Is there a way to control who you want your ships to attack (I'm talking about the ships that you capture from battles). Or is there a way to have your escorts deploy all their fighters, and then have all those fighters attack who you want them to attack. Or is there a plugin for that?
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Originally posted by InsanityCo:
**Is there a way to control who you want your ships to attack (I'm talking about the ships that you capture from battles).
**
Not currently. I do plan on doing something to enhance the player's control over his escorts, perhaps through a popup dialog with options. Comments and suggestions are welcome but are not guaranteed to be heeded. 
mcb
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Matt Burch
(url="http://"mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com")mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com(/url)mburch@ambrosiasw.com
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Originally posted by mburch:
**Not currently. I do plan on doing something to enhance the player's control over his escorts, perhaps through a popup dialog with options. Comments and suggestions are welcome but are not guaranteed to be heeded.:)
mcb
**
Hey that would be good. Then it might be possible to develop actual fleet tactics. It would be best if there was a way to issue orders separately to each escort. Maybe things like "cover my a**", "attack capital ships", "bug out", etc.
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Joe Burnette
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Just make sure that you don't undermine the special control that you would normally have with fighters. Give escorts more control, yes, but heed the fine line between fighters and escorts.
Also, a way of launching your fighters without having to select them as a secondary weapon. I find I don't use them as much as I should simply because it leaves me unarmed for awhile. (I find my attacks to be more effective, so taking the time to launch them wastes time.)
-Tim
"I can imagine a world without war, without hate. I can also imagine us attacking that world because they wolud least expect it."
Quote
Originally posted by Timinator:
Just make sure that you don't undermine the special control that you would normally have with fighters. Give escorts more control, yes, but heed the fine line between fighters and escorts.
Also, a way of launching your fighters without having to select them as a secondary weapon. I find I don't use them as much as I should simply because it leaves me unarmed for awhile. (I find my attacks to be more effective, so taking the time to launch them wastes time.)
Agreed, there should be a difference between escorts and fighters, but escorts are generally larger ships, especially later in the game, you have a few capital ships as escorts and a bunch of fighters. So i'm thinking escorts should have different controls, like launching fighters and staying in formation with or without your ship, hey even the ability to split your fleet into 2-4 parts, with other lead ships, and give each group commands, you could set up these groups in a dialog box, but during the game you shouldn't have to open a dialog box to tell your fleet where to go and such. Oh and this assumes your allowing more escorts and more max ships in system of course, because its hard to split a fleet four ways with only 7 ships.
Chamrin
In a UE Cruiser, it's ever so easy to capture capital ships like the Azdgari and Zidagar warships. You can quite easily end up with a full half-dozen of them. When someone gets a lock on you and the alert siren starts blaring, it's launch, launch, launch... suddenly the sky is full of your escorts' itty-bitty fighters. Individually weak, between them they're a match for just about any fleet in existence.
The fighters dash ahead and engage the enemy. It doesn't matter how many of them get taken out, because you don't have to buy 'ammo' for your escorts. Once they're mixing it up with the enemy, I actually call them off, using the 'hold position' command. This causes my escorting capital ships to coast to a halt - shortly before they get into combat. I don't mind losing a few escorts' fighters, but I don't waste capital ship escorts (especially once I've upgraded to an Iggy warship, because then it's harder to capture replacements).
Now, the hostiles come after me, possibly finishing off a fighter or two first. The remaining fighters try to return to their motherships. The hostiles are half beaten up already (eighteen Azdgari and six Zidagar fighters can make a mess of a fleet), and when they come after me in ones and twos, it's simple to take them down. Importantly, the dormant escorts don't finish off disabled hostiles - so I get a chance to loot them after the fight.
While in the UE cruiser, I seldom use my own fighters, because that all too often involves a long trek back to UE space to purchase replacements. You don't have as much control over escorts, and hardly any over their fighters, but using this technique I manage to stop a battle from disintegrating into a confusing frame-rate nightmare that could prevent me from getting any loot!
Only trouble now is... there's nobody left who's worth fighting! Might start dominating the galaxy... well, it's a hobby.
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But I've got a bare chest
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Having dialog box would be good. maybee 5 or so options like:
1 attack
2 disable
etc.
this would enable you too get your escorts to do EXCACTLY 
what you want
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Quote
Originally posted by Burning cow:
Having dialog box would be good. maybee 5 or so options like:
1 attack
2 disable
etc.
this would enable you too get your escorts to do EXCACTLY what you want
Thats the kind of thing that I wouldn't want. Having to pause the game while you tell your escorts to attack, takes all the fun out of it. That stuff should be done on the fly with a few keys assigned to it.
Chamrin
You know the main status bar on the side of the main screen. Well there's a big bit of nothingness just below that. There's nothing in it, just blackness. I've always wanted to put something in there.
How about having a set of buttons in there that refer to the escort currently on your target screen? You could have:
•Attack mode (attacks all ships of Govs that don't like you)
•Defensive mode (only attacks when attacked)
•Run Away mode (flee's all conflict - usefull for cargo ships)
•Scout mode (fly's about the system and delpys all fighters)
•Wary mode (pre-deplys all fighters)
This way you could have different Controls for different escorts.
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Quote
Originally posted by the Necromicon:
**You know the main status bar on the side of the main screen. Well there's a big bit of nothingness just below that. There's nothing in it, just blackness. I've always wanted to put something in there.
**
Try playing the game with your monitor set to 640x480. That should fill that side of the screen nicely...
In case you didn't realize before, that status bar is just long enough to fit on a machine set for 640x480. Making it larger would mean those of us who can't change the monitor resolution would miss out on some features.
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Knucklehead, Aeon Productions
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(Insert witty remark here)
I have to agree with Chamrin and the Necromicon. a dialog box would just pause the game. even the dialog box used in the original game takes the fun out of talking while flying.
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The absolute minimum addition in escort control that I believe is necessary: A disable-only mode.
The absolute max:
Maybe allow the player to coordinate attacks when they aren't flying around, ie on a planet, and then map them to some keys "Attack Formation 1, 2, etc." Each of these would be different sets of behaviours for the escorts and fighters, such as formation type, and "split apart to attack multiple targets", or "swarm one big ship", or "lead enemy away from mothership" or "kamikaze", or any combination thereof. That would be cool, but a LOT of work for you, Matt.
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"The impossible is easy; it's the unfeasible that poses a problem."
