An idea for gold patch

[Askan Nightbringer]

The standard fleet formations are very inadequate.
My main gripe is they don't contain enough ships in them so when you pick the trusty wall formation with a fleet of 50 i end up with some ships completely scattered in space.

As formations are not saved with the empire (which would be the ideal) but stored in a data file it means that when your on the trusty PBW site your stuck using the basic formation.

Can't the patch just include all those wonderful formations lying around?


Cheers,
Askan

[Wardad]

The changes would be a hard sell. The more experienced players have all ships break formation, except for the Capture Planet strategy.

The main problem with formations is caused by a disabled Fleet Leader.

[capnq]

quote:

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Can't the patch just include all those wonderful formations lying around?

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Which would those be?

I've only seen the extra formations from TDM-ModPack, and have only ever found a use for two or three of those.

[Dracus]

Check the eyecandy mod on the gold,
You will find all the tdm and about 8 more that I created.

[Fyron]

Or, look at the formations.txt file in the B5 Mod. I collected all of the mentioned formations, plus many more. Or, you could d/l it right here: Formations.txt.

The biggest problem with formations is that they have a hard code limit of 31 ships. I am currently working on expanding all of the formations in that file to have as close to 31 ships, while still maintaining the original intent of the design. Anybody who cares about formations should send a request to Aaron (Malfador) for better ones in the standard game and for a huge increase in the available slots in each formation.

And yes, most experienced players have their ships break formation. However, the formation that you select for your fleet determines where the ships in the fleet start. Having a large portion of your ships scattered around behind the main front can be devastating to your fleet in a large battle.

[Askan Nightbringer]

Only 31 ships?
Thats a bit rough. I was hoping you could fill all the squares on the formation.txt.
Now I see...its using alphanumeric characters so there would be a limit of 36...what happened to the other 5?

Try this
1) Go into the combat simulator
2) For player 2 give him 1 ship
3) For player 1 stick in a huge pile of them
4) Crate a fleet for player 1 (which in the simulator means create 2 fleets and add ships to the 2nd one)
5) Stick all the player 1 ships in that fleet.
6) Start the combat (as tactical).
7) Check out all the ships milling around the back like a pack of forwards in a South African rugby team.


Now that milling around usually doesn't matter.
So my next step would be to get a game to turn 140, stick a fleet of 50 ships around a planet. Have another fleet of 50 ships attack it. Everything seems to be a chaotic mess.


Cheers,
Askan

[Bman]

How come they do not break formation on Capture Planet? I do and it seems to work just fine. Although with the Gold change so that ships that break formation now follow their own strategy instead of the fleet strategy I need to see if they will still avoid glassing the planet if I have troops.

quote:

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Originally posted by Wardad:
The changes would be a hard sell. The more experienced players have all ships break formation, except for the Capture Planet strategy.

The main problem with formations is caused by a disabled Fleet Leader.

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[Bman]

Yes formations are a bit tricky late in the game. I had a fleet of 70 ships go through a warp point and enter combat with a 10? ship defense fleet. My first 9 or 10 ships were in a nice V formation. The other 60 or so ships were packed into a massive square with the warp-point in the middle. Interspersed here and there within the square was one of the defender ships. No one in the middle of the square could move. It made for a short battle

quote:

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Originally posted by askan:
Only 31 ships?
Thats a bit rough. I was hoping you could fill all the squares on the formation.txt.
Now I see...its using alphanumeric characters so there would be a limit of 36...what happened to the other 5?

Try this
1) Go into the combat simulator
2) For player 2 give him 1 ship
3) For player 1 stick in a huge pile of them
4) Crate a fleet for player 1 (which in the simulator means create 2 fleets and add ships to the 2nd one)
5) Stick all the player 1 ships in that fleet.
6) Start the combat (as tactical).
7) Check out all the ships milling around the back like a pack of forwards in a South African rugby team.


Now that milling around usually doesn't matter.
So my next step would be to get a game to turn 140, stick a fleet of 50 ships around a planet. Have another fleet of 50 ships attack it. Everything seems to be a chaotic mess.


Cheers,
Askan

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[capnq]

0 (Leader) - 31 is 32 ships, or 2^5, a nice binary computer number. That probably has something to do with the limit.