Being able to build ships directly for/into a fleet...

[Glymner]

from the fleet menu. Is this in there somewhere? If not I would love to be able to do it.

[pycco]

in the ships menu select military ships from the drop down menu select ships you want to put into a fleet, select desired fleet or create a new one.

[Tormodino]

I have not been able to do that, no. There seems to be no way of "ordering" a fleet to contain a certain setup with reinforcements being created as required. I also think that would be a very good thing to have.

For now you can add ships under construction to a fleet, existing or new, set a homebase and even issue orders that it will then carry out as ships are finished.

[Glymner]

That is how I've been doing it. But it get very tedious later on, on fully manual.

It would be nice if you could select a fleet or create a new fleet in the build order menu and just put in the amount of new ships for that new or existing fleet.

[Tormodino]

I would not at all mind to have the fleet menu and ship menu more closely integrated. There is a lot of potential to move things like fleets settings, troop compositions etc into an interface where you can have slightly more control of this crucial aspect of the game.

Even on manual construction I would not mind being able to make a shopping list of ships, and arranging them directly into fleets with certain setting.

I also think that task forces should be subsets of actual fleets for easier management, but that is another discussion.

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: Glymner

That is how I've been doing it. But it get very tedious later on, on fully manual.

It would be nice if you could select a fleet or create a new fleet in the build order menu and just put in the amount of new ships for that new or existing fleet.

ya that would be nice after a while it takes forever to navigate the interface when you have 1000'S of military vessels.

a add the ships queued to be built to fleet X would be great i doubt it will happen though does not sound easy to implement.

[Bingeling]

It would be a useful option to the build order screen. With a larger empire and multiple spaceport they would be built all over the place, though.

I don't miss it myself. I run all military ships (with very few exceptions) in fleets. I buy the ships for a new fleet, typically at a couple of spaceports of choice. Open ship list, military ships, sort by fleet. And in ship list select the lot with control or shift clicks, then add to new fleet.

If I for some reason have many non-fleeted ships, sort by firepower instead. The newly ordered ships have 0 firepower. This does not work well if buying more than one fleet at the same time, though. For this reason I really hope the AI designs of my race does not use carriers with no weapons. And it may well happen that the ships bought when paused ends up at the top/bottom all by themselves, but I sort before checking if they do.

[Tormodino]

I don't think anyone is arguing that the current model doesn't work, it just has room for some very big quality of life improvements.
Something simple like being able to select three shipyards and putting in an order for x number of ships to be placed in fleet y at system z. I think that would be a dramatic improvement to the current mechanics without interfering with how it works currently.

[FingNewGuy]

I dunno. My combat fleets are not usually sitting in one place long enough for that to work for me. I like it as is- what you are talking about would be more clicks anyway and more confusing as fluid situations develop and you would have to change those orders or get all gummed up.

[Tormodino]

Don't you have to change orders and locations anyway? I don't see how having a single screen for all fleet management as well as slightly more control over where what you build ends up gums things up.
We might be talking past each other a bit, though. I am simply arguing for a more easily viewable fleet screen with options for ship composition, being able to add and remove ships in that screen, setting homebase and area of operations and troop setup.
Pretty much what we have now, but with the added bonus of not having to go into the massive military ships list to add/remove ships.

[FingNewGuy]

We might be talking past each other a bit, though. I am simply arguing for a more easily viewable fleet screen with options for ship composition, being able to add and remove ships in that screen, setting homebase and area of operations and troop setup.

We probably were. [;)] I can agree with what you are saying now for sure. I like the idea of adding an 'Area of Operations' function a lot.

[Bingeling]

A very good quality of life improvement, would be a fleet screen where I can say what the desired fleet composition is. One where it is easy to see what is missing. And one where one can order ships to build the fleet up to strength, using a selected spaceport.

I may run the normal fighting fleets at 14 cruisers and 3 carriers. If they are down to 16 ships I know something is dead. Apart from firepower/fighter count it is not always easy to see whether a carrier or cruiser is missing.

If I could define that my "main fleet" type has 14 cruisers and 3 carriers, the game could clearly define what is missing. A pulldown to select spaceport and an "order replacements" button would be just sweet

A nice and simpler function would be the fleet screen printing the fleet composition, and I could just check that list for what is missing.

