Novalith Macro

I was doing a 102 planet, 5 star game this week, and towards the end, I started spamming Novalith Cannons. At first, I was hotkeying them to 0, 9, 8, 7, etc, but when I came to control too many, I just started putting them on autofire and forgetting about them. Although it was fun to see 30-40 Novalith shots traveling between systems, it was a pain in the butt to have to wait 20 minutes for the shots to subside before I could colonize any plants that had been flattened, for fear of more shots hitting the planet after I colonize it.

My question is this: Is there any way that I can easily select all of my Novas and then fire them one at a time? I tried to shift-select them all into one group, but I was having problems with tabbing through them, as it wouldn't progress through them uniformly. Also on a few planets I was able to squeeze two on (due to planet specials), and when I selected both of them at once, I couldn't cycle through them with tab either.

Also, I was wondering if anyone knows how to mass-scuttle a group of objects? It's a pain in the butt to have to scuttle everything individually...

Thanks!

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Nothing? Is there no way to select a type of building / unit across the entire empire? The search function is nice, but it's limited by the types of units that can be selected, and I *still* can't tab-cycle through two buildings in the same gravity well.

Hell, I could forgive the limited search tool, if I could just tab through buildings in the same grav well...

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Can't tab through 2 of a building inside the gravity well?
Use 2 numbers.

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Can't tab through 2 of a building inside the gravity well?
Use 2 numbers. Not a perfect solution, but it works well enough.

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The NOvalith is smart enough to only fire on enemy planets. The wait time is for the radiation to die down, which is why you only need to hit a planet once.

Have you tried selecting them all and then pinning them?

Sometimes you have to use shift-tab as the method of selection for the tab shift to work properly.

Hope that helps!

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

The last time I had multiple Deliverance Engines (in different systems), I had them all bound to 0 in a group, and could tab through them. I'm not sure why that didn't work for you.

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Slow way:

Go to each Novalith cannon and add it via the shift-key to a numbered control group.

Fast way:

Display all your planets via the empire tree. Press alt and select all novalith cannons. Add them to a numbered control group.

Either way you can cycle through them with the tab-key. Just don't have stacked symbols activated in the empire tree, or you'll only select one novalith in each grav well (if you have multiple there).

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Ah ha! I never knew that I could alt-select from the empire tree. That's the magic bullet I was looking for I guess. And yes, I had my icons grouped, because the tree was too unwieldy without them being grouped... looks like I'll just have to deal. Thank you Vandenburg.

My second question still stands though -- Is there any way to delete a stack of units simultaneously? When I select a group and try to scuttle them, it only scuttles one at a time.

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I assign all my novalith's to a single numbered group. To fire them I then select the group, hit the hotkey to fire the cannon, select my target, hit the "tab" key and repeat. It sounds like a lot of steps but it actually goes pretty quickly. Besides, it takes 30secs-1min for the darn thing to change facing anyway, so it's not like it's all that fast to begin with.

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The "alt-select from the empire tree" solution in-game didn't work... has this technique been verified by anyone as working in-game? I displayed the empire tree, disabled stacking, and alt-selected a cannon from the tree, but all it did was select the one cannon at that planet.

The problem persists... why is it this difficult to macro-select and control my assets?

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Alt-selection in the empire tree only selects units in the same gravity well. You'll have to pin the planets with superweapons to your tree and shift-select them one by one, then put them in a ctrl-group for fast selection later. Then at that point you can do the tab-clicking thing to fire them as you see fit in a manner of seconds.

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The empire tree alt select is good to know. I have 1 so far but adding a second soon. Not even really attacking the guy at the moment, just feel like blowing his infrastucture a bit as he annoyed me.

First he kicks me out of the starting star system, then asks to be my friend for 6 hours, then changes his mind when i take his enemy out of the origional star and come home again. I see him sitting on my starting home world all smug, then he decided to raze me. Really rude I figure so I am random bombing him into oblivion bit by bit. Serves him right. (course I did just take 4 of his planets to set a better choke point. Got his artifact to boot.

Just goes to show. Don't be rude.

2 of 8 dead, 2 somewhat crippled, 1 peace treaties, 1 cease fire, and a third to be injured...then I take his ships from him.

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