Slitherine

Is there a way to make the camera follow a unit or squadron during the action phase? Like you can in the Homeworld games?

Also, is there a way to control the speed of the game during the action phase? I would like to make it go slower so I can see what is happening better.

Is there a way to zoom in and out faster? It's very slow by default and annoying.

Is there a way to remove the ghost outlines temporarily so I can view the battlefield better?

Scrolling doesn't seem to work on the save game menu. Is this a bug?

I don't really see how you're supposed to use mines in a useful way. Because you have to wait 3 turns for a single mine they seem useless to me.

How do Raptor rockets work? The game doesn't explain. The game actually does a poor job at explaining itself in general.

Is there a way to select multiple units using the keyboard keys? Like CTRL-click? Or Shift-click?

Is there a formation lock button? To maintain positioning and spacing of the selected units.

What is purpose of Raptors exactly? Do they fight enemy squadrons?

Is there a way to turn your engines off? It's kind of annoying how the ships are always moving forward no matter what. I don't see a way to make them stop or reverse.

Is there a way to see if a unit is experiencing friendly fire? Seems like there really should be a friendly fire indicator.

Do Cylons experience persistent damage like the player does? I hope they do because it wouldn't really be fair if only the player did.

Is there a way to tell your unit to follow an enemy unit?

Something I'm struggling to understand about fleets. If you can only have a maximum of 7 ships in a fleet, then why would you ever use smaller/weaker ships? Seems like it only makes sense to use big/powerful ships.

Something weird I've noticed with the Battlestars. In the show the big cannons on the top of the ship are used to create the Flak field. But in the game they don't seem to do that. I was disappointed when I saw that.

Something weird I've noticed about the enemy AI is that they always seem to attack only one of your ships. They seem to ignore all of your other ships until that one is destroyed. This makes it really hard to use smaller/weaker ships because they get destroyed so easily. Is there a way to make them attack your other ships?

Does Flak hurt your own squadrons and ships?

Hi.

Riekopo wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:56 am Is there a way to make the camera follow a unit or squadron during the action phase? Like you can in the Homeworld games?

Click the squadron you want to stick with in the selection panel on the left during the action phase. It should zoom and follow in on them. However, it won't be as close up as Homeworld was.

Also, is there a way to control the speed of the game during the action phase? I would like to make it go slower so I can see what is happening better.

No. Only during the replay can you turn it to 1/4th speed. However, in singleplayer you can rewatch it as often as you want.

Is there a way to zoom in and out faster? It's very slow by default and annoying.

There should be a scrollspeed setting in the options menu if I am not mistaken.

Is there a way to remove the ghost outlines temporarily so I can view the battlefield better?

No, the ship movement icons are there during the planning phase at all times. However, they get removed during the replay. You could in theory pause your replay just before it takes you back to the planning phase and use that.

Scrolling doesn't seem to work on the save game menu. Is this a bug?

I believe it worked for me, I can't really recall.

I don't really see how you're supposed to use mines in a useful way. Because you have to wait 3 turns for a single mine they seem useless to me.

They are area denial. Meaning, if you don't want something to turn X, you toss a mine or two towards X. Meaning they either turn Y and do what you want, or hit the mines at X.

How do Raptor rockets work? The game doesn't explain. The game actually does a poor job at explaining itself in general.

They work just like munitions from a ship, except they're not really doing a lot of damage and are usually feasible for finishing low-health Nemesises or something. Get the Raptors within range and tell them to fire rockets from the lower right.

Is there a way to select multiple units using the keyboard keys? Like CTRL-click? Or Shift-click?

Shift+clicking on the icons in the unit list selects or deselects them.

Is there a formation lock button? To maintain positioning and spacing of the selected units.

There is not. You'll have to manually keep them in position, although the multiple selection and then movement does an okay job of keeping them sort of aligned.

What is purpose of Raptors exactly? Do they fight enemy squadrons?

Raptors are not fighters, although they carry weapons for self defense. Their purpose is as scouts, harassment units (boarding and thus debuffing enemy ships) and shooting rockets are low health targets of opportunity.

Is there a way to turn your engines off? It's kind of annoying how the ships are always moving forward no matter what. I don't see a way to make them stop or reverse.

There is not. The engines will always remain lit and the ships will always inch forward. Stopping or reversing isn't possible.

Is there a way to see if a unit is experiencing friendly fire? Seems like there really should be a friendly fire indicator.

There is no indicator. Generally, if a ship is in the line of fire, the firing ship will stop when it detects the friendly ship in the way. This does not go for munitions, you just have to manually make sure to clear the firing arcs.

Is there a way to tell your unit to follow an enemy unit?

No. All movement of capital ships is manual. Squadrons, when set to attack a particular target, will however.

Something I'm struggling to understand about fleets. If you can only have a maximum of 7 ships in a fleet, then why would you ever use smaller/weaker ships? Seems like it only makes sense to use big/powerful ships.

