Idea: 'Repeat Attack"/"Repeat Target Type" option for fleets

from Sins Forums

This is an idea I have been thinking about for a while and finally decided to post to see what other people thought.

The basic idea is adding a new setting to the fleet options to reduce micromanagement.  This setting would be named "Repeat Attack"/ "Repeat Target Type" or somthing similar.

If it was turned on, it would come into play when the player ordered a unit belonging to the fleet to attack something.  Such as having some fighters attack long range frigates instead of hostile fighters.  Currently a player would have to que up an attack on every single long range frigate as long as there were hostile fighters.  With the option set to on, units would continue attacking all enemy units of the same type as the one the player ordered them to attack until there were none of that type left.

Example for clarification: I have ten fighter squads and the enemy has fighters and long range frigates.  I order five of my fighter squads to attack one of the enemy's long range frigates while the other five auto engage enemy fighters.  With the repeat option on, the five squads attacking the long range frigate will find a new long range frigate to attack when they destroy their target instead of switching to target fighters like they do now.  This will repeat until they get new orders, are all destroyed, or there are no hostile long range frigates left.

20,153 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Thats a good idea.

If you could make fighters prioritise other fighters, then you would not need to worry about every squad chasing a single bomber (this should get fixed anyway) HCs could prioritise LRMs or carriers or something.

 

This should also work for abilities. Abilities eg. Nano-disassembler, Ion Bolt and Detonate Antimatter  should be able to prioritise cap ships OR frigates etc. This woud not work for abilties like Repair Cloud though, so I'm not sure how this would work.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Good idea!

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I had a similar idea which used the "stacking" aspect of the empire tree on the left.  When "stacking" is turned on, it will stack ships in groups of 10, i.e. 10 lrm, 10 lrm, 10 hc, 10 hc, etc.  My idea was that when you grabbed your ships and right clicked on a stack, they should attack ALL of the ships in the stack.  Currently, they don't, so you have to turn stacking off and click each ship independently.  What a tedious micro that is.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Agent, reply 3
I had a similar idea which used the "stacking" aspect of the empire tree on the left.  When "stacking" is turned on, it will stack ships in groups of 10, i.e. 10 lrm, 10 lrm, 10 hc, 10 hc, etc.  My idea was that when you grabbed your ships and right clicked on a stack, they should attack ALL of the ships in the stack.  Currently, they don't, so you have to turn stacking off and click each ship independently.  What a tedious micro that is.

I remember. but I think there was not so much an unwillingness to implement it, but more like memory issues or something in storing these attack orders for so many ships at the same time. would that be a similar problem to the op request.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I remember. but I think there was not so much an unwillingness to implement it, but more like memory issues or something in storing these attack orders for so many ships at the same time. would that be a similar problem to the op request.

The repeat attack theortecially uses less ram than queing up attacks as instead of remembering each target individually it only needs to remember a target type.  It should have a strong advantage any time a player would otherwise que attacks on more than 3 ships of the same type.  Coding wise I think it would be something like an if statement.

Something like:

if (repeat attack on and given target by player) then (attack target type) else (use normal auto attack)

 

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

like this idea a lot. we should definitely be striving for it

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

There's almost no game I play in which I don't long for this feature. A definite must-have!

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

wow! thats an incredible idea. hopeeefully a certain someone is watching over this post =)

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Do you mean that they continually target a specific ship type till they are gone? then they attack another type?

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Mooster, reply 9
Do you mean that they continually target a specific ship type till they are gone? then they attack another type?

Yes, if the player gives the ships a target they will continue to attack all enemy ships of the same type as the target until there are none left.  After that the player can give them another order, or let the default auto-attack take over again.  Note that after the player gives the inital attack order they don't have to do anything else until there are no enemy ships of that type in the gravity well.

I think this would be very useful in large battles, especially when you don't have the time to que fighter attacks on each and every long range frigate(I am using fighters attacking long range frigates as an example because I find that its what I que attack the most).