Dear Devs,
I was wondering if it's possible to create a new attack command feature for ships in this game similar to what is in Supreme Commander Forged Alliance does. What this attack command can do is > Select any ship units > Hold Shift > Right Click on Targets > use Shift + G. It is perhaps the most useful command function in Supreme Commander FA because it allows each individual unit you have selected in your army, to attack each unit target independently and separately of each other so your army is not focus firing on one unit but each of your units is firing on each independent target unit which has been selected. It saves having to manually select each ship in your fleet to focus on separate targets. And a fleet can consist of hundreds or thousands of ships, so it would take forever to manually select each ship to focus on a different target. If you're interested, please see this video because it explains how it works in Supreme Commander FA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSxP-UUe75I
This would be extremely useful because there are capital ship abilities within the fleet that works best targeting different targets independently instead of one target focused fire because it would be overkill. For example, the Advent's Radiance Battleship with Cleansing Brilliance ability does enough damage that you don't even need 12 of these battleships all using the same cleansing brilliance ability on one target if the enemy ship hitpoints is low enough that 3 or 4 cleansing brilliance can destroy an opposing capital ship. Anymore than that is overkill and would be wasted on one target. It could also be useful if you have thousands of bomber squadrons that can use Shift G to independently go after different targets.
Another useful feature of Shift G is the ability to dynamically control how units move to one particular spot which would be useful for situations like an TEC Akkan Battlecruiser can force foe and friend alike ships to cease fire with the Armistice ability, so it would be handy to use Shift G to direct your fleet of ships to one spot next to a TEC Akkan Battlecruiser, ready to wipe it out of existence when the Armistice ability expires.
It would perhaps be one of the most useful attack commands in Sins 2 I think. What do you think?
I don't really see how this would make sense as a toggle.
Other things are already toggles. Fleet engagement range? Auto-casts? Those are toggles and they're behaviours. That makes sense. But you click on a ships to attack them, that's an action. This is a modifier to that action. A toggle would what, put you in a mode where every ship click did this by default and now you have to turn it off or use a different hotkey to target a specific ship?Why would you want that? You'd just be making the UI more cumbersome.
Some things are suited to toggles, others are not. It's a good thing to consider as there could very well be cases where they've not made the best choice between what should be behaviour toggle vs a command modifier, but this very much does not seem like an example of that.
Edit: Actually, I'll revise that slightly. More broadly speaking, it's absolutely reasonable to have toggles for fleet firing behaviours, but such a thing would be in addition to a hotkey to do something specific. The same way the fleets jumping as a group vs individually is a behaviour toggle, but you should be able to override it when issuing a move command (does ctril+right-click still do this? Am I remembering that correctly from Sins 1?)
Wouldn't this basically just be an attack move option?
Some are and some aren't - its based on feedback. For example the initial Sins2 method of 'group jump' was to hold control when using the movement order. It was switched back to the Sins1 toggle style. Although, ironically we started getting requests to go back to it just today lol.
Can you still hold control to not group jump when issuing a move order? I kept trying to do it in my last game and it felt inconsistent, so not actually sure if it was doing it or not.
Either way, this is one of those cases where I feel it should be both, which is how I thought it was in Sins 1. i.e. You could toggle it to group move, then ctrl+click to bypass it
It's still kinda wonky where ships occasionally jump on their own, even when they are told to fly in a group. Telling the fleet to stop, then jump sometimes fixes it but not always. This problem was much worse in larger fleets in the first Sins and nothing I knew of could fix it. At least it's better now, but it is kind of annoying when a few of your ships jump without authorization then die the moment they arrive.
Can you still hold control to not group jump when issuing a move order? I kept trying to do it in my last game and it felt inconsistent, so not actually sure if it was doing it or not.Either way, this is one of those cases where I feel it should be both, which is how I thought it was in Sins 1. i.e. You could toggle it to group move, then ctrl+click to bypass it
It's a toggle, you select the option for what you want. It defaults to move fast. I sometimes forget and am quickly reminded when my fleet jumps one at a time early on.
I know it's a toggle, what I'm trying to confirm is if there's hotkey like Sins 1 to override the toggle when ordering the move. Will confirm it tonight either way, but should be a thing in any case.
David if I was in your situation i’d simply look down, make sure I had toggled jump together visually and simply right click out of the system. Things don’t move fast enough for me to need more. Additionally if it’s a toggle it means if your visual check shows jump together not being toggled, you right click or use the hot key to enable it.
Additionally a toggle allows people to flick through the options visually in game in the toggle rather than learning a raft of key combinations.
I like that your initial statement showed your button combo not giving feedback and you having no idea what your ships were doing without the toggle feedback.
Thanks Norska, I didn't realize I could look at the toggle. 🙄
I apologise David. Did not mean to sound preachy or insulting. I get excited about spreading the word on the benefits of toggles. I knew that you probably knew about the visual aspect.
Another point if I may. RTS games have lately tended to fail to register clicks when giving orders or selecting units. Company of Heroes 3 is a great example of this. Visual toggles that show your current orders and stance are at least confirmation that your orders will go through correctly and succinctly.
Something else I would add for the devs. If you guys are worried about giving control to players through complex order options being something that is too easy to beat the AI with in the early game. Perhaps lock more advanced orders behind fleet training that is only available to formed fleets and the fleet in question must go back and attend training at a facility for before those orders are unlocked. You could have individual fleets only trained with specific commands and others trained in two or three. Fleet experience levels would have to be reached first of course. Perhaps alternatively a reason for the ceilo command corvette to be reintroduced?
Reads own post above without seeing who posted and thinks its a great idea lol.
That's amazing. Thank you to the developers at Stardock for working hard at this game. I'm looking very much forward to buying it when it comes out on Steam
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