Rally Points

Supposedly at some point you could use the right and left bracket keys on your keyboard to step through rally points the same way that Z and X will let you step through colonies when you're in a colony window. But I haven't tried in a long while and it didn't work right when I did.

IMO, rally point management is one of the weaker aspects of the GC2 UI. I'd use more of them if they were easier to manage. As-is, I rarely have more than four or five, even on Immense maps, and I use the Autopilot lines on the mini-map to help me center my view on them if I want to check how many ships have stacked up since the last fleet filled up, or, in the case of a resource mine or other starbase, whether it's time to move the constructor stream to a new target.

Adnurm. I don't know if you already do this, but I find it useful to rename them with a name which tells you where they are or what they do, instead of those meaningless numbers. Also delete one when it is no longer necessary.

I think on an immense map playing without them would drive me mad. I usually set it up to auto build on resources with morale 1 or influence 2 as a name. and then set a seperate system to build starbases usually with the nearest star as a name like Gildor const. Co. but i move them around and forget to rename them then I lose them.

I rename my handful of rally points also. I usually have just one dedicated to collecting constructors, but sometimes I have a pair of those. If I'm in between base-building projects, I just set that rally point to 'Fleet' and put it somewhere near where I think I'll want to start my next round of building.

For warships, I usually have a 'Home Guard' point somewhere near the core of my territory. When I'm preparing to attack, I create something like 'Drengin Front' on the edge of or just outside enemy territory. If I take the area and it it is close to other strong fleets or production centers, I create a new rally point like 'Drengin Watch' and send all local warship production there while I rename and move the old 'Front' to the next enemy area.

Even though I try to be methodical about it, I do sometimes misplace a rally point if I reassign all of its shipyards elsewhere (or just turn them off for a bit). My most common workaround for that is to find a ship that's used all its movement, send it to the rally point I've misplaced, and follow the auto-pilot line on the minimap and/or main map. It's crude, but it works.

I play mostly on large maps and I just don't get into using them. I guess i should. Generally when a ship is constructed i just send it to a point sopmewhere near where I'd want it. When a few ships start to converge I'll adjust the end point of their trips and make a fleet. SOmetimes I'll just pick a point in a general direction but not too far of a trip and then pick a new destination when that ship prompts me for movement.

Rally points are mentioned in one of the Tutorials and there is a screen that shows them all and what is going where and they can be reset from there I think.

One other point is that you can easily "move" rally points anywhere on the map. I generally find I actually have need of only a very few unique rally points but that over time I need these to be in different places on the map. I think it just makes more sense to move a current rally point to a new place as opposed to deleting one and creating a new one. Also I've deleted rally points only to have them reappear in the destination list but not be apparent on the map and this is somewhat disconcerting, but this may be a DL only problem.

It's definitely one of the systems that could be improved. I find when I hit the late game I use a *lot* of 'named' points (At some point in late game I will inevitably go through my colonies and starbases and set a 'named' point at each and every one. And then I cuss out frogboy for not implementing the 'tickbox' rally point toggle I suggested for starbases and colonies - {G}. But I digress.) to organize myself, along with larger 'org' level rally points named after my 'regional capitals' in star clusters ("Vega Command", "Spinward Quadrant", et al. You know, when I consider that I once named one of these the "Orion Shipyards", it's just vaguely possible that I play this way to much like an RPG - {G})

That said, I would very much love to see Rally point expanded to allow additional orders - I think anything you can click on a ship and command you ought to be able to order on a rally point, including 'go to rally point "x"'.

Jonnan

Some of us have been pining for that for ages, even before the (Yor) Isolationist super ability came along. When those no-wake zones started popping up, the pining became severe.

Fingers crossed for GC3