Moving Force Fields

[Marc420]

I really wish either forcefields didn't move, or there was some easy way to 'lock' them in place. 

I'm pretty new at this game, so let me know if I'm missing something.

I had played some on v 3, and now really getting into this game on v4.  Somewhere along the way, I got use to using a left-click drag across my units to pick my military units.  Only now, that action seems to be picking up my force fields and telling them to move along with everyone else.  I really wish that wouldn't happen. Just lost a command ship because of it.  Thought I had an incursion easily under control, with a fire fight going on back by the warp node.  Then I got the message where the AI was laughing at me for losing a command station.  What?  Looked, and my force field was sitting in the middle of the board, away from my command station, and actually blocking some of my turrets from effectively firing.

One of the things I like about this game is that a lot of work has gone into making the game work without a lot of micro-managing. But, now I'm finding that I have to do a lot of micro managing around these moving force fields.  One thing it causes is that I'm going have to be a lot more careful in how I pick units to move.  That left click drag is handy, but I think I have to quit using it.  Which means more clicking and manipulations to try to pick all the military units while being certain that I don't ever grab that dang movable force field. It also means that periodically I should go around and check all my at risk worlds just to make sure the dang movable forcefield isn't sitting out in the middle of space somewhere leaving my command station unprotected.

For what I want to use forcefields for, which is mostly protecting at-risk command stations, the fact that they can move seems to cause a lot of extra problems. 

[Invelios]

Wait, if you are using force fields to protect your command stations, then why are your military and force fields near each other? Do you keep your military right next to your command stations? You might just want to put a rally post a little ways away from your command stations and make sure space docks send ships away from the force fields. Then you shouldn't really have this problem. Also if you didn't know you can use Ctrl + , to select all military units, and I'm pretty sure this doesn't select force fields. I just don't understand how you are having this problem, because I use force fields mostly like you, to protect at-risk command stations, and they are never even near my military.

[Suzera]

You actually would have to select over them twice. If any new military is in the selection box, it will only add military. Only if there is no more extra military in the selection box will it select things like FFs, engineers and docks.

[Marc420]

This is what I'm trying to figure out.

In version 3, it was just a Left click drag to select military, and CNTRL + left click drag selected non-military too.  Did this get flipped around in v4?  I just know I didn't use to have this problem in v3, and now I'm having it.  If these got flipped backwards from what they were, this would explain it.

Otherwise, you are just saying I have to use your tactics.  I know I'm new to this game, but I kinda like having my ships back by the forcefield, at least at the start of battles.  I like to let my static defenses do their work, especially the long range stuff like sniper rifles and ion cannons.  I also usually keep a counter-sniper turret back near the ff and command ship, so in one case with Marauders coming in with their sniper guns, I just told my fleet to go hide back by the defensive zone where they wouldn't get hurt.  I think that was the battle before the one I lost the command ship, so a click-drag across my units to move them out of that zone might well be what was what moved my forcefield.

Generally, I like keeping my ships on FRD so they don't sit uselessly if I don't notice a battle going on. But, at the same time, I think they charge out towards attackers way too fast.  Against the marauders, they want to go charging way out into space and almost leave the planet undefended to any other threats that might warp in.  Sometimes, just to delay such a charge, I grab all my units and drag them back to the rear, just to make them go back before they start to charge again.  I like having my static defenses have time to shoot up the enemy before my fleet engages.

And yes, I know there is more micromanaging I can do to my fleet. But I don't want to be micromanging my fleet on five planets at once. Sometimes I just want to be zoomed out and give a big order to everyone in the system.  If I've got three fights going on, sometimes I just want to that to set everyone on this planet back to FRD and a good rally point, and then go back to the other system that's in trouble.  Its when I zoom out and drag a big box across the screen to do just such a selection that I keep seem to be picking up my forcefields and moving them

If everyone uses forcefields to protect their command ships, then what's the point of having them movable?  

[Suzera]

If you left click drag around all of your military with some civilian stuff under, it only selects your military. If you do that again without deselecting and without any extra military coming in to the area, it will then select all the civilian stuff underneath in addition to your military.

[Marc420]

You actually would have to select over them twice. If any new military is in the selection box, it will only add military. Only if there is no more extra military in the selection box will it select things like FFs, engineers and docks.

So the same action does two different things depending on what's already selected?  arghhhh!  no wonder I couldn't figure it out.

