Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (Full Version)

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Glymner -> Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 6:54:23 PM)

from the fleet menu. Is this in there somewhere? If not I would love to be able to do it.



pycco -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 6:57:14 PM)

in the ships menu select military ships from the drop down menu select ships you want to put into a fleet, select desired fleet or create a new one.



Tormodino -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 6:58:49 PM)

I have not been able to do that, no. There seems to be no way of "ordering" a fleet to contain a certain setup with reinforcements being created as required. I also think that would be a very good thing to have.

For now you can add ships under construction to a fleet, existing or new, set a homebase and even issue orders that it will then carry out as ships are finished.



Glymner -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:04:10 PM)

That is how I've been doing it. But it get very tedious later on, on fully manual.

It would be nice if you could select a fleet or create a new fleet in the build order menu and just put in the amount of new ships for that new or existing fleet.



Tormodino -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:13:04 PM)

I would not at all mind to have the fleet menu and ship menu more closely integrated. There is a lot of potential to move things like fleets settings, troop compositions etc into an interface where you can have slightly more control of this crucial aspect of the game.

Even on manual construction I would not mind being able to make a shopping list of ships, and arranging them directly into fleets with certain setting.

I also think that task forces should be subsets of actual fleets for easier management, but that is another discussion.



pycco -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:14:31 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Glymner

That is how I've been doing it. But it get very tedious later on, on fully manual.

It would be nice if you could select a fleet or create a new fleet in the build order menu and just put in the amount of new ships for that new or existing fleet.



ya that would be nice after a while it takes forever to navigate the interface when you have 1000'S of military vessels.

a add the ships queued to be built to fleet X would be great i doubt it will happen though does not sound easy to implement.



Bingeling -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:15:06 PM)

It would be a useful option to the build order screen. With a larger empire and multiple spaceport they would be built all over the place, though.

I don't miss it myself. I run all military ships (with very few exceptions) in fleets. I buy the ships for a new fleet, typically at a couple of spaceports of choice. Open ship list, military ships, sort by fleet. And in ship list select the lot with control or shift clicks, then add to new fleet.

If I for some reason have many non-fleeted ships, sort by firepower instead. The newly ordered ships have 0 firepower. This does not work well if buying more than one fleet at the same time, though. For this reason I really hope the AI designs of my race does not use carriers with no weapons. And it may well happen that the ships bought when paused ends up at the top/bottom all by themselves, but I sort before checking if they do.



Tormodino -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:42:47 PM)

I don't think anyone is arguing that the current model doesn't work, it just has room for some very big quality of life improvements.
Something simple like being able to select three shipyards and putting in an order for x number of ships to be placed in fleet y at system z. I think that would be a dramatic improvement to the current mechanics without interfering with how it works currently.



FingNewGuy -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:46:42 PM)

I dunno. My combat fleets are not usually sitting in one place long enough for that to work for me. I like it as is- what you are talking about would be more clicks anyway and more confusing as fluid situations develop and you would have to change those orders or get all gummed up.



Tormodino -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 7:55:44 PM)

Don't you have to change orders and locations anyway? I don't see how having a single screen for all fleet management as well as slightly more control over where what you build ends up gums things up.
We might be talking past each other a bit, though. I am simply arguing for a more easily viewable fleet screen with options for ship composition, being able to add and remove ships in that screen, setting homebase and area of operations and troop setup.
Pretty much what we have now, but with the added bonus of not having to go into the massive military ships list to add/remove ships.



FingNewGuy -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 8:00:01 PM)

quote:

We might be talking past each other a bit, though. I am simply arguing for a more easily viewable fleet screen with options for ship composition, being able to add and remove ships in that screen, setting homebase and area of operations and troop setup.


We probably were. [;)] I can agree with what you are saying now for sure. I like the idea of adding an 'Area of Operations' function a lot.



