Large Fleets

[capnq]

quote:

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Can you use custom formations in PBW games? And, if yes, can the custom form. have more than 22 ships?

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You can only use them if the game server has those formations installed. I tried to use a custom formation from the TDM-ModPack once in an unmodded PBW game, and the server used the default Arrowhead instead.

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Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Urendi Maleldil]

It would be nice if each race had their own formations.txt data file.

[Testosteronos]

>>>You can only use them if the game server has those formations installed. I tried to use a custom formation from the TDM-ModPack once in an unmodded PBW game, and the server used the default Arrowhead instead.<<<

I thought so....

The fleet management( and the combat system as a whole )is rather bad.
Someone in this forum said that the fleets should be organized as trees, so you can give specific squadrons within the tree specific orders. That's exactly what the combat system needs( + a larger combat map, the function to let ships in a fleet use their ship strategy instead of the strategy from the fleet´, +....no wait, that would be more than enough, hehe )
What do you think, is there a chance we see such stuff in one of the future patches?

[This message has been edited by Testosteronos (edited 15 October 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

Combat improvements needed:

1) Some sort of "initiative/impulse" system to prevent the huge imbalances of "I go You go" combat. This could also be used to give smaller ships some advantages in combat so they are actually worth building in the late game.

2) Seperate settings for automated movement/fire-control so you can use partial automation and still control one aspect or another of your fleet manually.

3) Much more flexible fleet/formation/squadron controls. Either have definable 'squadrons' with seperately definable orders as others have mentioned, or expand formations to be vastly more flexible with some sort of 'script' language. More basic strategies are needed as well, of course. Also, some sort of 'macro' storage would be useful. If you want your 20 missile ships to move closer to a planet, fire, and move away in a single turn you have to manually click on 20 ships and repeat this 20 times! It would be so much easier to click a "define macro" button and 'teach' the ship its macro, then click it and touch a hot-key after that.

4) Speaking of individual ship controls, the control panel is inadequate. If you have a planet with dozens of WPs, or satellite group of 20 or 30 sats, you can have 100+ weapons to control on a single panel. What if you want to fire only a few of them at several targets? You have to click ALL of them off by hand! Argh! Why can't there be a single "global toggle" button that flips all weapons to 'selected' or 'not-selected'??? You could turn them all off with one click and then re-select only what you need. And there also ought to be a display of your multiplex ability and how many targets this ship/unit stack has fired on so far this combat round.




[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 15 October 2001).]

[Instar]

Well, if you made a giant formation, then when it tries to turn around, they spend forever going to the other end of the line... that really should be changed, so a fleet simply changes the order of ships to maintain the best most efficient movement style.

[capnq]

quote:

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It would be nice if each race had their own formations.txt data file.

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That seems terribly redundant. There simply aren't that many useful formations; there would be very little variance from race to race.

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Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[CW]

For my fleets, especially the 200 ships ones, the only useful formation that I've found is Wall, but I only use it to define my ships' starting positions. When the fight begins my ships are told to break formation and follow their own orders.


[This message has been edited by CW (edited 16 October 2001).]