the selection method so that players can select ships on multiple planets at once.  That would just break the feeling of separation between planets, in my opinion.

I don't think I feel that way about it, personally.

I think it kind of makes since that if you have a "leave this planet" order, any other orders on the local planet would happen before you leave.  It might surprise a few people at first, but hopefully that will be an easy thing to understand after the first time they see it.  It's certainly a step forward from the current model, at least...

I definitely agree with this part, though. Well, sort of. I'm sure somebody somewhere will want to do something so that their fleet leaves a planet, moves somewhere, then moves somewhere on another planet, then maybe moves back again or enters free-roaming defender, or something. It seems like you see the planets as having a lot more separation than I do. I think it's nice to have that flexibility available, and good to conform to what people expect in that regard.

On my personal front of not liking unnecessary micromanagement, I really like free-roaming defender and attack move.

[Admiral]

I thought I had a line in the tutorial about that

I distinctly recall a part of the 1.006 tutorial (the intermediate tutorial) where we are directed to create two groups of 5 scouts each and send them through to two planets at the same time in the hopes of one getting through to each.

Cheers!

[x4000]

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. That wasn't really obvious to me because the only cloaking ship I've used is the Scout Starship, and they're dumb and shoot at things for no reason.

Yep, they are a pretty poor scout, they are more like mobile recon.

hehe! I'm just talking about it at that point, really, not saying it should be in AI War. I'm a big fan of games giving players the tools they need to avoid a lot of micromanagement chores, mainly.

All good, me too.

I definitely get what you mean about the transport - it was really apparent in the patch description.

Excellent!  But I just know somebody is going to ask me about that a month from now, or something.

The AI hasn't been much of a threat to us yet. We're playing really conservatively on the strategic level and being very careful about what we attack. Maybe my view of the scouts will change if the AI level ends up increasing more.

I'm conservative, too.  But at difficulty 7, on 80 planet maps, I tend to feel the time pressure.  Seems like I've just fought off one wave or accomplished something else, and then the AI is attacking again, ha.

On my personal front of not liking unnecessary micromanagement, I really like free-roaming defender and attack move.

Excellent!  Yeah, those have been big hits.  Free-roaming defender mode was a player suggestion, and I've wondered ever since how I got along without it!

[x4000]

I distinctly recall a part of the 1.006 tutorial (the intermediate tutorial) where we are directed to create two groups of 5 scouts each and send them through to two planets at the same time in the hopes of one getting through to each.

Ah, thanks for the confirmation -- saves me from having to check.  Glad it was already there!

[yllamana]

This is sort of vaguely related to the topic of the thread - it'd be really nice if AI War supported the RTS pretty-standard of shift-1 through shift-0 adding the control group belonging to that number to the current selection. This lets you do a few interesting things, like select multiple control groups or add units to a control group (select new units, shift-number to add group to the selection, ctrl-number to set the selection to the new group).

The problem I was having, specifically, is:

- I create a control group on a dock, along with some units;
- I send the units off gallivanting around the galaxy;
- I build a new dock to augment the other;
- I flail around confused trying to get the docks and the units in a control group together without leaving any out.

But the shift-thing is useful for all sorts of neat reasons, so...

Also, two observations from trying a fast & dangerous game. Firstly, the scouts are a lot less durable in fast & dangerous, and because of the pace you don't end up with as many. Secondly, sort of on the topic of that other thread but wow, systems are really scary when they have a command post right near a wormhole. Depending on the distance, the scouts can either get heavily damaged or vaporised instantly.  (I saw both of these in that game!)

And on the topic of the thread, I'm noticing I do try to get my units to attack and then move all the time - I do it when I'm attacking a system and roaming single or small groups of enemy ships are around. As an example, three cruisers might move near my fleet, so I'll select my fighters, click shift-click shift-click the cruisers, then shift-click back near my fleet to get the fighters to return (annihilating my attack orders ).

[x4000]

This is sort of vaguely related to the topic of the thread - it'd be really nice if AI War supported the RTS pretty-standard of shift-1 through shift-0 adding the control group belonging to that number to the current selection. This lets you do a few interesting things, like select multiple control groups or add units to a control group (select new units, shift-number to add group to the selection, ctrl-number to set the selection to the new group).

The problem I was having, specifically, is:

- I create a control group on a dock, along with some units;
- I send the units off gallivanting around the galaxy;
- I build a new dock to augment the other;
- I flail around confused trying to get the docks and the units in a control group together without leaving any out.

But the shift-thing is useful for all sorts of neat reasons, so...

Actually, this is already supported, has been since alpha.  Although, it's Ctrl+Shift+[Number] here.  See the "Control Groups" section of the controls.txt file for why.  Well, actually, I'll just excerpt it here:

Control Groups:
-------------------------
Ctrl+0-9:   Set control group
Ctrl+Shift+0-9:   Add to existing control group
Shift+0-9:   Select control group ships at cur. planet in addition to cur. selected.
0-9:      Select control group ships at current planet.
      (switches to other planet if none at current)
      (never selects ships from more than one planet at a time)
      (does not select constructors)
X+0-9      select contructors only (also works with double and triple presses).
0-9 (Double):   Select control group ships, as above, but also center view on them.
0-9 (Triple):   Select control group ships on the next planet that has them.

Hope that helps!

Also, two observations from trying a fast & dangerous game. Firstly, the scouts are a lot less durable in fast & dangerous, and because of the pace you don't end up with as many. Secondly, sort of on the topic of that other thread but wow, systems are really scary when they have a command post right near a wormhole. Depending on the distance, the scouts can either get heavily damaged or vaporised instantly.  (I saw both of these in that game!)

Wait until you see the new stuff in 1.008F, if you haven't yet.  That will really be hard on scouts.  I'm thinking I'm going to need to buff the scouts a bit in response to that.  I might give them all cloaking, and buff the stats of the Mark III scouts, in order to counteract this.

And on the topic of the thread, I'm noticing I do try to get my units to attack and then move all the time - I do it when I'm attacking a system and roaming single or small groups of enemy ships are around. As an example, three cruisers might move near my fleet, so I'll select my fighters, click shift-click shift-click the cruisers, then shift-click back near my fleet to get the fighters to return (annihilating my attack orders ).

Yeah, that's on my list.  Turns out I do that on occasion, too, and I just had never really noticed it.  That's the only part that remains right now with the waypointing stuff, since the waypoints now play perfectly with the cross-planet commands (the cross-planet commands all get queued at the end, and don't get erased, as I'd thought I would do it).  Hopefully I'll get this remaining part in sometime next week, right now I don't want to introduce any potential instability into the current code for the 1.008 official release on Tuesday/Wednesday.

Thanks!

[Quitch]

Since we're dealing with control groups, there's a minor "bug" in selection where rather than cycling between planets containing elements of a group for each press of the group's key, it will sometimes stay in one planet for multiple key presses before moving onto the next planet. The way it moves the camera suggests it might be refocusing on a new unit within the group.

[x4000]

Since we're dealing with control groups, there's a minor "bug" in selection where rather than cycling between planets containing elements of a group for each press of the group's key, it will sometimes stay in one planet for multiple key presses before moving onto the next planet. The way it moves the camera suggests it might be refocusing on a new unit within the group.

It tries to center on them, if it hasn't already.  When your ships are moving, it might jostle the camera some for that reason.  To switch between planets when your local planet has ships of that control group, the correct hotkey is actually a triple-press.  That seems to be working for me -- are you having trouble with that?  Double-pressing when you are already centered on the group will also work, but with moving ships that's going to be unreliable unless you are holding spacebar or something.

[Quitch]

Ah, just me misusing the keys then.