Last night, I discovered arc move.

[Aegis]

Today, I denounce any other form of wormhole defense. Now if only I could arc-place turrets. It's a dazzling display of grace, firepower, and trap setting. All you need is shift+q+v. right click, drag the red line to the desired radius of your arc, and watch your ships tap z or r twice in preparation.

Any other obscure commands that you've toyed with to great success?

[Buttons840]

What's z and r do?

[keith.lamothe]

Last night, I discovered arc move.

Thank you, that made my day

It was one of those things that I implemented on a lark.

Shape mode for build-placement is also planned, so you'll be able to do it with turrets (assuming we ever get to it, knowing how much we have planned, but it's on the shorter list).

By the way, when setting up for wormhole defense, remember that most ships do not do optimal damage at maximum range, depending on the shields of the target.  So pulling them in a bit from max range can help.

The funny thing is also had to ask myself "what does r do?"; z, I imagine, you were using to show the range of the circle of death.

One other note is that we have some plans for overhauling the interface for these more obscure commands; shift-q-v-right-click-drag-and-release... well, it works, but we need to find a better way

[Aegis]

You may have played Star fox 64 a LOOONG time ago. Z and R buttons made you do a barrel roll. Also, yes. I made heavy use of max ranging with z. But I set the arc with shift/q/v, which also put my ships into FRD to combat the long range issue

[superking]

lol not enough n64 owners/4channers round here

I havn't tried out arc move yet, mostly because Ctrl-q-v seems awkward as hell

[keith.lamothe]

Well, actually it's just ctrl-q-right-click-drag-release, but the v is helpful too

[Aegis]

Correct. I used it once or twice, then wanted to experiment to see if I could put the arc'd ships into FRD. It worked, and I haven't looked back. BTW, the time it took to organize all of the ships of various Mk levels to their maximum range or just under it took the whole 2:30 before the actual raid. but it was soo satisfying. I imagine putting an MRS in-between rings to repair will look amazing.

[superking]

why not just have right clicking and dragging create custom formations without any hotkeys required? I hate hotkeys  

tap right click for simple move to position as now, or hold right click and draw a line that your ships form up along. this system is implemented in TA spring (3d total annhilation remake, http://springrts.com/) and it is probably the best thing to happen to RTS gui's ever, of all time

[keith.lamothe]

Well, right-click-drag is probably going to be paint-attack.

But shape-move in general is planned, as is a move away from hotkeys, it just takes time.  We'll need your testing, when it comes

[Aegis]

Well, right-click-drag is probably going to be paint-attack.

But shape-move in general is planned, as is a move away from hotkeys, it just takes time.  We'll need your testing, when it comes

PAINT attack? I don't know what that is or will be, but I would like to picture my fighters valiantly recoloring dreadnoughts with fury. The Aegis Armada..emasculating robotic enemies since creation.

[keith.lamothe]

It's a concept from other rts's that's sort of the other end of dragging a selection box, but instead of friends it affects enemies, and instead of selecting it gives attack orders

[RogueThunder]

^.^... Try shift-q-v and a fairly over-sized radius with autobombs. Might have to give the order 2-3 times to get them spread out enough... but watch the fun afterward.

Another fun one is shift-q, then formation-locking teleporters. Ring of consuming death. Warning though, sometimes teleporters get a little finicky and need to be de-formation-ed to stop fluttering around trying to adjust their formation. (This could maybe be fixed if teleporters, particularly tele-raiders calculated a few pixles of breathing room in when choosing where to be in a formation... hmmm)

[keith.lamothe]

The arc-move is supposed to space them out a fair bit more than necessary, which helps with collision issues, but there might be a bug; thanks for mentioning it.

[RogueThunder]

Only ever had issues with teleport raiders and teleport battle stations. They seem drastically most finicky. I mean, sometimes with another ship type one ship will miss its spot in formation and move... But then it stops. Teleports will often still be trying to figure out where they want to be forever if not told to stop.

Battle stations, not a big issue. Raiders though, both experience it more(due to numbers) and need it more(due to being horrendously vulnerable to beam weapons, a good ring formation greatly reduces this massively.)

[RCIX]

You may have played Star fox 64 a LOOONG time ago. Z and R buttons made you do a barrel roll. Also, yes. I made heavy use of max ranging with z. But I set the arc with shift/q/v, which also put my ships into FRD to combat the long range issue

Ooh, barrel roll! i like! when can we get it