Bingeling -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 8:16:24 PM)

A very good quality of life improvement, would be a fleet screen where I can say what the desired fleet composition is. One where it is easy to see what is missing. And one where one can order ships to build the fleet up to strength, using a selected spaceport.

I may run the normal fighting fleets at 14 cruisers and 3 carriers. If they are down to 16 ships I know something is dead. Apart from firepower/fighter count it is not always easy to see whether a carrier or cruiser is missing.

If I could define that my "main fleet" type has 14 cruisers and 3 carriers, the game could clearly define what is missing. A pulldown to select spaceport and an "order replacements" button would be just sweet :)

A nice and simpler function would be the fleet screen printing the fleet composition, and I could just check that list for what is missing.



Tormodino -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 8:42:02 PM)

For sure. I'm not necessarily calling for a complete rework of the ui, but a little more info in the relevant screen would go a long way.

Also, I can definitely see how you don't want newly built ship trekking across your empire to join fleets in the heat of battle, but that is as much an issue of the ai being more disciplined about allocating ships to fleets by proximity and the player being a little more cautious about creating fleets all over the place. A "fleet design" tool would be a boon both for the AI and the player imo.

Having some general tools to make ship oversight easier would also make the player less prone to creating fleets from ships spread all over the map. It would feel more coherent.



FingNewGuy -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 9:35:26 PM)

quote:

I may run the normal fighting fleets at 14 cruisers and 3 carriers. If they are down to 16 ships I know something is dead. Apart from firepower/fighter count it is not always easy to see whether a carrier or cruiser is missing.

If I could define that my "main fleet" type has 14 cruisers and 3 carriers, the game could clearly define what is missing. A pulldown to select spaceport and an "order replacements" button would be just sweet :)

A nice and simpler function would be the fleet screen printing the fleet composition, and I could just check that list for what is missing.



Hold on just a tick... are you saying, Bing, that when you select Next Fleet on the lower left mini-map that you cannot tell from the displayed graphic what the status of the ships in your fleet are? It is true that fleets that are too large don't fully display (which is when I go to the Fleet button up top in the UI)...



Bingeling -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 9:45:13 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: FingNewGuy
Hold on just a tick... are you saying, Bing, that when you select Next Fleet on the lower left mini-map that you cannot tell from the displayed graphic what the status of the ships in your fleet are? It is true that fleets that are too large don't fully display (which is when I go to the Fleet button up top in the UI)...

The problem is not seeing all the ships unless something special is going on. The problem is seeing which ship is not there in a fleet of some size. For instance, cruisers and carriers have similar size, and may have similar graphics depending on the ship set. And even if not very similar, their position in the selection panel is not the same from fleet to fleet. Sometimes there are carriers at the end, at other times they are scattered around the fleet.

In my AAR game my largest fleets had 31 ships, and I think that is close to, but not over the limit at what is shown. But seeing whether they had 5 or 6 carriers at a glance was not easy. Since I had more than one, a firepower comparison to a full fleet (in the fleet screen) would show if cruisers were the ones missing, though.



FingNewGuy -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 9:47:20 PM)

I understand now [8D]



ehsumrell1 -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 10:19:52 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Tormodino

Don't you have to change orders and locations anyway? I don't see how having a single screen for all fleet management as well as slightly more control over where what you build ends up gums things up.
We might be talking past each other a bit, though. I am simply arguing for a more easily viewable fleet screen with options for ship composition, being able to add and remove ships in that screen, setting homebase and area of operations and troop setup.
Pretty much what we have now, but with the added bonus of not having to go into the massive military ships list to add/remove ships.

Hello Tormodino;
I like where you're going with this. Please develop your idea with a bit more detail and post
it in the "Master Wishlist" thread. Elliot may not get to it right away (meaning probably DW2)
but he has surprised us before!
[:D]



Tormodino -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/17/2014 10:36:33 PM)

Thanks :) I will.

