Selection problems from noob

[AlterEgo]

Sry, I have some problems with selecting/deselecting ships:

- I like to group fleets. Is there a way to delete a group number (anything like Ctrl+Right-Click on the group)?
- If I have more than one big ship (lets say two), how can I select a special ship of this two for a group? Is there a way or an option at least for big ships  to show them separately in the planetary summary?

Perhaps I only didn't find it in the manual nor in forum discussions, sry.

Thanks in advance.

[x4000]

Welcome to the forums.

For the first question, yes you can delete groups but I don't recall the hotkey; check the key bindings in the game itself to do so. Essentially, when all the ships are out of a group, that group is gone.

In terms of the second question I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. But you can select half of all your current selection with the L key. Alternatively, you can select just a specific type of ship from your existing selection using the selected ships window in the lower right. In terms of making special notations on the planetary summary, that is not possible, however it always shows each kind of ship on it anyhow; if you just want one of that type of ship, you can always left click the ship type in the planetary summary, then hit L a few times until only one ship remains selected.

Hope that helps!

[AlterEgo]

Thanks for your answer, but...

For first, yes I can delete ship types from group  but the last. If I hit Alt on last ship type and then Ctrl and the group number of the last ship type, it stays in group. The group won't be empty.

For second, I want to add a (big) ship from one group (fleet) to another. I think "L" is not what could help me. I have to move the ship to another place on the map...

[x4000]

I'm pretty sure there is a hotkey for removing all selected ships from a control group. But I can't remember what it is, as I don't use control groups. You'll have to check the in-game key bindings.

For the second one, you'd have to select the ship and give it orders manually; theres not an automated way of doing that.

[AlterEgo]

Thanks very much. I will find it.

[Entrenched Homperson]

You could also just overwrite the group. Take what you want to be group 1 and name it that. Select the second group, name it. You can save a group of one ship, so just start over naming your groups. If you have old groups on wierd numbers like 8, just don't press them till you overwrite them to something usefull.

That's what I do at least. XD

[mindloss]

Ctrl-# will overwrite that # with currently selected ships.
Ctrl-Shift-# will add currently selected ships to that group # (leaving ships already in that # still there).
Ctrl-Alt-# will remove them from that group # (and you can delete a group entirely this way).
Ctrl-x-# will assign the currently selected ships to # and remove them from all other groups (as near as I can tell).

Other useful tidbits about groups, while I'm at it:

Hitting the # once selects the group (changing your currently viewed system if there are no group members in system).
Hitting it twice selects it and centers screen on the midpoint of the group.
Hitting it three times will select and center on any members of your group in a different system (useful for cycling through and figuring out where stragglers are sometimes).

Less useful:

You can also assign Docks/Fabricators/etc to groups, but this is slightly different than some other RTS's where you can then hit that # to select those buildings. I mean, yes you can do that, but if you add any non-military units to the group, it will default to selecting them instead. What you can do that I find useful is Ctrl-Shift-# whichever building(s) you want, and then any units built from there will be assigned to that group automatically. I generally pick one number and leave it reserved for this purpose, assigning every production building to that group; what this leaves me with is a hotkey for select-all-units-in-system (yes, I know that's already a hotkey), and for cycle-through-all-systems-with-units, and other general goodness. You can assign a building to multiple groups. This helps because in addition to having my one super-group, I may early on have a dock building, e.g. only scouts. Then I have hotkey for select-all-scouts (yes, I realize that's already a hotkey too), and cycle through systems with scouts... anyway, just sayin'.