Ammo Management tab for Ship Window

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have added a new ammo management tab to the ship window, replacing the existing tab that held the ammo list and the parasite list. Parasites are now shown on the same tab as cargo and ground units.

[attachment=1:1uy3uzdg]ShipAM.JPG[/attachment:1uy3uzdg]
The ordnance list for the selected unit is shown on the lefthand listbox. You can select a variety of ships for the centre list box, select the amount to be moved either way using the x1, x10, x100, x1000 radio buttons and double-click to move ammo between them. There are two dropdowns above the centre listbox, which are used for ship selection. The top one has the options of Mothership, Population, TG Colliers, TG Non-Parasite and TG All Ships. This populates the lower one with a list of ships from which you can choose. Mothership is obviously just the one ship, Population is the population currently selected on the top right of the ship window, TG colliers is a list of colliers in the same task group, TG Non-Parasite is all ships in the same TG that are not aboard motherships and TG All ships is simply all ships in the task group. I will probably add some more options including colliers or ships in the same location as the TG.

The buttons in the Fast Reload section above the left hand list box are the existing buttons from the previous version of this tab. They are one button reload options which will use the default class loadout to load ammo from colliers in the same fleet, a population in the same location, the current mothership, or from thin air (SM Only).

The right-hand list box shows all the missile launchers for the class, along with any assigned missiles. This is a multi-select listbox so you can select one or more launchers, select a missile type from the left-hand listbox and press Assign. Assign All assigns the select missile to all launchers of the same type.

[attachment=0:1uy3uzdg]missileassign.JPG[/attachment:1uy3uzdg]
The top right Options section has the following buttons

Select Ship: Changes the ship currently selected in the Ship Window to the one currently selected above the centre listbox
Para MS: Sets the ammo loadout for all parasites of the same class with the same mothership to the same loadout as the selected parasite. This will use ordnance from the mothership only
Para CO: Sets the ammo loadout for all parasites of the same class with the same mothership to the same loadout as the selected parasite. This will use ordnance from the mothership or from colliers in the same fleet
All Para - MS: Sets the ammo loadout for all parasites of the same class currently on motherships in the same fleet to the same loadout as the selected parasite. This will use ordnance from the mothership of each parasite only
All Para - CO: Sets the ammo loadout for all parasites of the same class currently on motherships in the same fleet to the same loadout as the selected parasite. This will use ordnance from the mothership of each parasite or from the fleet colliers
Ammo Mgmt: Opens the existing ammo management window. It's unlikely you will need this now but I am going to leave it in just in case.

There is also a new Load Para button on the Task Group window. This reloads all parasites from their motherships using their default loadout.

Steve

[waresky]

Damned AWESOME work,usefull.

Ty Steve

[UnLimiTeD]

The buttons in the Fast Reload section above the left hand list box are the existing buttons from the previous version of this tab. They are one button reload options which will use the default class loadout to load ammo from colliers in the same fleet, a population in the same location, the current mothership, or from thin air (SM Only).

Damn, I suspect it must be pretty hard to get thin Air in space.  

[sloanjh]

Cool!!

While you're in there, did you want to think about the idea of having multiple "named" loadouts for the same class type?  This would be especially useful for Colliers, for which one might want to have both asm-heavy and amm-heavy loadouts possible.

John

[welchbloke]

Cool!!

While you're in there, did you want to think about the idea of having multiple "named" loadouts for the same class type?  This would be especially useful for Colliers, for which one might want to have both asm-heavy and amm-heavy loadouts possible.

John

This would be extremely useful and remove a major source of micromanagement.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Specifying a second or third loadout shouldn't be too difficult - its how you communicate which loadout via the UI that is concerning me at the moment. I guess there could be duplicate orders for each current load ordnance order or perhaps I use the same listbox for specifying which loadout as is currently used for picking up ground units. Or would it be easier to just have a switch on the class window for the current default loadout between several preset options?

Steve

[welchbloke]

Specifying a second or third loadout shouldn't be too difficult - its how you communicate which loadout via the UI that is concerning me at the moment. I guess there could be duplicate orders for each current load ordnance order or perhaps I use the same listbox for specifying which loadout as is currently used for picking up ground units. Or would it be easier to just have a switch on the class window for the current default loadout between several preset options?

Steve

I like the ground unit-like listbox option.

[Caplin]

I'll second this.  Consistency in the UI is a good thing, if we can get it.  Reuse can only help with this.
Is this the same list box used for things like picking up teams?

[sloanjh]

Specifying a second or third loadout shouldn't be too difficult - its how you communicate which loadout via the UI that is concerning me at the moment. I guess there could be duplicate orders for each current load ordnance order or perhaps I use the same listbox for specifying which loadout as is currently used for picking up ground units. Or would it be easier to just have a switch on the class window for the current default loadout between several preset options?

Steve

I like the ground unit-like listbox option.

Ditto

John