Are their any mods that make Fleet Combat Management easier and more user friendly

[Midnitewolf]

I asked this question in the mods section but do to my post being poorly worded, I got no actual answers.

To put it into context what I am looking for, I honestly find the Fleet Management to be very clunky, unintuitive and lacking behaviors I think it should have. There are also a ton of hidden commands that I am only now just realizing are there. I am looking for anything that enhances these aspects and adds Quality of Life features. Things like better menus, added behaviors, streamlined interfaces, more commands to do more things, anything like that.

An example of something similar would be the Mules, Supply and Warehouses Extended mod which takes things a lot of things that already exist in the game in one form or fashion but makes it easier to visualize, understand and control these things while adding new options and behaviors to do things. The "Supply Mule" feature of this mod is a prime example. It basically take the "Autotrade" function that happens when you assign a ship as a trader to a station and then allows you to control about a dozen variables including wares selection and priority. I am looking for something like this but only for fleet and combat management.

[thomasbkdk]

A mod on Steam was recently posted that makes it possible to define Which turrets to have NPC's attack.

[Alan Phipps]

Funny old thing, but discussions about scripts and mods do actually belong in the S&M forum. Over we go.

[BigBANGtheory]

Not really no, you have to micro manage. On the plus side though the X4 map and UI makes that far better than anything before but its something Egosoft have to choose to invest in. Welcome to the pro-Fleet management club

[Midnitewolf]

Funny old thing, but discussions about scripts and mods do actually belong in the S&M forum. Over we go.

Funny thing is, I got ZERO help on this part of the forum so SPECIFICALLY wanted to see if someone who might mostly focus on just playing the game instead of discussing how to mod stuff, might have run across something that would help.

Sorry if I am sounding upset, but when you SPECIALLY post in a section for a SPECIFIC reason and get your post moved to an area you know is already going to be unhelpful, it is rather frustrating.

[Midnitewolf]

Not really no, you have to micro manage. On the plus side though the X4 map and UI makes that far better than anything before but its something Egosoft have to choose to invest in. Welcome to the pro-Fleet management club

Actually there have been mods out there that offered some of what I was looking for. I ran across one called "immediate Orders" on Nexus mods but it looks like it was abandoned a long time ago unfortunately. It basically made it so you could force an order to the top of the priority list. I absolutely hate that I have to remember to "Remove all orders" if I want to countermand or change my orders on the fly. I can't tell you the amount of times I had everything fall apart because I clicked "Attack" expecting my fleet to immediately make a beeline to where I have ordered it, only to have the Fleet do something stupid like jump out of the system because my previous order was still in the que. Another favorite is ordering my fighter wings to attack a target in the distance only to have them all recalled because I want to move the carrier to another location and it decides it needs to "recall all subordinates" before it moves.

Honestly I don't mind the micro. I just want the micro to be more intuitive and to be able to do things like move my carrier independent of having to recall my subordinates or have priority commands that immediately erase all previous orders and execute the command I have given them, things like that. I am 100% sure this is possible as evidence by the old mod I found, it is just that I need to find one that has been kept updated.

[BigBANGtheory]

I personally find I spend too much time in the map interface which can be seen as a good and bad thing. Its good because its a powerful tool to get things done, but I do feel I have to micro-manage a lot because I don't trust the AI to execute orders with any intelligence.

[kyrah]

It's really a shame that there is still no hotkey to delete all commands or to set a desired command as a priority. With a mouse it takes so much longer.

[BlackRain]

I asked this question in the mods section but do to my post being poorly worded, I got no actual answers.

To put it into context what I am looking for, I honestly find the Fleet Management to be very clunky, unintuitive and lacking behaviors I think it should have. There are also a ton of hidden commands that I am only now just realizing are there. I am looking for anything that enhances these aspects and adds Quality of Life features. Things like better menus, added behaviors, streamlined interfaces, more commands to do more things, anything like that.

An example of something similar would be the Mules, Supply and Warehouses Extended mod which takes things a lot of things that already exist in the game in one form or fashion but makes it easier to visualize, understand and control these things while adding new options and behaviors to do things. The "Supply Mule" feature of this mod is a prime example. It basically take the "Autotrade" function that happens when you assign a ship as a trader to a station and then allows you to control about a dozen variables including wares selection and priority. I am looking for something like this but only for fleet and combat management.

