Simulator Formations?

MarkY · #1 December 27th, 2005, 07:27 PM

Is there any way to define the fleet formations in the simulator, other than through some hackery / modding? I ask because the default formations are really quite bad and take a lot of the fun out of the battles, esp. the larger battles. For example, if you run a full complement off Kawangi against a full complement (meaning 16 of each ship) of Tchorak, the Tchorak win with more than a third of their fleet intact. But if you add a second Kawangi fleet and put just one ship in it, it creates different formations and the Kawangi come out only losing a handful of ships.

This problem doesn't just occur with huge battles -- when facing multiple enemies that include fighters, it's hard to position your own fleet in a defense posture before the battle heats up.

Anyway, seems like this would be a nice feature, and I can't find it anywhere.

Shadowcat · #2 December 27th, 2005, 10:46 PM

I'd also like to see this.

And further into the future, I'd like to see the ability to set up a simulator battle, set all the formations, save the configuration to a file, and email it to other people to load and try out.

This way people could create and share combat challenges

Puke · #3 December 28th, 2005, 07:03 PM

speaking of simulator formations, i ran into a problem with the squidies in the simulator, once. I forget who I had them fighting, but i'll try to recreate it.

Basically, they took their normal 'circle' formation, but none of them moved. a single AI ship (kwangi, probably. I think i was facing a bunch of ships against one in an AI duel) then went through them one by one, picking them off.

ImUrOBGYN · #4 December 28th, 2005, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Puke said:
speaking of simulator formations, i ran into a problem with the squidies in the simulator, once. I forget who I had them fighting, but i'll try to recreate it.

Basically, they took their normal 'circle' formation, but none of them moved. a single AI ship (kwangi, probably. I think i was facing a bunch of ships against one in an AI duel) then went through them one by one, picking them off.

I've had this happen once, as well. And I also believe the sim would be much more fun if you could set formations or at least the enemies would use their in-game formation, too.

Shadowcat · #5 December 28th, 2005, 10:16 PM

And not to mention setting the load-out for your ships, of course

Foosnark · #6 December 28th, 2005, 11:00 PM

Quote:

Puke said:
speaking of simulator formations, i ran into a problem with the squidies in the simulator, once. I forget who I had them fighting, but i'll try to recreate it.

Basically, they took their normal 'circle' formation, but none of them moved. a single AI ship (kwangi, probably. I think i was facing a bunch of ships against one in an AI duel) then went through them one by one, picking them off.

Friendly ships just sit around not doing anything... were you pitting two fleets against each other while watching as a Deep Hunter maybe?

Fingers · #7 December 29th, 2005, 03:43 AM

Correct, if you make a fleet of the same race as the player, you can (and have to) control its ships.

Puke · #8 December 29th, 2005, 07:39 AM

ah ha! i think that was exactly it. maybe theres a way to run the simulator without a player race being inculded? or maybe in a patch?

or maybe the answer is to mod in an additional race with a cloaked ship, so you can watch without compramising the squidies.

MrFantastic · #9 December 30th, 2005, 04:32 AM

Just play a zorg fighter instead and telport right into the middle immediatly. You can still watch after you die.