Progress update 2019-06-07
At long last, this phase of the project is done! I've completed the last windows on my list which were the event log,
The Combat Overview window,
And the Fleet Orders window.
Specifically, on the Combat Overview window: system dropdown, task groups tree, fleet sync fire on/off, fire controls, display eccm, assign eccms, display current point defense mode and range, set pd mode and range, display weapons, assign 1, many, or all weapons to fc, clear weapon assignments, assign missiles to 1 or all launchers, raise/lower shields, (de)activate active sensors, fleet auto fire, fleet cease fire, display assignment summary, copy assignments of selected ship to same TG, same System, or same Race.
The Events window was halfway done in the previous update; for this update i completed: delete old events, copy to clipboard, show research only, use race colors, jump to event, select bg and text color for highlighted event type, reset color, reset all colors (with confirmation box), filter events.
And last but not least, on the Fleet Orders window I completed: select task group, display location, grav points, geo points, max initiative, current initiative, set max initiatve, senior officer, time and distance for current order or all orders, current speed, max speed, set max speed, center maps on fleet, list current ships along with their class, fuel, ammo, thermal, maint, crew, morale, grade, and training, fire delay, and sensor delay. In tab 1: display locations available for next order, actions available per location, and current plotted move. add move, remove last move, remove all moves, set min distance, set max/min amount, set order delay, cycle moves, repeat moves x times. Display fleet order of battle, save/use/delete order templates, display default/cond/escort orders, set grav or geo order. display cargo and ground unit info for fleet. Toggle moons, asteroids, task groups, waypoints, comets, lifepods, wrecks, survey locations, exclude surveyed, filter orders, show all pops, auto-routing to distant pops, auto include lagrange points, no auto-route jump check. In tab 2: select task group to protect along with distance and offset bearing, primary default order, secondary order, condtional orders A and B, start/stop task force training, combine with other task group, set superior formation, list subordinate formations, copy orders to subordinates with or without speeds, default orders, or conditional orders. Move ships between task groups in same location, split task group, divide task group. On tab 3: show task group history, senior officer in system, task force commander, officers within task group, SM set task group position to selected system and body or to capital, show average fleet training, total fleet mass, sync fire on/off, transfer fleet to alien empire with or without commanders. Tab 4: show naval organization chart, add branch, rename branch, delete branch or ship from chart, move stored branches under selected branch, copy stored branches, add ship to branch, add task group to branch, assign ship as mothership , create task group out of selected ship, branch, branch + subordinates; add to stored branch list, remove from stored branch list, clear stored list, center map on selected ship, show fleet and location. Buttons along the bottom: open system map to current task group, add colony, open OOB, create new task group, rename task group, delete task group, toggle fleet active sensors, toggle fleet shields, equalize maint, equalize fuel, save escorts, recall escorts, deploy escorts, detach ship, detach ship and escort fleet, assemble taskgroups in location into one TG, clear default orders, clear conditions.
Latest build pushed to Itch. Some commentary on a few selected features:
- Auto routes support infinitely long routes instead of stopping at 4
- Lagrange points are only auto-included for the first move. Whenever a fleet changes systems it will plot a new lagrange point jump if applicable.
- Naval Organization is more stable than in A4X, because it safely deals with cycles. In the distant future I hope to also update it so that you can have ships under more than one branch at a time.
- Delete button can delete ships from the chart instead of just branches
- Fleet can't be deleted without first removing ships from it. (In A4X if you accidently hit Yes you could lose all your ships)
- You might have noticed no support for fighters or parasites in this and all other windows; I hope to use fighters/parasites in my first test asap so I can fill in these features
- I'm pretty sure there will be more bugs to fix related to Fleet Orders than any other area due to how much you can manipulate fleets and how many parts of the game have a logical dependency on fleets.
- As you might have guessed, the majority of my time was spent on the Fleet Orders window, especially on Tab 1. I can't begin to describe how many different things can go on in that tab, but it should be fairly complete!
SO!
A new phase of the project begins, this one much more free-form. (And, I hope, a lot of fun!) It's time to start working on time advancement. I plan to start a fresh 1-system no-ai game in parallel on A4X and Q4X and conquer Sol while developing and fixing along the way. I may add some sort of achievement with a progress bar you can optionally display where the goal is to gain X wealth and Y population while in Sol, or something like that because I like the idea of having something meaningfully playable early on. I'm itching to get working on civilian AI & the external scripting concept. I'm hoping not to be on this 1-system no-ai phase for *too* long, as soon as possible I'd like to throw in one more system with some AI force-spawned so we can get into the really fun stuff.
I'll try to throw out an update sometime next week, although I have no idea what or how much I'll have done. Onward!
