Build version: v1.1.6.5 (Beta)
Severity: Medium-High
Annoyance factor: Through the roof and to the stars!
Saved game:
This is something I encounter way too often in my games: when many fleets are in the same system, or worse, at the same planet, it is often impossible to order my fleets to attack an enemy fleet that is part of that “pack” of fleets. When that happens, sometimes I manage to do it, after a long fight with the interface, but often, I just can’t do it.
Extremely annoying!
Here’s an example from my current game. Playing as the Ikkuros, I’m at war with the Mortalens and the Ackdarians (Ackdarian Empire). Up to now, I’ve seen only one big Ackdarian fleet: 3rd Fleet. It’s no match for my big fleets, and I’d like to send one of those big fleets to destroy it.
Their 3rd Fleet is currently in the Rhudus system, near Rhiduls 7, and I want to attack it with my 2nd Fleet, which is in the same region.
This is a screenshot of what I get if I LEFT-click on the pack of fleets at Rhidulus 7:
- Rhudus system view.png (538.09 KiB) Viewed 459 times
As you can see, the Ackdarian’s 3rd Fleet is there. And from that menu, I can select that fleet. But if my 2nd Fleet is selected (I have a shortcut key for it: “2”), then I can’t right-click on the pack of fleets to get the same menu. Instead, I have to hover above the pack of fleets, while moving the mouse pointer, seemingly indefinitely sometimes, in the hope that the fleet I want to attack will appear among the many popups that “pop” all over the place. And in this case, as in many many other cases encountered previously (since launch), the fleet I want to attack is not shown (doesn't "pop"). So I can’t order 2nd Fleet to attack 3rd Fleet!!! The same thing happens if I try from regional or galactic view.
Not good. Not fun.
Ways to solve that problem?
There are 2 possible solutions that jump at me right away.
The first one is to modify what happens if I right-click on a pack of fleets in system view (or other views for that matter), while one of my fleet is selected. But first, let’s look at what happens right now if I do it:
- Right-click menu.png (360.46 KiB) Viewed 459 times
Above, you see the result of right-clicking on the pack of fleets while 2nd Fleet was selected. It shows a menu of possible actions, 2 of them related to the Ackdarian’s 12th Fleet, which is the fleet that was “poping up” at that moment while hovering above the pack of fleets.
Instead, right-clicking could show a menu similar to the one shown when LEFT-clicking on the pack of fleets (see 1st screenshot). But instead of showing everything that’s there, it would show only the possible targets for my fleet, which would include the 2 enemy fleets: 3rd Fleet and 12th Defense Force.
Now, let’s say that from that menu, I’d click on “3rd Fleet”, then a sub-menu would be shown, similar to the one in the 2nd screenshot above, but focused on 3rd Fleet instead of 12th Defense Force.
So that’s one of the possible solutions to the problem.
Another one would be to allow the use of the summary view to order attack on enemy fleets.
How would that work?
First it would be necessary to show enemy fleets in summary view in a similar way that our own fleets are now shown. By the way, thanks to the team for that interface improvement. After I had stop playing for a while (in part because of the type of interface problems I’m describing here), I was glad, when I started playing again, to see that it was now possible to see and select our own fleets from the summary view, even while in system view.
So in a similar way, enemy fleets could (should) be visible in summary view, at least from system views. They should be clickable (would select the fleet) and right-clickable (would show a menu of actions in relation to that fleet, allowing to attack it).
Eventually, it would be nice to also have the same functionality from regional and galactic views, but that would require some ways to specify fleets of what empires are to be shown in the summary view (otherwise, there would be too many).
But for now, implementing this for system views would be enough to solve the problem I’m reporting here.
Or the first solution (right-click sub-menus).
Or any other solution.
But please, fix that problem!
