What's fleet managment like in Sins?

Hello everyone!

I pre-ordered the game after the beta 2 close. So I am excited to see that I will get a chance to try and participate in beta 3 here tomorrow. before I eventually see for myself I would like to ask one simple question.

What's fleet management like?

I see these huge fleets on screenshots and think to myself "damn I don't know if I would like to play another Homeworld 2 pull my hair out trying to manage all my frigates and fighters game"

I have found some calm in the interview and review on IGN but I really would like to know first hand what those of you can tell me about fleet management and micro management in Sins

I know I will get the game tomorrow, but this post will hold me over and give me something to read and think about as I'm downloading and installing sometime after class.

Thanks!

P.s. Links to other threads or even "yeah its awesome don't worry about it" comments will suffice.
14,222 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top
Fleet managment is really easy, assign control groups and you should be good to go... I usually have 8-9 mid size fleets.
Reply #2 Top

There are lots of things that make fleet management easier and we still have a some stuff we want to put in to improve it. Here are some examples of what is in right now. Sins follows the RTS standard group assignment controls (ctrl # etc) but it brings up numbered expandable fleet items on the empire tree so you have a visual reference. You can interact with them here as well for things like micro targetting heals and focus fire DPS without zooming in. Rallying to fleet automatically adds new ships to the fleet. Ships rallied or told to follow a fleet or a ship in fleet will follow it and smartly engage targets. All ships know what targets they are best against and will require automatically if not given override orders. There is a fair bit of focus fire logic for auto engagments. Almost all abilities can be set to autocast. Capitalships can be set to auto level and carriers can have autoproduction and launching of fighters/bombers. Infinite waypoints, infinite order queuing, instant access to tactical overlays and so on. Your fleets can be set to jump on their own (great for retreating) or as a group (so they don't all arrive solo and get picked off) and more but I can't think of it all off the top of my head

Reply #3 Top
Well thats a lot of good info right there, it sounds just as I had thought when reading the interview. I will have to wait and see, but it sounds like micro management will not be a huge issue.

I would like to comment that I do like the idea of trying to give units more say and control (speaking from their AI) I believe its more realistic to tell a fleet to "go into battle and handle it'. I mean, to me it allows for more strategy at the logistic and large scale battle level. So, if you can accomplish that on the programing end the better it gets for the rest of us.

Anyways, just some random thoughts, I can't wait to see if it meets my expectations.
Reply #4 Top
The great thing is, you have as little, or as much control as you want. Typically, I will automate most of my units, but micro my key units in my largest fleet.
Reply #5 Top
and why didn't anybody tell me about automating?

how do you automate? assume my girlfriend doesn't wan't to mate?