Planet shortcuts, & other newb questions

[Harry]

Hi there!  I'm playing the tutorial campaign, and I'm loving it so far.  I don't ordinarily care for RTS games, but this has strategic elements that make it more interesting.  Anyway, some newb questions:

1. Is there a keyboard shortcut that allows you to hop directly to a planet?  Or can I establish such a shortcut, akin to a control-group for a fleet?  Or must one use the galaxy map?

2. Does the AI ever rebuild a structure you destroy?  E.g., a warp gate, or a guard point, or a data center?  Or once you kill something, is it gone for good?

3. A "cross-planet" attack means one that comes thru the wormhole chain, rather than thru a warpgate, right?

4. Is there any way to see a galaxy-wide summary of how many ships you have of each class?  The summary on the right just displays this planet's numbers.  The "stats" contain the totals I've built and lost, but not the totals currently in play.  The galaxy map does include a simple total of all your ships, and some filters to see other ships, but it'd be nice to have something I could glance at quickly while playing.  Ideally, this might involve a "unit" icon on each planet on the galaxy map, with the number of each unit at that planet also displayed -- something like a wargame display.  (E.g., "War in the Pacific" for PC, or "Galactic Civilizatoins II".) 

5. How do you recommend that the player use ctl-groups?  One group per ship class, I assume?  So group 1 can be fighters, 2 can be bombers, 3 can be cruisers, etc? 

6. Also, I struggle a bit with spitting out big blobs of mixed units at my space dock and then trying to organize them into groups without inadvertently sucking in every ship already defending the planet.  I guess one way is to click-drag the group, then click the button at bottom to select just the fighters, then assign them a ctl-group. 

7. On the same topic: I'm having a bit of trouble establishing a rally point outside the current system.  Select dock; choose units to build (and loop); tab to galaxy map; then what?  Left-click on target system, right click on desired point?

8. Once I'm through the tutorial campaign (which is going reasonably well so far), what level difficulty would you recommend?  I've played some RTS games (Warcraft, Age of Empires, a little Supreme Commander), but I'm not usually that good at them because I panic when things get hectic.  Any options you'd recommend enabling or disabling?  I like a challenge but I also want to learn the game without getting too discouraged.

[raptor331]

1. Just assign the command station a control group number, i do this with my homeplanet.

2. No they don't, the only thing they continuosly build are turrets.

3. Yes, basicaly they send in units from different planets to attack your planets.

4. Yes, its in the side bar of the galaxy map, might not be what ur looking for though.

5. I use 1 for the entire attack fleet then organize them into sub groups and give them alternate control group numbers.

6. just click the unit icon on the intel bar to ur right. that selects all units of that type.

7. You cant do that, you can not set specific rally points, but you can build a rally post for that planet.

8. For a begginer i recommend ou go on two turtle ai's on level 5 with 40-70 planets with astro trains turned off(they tend to intimidate people, but eventually they just become annoying when you are more experienced).

[Revenantus]

1. Just assign the command station a control group number, i do this with my homeplanet.

Just to clarify this, when pressing a number key to select a control group, if there are no ships in that control group on the current planet then the view will switch to the nearest planet that contains ships in that control group. This a 'creative' way of achieving what you want to do, and works as long as you then don't assign any other units to that control group. There isn't a way of assigning planets directly to shortcuts.

2. No they don't, the only thing they continuosly build are turrets.

And ships, of course.

3. Yes. The ships that participate in cross planet attacks are drawn from the AI's existing garrison. They'll travel through the wormhole network to reach your planets. It can be very difficult to predict where the AI will strike when using this sort of attack - often the AI's fleet will spend a lot of time patrolling your borders looking for weak spots in your defenses.

4. Nothing that can be seen at a glance I'm afraid. This is largely due to the design philosophy of AI War that considers each planet to be a largely separate battlefield. You can use the finder tool (the magnifying glass icon to the left of the galaxy map) to query for specific ships, though I presume that this isn't quite what you're after. The quick buttons at the bottom maintain lists of more specialized ships, such as engineers and science labs.

5. This is entirely down to player preference. Personally, the primary use of control groups for me is keeping fleets performing different tasks separated, so that I never accidentally order a group of garrisoning ships into battle elsewhere for example. Assigning specific classes of ships to control groups is also useful, as it's then generally quicker to gain access to them than by using the selection box dropdown at the bottom.

