Matrix Games Forums

I mean, it would be in my eyes better, if it stays on auto/former setting.
There is mostly no message when a mission is done, and therefore there are many ships idling around doing nothing after their manual order. Especially because we can give them only one.

But on the other hand, we can right after giving them a manual command, switch the ship back to auto but the manual given command stays programmed in (and I hope it keeps that way).

So my idea was, that it would be the best way to give them manual order, but stay in the given automation stance.
What do you think?
We can always set them to any state as we wish, but we have to chose it then from the drop down menu.
Right now, we have always after a manual order go to the drop down menue.

Yeah absolutely. Either they should go back to auto, or we need order completed notifications, or idle ship notifications. You can filter the ship lists to only show idle ships - but that still means constantly flipping back and forth between three different tabs spread across three different windows, so isn't really a viable option.

I agree that a single order should not invalidate Automation itself.
Or at least there should be a way to give a order that "keeps Automation on".

The current model is more annoying then helpfull.

Every time I run into this UI issue it is problematic. It happens a lot, eventually I often end up just not giving an order that I might want to..., it is easier to go... ahhh just forget it.
The cumulative consequence of this is that I end up losing engagement in the game. Not a biggie, maybe, but it is a shame.
An option to do this without changing the setting of the ship would be really great.

I checked the manual again.
there are hotkeys to cycle through ships and colonies but none for idle ships

A good habit to develop is to regularly check the Exploration tab for the status of your explorers and the Construction Ships tab under the Ship Construction tab for the status of your constructors. It will tell you what they are doing and if they are idle. I regularly consulted the corresponding tabs while playing DWU. This will keep you from 'losing' explorers and constructors for long periods regardless of their automation status. It is also helpful for your constructors in coordination with New Mining Locations tab and if you are getting mining suggestions from your advisors. The New Mining Locations tab is a great primary tool for programming your constructors, especially once you are past the very early game. This is no different in general than the planning process for DWU, just a different tab organization. I always started fully manual in DWU, but there always came a point when I automated constructors and managed them using the DWU equivalent of the New Mining Locaitons tab. There is also a similar tab for new research locations. If you did not play DWU, then just start regularly checking the two tabs I mentioned at the top. That is the simplest way to maintain control.

yeah. I miss the expansion planner.

But looking forward :

what I missed in DWU and would really like to see in DW2
is

-Sorting by Star System
-Searching by Keyword.

I hate to say it,but most developers start to forget,
PC Games. We have keyboards.

and finally my favorite Space Empires feature, never to be seen afterwards : Configurable Menus with the ability to
save and load into games, similiar to ship designs

jwarrenw13 wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 4:03 pm A good habit to develop is to regularly check the Exploration tab for the status of your explorers and the Construction Ships tab under the Ship Construction tab for the status of your constructors. It will tell you what they are doing and if they are idle. I regularly consulted the corresponding tabs while playing DWU. This will keep you from 'losing' explorers and constructors for long periods regardless of their automation status. It is also helpful for your constructors in coordination with New Mining Locations tab and if you are getting mining suggestions from your advisors. The New Mining Locations tab is a great primary tool for programming your constructors, especially once you are past the very early game. This is no different in general than the planning process for DWU, just a different tab organization. I always started fully manual in DWU, but there always came a point when I automated constructors and managed them using the DWU equivalent of the New Mining Locaitons tab. There is also a similar tab for new research locations. If you did not play DWU, then just start regularly checking the two tabs I mentioned at the top. That is the simplest way to maintain control.

Thanks for the tips! For a complete newbie like myself this is very useful. =)

Thanky you all for your supporting answers.
Sure Distant Worlds 2 looks great, feels great and plays great.
But it will take time to play it the way its meant to be

When you talk about shortcuts, then it would come in handy when we could have things like:
select nearest idle constructor as well as
select nearest constructor and so on. I mean also implemented for exploreres and military ships.
But we do not have that for now. We also do not have queues.

