Problem with starships in fleets

[Huw]

I did search for 'starship' but didn't find a relevant thread, so...

In my current (first) game my main strike force has a light starship attached to it.  They're all in the same control group and move as a group.  I really like the damage boost that the starship confers but it tends to stay on the outside of the fleet whenever the fleet is stationary.  That means that only a couple of ships are usually receiving the damage bonus when everyone's pounding away at a forcefield or whatever.

Is there something I'm doing wrong?  I suppose I could direct starships manually and not have them as part of a control group but that's not my preferred option.

[x4000]

The damage boost thing is something of an ancillary benefit of starships, so don't worry about it too much.  There are some features on the list already about "ship priority" which would basically make other ships move out of the way of starships instead of vice versa, so that will hopefully resolve it (or make it easy to resolve by just pointing your starship to the middle of the group and then doing group move).  Anyway, so that's on the list!

[Huw]

Good to know, cheers Chris.

[x4000]

Sure thing!

[CautiousChaos]

To handle this today I have to do a bit of micromanagement. 

I position my starship where I want it, then group select a number of units and have them muster "on top" of the starship.  What happens then is that the units I select gather around the perimeter of the starship and I get lots of them boosted in one shot.

It's a whole lot more effective than trying to move the starship into a better position around other units.

-cc

[Huw]

Thanks CC.  Yeah, that's what I'll end up doing until the next patch probably.

[Admiral]

I was thinking of mentioning this same exact problem - making holes in the middle of my blobs to slot in starships. There are lots of (what I consider) little things that I don't mention, though, as X has plenty on his plate (just look at his to-do forums!).

Cheers!

[x4000]

There are also lots of "this sucks about every RTS game and I'd like you to fix it in yours" problems that arise, too.  I'm happy to deal with those, because it helps to make this more of a standout game in those areas, but I also find them mildly amusing.  Mainly because I wonder how no other developers ever got that sort of feedback.  It's cool to be cutting edge, and fix things that no other developer ever bothered to fix before.  This isn't an example of that, but for some reason it made me think of it.  OT, sorry.

[Revenantus]

I was thinking of mentioning this same exact problem - making holes in the middle of my blobs to slot in starships. There are lots of (what I consider) little things that I don't mention, though, as X has plenty on his plate (just look at his to-do forums!).

I'm hoping that once the priorities system is implemented this should be much easier to manage. For example, any ships with the munitions booster ability will have a higher priority than those without - Ship Positioning Priorities

Although, Admiral highlights the need for a special move order for overriding the standard priorities. For example, P+Move could mean the ship will force any other ships beneath it to move when it reaches its target location.

[x4000]

Although, Admiral highlights the need for a special move order for overriding the standard priorities. For example, P+Move could mean the ship will force any other ships beneath it to move when it reaches its target location.

No -- with higher priorities, that would be automatic.  So in this instance you would simply point the starship to the middle, and everything at the end point gets out of the way.  Nice and simple.

[Revenantus]

Although, Admiral highlights the need for a special move order for overriding the standard priorities. For example, P+Move could mean the ship will force any other ships beneath it to move when it reaches its target location.

No -- with higher priorities, that would be automatic.  So in this instance you would simply point the starship to the middle, and everything at the end point gets out of the way.  Nice and simple.

In the case of ships with the munitions boosting ability, yes, but what if the player wants to say place some cruisers at a specific point in the formation?

[x4000]

Although, Admiral highlights the need for a special move order for overriding the standard priorities. For example, P+Move could mean the ship will force any other ships beneath it to move when it reaches its target location.

No -- with higher priorities, that would be automatic.  So in this instance you would simply point the starship to the middle, and everything at the end point gets out of the way.  Nice and simple.

In the case of ships with the munitions boosting ability, yes, but what if the player wants to say place some cruisers at a specific point in the formation?

Ohhh... I see what you mean.  I don't know, I'm not sure that warrants a full movement mode (those make savegames larger, and have other complexity side effects, so I'm pretty judicious with when and how I add those).  Usually you just want to select your fleet and build it in parts.  I can't see a reason to put cruisers anywhere except at the back, for instance.  The priorities are a no-brainer, and have none of those negative side effects, but a new movement mode... I'm not sure that's really a large/common enough problem to warrant it.  I could be wrong, but right now I'm not feeling it yet.

[Admiral]

There are also lots of "this sucks about every RTS game and I'd like you to fix it in yours" problems that arise, too.

Unless, of course, it relates to the inconsistency of the "action" command for placing "structures" (a type of order) and telling things to go somewhere (another type of order).

[x4000]

There are also lots of "this sucks about every RTS game and I'd like you to fix it in yours" problems that arise, too.

Unless, of course, it relates to the inconsistency of the "action" command for placing "structures" (a type of order) and telling things to go somewhere (another type of order).

Well, that's not someone that anyone who actually plays RTS games routinely will complain about. 

And, at any rate, it would really make it uncomfortable for the majority of my target audience (and myself), so hence the not change there.

[Admiral]

I don't remotely fault your reasoning for not implementing that! (Unless, of course, you really want to make it a configuration option, evil cackle  .)

It's just my object-oriented programmer mindset: I like everything to be perfectly orthogonal and consistent. Mind you, I'd rather be doing my work in Scheme or some fully FP language (such as Haskell, given my academic background) but alas, professional work requires OO these days.