And on the topic of DW2, I really hope they keep expanding and improving DW1. Personally I see 0 reason to abandon the current awesome model in favour of an entirely new game. I've said it before. This simulation is at its core the best 4x ever made.



tjhkkr -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 2:07:14 AM)

Why can you not put your ships into the build queue -- whether at a specific Starbase or on the general ship order screen, and when you are finished then go to the ship screen, and then assign them to whatever fleet you want?
I am not trying to be rude, but I do it all of the time... am I missing the question?



Sirian -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 5:40:34 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

Why can you not put your ships into the build queue -- whether at a specific Starbase or on the general ship order screen, and when you are finished then go to the ship screen, and then assign them to whatever fleet you want?
I am not trying to be rude, but I do it all of the time... am I missing the question?


This works, I do it all the time, too. And it is quite a step up from having to collect the ships manually. I'm so glad that I can add unfinished ships to fleets. But... when doing it in every game every time, it feels like "empty clicks". Additionally, if you have lots of ships, the ship window will become quite slow. I could be better and less click intensive.

TLDR: Less clicks -> more fun.



Darkspire -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 5:48:12 AM)

Put a build order in for new ships that you want in your fleet.

Go to the ships screen and select the military filter.

As long as the sort for the columns is at default, grab the slide bar and pull it to the bottom of the list, your new ships will be there with the names in orange, select the first one you want, hold shift, select the last one you want, with the ships selected click the dropbox for fleets and select the fleet you want to add them to.

Select the fleet and you will now see the new ships in orange with the current ships in that fleet.

Darkspire



henri51 -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 12:03:32 PM)

Darkspire, what happens when you build unfinished ships into a fleet that is far away? What happens when the ships are finished building, so they fly off and join the fleet wherever it is? Will the fleet keep doing its thing while they wait for the new ships, or will they stop and wait for the new ships to arrive?

Henri



Bingeling -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 12:26:13 PM)

That depends on the orders of the fleet. If they chain attack orders I think they happily move along, with the straggles changing targets. If they have a refuel or retrofit order I think they will wait for all to complete it. "Prepare and attack" probably has them waiting for the already built stragglers.

Unless you are aware of what you are doing, you end up with out of fuel ships that chase the fleet, lowering the fleet's movement speed to those out of fuel. It is particularly fun if the building spaceport can't fill them up when new and they are out of fuel from the very start.

This is why it is important to be able to specify spaceport on any automatic "refill function", and why it is a bad idea to build replacements on the current build order screen where they are built at whatever location the AI pics. The AI is good at getting ships built, it is not so good at building them where they are needed.

If the spaceports are far away, it is better to add them to a build fleet that never gets orders (apart form maybe refuel). The lead ship can stay in a forwards position to gather up the new ones. Ships always head to their leader when they got no order. Recruit replacements for the active fleets from members of the build fleet that are at the gather point, and that are full of fuel. Hopefully they are not too far away from the fleet to be reinforced (or you have a poor gather point).



btd64 -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 1:42:57 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

A very good quality of life improvement, would be a fleet screen where I can say what the desired fleet composition is. One where it is easy to see what is missing. And one where one can order ships to build the fleet up to strength, using a selected spaceport.

I may run the normal fighting fleets at 14 cruisers and 3 carriers. If they are down to 16 ships I know something is dead. Apart from firepower/fighter count it is not always easy to see whether a carrier or cruiser is missing.

If I could define that my "main fleet" type has 14 cruisers and 3 carriers, the game could clearly define what is missing. A pulldown to select spaceport and an "order replacements" button would be just sweet :)

A nice and simpler function would be the fleet screen printing the fleet composition, and I could just check that list for what is missing.


Good Idea. Would make fleets easier to manage. In the fleet screen have a list of the ship types, and all you have to do is type in 2 for carriers, 4 for capital ships, etc. Select a form new fleet button, Then hit the build button. After the ships are built they would converge on the lead ship to form up. Just have to watch your cashflow though. GP



btd64 -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 1:45:11 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Darkspire

Put a build order in for new ships that you want in your fleet.