I'm guessing that's not on the quick ref card.

OK, I'm new, but I could have lived without that.  I don't really want to add docks and ff's to military fleets very often. So, having Cntrl + drag to do it would have been fine with me without this added feature.  I'd be happier with a control mode that I knew was always going to pick military units no matter what.  Sometimes I'm just doing a second drag to make sure I got everyone I wanted to get.

At least that explains why it was happening some times and not on others and that I couldn't begin to figure out why and when and what was causing it.

And I guess it explains the time my engineers led the charge out towards the enemy when I sent everyone in attack mode out to them.    Kinda ugly to the engineers union membership count.  The engineers being faster didn't help them that day as they got there even before the fighters.  Ugly.

Oh well, scrap five hours of a game where I've now lost my command stations over and over and call it a learning experience and start over.

Any more little selection rules a new player needs to know?  Does it do anything differently on a Sunday afternoon if I hold my left foot off the ground and stick out my tongue while selecting?  How about on Monday mornings with my right arm in the air while wiggling my nose?



Thanks for the help though.  At least now I've got a clue as to what's going on.

[Suzera]

I think that's about it. If you look at the selection numbers at the bottom left, if there's a set of parenthesis, that's how many military only will be selected, and no civilians will be selected. If there are no parenthesis, it will be selecting civilians.

[Invelios]

If everyone uses forcefields to protect their command ships, then what's the point of having them movable?  

There are other things you can do with forcefields, I myself just usually protect command ships. Also, having the movable saves a lot of pain when I get new boarder worlds. I usually have forcefields only on worlds at risk of attack, and early on which planets are at risk changes so fast. Having them movable is much less work then destroying and rebuilding, and also doesn't cost any more resources.

Also, what the last people where saying about drag-selecting is correct, it will only select non-military ships if all the military ships in the selection are already selected. So if you don't want to select the forcefields just drag once to select only military. One problem you might be having, is that the game seems to remember selections when you go back to a planet. So if you select some units on one planet, then go look at another planet and select something else, then come back to the first planet, the units you had selected at the first planet could still be selected, so if you try to select them again you will cause any non-military to join the selection. I've had this happen myself a couple of times, causing me to move rally posts around that I wanted to stay put.

EDIT: I don't know if there is a way to make drag-select always only select military, but the Ctrl + , hotkey should always select only the military on the planet iirc.

Also, I'm pretty sure the reference card is for an old version, at least I can't find that file in Unity's installation. Also, you can actually change key bindings in the new version, if you want.

[Vinraith]

Chris has mentioned that the double selection box thing is an unintended "feature." I for one would love to see it go away. If I want to grab non-military stuff I'm happy to use the ctrl+click-drag function, as it stands I end up unintentionally grabbing non-mil stuff all the time.

[Sunshine!]

The point of having moving forcefields is that you can redeploy them.  Rather than have to scrap and rebuild all the forcefields to protect against a counterattack post, we just took the 14 minutes to move all our available forcefields into position (33 in total of mk1 and mk2 I think it was).

I also frequently use forcefields to cover mobile forces in situations where, for some reason, I've deemed transports to not be worthwhile (heavy presence of artillery guardians or other things that can do ridiculous damage to transports, but still have problems getting through 12 million hp).

On rare occasions I've used forcefields as crowd control.  Because forcefields can push enemy units around, setting up a series of grav turrets and a logistics station on the same planet to defend against an incoming wave, and then using forcefields to disperse the wave for easier consumption works out okay if, for example, they have a giant pile of parasites and you don't want to be engaging them all at the same time.

[snrub_guy]

I thought this was on a list to fix at some point. I also think it needs to go away. Sometimes I'll want to just drag a box over a whole planet to quickly send my military somewhere. I've lost games because of this, and hope it'll be fixed in the polish phase.

[zoutzakje]

hmm I never had problems with this. just select once for military ships and select twice for pretty much everything else. and to make sure I don't accidentaly select non combat ships, I just keep my fleet seperated from pretty much everything else. if I want my engineers to repair my fleet for example, I just put them in FRD mode somewhere not near any other ships.
the only thing that can be annoying is when a rally point gets moved when you didn't want to.... if that little red flag would appear everytime it happened when selecting a big bunch of ships, then it wouldn't be a problem.... unfortunately you don't see rally points when you select more than just the builder.