Matrix Games Forums

The problem

Let’s say another empire just declared war on you. And you see that one of their fleets is coming toward the only fleet you have in the region. And that lonely fleet had lost many ships recently in a previous battle with pirates.

So you press on the “Top up fleet with ships” button, in the hope that the new ships will be completed before the enemy fleet arrives in the system. But...

... In its wisdom, the AI decides to build the missing ships in the opposite end of your territory. So you’re screwed! Even if they would be built before the enemy fleet arrives, they would never reach your diminished fleet in time.


The solution to the problem

Searching the game’s manual for something else, I stumbled, on page 53, on a game functionality that I didn’t know existed, that would be the perfect solution to the problem described above if it was added to the “Top up fleet with ships” button.

I’m referring to what happens if you click on a ship in the “Build Order” tab of the “Ship Construction” section of the control center. The construction yards are then displayed on the map, as clickable tags. And each click on one of those tag add one ship of the selected type to the build order. But the important point is that the ship will be built at the clicked-on construction yard.

Here’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about:


What I envision is that clicking on the “Top up fleet with ships” button would also display the construction yards as tags, allowing the player to click on the ones where he or she wants the fleet’s missing ships to be built. And then, the game would split the ships needing to be built among the yards selected by the player.

To me, that has the following advantages:

• As good of a programmer Elliot is, it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to code an AI that would be as proficient as a human being in identifying the best yards to use to complete the fleet. Especially if we’re talking AI versus a good player. So letting the player select the yards is better.

• Not having to invest in perfecting the AI to make better yard selections, mean that there’s more time and energy to invest elsewhere.

• A good chunk of the code needed to add that functionality to the “Top up” button already exists in the game.

Last thing: if the player doesn’t have enough funds to build all the ships required to complete the fleet, the “Top up” button’s tooltip should mention that fact, and how many of the missing ships will be built, and how many will still be missing.

Yes... this is something that I would like to have. In many instances right now I have to manually build the ships I want and add them to the fleets rather than use the top up button. It is not uncommon for the game to build a big capital ship at the far end of the empire and then they will even end up using up all their fuel getting to the fleet and taking even longer to get to the final destination.

There are several issues with how this works in my opinion and how ships deal with fuel and where they are going. Ships should be able to inject a refuelling stop to get to their final destination if necessary in addition to selecting better places to build ships. They don't seem to take distance (and speed of the ships) into account as much as time to build multiple ships in one place but closer.

Jorgen_CAB wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:46 pm There are several issues with how this works in my opinion and how ships deal with fuel and where they are going. Ships should be able to inject a refuelling stop to get to their final destination if necessary in addition to selecting better places to build ships. They don't seem to take distance (and speed of the ships) into account as much as time to build multiple ships in one place but closer.

Agreed. But I have a feeling that it might take a while before we see that. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think that to solve that problem, the pathfinding needs to be improved quite a bit. And since it's not an easy problem to solve...

What I'd REALLY like to see in the meantime, would be the ability for the player to manually specify where the fleet should go to refuel on its way to its destination. It would be a little bit more work/micromanagement for the player, but in exchange, you wouldn't need to babysit your fleets to make sure they don't choose a refueling place... out of their fuel range!

Being able to drag and drop waypoints or designate a role such as 'refuelling stop' or 'assembly point' would be nice (short of the game getting better at automation).

A suggestion I posted a while back was for the construct tab to have a 'to fleet' option. So you could select an existing fleet, then purchase ships which would be auto added to that fleet on completion.

MichaelJ007 wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:36 pm A suggestion I posted a while back was for the construct tab to have a 'to fleet' option. So you could select an existing fleet, then purchase ships which would be auto added to that fleet on completion.

I really like that idea

Cubano wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 7:25 pm

MichaelJ007 wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:36 pm A suggestion I posted a while back was for the construct tab to have a 'to fleet' option. So you could select an existing fleet, then purchase ships which would be auto added to that fleet on completion.

I really like that idea

Seconded! The Game could create a fleet if a template is specified instead of an existing fleet.

MichaelJ007 wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:36 pm A suggestion I posted a while back was for the construct tab to have a 'to fleet' option. So you could select an existing fleet, then purchase ships which would be auto added to that fleet on completion.

Great idea. Hope it will be implemented... yesterday!

While the waypoints or auto-assign to fleet will take some dedication (yes please), designating a drop-down list for a rally point on the Ship Construction tab could be really simple. Can almost copy-paste the code for the rally function from the Fleet Template's "Build new X at..." command, unless that's dependent on the flagship being built at the designated rally location.

Alternatively, a sub-option to set the purchased ships to be built as a fleet with a single click, with the first selected being the flagship? Perhaps it could also auto-create a simple template based on that command!

Given that there are pending changes to Fleet Templates, adding derivatives to it at this point will just create more work down the road. Depends on what those changes will be.