Smaller ships can fit a niche bigger ships can't manage. They can serve as scouts, extra squadrons or simply additional guns.

Something weird I've noticed with the Battlestars. In the show the big cannons on the top of the ship are used to create the Flak field. But in the game they don't seem to do that. I was disappointed when I saw that.

In the show, the main batteries contribute to the screen with airburst shells. It's the PDCs that create the overwhelming majority of the flak screen. When using flak, the main battery's effectiveness is degraded, but they will keep firing their regular shells. In the game, they will not fire airbursts.

Something weird I've noticed about the enemy AI is that they always seem to attack only one of your ships. They seem to ignore all of your other ships until that one is destroyed. This makes it really hard to use smaller/weaker ships because they get destroyed so easily. Is there a way to make them attack your other ships?

The AI has a list of priorities, which it tries to adhere to. They will indeed attempt to focus down the weaker ships, because their chances of killing that are higher than chipping away at a battlestar for 5 minutes while the smaller ships run amock.

Does Flak hurt your own squadrons and ships?

Yes. So don't launch your vipers into your flak screen.

GHawkins wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:59 am

Riekopo wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:56 am Something weird I've noticed with the Battlestars. In the show the big cannons on the top of the ship are used to create the Flak field. But in the game they don't seem to do that. I was disappointed when I saw that.

In the show, the main batteries contribute to the screen with airburst shells. It's the PDCs that create the overwhelming majority of the flak screen. When using flak, the main battery's effectiveness is degraded, but they will keep firing their regular shells. In the game, they will not fire airbursts.

Using the miniseries as an example, that's not strictly true, GHawkins. The flak field was created using only the airburst rounds you mentioned from the main batteries. The point defence cannons didn't contribute to this specific form of defence however. Instead, they created an anti-fighter screen that took the form of a continuous stream of fire. This allowed Galactica's PDC's to protect her fighter wing more directly, whilst the artillery shut out the majority of the Cylon missiles with the topside flak coverage.

Commander Scott wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 6:04 pm

GHawkins wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:59 am

Riekopo wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:56 am Something weird I've noticed with the Battlestars. In the show the big cannons on the top of the ship are used to create the Flak field. But in the game they don't seem to do that. I was disappointed when I saw that.

In the show, the main batteries contribute to the screen with airburst shells. It's the PDCs that create the overwhelming majority of the flak screen. When using flak, the main battery's effectiveness is degraded, but they will keep firing their regular shells. In the game, they will not fire airbursts.

Using the miniseries as an example, that's not strictly true, GHawkins. The flak field was created using only the airburst rounds you mentioned from the main batteries. The point defence cannons didn't contribute to this specific form of defence however. Instead, they created an anti-fighter screen that took the form of a continuous stream of fire. This allowed Galactica's PDC's to protect her fighter wing more directly, whilst the artillery shut out the majority of the Cylon missiles with the topside flak coverage.

Nope. The PDCs were the ones doing the heavy lifting for the defensive fire. Otherwise, the following snippets wouldn't be possible;

https://i.imgur.com/H7Kfwyx.mp4

The main battery contributes to the flak barrier here, however you can clearly see the main volume of fire is coming from the PDCs. It's the PDC bullets exploding around the heavy raider and Apollo's viper, not the big ones. The gif is even slow enough that you can actually see the main battery rounds shoot by, you can track them

https://i.imgur.com/pUiyl9v.mp4

Here, you can clearly see the flak screen is moving far too rapidly to be created by the main battery guns. A volley every 4 seconds is impressive for Galactica's main battery, but it can't do what you see there. The PDCs are however very much capable of turning that rapidly and projecting rapid fire like that.

https://i.imgur.com/zIKxtyb.mp4

And here, during the battle of the Resurrection Ship, you can clearly see the PDCs project flak in the path of the incoming Cylon missiles, while the main batteries are working over the Basestar. You can see tracer fire race up from the PDCs to intercept the missiles, while the main guns are not even bothered to aim or track the missiles and instead focus on the basestar. You can see the same happening with Pegasus, where her broadside armament is busy pounding the basestar.

I believe I saw you pop into the discord a while ago. Hit me up there if you want some stills because I can get you those.

So Battlestars can create a Flak field on either side. Which got me really excited because I love the show. But then I used it and saw that literally none of the guns on the Battlestar were actually shooting to create the flak field. The flak field just magically appears.

In the show you get all those cool shots of the PDC's on the sides and the main topside cannons shooting into the flak field. In the game none of them create the flak field. I really think they should fix this. It's very disappointing.

I think by default the Flak field should be created by the PDC's and main topside cannons. And then you can tell the topside cannons to stop and focus on enemy ships if you want. Which would lessen the effectiveness of the Flak field but allow your Battlestar to engage enemy ships.