emergency movement pods
 

Greetings,

Another stupid question from Jestak:

I installed an emergency movement pod on my starship and I can't figure out how to use it. I tried to right/left click, I tried to find out a special button. I am sure it is as obvious than the nose in a face. Anyone can tell me how to use it exactly?

Thank you

Re: emergency movement pods
 

Heh, there is no stupid question, except the one that goes unasked. There should be a Use button in the main menu, enabling you to activate the Emergency Propulsion component. If you are playing in a simultaneous game, the extra movement points will *not* appear right now, but they will be used when the turn is executed.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

Greetings,

Thank you for the answer. I am playing against comps for now because I am still learning the game.

However, I still don't see the button. I click on the fleet or on the ship and I don't see it. I must be really blind.

Thank you

Re: emergency movement pods
 

A fleet cannot use Emergency components; the button will only be available for a single ship. So, select an unfleeted vessel (or remove a ship from its fleet), and look at the list of buttons: there should be a button resembling a weapon on the right, a few columns to the left of the pink arrows (the "replay movement" buttons).

Only ships outside of a fleet and equipped with Emergency devices will have this button displayed; otherwise, it will be greyed out.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

Note to SEV betatesters: please mark this as a bug if it works the same way in SE5!

Re: emergency movement pods
 

There is a problem, though.

Not all ships have the same emergency components and not all emergency components have the same ability amounts.
Even ships of the same design may have different emergency components intact.

And even if they do have equivalent strength components, the side effects of destructively using said components are not known.
EG:
Engines with EP ability. Using the engine gives you a 1-turn speed boost at the expense of slower travel until it is repaired.

Except in a fleet of ONE SHIP, trying to apply the "use component" order to a whole fleet is just asking for trouble.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

Apply it to types of ships?

Re: emergency movement pods
 

That's why it's a bug. It needs a whole different UI.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

I don't see what the problem would be if the "Use Component" icon were available to fleets. It seems to me that it should work that way. All the ships in the fleet with EPP's would activate their EPP's and fleet movement is limited by the slowest ship. Fleet movement mechanics already work this way with ships of different speeds. A spaceyard ship or two in the fleet would allow doing it again the next turn. Why would this be so bad?

Re: emergency movement pods
 

That would work fine for Emergency Movement, where you'd generally want all the ships with that component to use. It wouldn't work so well with somehthing like Emergency Supplies, when you might only want some of the ships with that component to use it.

What the button should do when you click it is ask you:
1) Which Component to use
2) Which ships to use that component (via some sort of sortable list, with some ease-of-use functionality such as "select all", "select all of same design", etc.)

Re: emergency movement pods
 

The hidden assumption that you guys seem to be using here is that there is exactly one emergency movement component per ship.

- If just one single ship has used (or otherwise damaged) all of its EM components, the button is worse than useless. It will damage the rest of the ships and not increase the fleet speed because of the one slowpoke.

- If some ships have two or more EM components, which one gets picked?


In order to really do this, you'd have to open a big window which lists all the ships in the fleet and allows you to select which components to use as a group before hitting OK.
Preferably with some indicators for which ships are slowing down your fleet, and what the fleet speed would be if the chosen components are used.

A lot more complicated than just "Use -> Emergency movement"

Re: emergency movement pods
 

In your example SJ, I feel making good use of these components is up to the player: you should check for damaged Emergency components before using that kind of option, and create a second fleet if needed. And you do not *have* to use this "Mass Component Use" button if you do not wish to.

Components should be selected as under SEIV, with only picks for components available thorought the fleet. What would happen if only a part of the fleet had specific components is another matter; maybe the game could tell how many ships in the fleet had this or that component.

