rotatable structures

posted on February 15th, 2012, 7:52 am

Pretty sure this might have been discussed before, but would it ever be possible to allow stations to be rotated before the final. Placement occurs for construction?

Another member here made a really good point about how the entrance and exit points on the shipyards can lead to small but reasonable advantage/disadvantage for repairing and retreating fleets. Being able to rotate the buildings placement would alleviate this problem.

posted on February 15th, 2012, 8:48 am

yes, we'd like to add this at some point. i've had it working in local sessions, however the problem is that the network code requires some additional code for that, too, since only the position, not the the direction of a building is being sent. It is possible to do, but requires more time for me to understand the network code better.

posted on February 15th, 2012, 1:13 pm

Very nice to hear that!! I made that request some time ago and someone told me that it
its not shure if it can be done because it requires very much coding.

But it would be a nice feature.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 1:56 am

Thanks for clearing that up Doca.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 7:45 am

Rotatable structures, huh? I can see both sides of this idea. 

posted on February 16th, 2012, 1:34 pm

I'd be fine with just having 4 different models for each shipyard, each pointing in a different cardinal direction.  Full rotation would obviously be preferable, though.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 3:13 pm

A full rotation would be a disaster for coding... spoken from experience, even worse so if there is already a pre-existing code for static structures!

Just to rewrite a code for 4 directional options would be nasty!

posted on February 16th, 2012, 4:10 pm

if we ever integrate shipyard rotation, it would be 4 directions only (with one model file). though it'd be possible, i think 360 degree free rotation is unnecessary, gameplay wise.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 4:47 pm

Of course, of course. Look at the game Emperor: Battle for Dune. I was much newer than the original armada 2, i had only 4-corner rotation, but everyone was still happy!

posted on February 16th, 2012, 4:55 pm

Yeah obviously we would only need four directions.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 5:50 pm

if we ever integrate shipyard rotation, it would be 4 directions only (with one model file).

I think it should be 8 or 16 directions.  Will all stations get this or just shipyards.  It would be nice for at least mining stations to also get this feature.

i think 360 degree free rotation is unnecessary, gameplay wise.

I can't disagree here, though it would be fun to have.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 6:00 pm

No it would be a micromanagement nightmare. Now you pop the shipyard down in less than a second, with 4 or 8 rotations you would still put it down in a reasonable amound of time, but 360 degrees is out of the question, the placing of the shipyard would require just too much attention in the early game!

posted on February 16th, 2012, 6:37 pm

No it would be a micromanagement nightmare.

Not necessarily (rotating things with the mouse is quick'n'easy), but it would be pointless. I would love to have yards go to the right, left or just mirrored to the current positions and that's achievable with 4 directions.

You just need the 4 basic directions to build yards in a way that allows for fast repairs of raiding parties or attacked miners.

posted on February 17th, 2012, 6:27 pm

Will all stations get this or just shipyards.

As said before it would obviously be all relevent stations.

posted on February 17th, 2012, 7:28 pm

I think it should be 8 or 16 directions.  Will all stations get this or just shipyards.  It would be nice for at least mining stations to also get this feature.
I can't disagree here, though it would be fun to have.

8 directions would be unnecessary.  The Armada 2 engine (from what I can tell, at least) uses a grid system to determine station placement.  Having diagonals would mean those diagonal stations would take many more grid sections than their straight counterparts.