I don't think there is anything like this yet unfortunately. It is definitely possible, but as far as I know, no one has invested the time to make it.

[Midnitewolf]

I asked this question in the mods section but do to my post being poorly worded, I got no actual answers.

To put it into context what I am looking for, I honestly find the Fleet Management to be very clunky, unintuitive and lacking behaviors I think it should have. There are also a ton of hidden commands that I am only now just realizing are there. I am looking for anything that enhances these aspects and adds Quality of Life features. Things like better menus, added behaviors, streamlined interfaces, more commands to do more things, anything like that.

An example of something similar would be the Mules, Supply and Warehouses Extended mod which takes things a lot of things that already exist in the game in one form or fashion but makes it easier to visualize, understand and control these things while adding new options and behaviors to do things. The "Supply Mule" feature of this mod is a prime example. It basically take the "Autotrade" function that happens when you assign a ship as a trader to a station and then allows you to control about a dozen variables including wares selection and priority. I am looking for something like this but only for fleet and combat management.

I don't think there is anything like this yet unfortunately. It is definitely possible, but as far as I know, no one has invested the time to make it.

I actually found a mod that does exactly what I was looking for but it appears to have been abandoned around the 3.2 update. God I really wish Egosoft would just sit down and do a once over of their UI and think about what makes sense.

The mod I found is simple. It is called "Immediate Orders" and all it does is add choice to the right click menu that issues new, priority commands, while erasing any previous command in the que. Basically if I click "Attack", my fleet drops the previous "Fly and Wait" order and immediately executes the attack order. Simple, just a single click accomplishes what 2-5 clicks currently accomplish in game. Why can't this just be available to the Vanilla game? Surely the devs know from the community how frustrating the UI command interface is just based on the number of posts asking for help or offering suggestions?

[thomasbkdk]

Have a look here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2437198154

[Midnitewolf]

Have a look here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2437198154

Yeah I grabbed that one.

What I am looking for though mostly has to do with more general commands. I think I mentioned it in probably a dozen posts now but at one point someone designed the exact mod I was looking for. It was called "Immediate Orders" but it was abandoned back about patch 3.2 and requires a dependency on another mod that was also abandoned. I just want to be able to rapidly issue commands to my ships/fleets and have them execute on those orders without regard to what orders might have previous be qued.

You see I tend to like to do my battles in the "Hotseat" usually standing on the bridge of one of ships in the CIC center (basically looking at my map) and issue orders in real time without pausing the battle. Trying to do that while also dealing with order queing and many what should be simple commands, being tied to the Behavior system makes this kind of game play, at best challenging and at worst, nearly impossible.

Prime example.

I was attempting to take a Xenon sector and had them about eliminated. I had order my AUX ship back to the gate I had entered in from because it was completely clear behind me with zero activity at the gate other than me moving ships back and forth. Thinking I had everything wrapped up, I had a fleet that had gotten torn up previously so I had had ordered out of the system back to home to repair and refi. Suddenly 2 Xenon Destroyers and support showed up at the gate I thought was completely clear and were right on top of my AUX ship. Luckily (LOL yeah right), the Fleet I had ordered how was right there so I right clicked and issues the order for that fleet to clear out these 2 Xenon DDs that were about to wreck my AUX ship. Thinking I had that taken care of and being very pressed to bring my attention back to the main big fight at the Station I was currently micro-ing to keep my destroyers from wandering into the stations range and getting killed. 10 minutes later, on the map I see 2 Xenon Destroyers entering to engage my main fleet from the direction of that gate I had my Aux ship. I zoom out to find my Aux ship destroyed and no signs of the 8+ DDs and support I had ordered to deal with the 2 Xenon Destroyers that jumped my Aux ship. I went, "What the Hell" and scramble to figure out what happened to my fleet only to find them 1/2 way home executing my original order. Of course, qued in line were the orders for them to come right back to take out those 2 Xenon Destroyers.

And asking ships of a fleet to simply product a position is a nightmare of having to go through 2-3 menus to set up a "behavior" rather than a simple click protect position and click on the map.

Or how Fly and Wait, means Fly and Die since wait apparently means wait until the enemy kills you.

The honest truth, is that I am having a much, much harder time fighting the commands system in this game than I am fighting the Xenon. That Queing system plus burying several simple commands in the behaviors menu makes fleet control a nightmare of frustration.