Odd Set Group Hotkey / Fleet Behavior

from Sins Forums
Ok...I will try my best to describe this -- maybe someone else has seen it since 1.09 and can also give feed back.

I usually hotkey my capital ships so I can find them, and they are usually 1 ship fleets so they don't auto join some other fleet. I have noticed the following new behavior in 1.09 that I don't remember ever seeing before.

I make a capital, select it, and hit CTRL 1 to assign it to group 1. I also make it a fleet.

Some frigates enter the system, and of course they join it because they are not in a fleet yet. As more frigates get made, I select them and make them into their own fleet.

I send the frigates off to do something, then decide I want to send my capital somewhere else, so I hit "1" to bring up its group. The capital is selected, but the frigates that joined the capital's fleet before they got into their own fleet are also selected.

Not realizing this, I give the capital a move order, and that group of initial frigates breaks off from the rest and executes the order as well. They are still in another fleet though, so when I give that fleet an order, they try to follow that order too. This creates a mess with frigates flying back and forth.

At first, I thought I was just making some mistakes and accidentally catching other ships when I created the hotkey group, but after a while, I realized that when ships joined the flagship that the hotkey was assigned to, they also were joining the hotkey group as well. I have to go and manually re-set the groups repeatedly, because as new frigates are made, they sometimes join the hotkeyed groups even when I don't want them to.

This is really frustrating...is it intended behavior? When you set a group of ships to 1-0, you don't expect other ships to get into that group. Sure, if you set the group to be the flagship of a fleet, you would expect the rest of the fleet to follow, which is how it worked in 1.05. You wouldn't expect the other ships to get added to the group, because what happens is when you give those frigates their own fleet, they don't get removed from the hotkey grouping, creating absolute chaos when you are trying to give commands in the heat of battle.

Sorry for the long explanation, but it is kind of involved...it took me a bit to figure out what was going on.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?
2,928 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Confirming.

I just tested it out, and that's what happens. It seems to only happen if the fleet leader is assigned to a CTRL hot key.

If I hotkey a group of light frigs within a fleet, new light frigs will join the leader's hotkey group, but not the other light frig group.

I would definitely call this functionality undesired. It would be great if ships of the same type joined a control group if one was created - for example, hotkey a few Cobalts within a fleet. When new Cobalts join that fleet, they automatically get assigned to that hotkey group.

But ships should not join the fleet leader's hotkey group.

To reproduce:

- Start a game
- Build any capital first, assign it a hotkey and create a fleet
- Build a few light frigates. They will join the fleet and the hotkey.
- Assign a new hotkey to just the frigates.
- Build a few more. They will keep joining the fleet and the leader's hotkey group, but not the light frigate hotkey group.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Hey Annatar, Thanks for taking the time to confirm this!

I was trying to think if there was an advantage to this behavior, but I really can't think of it. I discovered it because I would give retreat orders to my capital when it was under fire, and I would discover a chunk of frigates in a different fleet would follow it (usually with very bad results for the frigates that stayed and fought).

I can't help but think it is a bug with the "fleet auto join" functionality also adding the ships to the group hotkey unintentionally. After you move the ships to another fleet, they are still part of the group hotkey unless you reassign them manually.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I jut posted another thread about this -- oops.

I think this is a feature. It allows you to hotkey a whole fleet and maintain that hotkey. So later when ships are added to the fleet the hotkey still refers to the whole fleet rather than just the subset of it when the hotkey was assigned.

What I suggested will fix your problem as well - the problem is that ships aren't removed from the group when they leave the fleet. If they did, the behaviour you desire will also exist.

