fleet autojoin and related questions

Hi all:

I'm in the middle of my second singleplayer game. Loving it but still learning the ropes (that's an understatement)! I'm very impressed by some of the user interface ideas the devs had to make a game of this scale manageable.

I've been trying to understand the fleet management, though. I had a couple of questions that weren't answered by the manual and I wonder if some of you know the answers:

1) How exactly does "auto-join" work? If I have a fleet parked in the gravity well with auto-join turned on, will any combat ships built there join the fleet? What about ships built in other gravity wells? What if there are two fleets in the well?

2) I can't find a way to select fleets from the empire tree. If I'm zoomed in, I can select a fleet by clicking the fleet icon/flag in the main UI. But on the empire tree, even if I click the fleet's flagship, it only selects that one ship. Or I can click the "all ships" icon for the system, but that doesn't just select the fleet. Or I can use ship group hotkeys like other RTS's, but then ships that have autojoined the fleet don't get automatically added to the hotkey group. Sorry, this is probably a confusing question, but what I'm getting at is "what's the best way to select an entire fleet without zooming in to the tactical level to click on their fleet icon?"

3) How do you control the jumping and movement behavior of a fleet? It seems like fleet members just jump from system to system at their own speed. Is there a way to (automatically) tell a fleet to (a) move at the speed of the slowest ship and/or (

jump as a group? I assume there is, since this has been an issue in every RTS since they invented cavalry...

Thanks in advance all, and thanks stardock/ironclad for an awesome game so far!

p.s. the manual is kinda weak. Including all the ship/building stats is nice but it should have a lot more on UI stuff like the above.

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1) Auto-join is pretty much like you described

If there's a fleet in the grav well, combat ships built/going into that grav well will auto-join the fleet. Also, you can set a rally point on a fleet from your factories, and ships built will fly to it and join that specific fleet. If there are 2 fleets in a grav well, I'm not entirely sure which one auto-join picks.

2) Click on the fleet icon on the empire tree, not a ship

That selects the whole fleet. (Also, when you set a rally point - set it on the fleet icon as well)

3) The "jump as a group" button is to the left of the Tactical Manager, it looks like green arrows. One arrow means each ship on its own, 2 green arrows and one gray means some ships are jumping as a group and others aren't (common when new ships are added to the fleet), and 3 green arrows means all ships jump at once.

Hope that helps

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Annatar -- thanks a lot. Don't know how I missed the jump as a group button. It's hard to really study the tooltips while desperately trying to get your ships to intercept an incoming fleet!

About #1. Interesting that ships jumping into the system get added too. I can see when that would be useful (reinforcements to a pitched battle) or trouble ("hey buddy, I'm just a scoutship passing through, I don't wanna go to war!")...

About #2. When you say the fleet icon in the empire tree, do you mean the icon of my empire that is to the left of the list of ships? I thought that technically meant "all ships in the well". Like, if I have a fleet, and I click that icon, it seems like it selects the fleet but *also* all other combat ships in the well. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Maybe I will start a game on "slow" just to play around with fleet UI.

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to 1: scouts don't join fleets

to 2: not the planet icon, the fleet icon. which is normally above your planets and asteroids, IF you created a fleet. which has to be done manually by selecting some ships and left clicking the "create fleet" button in fleet management. now every ship which has autojoin on (rightclick on the same button) will join that fleet, and be selectable by the fleets icon top left.
i might add that (at least for me) new auto-added ships didn't appear as little dots beside the fleet icon unless i selected the fleet and clicked create fleet once more, which updated the little dot count. possible bug?

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Zaphear, thanks. I didn't notice the fleet icon in the tree. I'll have to look for that when I fire the game up again. I've only paid attention to things that are nested under the planets in the tree but I gather there must be a "fleets" section of the tree too? Cool, that's probably what I've been missing.

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Yes, I should clarify #1 - ships only auto-join the fleet if their waypoints end in the grav well where the fleet is. If they're just flying through, they don't auto-join

but I gather there must be a "fleets" section of the tree too? Cool, that's probably what I've been missing.

Yep, all your fleets are put above all the pinned planets. Initially they aren't expanded, so you just see the fleet icon and pips for ships - but you can expand it to show fleet composition and select the entire fleet by clicking on the icon.

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to 1: scouts don't join fleets

Neither do colony firgates, at least from what I've seen.

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