Formations

Litcube · #1 September 27th, 2004, 06:36 PM

How does the game decide which ships get precident in the front line of a formation? What about the rear? I thought it was alphabetical, but apparently, there's no friggen' rhyme nor reason.

Arkcon · #2 September 27th, 2004, 06:46 PM

Most people seem to agree, the order in which the ships are clicked to enter into formation is the order of the ships.

That's not a complete answer 'tho. I have tried to manipulate the formation, for example, to get the ship with the point defense in the right spot, and have it not work. Seems to have something to do with when the ship was created, or something even more subtle that I can't track down.

Reselecting which ship is the leader tends to resort the ship formation

Aiken · #3 September 27th, 2004, 07:04 PM

Not sure about "clicked order" rule. I tend to think that formation order dependant of ship's date of creation - oldest Last, newest first.

Fyron · #4 September 27th, 2004, 07:18 PM

Quote:

aiken said:
Not sure about "clicked order" rule. I tend to think that formation order dependant of ship's date of creation - oldest Last, newest first.

This is how formation order is determined. Leader is the first ship or the ship designated later as the leader. All other ships are placed in slots based on the order that the ships were constructed. The order you add them to the fleet is irrelevant.

spoon · #5 September 27th, 2004, 09:09 PM

Man, everytime I hear this explanation, I just shake my head in wonderment.

SE4 is full of some amazingly great fun, and some amazingly bizarre design decisions...

Fyron · #6 September 27th, 2004, 09:15 PM

It is the simplest way of handling it, though not a very good way.

Litcube · #7 September 27th, 2004, 09:33 PM

Dumb. I mean, really.

Kamog · #8 September 28th, 2004, 09:42 PM

What happens if you have many ships in the fleet which were all built on the same day (from multiple shipyards)? Then does it use the clicked order?

narf poit chez BOOM · #9 September 28th, 2004, 09:44 PM

Simple. The order in which the data was created for the ship.

Fyron · #10 September 28th, 2004, 09:45 PM

No. It is not done by date, so much as the index number of the ship object. Or some similar mechanism. So, whichever ship was created as an object first would be the first in the formation, then second, third, etc. Only Aaron knows how the game indexes the ships. Maybe it goes in order of the creation order of the space yard queues?