Let’s say another empire just declared war on you. And you see that one of their fleets is coming toward the only fleet you have in the region. And that lonely fleet had lost many ships recently in a previous battle with pirates.
So you press on the “Top up fleet with ships” button, in the hope that the new ships will be completed before the enemy fleet arrives in the system. But...
... In its wisdom, the AI decides to build the missing ships in the opposite end of your territory. So you’re screwed! Even if they would be built before the enemy fleet arrives, they would never reach your diminished fleet in time.
The solution to the problem
Searching the game’s manual for something else, I stumbled, on page 53, on a game functionality that I didn’t know existed, that would be the perfect solution to the problem described above if it was added to the “Top up fleet with ships” button.
I’m referring to what happens if you click on a ship in the “Build Order” tab of the “Ship Construction” section of the control center. The construction yards are then displayed on the map, as clickable tags. And each click on one of those tag add one ship of the selected type to the build order. But the important point is that the ship will be built at the clicked-on construction yard.
Here’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about:
- Construction yards as clickable tags.jpg (382.1 KiB) Viewed 760 times
What I envision is that clicking on the “Top up fleet with ships” button would also display the construction yards as tags, allowing the player to click on the ones where he or she wants the fleet’s missing ships to be built. And then, the game would split the ships needing to be built among the yards selected by the player.
To me, that has the following advantages:
- As good of a programmer Elliot is, it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to code an AI that would be as proficient as a human being in identifying the best yards to use to complete the fleet. Especially if we’re talking AI versus a good player. So letting the player select the yards is better.
- Not having to invest in perfecting the AI to make better yard selections, mean that there’s more time and energy to invest elsewhere.
- A good chunk of the code needed to add that functionality to the “Top up” button already exists in the game.