[Tormodino]

For sure. I'm not necessarily calling for a complete rework of the ui, but a little more info in the relevant screen would go a long way.

Also, I can definitely see how you don't want newly built ship trekking across your empire to join fleets in the heat of battle, but that is as much an issue of the ai being more disciplined about allocating ships to fleets by proximity and the player being a little more cautious about creating fleets all over the place. A "fleet design" tool would be a boon both for the AI and the player imo.

Having some general tools to make ship oversight easier would also make the player less prone to creating fleets from ships spread all over the map. It would feel more coherent.

[FingNewGuy]

I may run the normal fighting fleets at 14 cruisers and 3 carriers. If they are down to 16 ships I know something is dead. Apart from firepower/fighter count it is not always easy to see whether a carrier or cruiser is missing.

If I could define that my "main fleet" type has 14 cruisers and 3 carriers, the game could clearly define what is missing. A pulldown to select spaceport and an "order replacements" button would be just sweet

A nice and simpler function would be the fleet screen printing the fleet composition, and I could just check that list for what is missing.

Hold on just a tick... are you saying, Bing, that when you select Next Fleet on the lower left mini-map that you cannot tell from the displayed graphic what the status of the ships in your fleet are? It is true that fleets that are too large don't fully display (which is when I go to the Fleet button up top in the UI)...

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: FingNewGuy
Hold on just a tick... are you saying, Bing, that when you select Next Fleet on the lower left mini-map that you cannot tell from the displayed graphic what the status of the ships in your fleet are? It is true that fleets that are too large don't fully display (which is when I go to the Fleet button up top in the UI)...

The problem is not seeing all the ships unless something special is going on. The problem is seeing which ship is not there in a fleet of some size. For instance, cruisers and carriers have similar size, and may have similar graphics depending on the ship set. And even if not very similar, their position in the selection panel is not the same from fleet to fleet. Sometimes there are carriers at the end, at other times they are scattered around the fleet.

In my AAR game my largest fleets had 31 ships, and I think that is close to, but not over the limit at what is shown. But seeing whether they had 5 or 6 carriers at a glance was not easy. Since I had more than one, a firepower comparison to a full fleet (in the fleet screen) would show if cruisers were the ones missing, though.

[FingNewGuy]

I understand now [8D]

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Tormodino

Don't you have to change orders and locations anyway? I don't see how having a single screen for all fleet management as well as slightly more control over where what you build ends up gums things up.
We might be talking past each other a bit, though. I am simply arguing for a more easily viewable fleet screen with options for ship composition, being able to add and remove ships in that screen, setting homebase and area of operations and troop setup.
Pretty much what we have now, but with the added bonus of not having to go into the massive military ships list to add/remove ships.

Hello Tormodino;
I like where you're going with this. Please develop your idea with a bit more detail and post
it in the "Master Wishlist" thread. Elliot may not get to it right away (meaning probably DW2)
but he has surprised us before!
[:D]

[Tormodino]

Thanks I will.

And on the topic of DW2, I really hope they keep expanding and improving DW1. Personally I see 0 reason to abandon the current awesome model in favour of an entirely new game. I've said it before. This simulation is at its core the best 4x ever made.

[tjhkkr]

Why can you not put your ships into the build queue -- whether at a specific Starbase or on the general ship order screen, and when you are finished then go to the ship screen, and then assign them to whatever fleet you want?
I am not trying to be rude, but I do it all of the time... am I missing the question?

[Sirian]

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

Why can you not put your ships into the build queue -- whether at a specific Starbase or on the general ship order screen, and when you are finished then go to the ship screen, and then assign them to whatever fleet you want?
I am not trying to be rude, but I do it all of the time... am I missing the question?

This works, I do it all the time, too. And it is quite a step up from having to collect the ships manually. I'm so glad that I can add unfinished ships to fleets. But... when doing it in every game every time, it feels like "empty clicks". Additionally, if you have lots of ships, the ship window will become quite slow. I could be better and less click intensive.

TLDR: Less clicks -> more fun.