How to queue ship orders?

[Jorgen_CAB]

In an environment where there are more un-played games, in the average PC gamer's collections, then there are days in the next year, devs need to be a lot less short sighted regarding their established customer bases expectations. Especially to sequels.

In one as complex as this, a simple command queue, isn't just important, it's bloody essential. Not implementing it, as if it's no big deal, just shows how out of touch they are from their customers. And doesn't surprise me considering how the last 2+ years have unfolded...

They have already said that it will be added to the game and that it was not added from the start due to time constraint. It is a bit more involved than just adding it and they have explained why a few times.

This is a really complex game and they had to decide that some micromanagement tools had to be put in to the game a bit later, this is just how things go at times. There are more tools than just this particular one that people want for better manual playstyle.

The game also have not been out for two years so not sure what you are on about there?!?

[rxnnxs]

Whe I started playing the game, I also began micromanagement like.
I wanted (just as in stellaris), say what planet, what debris, what little tiny stuff has taken care of and in what order.
But when you look at the game, even more now when you see in what direction it goes, it is really more of a huge universe where you lead your race into a direction.
And that is, what the focus is set to. First bugs, then macromanagement (oh yes, just as MOO3 and then, hopefully, going into micromanagement.
It might as well will come out as a DLC besides the playable Pirate Faction.
Because then, we can go into micromanagement, meanwhile the "Universe" is simulated around us.

If you do not like what you see right now, you better wait for another year.
I am understanding you, but thats unfortunately fact for me.

[tomchick]

I've mostly been enjoying rediscovering Distant Worlds 2 after the Aurora update, but I'm getting *really* frustrated with the automation in Distant Worlds 2, and especially with my inability to figure out what the AI is doing on occasion. So naturally, I sometimes want to just wrest control from the AI to tell a ship what to do.

But because I can't queue up orders or even waypoints (!), this turns into more busywork stretched out over an extended period of time, and something else for me to track without much help from the interface (speaking of, if I have to wait for a ship to be idle in order to give it its next orders, can't I at least get an alert for when that ship is idle?). Also, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be using the I, O, and K keys to queue up construction orders, but it doesn't seem to be working as I'd hoped, or even as I expected, or actually at all.

And is there really no way to set waypoints for longer movement paths? Really? Surely I'm just missing something.

I hope this is mostly me not understanding the interface, but I'm worried this is instead me not understanding how Code Force expects me to play the game. Sadly, reading over this thread -- my first Google hit for "Distant Worlds 2 queue orders" -- implies the latter.

[elliotg]

I hope this is mostly me not understanding the interface, but I'm worried this is instead me not understanding how Code Force expects me to play the game. Sadly, reading over this thread -- my first Google hit for "Distant Worlds 2 queue orders" -- implies the latter.

In DW1 we had queued missions per ship, which were often used for manually queuing multiple build missions for construction ships.

The problem with this was that it was fragile and inflexible. What if your construction ship is destroyed? All it's queued construction missions are lost. Or what if you build a new construction ship and now want to share those queued construction missions with the new ship? You can't, because they're assigned to the first construction ship.

So in DW2 the focus in on having global, empire-wide queues for building mining stations, research stations, establishing new colonies, etc. Automated or semi-automated construction ships then pick off these global queues to build the bases at the listed locations. Thus you have the New Mining Locations list (Shift-F7), the New Research Locations list (Shift-F9), the New Colonies list (Shift-F4), etc.

You can manually prioritize which locations to build at by clicking the buttons at the right side of each list item. Construction ships will then pick off those prioritized locations first. You can achieve the same thing by using the 'Queue Build Base' action buttons under the Selection Panel when you have a planet/moon/asteroid selected (I to queue mining station, O to queue research station). This will also prioritize these locations for new base building, just as if you had used the relevant list.

Note that when you are zoomed out to the galaxy level these lists highlight the locations on the map and ping the hovered item (New Mining Locations, New Research Locations, New Colonies, etc). So there's a high level of integration between these lists, the Selection Panel and the map, making it easier to visualize where things are.

That's the typical approach to queuing up base construction in DW2.

