Author Topic: A few newbie questions  (Read 1303 times)

Offline map66

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A few newbie questions
« on: September 05, 2014, 09:20:21 pm »
Sorry for what may be dumb questions---- I'm on the verge of finishing the beginner scenario and very much enjoying the game, which coming from a hard core turn based war-gamer who would not be caught dead playing a so-called RTS is very high praise indeed.

First a couple interface questions:

1.  Is there any way to just quickly select all military ships in a system?  I feel like I must be missing a hot key here or something and instead end up manually selecting each type of ship from the right bar each time.

2.  Is there any way to assign a default build order, especially for turrets?   Again, given the amount of times one clicks on fairly similar turret setups around wormholes, I assume there must be a shortcut, but the whole "control" menu screen is still confusing me a bit.

3. Is there anyway to deselect an individual unit when one has quite a few already selected?  As an example, if I have my whole fleet in the system selected, and don't want to send my fighters there to get killed, is there any way to do that other than to deselect everything and then re-click on all the other again?

4. Is there a way to turn on attack range circles for every unit in a system?  Just a way to get a quick idea on safe areas and such.

And the tactical one:

1. So Super-Fortress.   I get that bombers are pretty much immune to them, but I'm in a situation where there is one right next to a wormhole leading to the next system to the AI home planet, with a ton of other forces in the system, and there's no way I can find to keep my bombers alive long enough to destroy the Super-Fortress, while any other ships I could use to screen the bombers from the various other hostile ships get near insta-killed by the super fortress.... I'm sure I'm missing something, maybe some ship that would cut down on the attack range of the Superfortress or something.


All that said, incredibly impressed and addicted by the game.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2014, 09:25:57 pm by map66 »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2014, 09:29:06 pm »
Welcome to the game and to the forums, glad you're enjoying it :)


1.  Is there any way to just quickly select all military ships in a system?  I feel like I must be missing a hot key here or something and instead end up manually selecting each type of ship from the right bar each time.
The default binding for that is Ctrl+,


Quote
2.  Is there any way to assign a default build order, especially for turrets?   Again, given the amount of times one clicks on fairly similar turret setups around wormholes, I assume there must be a shortcut, but the whole "control" menu screen is still confusing me a bit.
There used to be a construction template system but I disabled it due to some problems.  I do mean to bring it back but there are some other things (mainly related to the recent engine version change) I need to deal with before I can get back into that kind of stuff.

But generally the ctrl+click and alt+click (to multi-place turrets) things seem to handle it pretty well.


Quote
3. Is there anyway to deselect an individual unit when one has quite a few already selected?  As an example, if I have my whole fleet in the system selected, and don't want to send my fighters there to get killed, is there any way to do that other than to deselect everything and then re-click on all the other again?
Pretty much alt+clicking something will remove it from the selection.  Whether it's an individual unit in the main view, or a category of ship in the selection box (bottom-right-hand-corner, or around there depending on resolution).  I think it also works on the planetary summary sidebar on the right.


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1. So Super-Fortress.   I get that bombers are pretty much immune to them, but I'm in a situation where there is one right next to a wormhole leading to the next system to the AI home planet, with a ton of other forces in the system, and there's no way I can find to keep my bombers alive long enough to destroy the Super-Fortress, while any other ships I could use to screen the bombers from the various other hostile ships get near insta-killed by the super fortress.... I'm sure I'm missing something, maybe some ship that would cut down on the attack range of the Superfortress or something.
If you kill the tachyon sentinel on the wormhole, does the AI have any other tachyon coverage of that area?  If not, Cloaker Starship + Transports should let you get whatever you want through (to another system, or another part of that system to mount a more ordered assault on the super fortress).  If you can get any kind of foothold I believe a sabotage hack can take down a superfort, if it's the nearest eligible target to the hacker.

And there are other things you can do, like an armored warhead, but that's probably unnecessary.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline map66

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2014, 10:02:57 pm »
Thanks (again) for the very quick response.

That hacker worked like a charm to sabotage the Superfortress---- would have been the last thing I would have thought to try.  8)

All the other answers worked as well, other then the control+ to select all military vessels.   Tried various things there, and assume I must click on some icon, but the bottom icon part on the screen lists various types of ships and such, but there appears to be none for military ships.

Also,  (I added the question in my initial post probably while you were incredibly quickly replying to it  ;) ), is there a way to get range circles on all ships in a system (ALA Harpoon or any number of wargames?)

Once again, really enjoying this game.   In odd ways reminds me of a classic SSI/SSG Gary Grigsby style thing, as opposed to any other 4X game I've tried which I just couldn't get into.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2014, 10:15:35 pm »
For templates, you can try out this mod which is, AFAIK, the only mod AI War has that isn't graphical or language based.

Offline Hearteater

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2014, 11:33:50 pm »
All the other answers worked as well, other then the control+ to select all military vessels.
Use CONTROL + COMMA to select all military. CTRL+, looks weird and I wasn't grasping it either when I first started.

Offline Cinth

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2014, 11:45:44 pm »
All the other answers worked as well, other then the control+ to select all military vessels.
Use CONTROL + COMMA to select all military. CTRL+, looks weird and I wasn't grasping it either when I first started.

Or maybe [ctrl] + [,]  ?
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline map66

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2014, 12:13:09 am »
Thank you very much--- controll comma is indeed it.   Honestly, probably should be just a default letter key, given how often it will be used.

And also thanks Drac for the recomendation on the add-on, I'll check it out.

Offline Cinth

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #7 on: September 06, 2014, 12:22:37 am »
I'm sure someone here knows how to reassign hot keys.

Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline Kahuna

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2014, 03:44:56 am »
Esc --> "View Controls"
For this specific keybind choose the "Planet View" tab.
I've rebound it to Ctrl+A.
set /A diff=10
if %diff%==max (
   set /A me=:)
) else (
   set /A me=SadPanda
)
echo Check out my AI War strategy guide and find your inner Super Cat!
echo 2592 hours of AI War and counting!
echo Kahuna matata!

Offline map66

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Re: A few newbie questions
« Reply #9 on: September 07, 2014, 12:01:10 am »
Esc --> "View Controls"
For this specific keybind choose the "Planet View" tab.
I've rebound it to Ctrl+A.

Thank you very much---- practically all my interface questions got answered once I figured out from this that there are multiple additional pages in the key binding options menu... They are kinda hidden away.