Basically what we want is the ability to hotkey a *fleet*, in such a way that the fleet itself is hotkeyed rather than the group of ships that are part of it when we hotkey it.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I can confirm this as well. Thanks for posting this cause I'm pretty new to the game and I was chalking it up to my inexperience. I tend to run thin on my fleet sizes, when I'm expanding in the beginning of the game and when I am advancing and have multiple fronts going on. Having a group of ships abandoning a battle following my Caps, one or two which I use for JIT (just in time) reinforcements was killing me. Literally hours of work down the tubes.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
What I suggested will fix your problem as well - the problem is that ships aren't removed from the group when they leave the fleet. If they did, the behaviour you desire will also exist.
End of quote


Well, see, the problem is if any hotkey group contains the fleet leader, it will fill up with the rest of ships. So you can't really have a "cap ships" hotkey group, because it'll end up with everything that joins the fleet. You could do it after the fact, I imagine, but then you always add ships to the fleets.

I know you posted about changing the fleets into its own entity and not tied to the fleet leader, but that would be rewriting the whole concept pretty much, so I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think the engine is capable of interacting with an abstract object, which is why it has to be tied this way to the fleet leader.

So, assuming the fleet mechanic stays the same, having ships leave the control group when leaving the fleet only solves half the problem. The other half of the problem where you have your capital ship group filling with all the new ships to the fleet remains.

Hmm, I just got an interesting idea to test, will post back..

Edit: Well, tested and there is a workaround.. just assign the fleet leader to two hotkey groups. If you have it as group 1 and 2, new ships will join group 1 but NOT 2. So essentially you'll need one extra hotkey, and will end up with one for the whole fleet, but the second can have all the capitals but no extra ships.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
You misunderstood my suggestion, try to read my post again.

BTW I don't think either of us can tell whether or not the engine can or can't interact with abstract objects, so let's avoid making such assertions.

BTW what you are trying to achieve can be easily done with turning off the cap ship's auto-join, and pinning it to the empire tree. Check it out.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, turning off auto-join could be a work around.


Otherwise, Brief Summary:

If ships auto join the hotkey group when they auto join the fleet they should auto leave the hotkey group when they leave the fleet.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
i spend alot of time disabling auto-join :P if it were standard that auto-join was off, or gave the frig factory the ability to preset this for any build-ships... that SERIOUSLY improve fleet control
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
-Autojoining a fleet now also inherits the fleet leaders settings (ex. group hyperspace state).
End of quote


I was looking through the changelog trying to figure out which change was causing this. I think what is happening is that it inheirts the group key as well. I honestly don't know enough about game mechanics yet. To know if its possible to have the fleet leaders settings dropped when they leave the fleet.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Well if we're on the subject of inheriting other settings then yes - I think this is very important. Also - again, if the fleet was an entity of itself, then the individual unit can preserve its own state, but only act by that of the fleet while in it. Then when it leaves the fleet it immediately gets back it's previous state.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Summary of Odd Set Group Hotkey / Fleet Behavior

Quote from:Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1 BETA Change Log - User Interface / HUD: -Entities autojoining fleets (see AI changes) will now search for and join the hot key group that contains the entire fleet. This way you don't have to rebuild hot key groups as more ships get added to the fleet automatically.
End of quote
So this is an intended behavior and the bug is:

[quote]As stated by Cykur: because what happens is when you give those frigates their own fleet, they don't get removed from the hotkey grouping, creating absolute chaos when you are trying to give commands in the heat of battle. or later After you move the ships to another fleet, they are still part of the group hotkey unless you reassign them manually.

and a possible fix:

As stated by San Tsu: Well if we're on the subject of inheriting other settings then yes - I think this is very important. Also - again, if the fleet was an entity of itself, then the individual unit can preserve its own state, but only act by that of the fleet while in it. Then when it leaves the fleet it immediately gets back it's previous state.
End of quote
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
and a possible fix:
End of quote


Fleets are not going to be made their own abstract entities in the way San Tsu suggests, but yes, the fix would be that ships need to leave the hotkey group if they leave the fleet.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I still hope to better fleet management ability, as I've suggested here.

In short:
- Rally points assigned to the fleet to remain after the fleet leader dies. Without this we get a lot of funny stuff with reinforcements.
- When retreating only the fleet leader, take it out of the fleet and retreat it individually like the other ships in the fleet would.
- Ability to easily add ships to the fleet without re-creating the fleet, so that hotkey groups and rally points are preserved.