Note that we probably will soon be adding queued missions for ships. But in my opinion the above global queues often work much better when it comes to queuing up base construction.

[elliotg]

Of course, you can also use these lists (New Mining Locations, New Research Locations, etc) to manually assign missions to your construction ships. The lists are simply a convenient way to find the right target locations.

So you could double-click an item in a list to move to the location in the main view, then select a construction ship (U/Shift-U to cycle all construction ships, or J/Shift-J to cycle idle construction ships) then assign the build mission at the location with the selected construction ship.

Any construction ship assigned to build a relevant base will still show up in the relevant list, whether automated or manual. So you can track your construction activities that way too.

[rxnnxs]

What would help a lot in this described case when we are micromanaging a constructor: a shortcut that selects the nearest constructor and with another key the nearest idle constructor.

Thank you for your insight, elliot.

[frankycl]

Note that we probably will soon be adding queued missions for ships. But in my opinion the above global queues often work much better when it comes to queuing up base construction.

Yes, but if it's optional you still could use the lists or selection-panel - And this will most likely save us of MANY complaints and bad reviews by other (mostly DW1-fan-) players.

Of course, you can also use these lists (New Mining Locations, New Research Locations, etc) to manually assign missions to your construction ships. The lists are simply a convenient way to find the right target locations.

Well, this depends a lot on the size of your empire - and how long these lists get...
The main complaint of "manual-players" are, that the micromanagement is too tedious and needs to be semi-automated, according to what I've read in other posts. I think this means that they (including myself) would want to chose/control by themselves what a ship/station, etc. does, but then it should be possible to transfer/generalize this controll-scheme to all other ships/stations, etc. with the same order-queue, too - like e.g. tell specific construction-ships to build a special queue of stations/bases and then restock themselves at another specific planet/station...

Thank you for your insight, elliot.

+1

[R_TEAM]

"if" the global queues would work "most time" better ....
Have an debris feeld with 3 disabled ancient ships ....
all marked to reconstruct ....
one construction ship (CS) was always here, build an mining station ...
but he flew away ... o.k. ... not an big deal ....
Then after an significant time an other CS araive ...
build ONE ship and flew away ....
the same with the 2 other disabled ships ...
CS come from fare away of my empire to repair "one" ship .........

the main probleme here i see is the unflexible intern order structur ....
if an order is given - it will not checked if it make after the actual order is finished still sense ... or not ...
the same for frighters .... on my conquered worlds, it still come frighter from the empire i am conquered the world, to unload cargo ...
even it is no way to make this sense anymore - and is most time "bad" for the frighters ...

[Radamanthe]

I hope this is mostly me not understanding the interface, but I'm worried this is instead me not understanding how Code Force expects me to play the game. Sadly, reading over this thread -- my first Google hit for "Distant Worlds 2 queue orders" -- implies the latter.

What if your construction ship is destroyed? All it's queued construction missions are lost.

So what? You ordered and an unexpected event happened. You're even notified about it. Looks like a dangerous area, buddy! Maybe send it with an escort next time? What a big deal... That kind of things happens in all RTS. I've never seen anybody complain that their destroyed units forgot their orders. Don't send them alone in dangerous areas in the first place, or assume the risk.

Or what if you build a new construction ship and now want to share those queued construction missions with the new ship? You can't, because they're assigned to the first construction ship.

You're trying to defend your global queue in a silly way, but there is no need to. That's a neat concept and nobody suggested to get rid of it in any way. Looks like you're afraid to the fact that both global queues and individual queues should interact with each other. Which they already do actually with simple direct orders to construct: the game does not try to send another construction ship when the player directly ordered a ship to construct at some place for which there is already a global order. Fine. Maybe a bit more work with individual order queues, maybe not since the place is flagged anyway (yellow clickable text indicating a ship is planned to build there).

Took me nearly one year to realize that individual queues is a so low priority to you.TBH, it's a so obvious feature to me that I had doubts about your position on it. Now you just confirmed. Consequently, I have another doubt: will you consider that these silly individual queues you probably plan to implement someday should ALWAYS have priority to your so beloved global queues? Is that obvious to you or are you wondering? I'm serious.

