View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0022390 | AI War 2 | Gameplay Idea | Dec 21, 2019 2:43 am | Oct 19, 2020 1:58 am | |
| Reporter | Strategic Sage | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 1.023 Cloaking Variagation | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 2.617 Calming For The Nerves | ||||
| Summary | 0022390: New Fleet Movement Modes | ||||
| Description | I'm finding one of the more clunky/fiddly things remaining is dealing with moving fleets in combat. You often want ships to be in a different location than the centerpiece of the fleet and there's no good way to do this that I'm aware of. One order is needed for the fleet in this situation, then you've got to find and move the centerpiece again so it doesn't go with the ships and get itself crippled. I suggest new movement modes to move only the ships or only the centerpiece when you've selected a fleet. These could be done via something like the Ctrl-RightClick used for wormhole navigation, only using Shift and Alt (or whatever). | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| related to | 0023997 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | Should Stationary Flagship Mode Default to Off? |
| related to | 0023995 | new | When a flagship and flagship only is selected, allow it to listen to orders even if stationary flagship is set. | |
| related to | 0023994 | new | Stationary flagship orders flair and tooltip shouldn't show for stationary "flagships" |
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+1 |
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So, just bumping this as it's come up again on Steam recently. The point made there, which I agree with, is this is going to be quite important for multiplayer. |
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This is indeed needed. I'd favor a new independently toggled stance with associated button next to Attack-Move, Pursuit and Hold Fire rather than yet another key modifier though, because we have enough of those as it is, and for discoverability. The use cases, at least for me: - Keeping flagships in the back or in the next system over so they don't get crippled. - Keeping bubble-shield flagships next to what they're supposed to protect instead of wandering around. Would be nice if said stance caused the shield-bearer to be absolutely rooted to the spot. Everyone decollisions, not him. (I wonder if this could somehow be extended to shield frigates, which are not flagships but face the same problem.) - Keeping non-cloaked flagship well away from the action in a friendly system, rebuilding for the next attempt, while I send its cloaked ships deepraid something. |
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So, essentially, what we're talking about here is a mode that would apply to flagships only, and would make them completely ignore orders until you exited that mode, is that right? I could see this being something that is a new button on the interface, yeah. And yes, since the very start of Fleets being a thing, this has been on my mind, but I never had a good solution for it. This sort of mechanism seems like it would be simple and sensible enough. |
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I think that would work well as described Chris. Being able to keep the centerpiece out of harm's way but move the combat ships as they are built to the 'danger zone' somewhere else in the system would go a long way. As is the only way I've found to do it is to use Attack-Move and target something specific (Guardian, GP, whatever) but that only lasts a bit until the target dies and then you're back to the same problem. Target a position in space and the centerpiece wades in and promptly gets itself crippled, resulting in a lack of temper control :). |
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Let's call this new stance "Independent" for discussion's sake. It toggles separately from hold fire and attack/move and pursuit, because those have different and important purposes. The simple but rather limited way to implement Independent is that the flagship basically turns into a turret. It can still attack but is unable to move. This lets you set the flagship to attack-move or pursuit to determine the behavior of its newly built units without it running after enemies. Since it's still desirable to adjust the position of the flagship during battle, a more complex but still reasonable implementation would be that you can still move the flagship if the current selection only includes the flagship itself (or just flagships). If the selection includes anything else, orders are ignored, and despite being able to move kiting and pursuing is forced to off no matter what standing orders are for the flagship (again, so built units can inherit stance without the flagship running off). -- To complete the picture, some way of selecting just the flagship with the number key would be interesting to minimize bandboxing, zooming and clicking: - Would pressing shift + 1 to select the flagship instead of the whole fleet make sense? (I'd like to reserve Ctrl+1 for assigning fleet numbers without opening the fleet panel... one day) - Otherwise I was thinking either of a global change where pressing 1 once selects flagship, twice selects whole fleet, and thrice zooms to flagship. Inconvenient is it's gonna be confusing for people especially when selecting a fleet from galaxy map. So perhaps an option? (Alternatively 1 could first select the flagship only if it's in Independent mode... but the inconsistency would probably be grating.) |
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Oh man this makes a huge difference: * New setting in the Ship Controls section of the controls: Hold To Give Orders To Stationary Flagships ** Normally flagships that are unarmed will not listen to any orders that you give them. This is because usually you select their entire fleet, and you mean 'everybody but you.' ** However, there are times when you definitely DO want to give them orders to move somewhere, perhaps transport some ships for you, and holding down this key while giving those orders will make them listen to you. ** The alternative is to take them out of stationary mode, but this is far simpler. Movement orders on the galaxy map screen are always obeyed. ** Default keybinding: control key. * The pre-existing "Flagship Movement Mode" option in the fleet options panel is now renamed to "Flagship Roaming" for the sake of clarity. * A new "Flagship Orders" option in the fleet options panel has been added. ** It is either "Follow All Orders" or "Stationary Flagship Mode". *** Unarmed flagships are by default stationary, while armed ones by default will follow all orders. ** Description in the tooltip: *** Some flagships are meant for fighting, while orders meant for hanging back. How far back is up to you. *** When this is set to 'Follow All Orders', it acts like any other ship in your fleet. This is great for Golems and Arks. Not so hot for unarmed transports. *** When this is set to 'Stationary Flagship Mode' mode, the