Having trouble with ship movement

I don't fully understand ship movement. When I click on the "FIND " button, I don't cycle through to the next ship with movement points. My ships are not orbiting a planet, they are all over the sector. I end up having to scroll all over the place to find my ships.... this is getting tiresome. I know I can use the ship/planet locater in the interface, but there must be an easier way. Also, when I find my ships, I still have to right click on the destination I want to send them to, EVERY time. Is thier an easier way, like a "go to" button? You can do this in games like CIV 4, there must be a way to do it here.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Rally points.

Towards the bottom left of the screen you will find a little half circle arrow thingy. When you click on it and then click on the screen, you can drop a rally point.

Then when you have a ship selected, hit the "t" key. This will pop up a list of rally points and you can send the ship to it.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

As far as finding the right next ship, I'm not sure there is a great way. AFAIK 'next' finds the closest ship with movement points left. I was also under the impression that in DA 'next' has been updated to ignore ships on autopilot.

As far as sending a ship somewhere once you do find it, you can do this using rally points. If you have a rally point set up you can send a ship/fleet autopiloting towards it by using the keyboard shortcut "T" and then selecting the appropriate rally point.

Intelligent use of rally points is the best way to keep track of what's going on. I never send ships directly from a planet to where I want to send them. I send all ships to one common rally point. From there I assemble the appropriate task force and send it on it's way to do whatever. I find this is the best way to organize what can otherwise be a very confusing process.

Successfully updated karma reason!

And one other thing Mumble pointed out a while ago. You can move rally points and all the ships will have their destination moved with it. This is really useful with a shifting front.

You do this by clicking on an already established rally point, a move button becomes available in the bottom left corner.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I use the tab key and the "C" key a lot. Tab key cycles through the ships, and if the "current" ship isn't on the screen, C centers it.

This cycling ignores ships on autopilot, orbit, sentry, and guard.

When you right click with your mouse a destination point, the ship will move to that spot and tell you how long it will take to get there. What bothers me is if a ship on autopilot only has a 1/2 turn to go, and you hit "next turn" it will move that, but you don't get an opportunity to move it the rest of its movement points. This has cost me more than once when they are flying through a dangerous zone and I'm wanting to join them in a fleet.

What I'd like is a button to "move all ships on autopilot". I can click this button then cycle through all my ships that still have movement points remaining. Also, a nice button would be to "un-sentry/un-guard" all ships.

Successfully updated karma reason!

there is an option that lets you move all ships with movement left after you click turn end, so if they have any movement left after autopilot, gives you the option to finish its move....helps alot...also if you missed ships that still have movement, then you can finish thier movement with this option selected ( or turned off). if you cannot find it in the options list, I'll specify the exact one, but think its pretty obvious....

So basically I use tab/find to get all ships that I can move, then use this option to move any ships with extra movement after autopilot & and ships I missed moving in the normal turn sequence. With only 5 parsec/week, really cannot afford to miss movement...takes too long as it is to get where ships need to go.....

Oh, I don't use Rally points all that much........

Successfully updated karma reason!