What we have, as was mentioned before by jwarrenw13, is a really good and beauty overview for explorer, miners and such in mentioned TABS.
I already mapped my explorers to E.
But what does that help me, if I am at a location where there are 10 asteroids and I want to scan them in order to locate the best mining station place?
I have to scan them one by one by hand.
Meanwhile, my, lets say, second explorer does the same, on the other side of the moon, hehe.
Sure I have open the explorer screen so I can easily check who idles.
Here also a hint: Double clicking zooms to the ship, one click selects it. When you click now beside the name of the ship in the window at the bottom, the zoom state stays, but goes there.

But if you have 10 or more exploreres, from which the most are exploring systems, but staying then there on manual, it is work, not play, fun or relaxing.

I layed the key to switch the autmatic stance to A. Guess what, you change through all the states of automation and manual, step by step, that takes time.
Sometimes there is a lag, that is not accepting a keypress faster than one at a second.
You can click on the icons from the list to change them, but this is also laggy.

You can also go in the drop down list and set it back to some auto in the drop down list.

But, unfortunately, you can only do this to one ship at a time, you can multy select ships in the list, but you can not assign those selected ships a new mode.
So also here there is a way to help the player, room is there: It would be even a great help to provide a bindable key-kombo to set instantly the mode we want.

If you go to an Automation "P" (which is divided into three different P-Automations) and say in a Asteroid field: Auto-Explore, it does not take 5 seconds and the ship is going to warp-speed, exploring something else.
Adding a stance like "scan asteroids" would be very efficient.

I know all this has been written before, but this is why I wish that, right now, for the next patches and time to come, the easiest way would really be, to let the stance stay where it is, nothing more.

Next on list would be Ship Queues,

then the Hotkey for closest idle ships.

I hope for many things to come and I enjoy it, but right now, where I have time to spend, I can not enjoy it that much as I hope for.

To relax, kind of, I better start up Distant Worlds Universe. But it is not that relaxing because I have to have the absolute correct sitting position and distance to the monitor, other wise I can not read everything...

jwarrenw13 wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 4:03 pm A good habit to develop is to regularly check the Exploration tab for the status of your explorers and the Construction Ships tab under the Ship Construction tab for the status of your constructors. It will tell you what they are doing and if they are idle. I regularly consulted the corresponding tabs while playing DWU. This will keep you from 'losing' explorers and constructors for long periods regardless of their automation status. It is also helpful for your constructors in coordination with New Mining Locations tab and if you are getting mining suggestions from your advisors. The New Mining Locations tab is a great primary tool for programming your constructors, especially once you are past the very early game. This is no different in general than the planning process for DWU, just a different tab organization. I always started fully manual in DWU, but there always came a point when I automated constructors and managed them using the DWU equivalent of the New Mining Locaitons tab. There is also a similar tab for new research locations. If you did not play DWU, then just start regularly checking the two tabs I mentioned at the top. That is the simplest way to maintain control.

Good advice. I try and use the tabs you suggested in conjunction with each other. What do you suggest doing when your constructions ships won't act on the new mining locations? They just sit where ever and say No Mission -- fully automated, fueled, etc. FWIW, many of the new mine locations are within my own territory, some are within the bouders of an empire I have a mining agreement with.

ShawnP wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 5:41 pm

jwarrenw13 wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 4:03 pm A good habit to develop is to regularly check the Exploration tab for the status of your explorers and the Construction Ships tab under the Ship Construction tab for the status of your constructors. It will tell you what they are doing and if they are idle. I regularly consulted the corresponding tabs while playing DWU. This will keep you from 'losing' explorers and constructors for long periods regardless of their automation status. It is also helpful for your constructors in coordination with New Mining Locations tab and if you are getting mining suggestions from your advisors. The New Mining Locations tab is a great primary tool for programming your constructors, especially once you are past the very early game. This is no different in general than the planning process for DWU, just a different tab organization. I always started fully manual in DWU, but there always came a point when I automated constructors and managed them using the DWU equivalent of the New Mining Locaitons tab. There is also a similar tab for new research locations. If you did not play DWU, then just start regularly checking the two tabs I mentioned at the top. That is the simplest way to maintain control.

