4 UI improvements to SE IV I would like to see

[wingte]

Really need the SE III feature of being able to highlight multiple ships and send all of them to the same place without having to establish a "fleet" first. Either that,, or there needs to be a way to turn off the "fleet stratege/formation" during tactical combat.


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Wingte

[Richard Link]

This is one of the most frustrating features of SE 3, which I hoped SE 4 fixed.

Leaves you with no idea of what`s in the system after your ship leaves, are the planets occupied, by which race, what fixed units guard them i.e a BS or a ss or what.

Even just a "text" file, or "snapshot" of the Last visit would be very helpful, and more useful then more strange race traits IMHO.

I dislike making hand notes in a computer game.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by wingte:
Really need the SE III feature of being able to highlight multiple ships and send all of them to the same place without having to establish a "fleet" first. Either that,, or there needs to be a way to turn off the "fleet stratege/formation" during tactical combat.

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You can. SHIFT-CLICK on the ships and a little arrow/triangle will appear beside them... now you can issue orders and all of them will follow. There is a problem, though. If your ships finish the movement in the same turn you give the orders, the ships AFTER the first one don't get their orders cleared, and will repeat the orders on the next turn if you don't go clear them manually. If you send them off on a movement that takes more thanone turn to complete it seems to work ok.


You can cancel a formation in combat, too. Select the lead ship in theformation is choose "clear formation" on the orders menu. This will clear ALL ships from the formation.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 24 September 2000).]

[wingte]

[quote]Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
[There is a problem, though. If your ships finish the movement in the same turn you give the orders, the ships AFTER the first one don't get their orders cleared, and will repeat the orders on the next turn if you don't go clear them manually. If you send them off on a movement that takes more thanone turn to complete it seems to work ok.


Hmnnn,,
Well, this sort'a solves the problem but it creats some new ones. When I give the orders all the ships move at the same time on the turn I give the order,, but,, if the orders wern't completed on the firct turn,, then each ship moves seperately on the next turn. This means that if I send a group of ships to attack something and they don't get there on the first move,, then on the next turn they will arrive at the enemy one at a time and go to battle one at a time if I don't abort the attack for each ship.
UUgghhh,,

The second part about clicking on the "leader ship" and selecting cancel formation also only sort'a works. It does cancel the formation,, but,, unless you are very careful,, you can still find yourself moveing all the ships at the same time but now they all try to maintain the same relative positions they had when the formation was canceled.



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Wingte

[dmm]

That CancelFormation command sounds great, except that it is misnamed. It should be ReplaceFormation. I usually don't like any of the default formations, so I set them up each time. But then it's a pain moving my formation one ship at a time, so I'll be trying that CancelFormation command.

If you really want to cancel all formations, use CancelAllGroups. I don't see how you can do tactical combat without this!

Speaking of default formations, does anyone else wish there was a StraightLine formation?

Also, what's the point of these open formations? Is there some advantage to having all your ships several spaces apart? I don't see it.