6. I recommend double left clicking on the unit types in that situation. This will select all units of the same type currently on the screen.

7. I'm afraid that ordering ships to specific points on other planets isn't something that the engine supports. As suggested by raptor, rally posts can be used to facilitate this, but these are only available in the prerelease version of the game - the latest official version (2.0) doesn't include them. Anyone is welcome to try the prereleases if they wish, you can read the FAQ here - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2821.0.html

8. I recommend an 80 planet map on difficulty 5 for your first game, against two easier AI types, with simple ship types enabled. I don't recommend disabling astro trains, as I think they add a lot to the game and you'll soon have them sussed.

You've requested a number of features here that aren't available. We're very receptive to feedback here, so it'll be interesting to hear what others think of your suggestions.

Good luck in your first campaign!

[Spikey00]

I personally TAB (galaxy view) myself to other planets--otherwise I use unit control groups to zoom in.

Things in AI War get pretty hectic, regardless of the AI!  (:

[x4000]

With regard to #6, I'd also like to note that you can give cross-planet build orders.  Simply select the dock, tab out to the galaxy map, and then right-click the planet you want them to go to.  They will go to that planet and then sit at the wormhole, unless you build a Rally Post on that planet, in which case they will go there.

[Harry]

Thanks very much for all the helpful replies!  You've pretty much answered my questions for now.  I asked about keyboard shortcuts for planets because these games tend to bother my mouse hand, so the more shortcuts, the better.  It sounds like the "command station shortcut" will serve me well.

I am indeed interested in getting the pre-release and, eventually, the expansion, but I bought the game on Steam and I don't think any of that is available there yet.  (I'm particularly looking forward to the reordering of fighter > bomber, as my WW2 instincts make me think that way, although even in WW2 the B-17 was as good a fighter-killer as many fighters!)  I don't know if downloading the prerelease would make Steam unhappy, and I've certainly got enough to keep me very busy with the core release.

Incidentally, I just finished the tutorial campaign.  It was *really* well done; kudos to you for taking the time to make it.  It gave examples of most basic strategies I've read about here: defending hostile wormholes, warp-gate raiding, killing ion cannons, "neutering" a planet, "stealing" knowledge without conquering a planet, sensible ways to tech up, and when to "skip" a non-essential target.  If any other newcomers are debating about whether to try the campaign tutorial, I say go for it -- it made me much more comfortable with the game.  Er, it did take me 16 hours of "game time" to complete, but I guess I'm pretty pokey and cautious -- I like attacking with as large a fleet as possible. 

Off to try a "real" campaign now.  The consensus seems to be a level 5 AI, so I'll try that.

[Harry]

I thought of one more question.  The hotkey list for 2.001 says N+1 selects only Mark 1 ships, but I can't get it to do anything.  I hold down N and 1 at the same time, right?  Maybe this is a pre-release feature?  I'm just playing with the version I bought off Steam yesterday.

Thanks!

[x4000]

For that one, hold N+1 while you are dragging your selection, not after they are already selected.  This lets you mix and match, such as N+1+2 to select all mark I and II ships when you drag, etc.  Or, it lets you select all of one group, hold Shift+N+1 and add a group of Mark I ships to your existing selection, that sort of thing.  Of course, for some of those combos you basically need very stretchy hands; there has been some discussion about that.

[Diazo]

I am indeed interested in getting the pre-release and, eventually, the expansion, but I bought the game on Steam and I don't think any of that is available there yet.  (I'm particularly looking forward to the reordering of fighter > bomber, as my WW2 instincts make me think that way, although even in WW2 the B-17 was as good a fighter-killer as many fighters!)  I don't know if downloading the prerelease would make Steam unhappy, and I've certainly got enough to keep me very busy with the core release.

I can confirm that the Steam 2.0 has no problems with installed the pre-release downloaded from the website.

You will have to reenter your 2.0 serial key again however, in addition to the expansion serial key (if you've bought that.)

Diazo.

[x4000]

I am indeed interested in getting the pre-release and, eventually, the expansion, but I bought the game on Steam and I don't think any of that is available there yet.  (I'm particularly looking forward to the reordering of fighter > bomber, as my WW2 instincts make me think that way, although even in WW2 the B-17 was as good a fighter-killer as many fighters!)  I don't know if downloading the prerelease would make Steam unhappy, and I've certainly got enough to keep me very busy with the core release.

