DEVS: (QOL) DEF PLATFORM SORT BY ALPHABETICAL ORDER - PLEASE (!!)

[CaptainChaos]

If I'm just not seeing the obvious way to do this, I'm sorry.

This is so BASIC isn't it? If you have several diff Def Platform configurations you easily can get a migraine just keeping track of how you are outfitting them on your many Starbases.

Maybe I'm just the only one who uses DPs since mid to late game they are fairly easy to overpower even with all the buffs.

Although I think I had a game once that a SB with 150k power, which was helpful, although truth be told, SB power never seems to really scale against fleets for some reason. i.e. a fleet of frigates with half that power seems to be able defeat it quite easily.

[x]

missiles can have longer range than starbases. missile cruisers are awesome once you get swarmers and artillery computers. preferably with a bunch of thruster upgrades and afterburners so you can kill enemy ships without ever getting hit.

[corisai]

Originally posted by x:

missiles can have longer range than starbases.

Actually pretty opposite. On defense starbases AI building Target Uplink Computer that boosting range of starbase&platform weapons. So platforms almost always will outrange your ships (except of course when stupid AI building M-sized platforms in late-game).

Still best defense platforms (except L-gates and pulsar systems) are Hangar ones + one or two Ions to initiate combat ASAP and give time to launch strike craft (mandatory modules are Communications Jammer and Target Uplink Computer).

[Geoff]

Originally posted by x:

missiles can have longer range than starbases. missile cruisers are awesome once you get swarmers and artillery computers. preferably with a bunch of thruster upgrades and afterburners so you can kill enemy ships without ever getting hit.

Yeah. Big defenses in little systems help a lot with that. Some of the tighter systems have portal points close enough to be hit by the starbase with range extension. In my current game, I've got one built up station in a system with shield nullifcation that also controls the egress point of a wormhole in my territory. Its maxed out on platforms with nothing but armor and lasers. When battleships came around it got overrun by a few attacks, but a fleet behind it was able to clean up anything that got through. Alas, now it's safely behind my lines, but it was a chokepoint for four separate alliances that kept invading me, and I got to watch it shred many a fleet.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by CaptainChaos:

If I'm just not seeing the obvious way to do this, I'm sorry.

This is so BASIC isn't it? If you have several diff Def Platform configurations you easily can get a migraine just keeping track of how you are outfitting them on your many Starbases.

A quick hack I use in the fleet designer is I give the classes of each design alphabetically ordered names. And if they get out of sequence in the fleet designer, just toggle auto-upgrade and save, which drops the last saved to the last, so you can reorganize alphabetically by hand that way if things get a little messed up.

I never do more than 5 designs per type though. I just don't have the spare wattage to keep track of more than that in my head.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Geoff:

I've got one built up station in a system with shield nullifcation that also controls the egress point of a wormhole in my territory. Its maxed out on platforms with nothing but armor and lasers.

My most fancy defense was a Terminal Egress (rolled Tempest so with 3 planets with orbital rings):

• Zroni Storm Caster.
  
• Starbase itself and a planet most away from L-gate - Hangars with ancient drillers (yes, crazy, I know). All rings with Target Uplink Computer of course.
  
• Ring on planet in middle - Neutron torps.
  
• Ring near L-gate - Plasma and Flaks.

It was a beutiful Ship Grinder ^_^

[x]

Amazing, after 300 hours I had no idea that different systems were different sizes... I'm not very observant at times

I do stand by my missile cruiser statement, at least against AI, it does very well against their starbases and fleets up to the midgame at least.

[corisai]

Originally posted by x:

I do stand by my missile cruiser statement, at least against AI, it does very well against their starbases and fleets up to the midgame at least.

Yes, cruiser with Whirlwinds, 2*nano-missiles, 1 shield (rest armor), afterburners & artillery computer - will crush any kind of fleet build by normal AI empire.

Just be warned in case of war with Fallen Empires (or even worse Awakened Empires) and crisis enemies on near max multiplier. They could either wipe them or force a severe losses.

[Kalemenos]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think some of the replies got off track with comments about designs. Cool designs by the way. But the question heading the discussion is the ALPHABETICAL ORDER.

I concur completely. As the game progresses there are huge numbers of lists: planets, systems, fleets, starbases, leaders (I'm in the previous-to-last version of the game, lots of leaders), civilian ships, starbases... Now, for the AI, they're all just databases. Adding a toggle here and there to put the list in a different order would be FABULOUS: alphabetical, chronological (which seems to be the general default), power, age, level... all depending on what kind of unit you're dealing with. Just at the top of the list, two or three little "what order do you want" toggle buttons would be simply delightful.

I wonder whether the designers actually play the games they market? :-)

[corisai]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think some of the replies got off track with comments about designs. Cool designs by the way. But the question heading the discussion is the ALPHABETICAL ORDER.

With current game balance a skilled player DO NOT want to mix different types of defense platform (aside from throwing 1-2 ions).

