Position of Ships on Starbase

[StratFanatic]

There are 4 corners that ships can dock on the starbase. Is there a way to pre-select the exact corner existing ships can move to or where newly built ships can 'spawn' from?

Only trick I figured out is to move in-out of the quadrant of the preferred corner to position a ship there, which anchors/wastes a ship at the home base. I use a cheap interceptor or scavenger, which also add to the defense tank count.

This isn't exactly a bug but thought maybe it can be fixed since it requires micromanagement for certain galaxies - ex. when moving slow ships back and forth a square or so. This also applies to generic squares although the Starbase square is more painful.

Thanks once again for the great game with terrific sound to boot. Haven't quite finished it yet but I'm hoping this makes it to the big leagues for an SWC II! Keep it up.

- StratFanatic

[OUFOOTBALLROCKS]

That is a very good question and great observation. I think the only way to achieve a particular corner is as you described by moving in that general direction and then calling your ship back.

[Program Fatebringer]

Each ship tries to move to the closest corner when parking. However, if there are friendlies already parked in that sector, it will move to join them rather than park by itself. This does mean that it will have to go farther than necessary, sometimes. This not a good thing if you need to move Freighters under fire, so a way to move to the closest square has been implemented in the game. Simply hold Tab to give waypoint orders, and your fleets will move to the closest squares, regardless of who is parked. This works only in waypoint situations where you need to go back and forth. Hope this helps!

[Tapsa]

The biggest problem with this (at least for me) is where do new ships appear at my starbase. Let's say an enemy bomber is heading for my station at the start of a game. I have just enough money to buy a scavenger. If that scavenger appears at the corner that is the exact opposite to the direction where the enemy ship is approaching from, it will have to travel an extra sector when I send it to meet the bomber. This might (and has) mean the difference between the scanveger destroying the bomber before it reaches my starbase, or the bomber reaching the base and fireing one shot at my station before being destroyed. That's 10 hitpoints lost and possibly losing the 5$ scanvenger bonus because the starbase destroyed the bomber while the scavenger was still in the other sector This has happened to me several times, of course not always with bombers, but often at the start of the game the enemies send single ships that are hard to take out due to lack of ships.

What about this: Let the player choose which quadrant of the station new ships appear if there are no ships stationed at the starbase? A simple method could be selecting the starbase, and then right clicking one of the corners of that sector. You could visually verify the selection with the standard green "move-here" dot, and maybe add an arrow or a single corner marker or something to that corner for permanent display. (To clarify that: a claimed planet has corners in the players color around it. Draw a similar symbol to the chosen corner)

What do you think? Shouldn't be too hard to implement, and this could could really help get out of sticky situations when the enemy is approaching and you really want that new ship to get out there fast.