flagship will just sit there and ignore all orders you give it. The assumption is that the orders are meant for the rest of the fleet. *** To override this while staying in stationary flagship mode, hold Control down while issuing orders to the flagship. It will follow them as if this mode was not even on. This is perfect for rapidly giving different orders to your unarmed transports and the rest of the fleet they are supporting. Movement orders on the galaxy map screen are always obeyed. * If a flagship is in this new stationary mode, then they will show up with the "guard" shield icon behind them, which we don't really use for other purposes much. ** This should help players who are jumping right into this new version realize that something is going on when their ships are not listening to them. ** When Ctrl is held, then this shield status icon goes away and whatever the normal status icon would be appears. This is immediate visual feedback of what is happening, and also lets you check to see that your flagship is indeed in pursuit mode or what have you. * When a flagship is in the new stationary mode, and you are not on the galaxy map (where that is irrelevant), the tooltip for the flagship now shows "Stationary Flagship Mode!" even in the super brief tooltip, and then has more details if you go to medium and then full detail. * This whole thing with the flagships sometimes rushing to their deaths has definitely been one of the most singularly-annoying things since we introduced the concept of fleets, way back in the middle of Early Access. ** At first, more fleets than not had big weapons (Golems and Arks), so it seemed like less of a thing. But over time, it has become more and more annoying. ** This was something we have thought about for a long time, but for whatever reason we never could come up with a good solution for it despite how much it annoyed us directly, let alone player reports. Thank you all! |
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Thanks Chris! Excited to try this, it seems like it's gonna solve elegantly the suicidal flagships problem. It sounds like it even solves the void left by control groups, at least when you're not looking at the galaxy map. Since now I can use their fleet number key to bring to a specific point a bunch of cloaked ships spread on both sides of a wormhole without accidentally dragging the flagship along. Basically the whole "just stick them in their own fleet if you want a control group" pitch. Especially if this ingredient also gets dropped into the soup: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=23989 I just have one slight worry about the Ctrl key: it's used to increase the info level in the popups. So are your flagships immediately start move-attacking or pursuing while you hold the Ctrl key to see a detailed tooltip? |
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I've tried it out in a new game. I think it might need a few tweaks and I need time adapting to the new controls, but definitely moves the cursor in the right direction. Preliminary impressions: - Overall pressing Ctrl to move the whole group including flagships somewhere and then forget about the flagships while I order everyone else around works as advertised. Very good! - To answer my own question above, no holding Ctrl doesn't cause flagships to suddenly run around. I had forgotten they had that second setting you renamed to Flagship Roaming. - It feels weird that loaded transports don't follow orders without pressing Ctrl. Especially when driving my cloaked transport around all by itself. - Overall when only the flagship itself is selected it feels like it should be following orders. - Moving my loaded flagships next to a wormhole to prepare for an invasion feels risky, since I have to Ctrl-click so I risk accidentally sending them through. - I think flagships should obey orders that don't require them to move. For instance, I was not able to order my battlestation that has build assist abilities to assist the construction of the turret right next to it without holding Ctrl. The same thing will come up if I have a long-range flagship like the Spire Frigate - presumably I'll want to still direct its shooting if I set it to being immobile. - It doesn't act as much as a control group replacement (cf previous comment) as I hoped it would, because you can't order the fleet around from the galaxy map without the transport moving too. Also, when crossing a wormhole you're holding Ctrl so the tranport tries to come along! I guess I could change Ctrl to something else for my own personal use. I still kinda feel like it would've worked better as a stance you can easily toggle according to circumstances than a fleet panel setting. Now that I think of it Stop-to-fire (K) is pretty much useless for unarmed transports? Seems like an empty slot to put this ability in if we want to. |
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I agree that it feels weird that loaded transports don't move without pressing Ctrl, and that it would be preferable to have a way to toggle it on and off quickly without having to go through the fleet panel for each flagship. Other than that, this is something that I have wanted ever since the first time I made it to the AI homeworld and I am glad to see it in the game. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 21, 2019 2:43 am | Strategic Sage | New Issue | |
| Dec 21, 2019 2:17 pm | nas1m | Note Added: 0055082 | |
| Oct 11, 2020 11:13 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0059152 | |
| Oct 12, 2020 12:26 am | Asteroid | Note Added: 0059155 | |
| Oct 16, 2020 5:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0059249 | |
| Oct 16, 2020 5:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Oct 16, 2020 5:34 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => assigned |
| Oct 16, 2020 5:39 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Relationship added | related to 0023976 |
| Oct 16, 2020 6:29 pm | Strategic Sage | Note Added: 0059251 | |
| Oct 16, 2020 8:52 pm | Asteroid | Note Added: 0059259 | |
| Oct 16, 2020 10:29 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | assigned => resolved |
| Oct 16, 2020 10:29 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Oct 16, 2020 10:29 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 2.617 Calming For The Nerves |
| Oct 16, 2020 10:29 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0059267 | |
| Oct 16, 2020 11:47 pm | Asteroid | Note Added: 0059271 | |
| Oct 17, 2020 3:22 am | Asteroid | Note Added: 0059272 | |
| Oct 17, 2020 4:26 pm | Asteroid | Relationship added | parent of 0023997 |
| Oct 17, 2020 6:11 pm | Asteroid | Relationship deleted | parent of 0023997 |
| Oct 17, 2020 6:12 pm | Asteroid | Relationship added | related to 0023997 |
| Oct 17, 2020 6:12 pm | Asteroid | Relationship added | related to 0023995 |
| Oct 17, 2020 6:13 pm | Asteroid | Relationship added | related to 0023994 |
| Oct 17, 2020 6:40 pm | Asteroid | Relationship deleted | related to 0023976 |
| Oct 19, 2020 1:58 am | cml | Note Added: 0059313 |