But yean, a bit extra functionality from UI would be fine.

[CaptainChaos]

Thanks everyone! Great comments, although it was funny how it got a little of track.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand the hand rearranging. Different SB Platform designs have different sizes and you can manually reorder them? Is that it?

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think some of the replies got off track with comments about designs. Cool designs by the way. But the question heading the discussion is the ALPHABETICAL ORDER.

I concur completely. As the game progresses there are huge numbers of lists: planets, systems, fleets, starbases, leaders (I'm in the previous-to-last version of the game, lots of leaders), civilian ships, starbases... Now, for the AI, they're all just databases. Adding a toggle here and there to put the list in a different order would be FABULOUS: alphabetical, chronological (which seems to be the general default), power, age, level... all depending on what kind of unit you're dealing with. Just at the top of the list, two or three little "what order do you want" toggle buttons would be simply delightful.

I wonder whether the designers actually play the games they market? :-)

I think some of the frustration stems from the dual-design for console play. That's my best guess for why the spreadsheet aspects of the game are so weird and inadequate.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by CaptainChaos:

Thanks everyone! Great comments, although it was funny how it got a little of track.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand the hand rearranging. Different SB Platform designs have different sizes and you can manually reorder them? Is that it?

I'm maybe unclear on where your defense platforms are out of order. You can name each platform, which.... I mean.... if you want to rearrange that list, have fun doing it by hand I guess. I was thinking of the designs... since I alphabetize the designs in the fleet designer, I can quickly scan the non-sortable list of surviving platforms to know which ones were lost. All I need is the first letter to know which type of platform I'm looking at. I don't go over five designs for defense platforms, however convenient it might be, just to keep my level of scrolling and mental overhead lower.

[CaptainChaos]

Every design I have has a different name like M-M, S-S, L-PD, but when I see the list at a given SB it sorts them in order of construction, not name.

M-M I
S-S I
S-S II
M-M I
L-PD I
etc. (the Roman numbers are done by the game not me)

I have to very carefully count how many of each to reassess what changes or redesigns or others are needed. How diff would it be it were like this:

L-PD I
M-M I
M-M II
S-S I
S-S II

I'm like, ok 1 LPD, 2 M-M, 3 S-S. Easy. And quite frankly in 2023 with a game that's out for half a decade, bizarre it doesn't autosort.

So I ask once more - am I just missing something obvious?

Appreciate it :)

[corisai]

Originally posted by CaptainChaos:

So I ask once more - am I just missing something obvious?

Yes :)

Instead of that you should use:
a) Missile platform in early game or if you're going all-missiles route (S-missiles early, M-whirlwinds later).
b) Hangar platform.
c) Torpedo platform (for L-gates defence only - outside of Terminal Egress obviously).
d) Pulsar platform (mix of NT with M-sized lasers or plasma).

Everything else is meh and don't worth it. In that case you will stack a single platform design on each starbase so all you need is to look on name of existing platform.

Ion cannons (using a Ion and not Ruination glare) will be always last in platform lists (so some kind of sorting is already in game).

[Geoff]

Originally posted by CaptainChaos:

Every design I have has a different name like M-M, S-S, L-PD, but when I see the list at a given SB it sorts them in order of construction, not name.

M-M I
S-S I
S-S II
M-M I
L-PD I
etc. (the Roman numbers are done by the game not me)

I have to very carefully count how many of each to reassess what changes or redesigns or others are needed. How diff would it be it were like this:

L-PD I
M-M I
M-M II
S-S I
S-S II

I'm like, ok 1 LPD, 2 M-M, 3 S-S. Easy. And quite frankly in 2023 with a game that's out for half a decade, bizarre it doesn't autosort.

So I ask once more - am I just missing something obvious?

Appreciate it :)

Yeah so, the actual installed platforms is not a sortable list. Its arranged by the order they were built and that's all you can do, as far as I'm aware. If you want to hand reorder that, you can burn a bunch of resources scrapping "out of order" platforms and then build them again till you're back in order, though that's hardly a hack. For me, if I've got 51 platforms and 5 designs and I still care (cuz yeah later in the game it doesn't matter so much) then it's just a matter of scanning the list and tallying the first letters of each platform, since their auto-generated design is the ship class name plus a roman numeral indicating which order (empire wide) it was constructed in. That leads me to suspect there is in fact a master list of all the defense platforms in your empire and it's scouring that to figure out which ones are on the base you're looking at. I agree it should be better, but... i'm not the devs can't hlep with that and don't have an ingenious workaround for it.

I initially thought you meant in the fleet designer, which rearranges so that the last platform you saved appears last in the order. That can frustrate me a bit to have E before A, so when that happens, I click on "B", turn off auto-upgrade (or on if I'm being really hands-on), then save, then turn it back to the original setting and save it again. That moves it to the bottom of its class in the fleet designer without actually making any changes to the design - at least if done on pause. If you're running the fleet designer with game time running, y'know... props