Frankly, I can't stand anymore playing a strategy game like that without individual order queues. And I probably won't get back to DW2 until it's implemented.

Note that we probably will soon be adding queued missions for ships. But in my opinion the above global queues often work much better when it comes to queuing up base construction.

Works so much better that it's not rare to see a far away construction ship wandering the whole galaxy to fullfil an order when another one, a lot nearer (with a base nearby to get its stuff), is standing still...

Individual queues may not be your thing, they're also one of these features that a player uses to cope with bugged (or not so smart) AI. That's not to say devs should not fix stupid AI though, but that's a fair workaround, the kind of workaround that diminishes complains about dumb AI (hopefully less dumb in next patches). Also makes the player feel smarter (not that I like the idea to confort the player in its superior intellect in general, as I've seen so many players more stupid than basic AI and who deserve to blatantly fail).

Let's talk about theses ships you order to go somewhere, path finding through that nebula in line when they should get around... a queue of 2 or 3 orders and that's done. Currently, you order the first move, trying to keep that in mind for a minute ('cause there is no arrival notification you see) to make the next move order... seriously?

And exploration. Ahh, exploration ships. Do we really need an argument there? Simply consider the fact that there is no global queue to prioritize areas to explore...

[rxnnxs]

I do not think this outbreak makes it better in any way.
I would also like to have that queue - just as many other things that need much more work and so forth.

I wonder when this instant help text is switchable to OFF and when this loud noise and orange rectangle is HOOPING when you click outside a window that is opened.
Other windows are not doin that. It is really not needed to HOOP!! and blink that RUDE! I mean, just doing nothing would be ok... and on the other hand, clicking left and dragging besides a window is moving the galaxy in the background?
Hmmm... I would habe fixed that jus the day I figured out it does that.

Or take the drop down lists that have to get clicked on the same place or a different option to close. Clicking at any other place outside of them should also close them and keep the old setting but no.. click at that list to close it. Not good.

But what can we do but wait, ask and see what happens? Better not being rude - we do not have that much games that try to make it right (in all our own eyes).

just my 2 cents and now I shut up.

[drdru7029]

Seems like these two queuing methods can and should coexist. It's a good enough game that it's possible to cater to multiple play types. And frankly, both play types usually coexist in a single game. Having no manual queue does hamper much of the personal role playing element that added so much flavor to DW1, which itself coexisted with the automation capabilities.

Not to mention, it just makes more sense in the early game sometimes to manually direct certain things.

Seems a no brainer to me: add it in as an option to facilitate obviously desired manual operations, appease a decent chunk of the player base, and most likely improve the public reputation of the game in general.

[frankycl]

What if your construction ship is destroyed? All it's queued construction missions are lost.

So what? You ordered and an unexpected event happened. (...) I've never seen anybody complain that their destroyed units forgot their orders. (...)

I don't think that Elliot only meant the logical reasoning in this case - I think he meant more the difficulties that could occur if seen from a programming-perspective, because if you'd set many different order-queues, you'd also have to set many different flags on the queued objects (because they'd need to reject other orders that would be comming from another ship, et. if you'd e.g. had forgotten that you'd already queued another ship with it, or if the AI would decide to use the same object, like e.g. if they would send another constuction-ship, etc.).
And then when the ship that had an order-queue would be destroyed, it would have been necessary to delete all the set flags again simultaneously... And when you imagine that this could be the case in multiple locations/situations at the same time - depending on how big your empire is and how often you'd set these order-queues, I think this could have a reasonable impact on performance, additionally to the performance-problems the game already/still has.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that an ordering queue for constructors seems redundant give the system that we have in place. I don't miss being able to queue order like I used to do in DW:U

Now, if I need something specific I just take a constructor and give it a specific order and then put it directly into "auto" again. They will perform that order and then just take the next thing in the queue. I don't need to know when it is finished.

This will work in 99% of all cases for me... to be honest I'm not even sure it is worth their time to improve on this that much to cover those last 1%.

Maybe I would like a UI list for the priority of all construction tasks so I can move them up and down, that would be better than having to cancel them and redo them. Give a bit more control over in what order different stations get built.

