Tagging an Enemy Fleet

posted on July 21st, 2010, 5:27 pm

Would it be possible to add a feature to "tag" enemy ships under a "Fleet Number", much like hot-keying your own fleet? 

This way when your friendly fleet is engaged in close combat with an enemy fleet, and explosions start covering ship status icons, you can switch between fleets quickly to see how the battle is progressing.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 5:55 pm

That would be awesome.  It wpuld be really cool if you could give them a set of commands attached to that, like hit and run, or they automatically destroy the entire enemy fleet, and then run back to base and repair, ect. 

It would be especially useful for enemy miners, or constructors.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 6:11 pm

That would be awesome. 

I disagree with that. It would reduce micro-management to a minimum so that even the laziest player would just have to make his numbers and klick once without the need of reacting to circumstances and surprising turns a game usually takes or can take.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 6:29 pm

Less micro-management is a good thing, more micro leads to the superfast clickers and superfast reaction time people having a huge advantage. An RTS game is supposed to be about strategy and tactics more than who can click faster.
By assigning numbers to an enemy fleet you have taken time to prepare for battle, and should be rewarded for it.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 8:20 pm

interessting idea

posted on July 21st, 2010, 8:29 pm

I disagree with that. It would reduce micro-management to a minimum so that even the laziest player would just have to make his numbers and klick once without the need of reacting to circumstances and surprising turns a game usually takes or can take.

Thats what I thought aswell, but it would be no different unless you wanted your ships on a suicide mission.  You would still have to micro their special weapons, make sure they weren't lead into a trap, or overwelmed.  It would only apply to fire and forget in certain occasions.  It would mean less micro in certain situations, making for convience, but allow for a small level of autonomous control for your battlegroup.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 9:04 pm

Just as long as you can't double hit select the enemy fleet and find out their location 

posted on July 21st, 2010, 9:43 pm

I assumed that the function would only show ships that you have tagged, and their current status -ONLY- if they are visible.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 9:52 pm

However the idea that a ship could have the ability to tag and track another ship sounds really cool aswell.

posted on July 21st, 2010, 9:54 pm

It was called the Tal'Shiar Agent, and it used to be the special ability of the Shrike.  And yes, it was really cool.

posted on July 22nd, 2010, 2:38 pm

It was called the Tal'Shiar Agent, and it used to be the special ability of the Shrike.  And yes, it was really cool.

Yep, that's what kinda prompted the idea.  I could get some Tal'Shiar agents on ships early-on, and track fleets all over the map without scouts. 

Now I'm not quite sure what to do with the Shrikes, as their 3.1.3 special only does damage to Support Vessels.

posted on July 22nd, 2010, 3:14 pm

Romulan vs. Romulan it gives you an anti-leahval spam option. Other than that people do tend to not build support ships so they can build more ships with teeth.
I thought it did increased damage to supports and still does damage to other ships, similar to cascade feedback. If it does only damage supports than that is one rather weak special.

posted on July 22nd, 2010, 3:39 pm

that is one rather weak special.

i tend to disagree. it has many uses other than killing leahval spam.

as feds i love making canaverals for sensor blackout, this will kill them.

u can use it just to annoy your enemy, if u are near their fleet, use a shrike to damage a support ship (the feds/roms have 3 of them) and make them wonder whats going on. 1 shrike can do this while the others go eat some miners etc. u dont have to decloak to use it. plus its a simple damage dealer always a good thing.

posted on July 22nd, 2010, 7:23 pm

It deals damage (about 15% off the shields of a C-17), can be used while cloaked, AND disables the engines of that ship for 5 seconds.  And we know how awesome engine disabling is.