The ability to make a whole fleet use Emergency components is mostly useful for propulsion, but it is quite needed: currently, a fleet cannot use such components, so you have to destroy a fleet and give individual orders to every single ship to use those components. Not exactly convenient, as ships usually move around in fleets when there are a few hundred of them, and the lack of fleet experience will be painful should those ships run into an enemy fleet.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

Not really. I was assuming different components would appear as different components in the Select Component To Use screen. Emergency Propulsion I and Emergency Propulsion II would be treated as different components.
That is how it should work. Why should ship A increase ship B's speed? A warning message could pop up in cases like this, though, to avoid confusion.
If they are the same comp, it doesn't matter, just pick the first one. If they are different versions of the same comp (eg, emergency propulsion I and emergency propulsion II), then that would be decided when you pick which component to use.

Or just limit that class of comp to one per ship so that issue doesn't come up.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

If they are the same comp, it doesn't matter, just pick the first one. If they are different versions of the same comp (eg, emergency propulsion I and emergency propulsion II), then that would be decided when you pick which component to use.

Or just limit that class of comp to one per ship so that issue doesn't come up.
You can't limit them to one per ship. That breaks mods.

And part of the point is that if you fired off just the EP 1's your fleet would not go any faster, because there are other ships with EP2s, or perhaps a modded engine/EP combo component.

Trying to manage used components on a fleet is going to require something far more complex than something resembling the single ship use-component order but spanning across ships.

--

What might do the trick, is if you could select ships without removing them from the fleet.
Then give Component-Use orders, or retrofit orders, or whatever you needed to do. Without the extra clicking involved in the unfleeting and refleeting.

Managing conflicts between fleet and ship orders would be a bit of a sticky point, though. If you only allow immediate-effect orders or day-zero orders, like cargo transfers, and component-use it might work out.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

I'm talking about SEV, not SEIV, so there are no mods to be broken. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif That said, I prefer the former solution to the latter. But I'm biased towards modding.
I think I understand the confusion here. I am assuming that you will be able to order multiple Use Component orders to the same fleet.
More complex, definitely. "Far more" complex, I don't think so. I guess it depends on how far you think far is...heh

This doesn't seem overly complex to me:
1) Click Use Component
2) Select from a list of components that are useable.
3) Select from a list which ships this order applies to.
4) Repeat for more components

Re: emergency movement pods
 

This was not directed at you. Everybody else seemed to have a very simplistic "Add a use component button for fleets" with a sort of implied magic AI in there.

I'm talking about SEV, not SEIV, so there are no mods to be broken.
If you believe that, then you seriously underestimate me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

As for complexity; consider the current system. A ship is selected. Use component provides a list of usable components from that ship, and the user selects one.
The order ends up being "Use Component #5" or somesuch.

Simple. Basically the same as the system in place for colonizing moons.

On the other hand, a fleet use component order is going to have to:
- Record which ships are using which components
- Check ships leaving the fleet to see if they have use-component orders.
- Watch out for ships being added to the fleet, and probably warn the user
- Provide an interface for the user to pick components to use across all the ships and all those ships' usable components.

I'm envisioning a big scrolling chart, with a ship in each row, and the usable components listed to the right. Possibly sorted by ability amount.
Clicking each component would mark it for use, or unmark it if it was marked before.
The speed of each ship would be displayed in the rows, and a total predicted fleet speed would be shown across the top of the window perhaps. Maybe with the number of ships with the slowest speed.
Maybe a "select all" button, or a select-whole-column option.

Once you have it all decided, you hit OK or Cancel to close the window.

Re: emergency movement pods
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: emergency movement pods
 

I don't see a real problem with making a smart interface for doing this for a fleet - select Use component - emergency propulsion - pop up to select maximize movement, then the program would scan each ship to see if it has an available component, and what the maximum speed would be if it used it. Then the fleet maximum wold be the minimum of all of those speeds. Then go through the list again and check each ship, if it is that fast already, don't use any component to speed it up. If it is slower, use the minimum component that would boost its speed to the fleet speed.

I can see issues with wanting to maximize the fleet and leaving slow ships behind, but that would be something else altogether.