I wold more likely see this for exploring and ordering ships in combat. So you can order a ship in combat to go to one point and then another. I also would want to be able to set my exploration ships to explore one star system, then another in a specific order.

[Radamanthe]

What if your construction ship is destroyed? All it's queued construction missions are lost.

So what? You ordered and an unexpected event happened. (...) I've never seen anybody complain that their destroyed units forgot their orders. (...)

I don't think that Elliot only meant the logical reasoning in this case - I think he meant more the difficulties that could occur if seen from a programming-perspective, because if you'd set many different order-queues, you'd also have to set many different flags on the queued objects (because they'd need to reject other orders that would be comming from another ship, et. if you'd e.g. had forgotten that you'd already queued another ship with it, or if the AI would decide to use the same object, like e.g. if they would send another constuction-ship, etc.).

Man, the flag is not on the ship, no point doing that. It's on the resource already (indicated by the yellow clickable text I talked about). That's how other ships ignore that specific resource from global queue, as long as another construction ship is already planned to build there. The ship goes down? Look at its order, remove its reference from the resource. Period. Only addition in individual queue is then not only to check the ship's single order, but its whole queue before getting rid of it.

And then when the ship that had an order-queue would be destroyed, it would have been necessary to delete all the set flags again simultaneously...

What a big deal... are you kidding?

And when you imagine that this could be the case in multiple locations/situations at the same time - depending on how big your empire is and how often you'd set these order-queues, I think this could have a reasonable impact on performance

Definitely not. First, one will hardly eat a microsecond doing that, and second, we talk about a seriously infrequent event.

[rxnnxs]

Now I wrote my idea in another threads, the new DLC Thread, and mentioned some wishes there, maybe you look into it, because I had an Idea how to change the upgrade paths.

What do you think about this?
My idea to the upgrade paths and some fleet creation faults/ideas

onlylatestdesign.jpg (44.95 KiB) Viewed 1694 times

---

So I visualized this pic to explain in one pic what I tried to saywith thousand words:

DropDownShipTypes.jpg (13.99 KiB) Viewed 1693 times

In any way, I am doing (I did also for me a mod that says instead of Hull: Class, and instead of Role=Type
and shortended all that long words) mod that I will upload a day when I am happy with this.

But the option to AUTO DESIGN: |fastest| |hull| -design
I can not mod

[tortugapower]

Hi all,
I thought I'd bump this thread.

I decided it's been long enough (about a year), time to check out DW2 progress.

• Created new game (feeling excited)
• Zoom to planet finishes, I try to remember what I'm supposed to do
• Grab my explorer ship and send it to nearest asteroid, then try to queue order for next one
• After trying multiple potential hotkeys, I don't understand why my Explorer is only retaining one order

Yep, I forgot that queuing orders manually isnt in the game... My DWU instincts kicked in, but also it's such a given to have in RTS games.

I recalled the last time I played: I tried to micromanage a midgame battle and it was pain to do without being able to queue orders.


It seems the designers prefer not to add this (I don't see a technical limitation), and if so probably their vision of how we should play the game is not in alignment with how I want to play the game. I think that DWU was successful because it leaned into the details, like logistics, and let the player dive in. I think that micromanagement is, or can be, part of that fun.

I'm not saying this represents any significant group of players, but for me, it happens to make a big difference. Hopefully it can be added, and someone please ping me if it is

[Trifler]

Speaking for myself, I'm not even looking for infinite queuing. Being able to queue up to three orders would be enough for me.

[thegreybetween]

For the record, this is an excerpt from the current roadmap. No ETA on this, but it is clear that it is on their to-do list (emphasis to relevant part added):

8. Improve quality of life for manual players further. We have already made a series of improvements here, but our plan includes returning the full manual play functionality of DW1. While DW2 includes quite a few new semi-automated features which can help with manual play, for example the global queues and fleet and army templates that were not in DW1, we recognize that many players are still missing tools that would make manual play more enjoyable. Next in line as a large task are ship and fleet order queueing as well as a lot of additional minor improvements to various UI areas.

[scotten_usa]

I'm posting a month old thread to say that I also want to be able to queue ship orders. Pleaaaaase!?

[fruitgnome]

me2