Wishlist: Fix some of the carrier micro

from Sins Forums

Carriers are fairly obnoxious from their need for constant micro but 2 aspects stand out.

1.  Every time you build a damn carrier you have click it and assign squadrons.  This is annoying to say the least when you have factories at multiple planets printing out carriers to some forward deployment and having to constantly go back and find them to assign squadrons.  The fix is incredibly simple.  Split the build carrier button into 3-4 buttons.  First button would build all fighters, second button would build all bombers, third button would do 1 of each, or in the case of advent 3rd and 4th buttons would assign 2 fighters, 1 bomber and 1 fighter, 2 bomber squadrons respectively.  Fixed!

2.  Strike craft prioritization.   How many times have you sent your carriers in to kill the enemy long range frigates only to see the entire swarm of your strike craft chasing after 1 or 2 squadrons of enemy strike craft instead, leaving you to the tedious task of manually assigning a chain of LRFs to shoot. (oops you missed one now they gotta move to that place in space where they were before going on to the next one)  A simple solution would be to add some kind of target priority list for them perhaps as simple as 2 buttons on the UI.  One targets Long range frigates first, the other prioritizes strike craft.  This is mainly annoying because it's not something you have to deal with once in a while but pretty much every single game.  With bombers it's not really an issue as their best target tends to vary more often, necessitating manual assignment.

20,381 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hrm..  It might be too much, but maybe a reworking of the fleet tactics button.  What if in adition to the form a fleet, and fleet range settings there was another menu you could drop down into that let you assign fleet target priorities?  It could be fairly simplistic or very complex...  The simpler would be my choice.  It could look like a drop down that had a few ship types listed like, LRM, Carriers, Cap Ships, Structures.  That might not be the best mix, but you get the idea.  The more complex might have each ship role and then a set of priorities..like 1st, 2nd, 3rd and you could assign a target ship role to each slot.  Again, I'd prefer the simpler menu, but that's me.  Thoughts???

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Well, idon't want something too complicated : just one box and every click would change it from normal --> hard counter number one --> hard counter number two --> hard counter number three and then back to normal. for SC, it will make bombers/fighters and then LRF/siege fregates for exemple

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

i also noticed that the bombers always go after siege frigates and the fighters something else in pirate raids but on the tooltip it says that the fighters are counter to siege frigates and that bombers are not!:|

Edit: i like the drop down menu idea

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

On point #2, I think strike craft in general need to diversify their targetting.  It's not a problem that fighters prioritize other SC, but rather that every fighter does so.  When selecting their target, they should split up their firepower appropriately.  You don't need 30 squads of fighters to chase down 2 squads of bombers.  I can tell my units to focus fire on a cap if that's what I really want, but telling dozens of squads of fighters to split up their attacks against multiple targets?  Not feasible in most cases.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Darvin3, reply 4
On point #2, I think strike craft in general need to diversify their targetting.  It's not a problem that fighters prioritize other SC, but rather that every fighter does so.  When selecting their target, they should split up their firepower appropriately.  You don't need 30 squads of fighters to chase down 2 squads of bombers.  I can tell my units to focus fire on a cap if that's what I really want, but telling dozens of squads of fighters to split up their attacks against multiple targets?  Not feasible in most cases.
End of Darvin3's quote

probably a problem in pretty much every game that involves light craft making passes against an enemy. In command & conquer generals i could build 100 raptors(400 missiles), which was massive overkill on anything in the game, but no feasible way to make them divide up their fire power. a lot worse their though cause they alwayys fired all missile at a target(unless they were too far back when it got destroyed by the leaders) and had to go all the way back to my airfields and reload.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Maccilia, reply 3
i also noticed that the bombers always go after siege frigates and the fighters something else in pirate raids but on the tooltip it says that the fighters are counter to siege frigates and that bombers are not!

Edit: i like the drop down menu idea
End of Maccilia's quote

I notice that too, very weird. I think its because the fighters are prioritizing the enemy fighters/bombers/lrm frigates before targeting siege frigates. Thats why the bombers are left with the task of taking out the siege frigates. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I tend to control group my squadrons: one for bombers, one for fighters. I realize this is somewhat heavy handed for some cases because you have all your squads selected at once, but it helps a bit.