Default effects/boostings ranges and new units didtances

[Ozymandiaz]

Recently with the units not "clumping" like they used to, I find a lot of the units not as effective anymore as they used to be. When moving a big group of units they are now separated from each other a lot more then they used to, and this leads to less effective use of boosting effects like cloaking, shield, munition boosting. The cloakers 700 radius is now so small that you are mostly lucky if the small group you send it with stay cloaked, and I have seen my boostting units just boosting 3 or 4 units when I move my entire 2000 unit group.

The new "clumping mechanic" is of course nice on the CPU, so my question is, is it popssible to tweak it so that the units stay closer together again, without runining the new CPU niceness? As it is now there is room for 3 or 4 units between each other unit when I make a group move.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, we can tighten down on it a bit.  But it should be using the old clump move for groups smaller than 300 (I think that's the threshold, but it's bigger than 100).

[Ozymandiaz]

I think tightening it would help a lot.

Right now my cruisers on one end of the blob is out of range from the other side of the blob (1300 units)

In regards to the cloaker starship; it might just be me sending it with too "big" units, rahter then small strike forces of combat units. Generally my fleets are are a lot more then 300 units, so I have not observed a lot of unit behaviour with smaller fleets.

I added a screenshot as well.

[rubikscube]

well if you are willing to micro you can have your units distance over one other, in 3d space they are on top of each other

[superking]

more range on cloaking ship? given that it is hardlimited by the number of ships it can cloak, i dont perceive that affecting game balance a great deal

[rubikscube]

you can make everything boosted by 1 starship if you micro enough or just use a mod

[Ozymandiaz]

more range on cloaking ship? given that it is hardlimited by the number of ships it can cloak, i dont perceive that affecting game balance a great deal

Its more about my shield boosters and munitions boostes, and starships, really. They are not as effective as they used to be this way, considering their limited range and ship cap, they do not do the same for my fleet anymore.

I mentioned cloaking as well since its part of the same thing. And regardless, even if the cloaker is hard limited, when moving a group and a lab slips outside its radius, and dieing, that is annoying (need to micro them so that they stay inside the radius) . And if its hardlimited, then surley, there is no harm to make the units clump tighter, is there (or even make the ranges go up a bit)?

[rubikscube]

well, it would be useless if starships can buff so many ships at once or mrs's, but just micro more and you get a very concentrated blob of fleet

[orzelek]

For microing of small number of units with cloaker etc take a look at formation move - I think it's under the x+rmb menu now.

[superking]

munitions boosters are extremely powerful though. a 1.80x firepower boost for most your fleet increases combat effectiveness by a fairly ludicrous amount- even the smaller radius is worth using 

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, but in the days where you could get a 4x-5x boost or whatever it was... surprised I didn't get lynched for killing that

[rubikscube]

5x with 5 light starships, those were the times, and make your whole fleet a speck, but coming out of that speck is a ton of boolets.

[superking]

boolets.

lol