Good advice. I try and use the tabs you suggested in conjunction with each other. What do you suggest doing when your constructions ships won't act on the new mining locations? They just sit where ever and say No Mission -- fully automated, fueled, etc. FWIW, many of the new mine locations are within my own territory, some are within the bouders of an empire I have a mining agreement with.

Honestly I have not seen that problem yet. I've only got 15 hours in game and half of that was starting and restarting early game until I figured out some settings that seemed to work for me with automation set to make the game flow better. As noted by rxnxxs, my suggestion on important tabs to monitor also doesn't solve the problem he was originally discussing either. It just makes monitoring everything easier. I still wish the game was more 'fully manual play' friendly.' That is the way I played DWU games until I would reach a point where I had to automate explorers and constructors. I would like to be able to queue manual ship orders the DWU way and would also like some more options for handling individual situations easily.

I also wish the grid was still here so I could send explorers to explore sectors and could more easily find important locations. I note when you hold right click on a ship, there is often what appears to be a grid coordinate of some type the ship can move to, but I have no idea where that is on the map. I need to ask that question in a separate post maybe. Maybe it is something obvious I missed.

Bottom line, I agree some changes should be made to make the game more 'manual play' friendly or for specific situations when you need to do something with a specific ship in a specific place. But I haven't seen your particular problem. Yet.

jwarrenw13 wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:28 pm I also wish the grid was still here so I could send explorers to explore sectors and could more easily find important locations. I note when you hold right click on a ship, there is often what appears to be a grid coordinate of some type the ship can move to, but I have no idea where that is on the map. I need to ask that question in a separate post maybe. Maybe it is something obvious I missed.

Me too with missing the grid.
I very much miss it. Even if it is just an overlay - In DWU it really helped me place things into my internal map of what is going on in the galaxy.

jwarrenw13 wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:28 pm I still wish the game was more 'fully manual play' friendly.' That is the way I played DWU games until I would reach a point where I had to automate explorers and constructors. I would like to be able to queue manual ship orders the DWU way and would also like some more options for handling individual situations easily.

Yep. I am a full manual type myself, but ironically that means sometimes I do have to auto a thing temporarily so that I can focus on all the manual stuff. Even if we don't get queues, not having the mode unexpectedly switch from what you do have on manual when you need to send them off somewhere would avoid some pain.

If you reset the ship to automatic after giving it the manual order it will finish the order you gave it then go back to auto. However, if the ship is attached to a fleet and the fleet changes its orders after you send a single ship off on a manual task then the manual order will get dropped and it will rejoin the fleets order.

SirHoraceHarkness wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:11 pm If you reset the ship to automatic after giving it the manual order it will finish the order you gave it then go back to auto. However, if the ship is attached to a fleet and the fleet changes its orders after you send a single ship off on a manual task then the manual order will get dropped and it will rejoin the fleets order.

That needs elaboration:
Generally fleets transmit any orders they receive to every ship in the fleet.
And if fleet ships are idle, generally they try to gather at the flag ship.
So either have automatic ships or automatic fleets, not both mixed.

However the exception to this are Tankers. When you add them to a fleet, they do not receive any orders. And you have to set them to automatic to do their fleet supporting job.

I've also encountered OP's issue and even in the early game it gets tedious. There are too many ships that I want automated, but I first want them to do a specific thing before returning to their automation task.

dostillevi wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:25 pm I've also encountered OP's issue and even in the early game it gets tedious. There are too many ships that I want automated, but I first want them to do a specific thing before returning to their automation task.

As the other poster said:
1. Give them the specific order
2. Re-activate Automation

They will now finish the order, then go on as normal for a automated ship.

That's the correct action, yes, but the desired state is not needing to make (and remember to make) that extra click each time. 99% of the time when I issue an order, I personally want the ship to preserve it's automation status. I'd rather have to click a second time when I want the automation status changed (very uncommon), instead of every time I issue an order to an automated ship (virtually every time I issue an order).