I can confirm that the Steam 2.0 has no problems with installed the pre-release downloaded from the website.

You will have to reenter your 2.0 serial key again however, in addition to the expansion serial key (if you've bought that.)

Diazo.

Oh, I meant to address that -- thanks for catching that, it does indeed work great.  It disables the steamworks integration (achievements, etc) by default, but you can even turn that back on in the prereleases with a command line argument.

[Harry]

Thanks!  Hmm, maybe I'll try the pre-release after I finish my first "real" game.

[Fiskbit]

Regarding #1, you've reminded me of that functionality in Starcraft, where you set a location to an F key and pressing that key goes to that location. It was never something I could really remember to use, especially when everything was so easy to find on the minimap, but I feel like such a thing could potentially be good for AI War, where the minimap only shows a small portion of the game and finding a location is a lot harder without using a control group. Here, I imagine it would store both the location (position and planet) and zoom level.

Does this seem useful to people?

[Revenantus]

For that one, hold N+1 while you are dragging your selection, not after they are already selected.  This lets you mix and match, such as N+1+2 to select all mark I and II ships when you drag, etc.  Or, it lets you select all of one group, hold Shift+N+1 and add a group of Mark I ships to your existing selection, that sort of thing.  Of course, for some of those combos you basically need very stretchy hands; there has been some discussion about that.

The earlier discussion was here - http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1270.0.html

It's more intuitive if the filter is applied to the current selection (many players find the current method of applying a filters a little awkward, at least at first). The issue is that if the filter is applied in said manner, then you can't mix and match - There's no way of selecting both mark I and II ships, for example.

This could be achieved, albeit in a slightly less convenient way, by having Alt+N+# remove ships described by that filter from the current selection, but then this increases the required number of shortcuts.

I'm in support of the alternate method of applying the filters.

EDIT: From the linked thread, I think that this is quite a powerful argument in favour of changing this;

- You can apply these filters to ships selected in any manner, instead of having to drag boxes. So, you could press Ctrl+comma and then N+3, and you'd have all Mark III military ships on the current planet selected.
Or you could, say, put your whole fleet into selection group 1, then press 1, N+1 to get all Mark I ships in the group, and then 1, N+2 to get the Mark IIs, and so on, to be able to quickly order around separate fighting elements.

All in all, I think decoupling filter application from the click-drag selection box would be a huge usability win. And it'd just get even more awesome if you added new filters.

EDIT2: Actually, is there any reason why the current method couldn't be used if the shortcut was activated whilst dragging, and the other method used otherwise?

[Harry]

Regarding #1, you've reminded me of that functionality in Starcraft, where you set a location to an F key and pressing that key goes to that location. It was never something I could really remember to use, especially when everything was so easy to find on the minimap, but I feel like such a thing could potentially be good for AI War, where the minimap only shows a small portion of the game and finding a location is a lot harder without using a control group. Here, I imagine it would store both the location (position and planet) and zoom level.

Does this seem useful to people?

Yes, I was thinking of just that sort of functionality.  The "command ship control group" is a reasonable workaround for me, but of course it does decrease the number of "real" ship control-groups available, which is a minor drag.  Optimally I'd want to be able to assign a single keystroke, or maybe an easy keystroke-pair, to a location/zoomlevel.  Not a must-have thing, but it sure would be nice.  I have no idea how much development time it would entail.  The new features in the pre-release notes generally seems more important to me, so I can understand why this might not be a priority.

The earlier discussion was here

Thanks for the link.  If this worked like "L" currently works, I'd be very happy, but I guess all the simple, single-stroke shortcuts have already been claimed.  For me the issue is as much about this particular stretchy combo as about the timing of when to keystroke/mouse.  I think one reason I struggle with the N+ shortcuts is that I have a big "ergonomic" keyboard, making the stretch from N to 1 verrry long to make with one hand, as seems to be required if one must do this *and* mouse at the same time.  (Maybe Q+numbers would work better for the Mark selections?)  Anyway, I'll practice with it more today.  In truth, I'm not sure I need it all that much, and in this case I can certainly see why other matters might warrant higher development priority.

[Spikey00]

If you ever need to find a coop friend to give tips, feel free to visit our IRC (http://arcengames.com/irc/aiwar_irc.php).  I'm sure, if there are people available, that they would love to play with you.  (;