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Keston -> RE: Queuing a ship to return to automation (12/14/2011 6:31:32 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube
Control+Rightclick while you have a ship selected. You will notice at the bottom of the menu: Queue next order.
This is awesome, because:
1.) Select ship.
2.) Queue up a long string of orders.
3.) Hit the automate button.
3.) After completing the queue, fleet or ship will resume auto duties!
If paired with posture, this means you can take any fleet from your defensive network, send them out to do something, and then know that they will resume their post afterwards. Very important!
Yes, it is great in theory. But (2) would be even more awesome in practice if a hotkey used when the ship was selected could be used as a substitute for the right click when the latter is just a pain. I use this queuing much less often than I would like because of the need to right-click ON the ship ON the map, then scroll or jump way across the galaxy to wherever it is to click on the target for whatever I want it to do, then move all the way back to the ship and right click on it, then scroll back to where I was before to give an order. A hotkey would mean just find the target objects, select the ship using the last object button rather than moving the map back to the ship to right click on it, hit the hotkey, and give the order.
This assumes the ship is not at a starport in a cluster of ships where it is obscured by icons of other ships, bases, etc. and one can easily give orders to the wrong ship if not attentive.
Plus, the choices for queued items are too limited. "_________ at nearest" is particularly limiting. If I wanted the ship to do that, I'd just click the appropraite Selection box bottom button. Often I'd like the important ships to tank up nearby and the small fry to go to more distant ports.
Things I would like to do is be able to queue a move and repair at a specific starport, refuel at a specific location, load troops from a specific system, and then move to an assembly area, all by using a hotkey in place of repeatedly moving back to right click on the ship (except maybe the first time). Which is I think pretty much what the AI gets to queue when you order it to prepare an invasion. As it is I do what I can and cycle through No Mission ships periodically to order them on the next stage of their journey.
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