Random Discovery

[carlosjuero]

This is something I hadn't noticed before, took me by surprise but its an interesting 'feature'.

If you click on a Space Dock and assign it a control group, all ships produced will enter that control group - found this out by accident, decided to try and see if I could hotkey the spacedocks in various systems with control groups - then noticed that the parasites the dock was currently producing automatically got put in the same control group.

This is a pretty good feature, not sure if it is intended or not - but it would be even better if setting a control group on a space dock would only put the ships it builds in that group and not the dock itself (as it is you have to select the ships and re-assign their group to remove the dock so that you can quick jump to them in different systems by using the hot key).

[Lancefighter]

Of note, I first noticed this with mobile repair stations. its great and all that this happens, but having all the tugs as the same group as the MRS wasnt optimal for me at the time. Then again, I since then discontinued using tugs..

[x4000]

Yep, this is by design -- it was a player-requested feature, and is something similar to other RTS games.  Generally when you activate a control group that contains a space dock and other ships, it will ignore the space dock.  If all of the ships are on another planet, make sure you triple click to go to them.  If you ever have ships in a single control group on multiple planets, that's always how you cycle through all the planets.  Otherwise, if the space dock is on the same planet as the other ships in the control group, it will only select the other ships rather than the space dock.

[Echo35]

Wow, I actually didn't know that. I seem to discover or learn a new feature every time I play this game

[x4000]

[Dathknight]

Cool! I Loved that feature in Earth 2160

[MaxAstro]

(Hi I'm new, btw )

I just started playing AI War with a friend not too long ago and have to say the interface is wonderfully designed and constantly surprises me.  Something similar to what carlosjuero discovered that I stumbled across recently - Setting a Space Dock itself into Free Roaming Defense mode (hold 'v' and right click where you want its rally point to be) will cause all ships produced there to default to Free Roaming Defense.  This discovery absolutely saved my bacon in a cross-planet attack as I was able to have my space docks automatically replace destroyed defenders and thus free up some of my precious attention to managing the most important planets in the battle.

Kudos to x4000; whenever I stumble across something like this I always think "Wow, why hasn't every other RTS done it that way?" 

[x4000]

Many thanks!  And welcome to the forum!

Actually, that V+Gather Point feature is another one that I can't take credit for -- we have a wonderfully inventive playerbase, what can I say, and they've suggested all sorts of interface goodies like that.  Some of it is me, some of it is the community.  I think a lot of the more surprising ideas came from the community (so that answers why other games don't have that sort of thing; by the time their communities get it, they are not still developing the game nor interested in much feedback).