emergency movement pods

[spoon]

Alneyan said:

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

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

[Suicide Junkie]

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.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Apply it to types of ships?

[spoon]

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

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

[Slick]

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?

[spoon]

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.)

[Suicide Junkie]

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"

[Alneyan]

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.

[spoon]

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

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.

- 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.

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

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.

[Suicide Junkie]

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.