Go to the ships screen and select the military filter.

As long as the sort for the columns is at default, grab the slide bar and pull it to the bottom of the list, your new ships will be there with the names in orange, select the first one you want, hold shift, select the last one you want, with the ships selected click the dropbox for fleets and select the fleet you want to add them to.

Select the fleet and you will now see the new ships in orange with the current ships in that fleet.

Darkspire


Thats good to. GP



btd64 -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 1:47:23 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: henri51

Darkspire, what happens when you build unfinished ships into a fleet that is far away? What happens when the ships are finished building, so they fly off and join the fleet wherever it is? Will the fleet keep doing its thing while they wait for the new ships, or will they stop and wait for the new ships to arrive?

Henri


The new ships, when complete, will move to were the main part of there assigned fleet is located. depending on the fleet reassemble setting you have set in your game. GP



Bingeling -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 2:09:05 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: General Patton

The new ships, when complete, will move to were the main part of there assigned fleet is located. depending on the fleet reassemble setting you have set in your game. GP


Are you sure? I believe they move to the fleet leader, but "staying together" could explain one issue I had where this did not seem to happen. The fleet leader did not move to the main bunch either, though.

There are some assemble setting in empire options, but I always figured they are about "prepare and attack", and my boys never do that...



btd64 -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 2:26:37 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

quote:

ORIGINAL: General Patton

The new ships, when complete, will move to were the main part of there assigned fleet is located. depending on the fleet reassemble setting you have set in your game. GP


Are you sure? I believe they move to the fleet leader, but "staying together" could explain one issue I had where this did not seem to happen. The fleet leader did not move to the main bunch either, though.

There are some assemble setting in empire options, but I always figured they are about "prepare and attack", and my boys never do that...


Under options> empire settings, you will fine the setting. It works for me. When I build a new ship and assign it to a fleet it goes for the current fleet location or to there current destination. GP



Bingeling -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 2:42:29 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: General Patton

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

quote:

ORIGINAL: General Patton

The new ships, when complete, will move to were the main part of there assigned fleet is located. depending on the fleet reassemble setting you have set in your game. GP


Are you sure? I believe they move to the fleet leader, but "staying together" could explain one issue I had where this did not seem to happen. The fleet leader did not move to the main bunch either, though.

There are some assemble setting in empire options, but I always figured they are about "prepare and attack", and my boys never do that...


Under options> empire settings, you will fine the setting. It works for me. When I build a new ship and assign it to a fleet it goes for the current fleet location or to there current destination. GP


Setting a home base will have them move there, potentially unless the leader is delayed and they move to him. And them moves to home base when the leader is finished.

I did a quick test in a new game. Remove all automation for military ships. Have them refuel at the spaceport to have them all gathered outside. Disband the AI created fleet.

Then have one ship move to a system nearby. Then have him join a new fleet, and go to ship list to have the rest join his fleet. The fleet moves to the leader, they do not stay where 5/6 ships were, and the leader does not move.



Darkspire -> RE: Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet... (6/18/2014 6:39:33 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: henri51

Darkspire, what happens when you build unfinished ships into a fleet that is far away? What happens when the ships are finished building, so they fly off and join the fleet wherever it is? Will the fleet keep doing its thing while they wait for the new ships, or will they stop and wait for the new ships to arrive?

Henri


I set the options / empire options for fleet dispersal and fleet refuel both to 90. When the ship(s) is built(are) it(they) will immediately join the fleet it(they) is(are) a part of, useful for defense fleets in systems, you can just add ships when they lose any to pirates or attacking enemy fleets.

By careful setting of options both in general and design you can avoid fleets going off for repair and refuel unless explicitly ordered to do so when under manual control [:)]

Darkspire



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