Please let us be able to select the direction a shipyard auto-launches

Whine whine whine, moan moan moan, complain complain complain.  :P

I say the above in a joking manner because I know it's come up more than once during early access. ;)  But I really would like to have the ability to set the direction a shipyard launches, like we could in GC II with starports based on planets.  It doesn't matter so much for colony ships, because you can choose not to launch when it is built.  But for contructors with limited moves, or other low movement ships, it can be very annoying to have to waste movement piloting around the shipyard to get to the other side of it.  Especially in the early game when ships have very little movement points.  And if this isn't possible, perhaps a toggle to trigger autolaunch (either by shipyard or universal setting) on or off so the hardcore players can manually launch all newly created ships if they choose?

I suppose I could set (and reset and reset) rally points for each individual shipyard one square away from the shipyard to simulate a directional autolaunch. But that seems something of a pain.  Especially as it could easily clutter up the rally point list VERY quickly on maps with a decent number of shipyards.  It's already a bit of a task to sort through the rally point list when there is a large number of planets, starbases, and shipyards.  Adding a bunch of directional launches to all my shipyards makes me think it will make that list even longer.

If this is something that can't be put in as a polish point, I guess I'll make do with rally points.  But I personally would like the option not to have to use them all the time. :)

2,219 views 4 replies
Reply #1 Top

agree, choosing where to launch or having the ship always appear on top of the starport would be nice.

Reply #2 Top

  I Agree, a simple selector with 6 arrows would be fine and easy to see.

Reply #3 Top

Rally points can be used to affect the auto-launch direction - ships will launch in the tile closest to the rally location.  If you want, you can put a rally point right outside the shipyard and set it to rally there.

Reply #4 Top

Quoting Tohron, reply 3

Rally points can be used to affect the auto-launch direction - ships will launch in the tile closest to the rally location.  If you want, you can put a rally point right outside the shipyard and set it to rally there.
End of Tohron's quote

I said as much in the OP. :) But I've been expermenting with it and, as I thought, it's a bit of a pain.  First off, yes established Rally Pioints do have their own submenu in the select rally point screen, so that's something.  But they still clutter up the main list. Worse, and I feel this is a genuine complaint, the big honking huge arrow that bobs up and down can totally obscure smaller ships, especially tiny ones.  Sometimes  I have trouble clicking on them and get the rally point instead.  From a elegance viewpoint, I also find the fact that my ship can be totally obscured or nearly totally obscured to be a bit annoying.  But that's more a matter of taste, I suppose.

So yes, it can be simulated.  But I am still finding it somewhat of a kludge in actual gameplay.