[Suggestion] Volley Fire

[fibio]

First, I've got to say I'm really liking the game. My suggestion is to add a volley fire option where you flag weapons that fire together, ie, when one is fully charged it only fires when all others in the group are also charged. This would be useful to reduce micro as the lasers and such can only penetrate strong enemy shields when you use all of them at once. Also helpful would be the ability to set some guns to autofire whilst keeping control of others.

Thanks.

[Derakon]

There's relatively few situations in which this would be useful -- you'd have to have at least two weapons where you don't care which of them gets wasted against the shields. If all your weapons are burst lasers or the like, that's fine, but if you have a heavy laser, hull laser, or ion cannon in the mix, you typically want them firing just after the other weapons, to give them a better chance of making it through to the systems (or empty rooms, for the hull laser) underneath.

[jahlmaar]

Yes this is very much needed.

[Gorlom]

Too much hand holding imo. use spacebar to pause the game when it is time to fire.

On of the strong points of this game is the important micromanaging. Micromanaging can become pointless and just tiresome, but I don't think deciding how to fire your weapons has done that and is something that should not be simplified.

[Drasha]

Too much hand holding imo. use spacebar to pause the game when it is time to fire.

On of the strong points of this game is the important micromanaging. Micromanaging can become pointless and just tiresome, but I don't think deciding how to fire your weapons has done that and is something that should not be simplified.

This isn't hand holding. Hand holding would be when your system auto targeted the right systems and fired in the best pattern. The ability to set up auto fire groups is getting the interface out of the way so you can spend your time doing enjoyable things like planning where to shot or managing your crew. The more the interface is out of the way the better the game is.

[Gorlom]

Too much hand holding imo. use spacebar to pause the game when it is time to fire.

On of the strong points of this game is the important micromanaging. Micromanaging can become pointless and just tiresome, but I don't think deciding how to fire your weapons has done that and is something that should not be simplified.

This isn't hand holding. Hand holding would be when your system auto targeted the right systems and fired in the best pattern. The ability to set up auto fire groups is getting the interface out of the way so you can spend your time doing enjoyable things like planning where to shot or managing your crew. The more the interface is out of the way the better the game is.

I disagree with you on all points, good sir.

[Drasha]

I disagree with you on all points, good sir.

That's all right. I view any option that allows me to reduce the number of clicks I need to make to do what I want as a good thing. Heck I wish there was a fire all button. (there wouldn't be that many situations where I would actually want to use a autofire group)

[HunterZ]

I'm going to post here to show support for the OP in the face of all the nay-saying, as I've thought of and suggested this idea before too (and got mostly the same response).

Maybe a compromise would be to only allow it in Easy mode? Surely hardcore players would never be caught dead playing in that mode in the first place, and would therefore not care what is added to it...

[Durus]

I almost agree with the OP.
The problem is the ION weapons you always want to fire first so that they hit the shields.
The other one is beam and ION/Laser weapons. You actually want the beam to fire just AFTER the laser usually as you want the laser to take the last bar of shields.

[Trylobyte]

This would be a great addition for ships with multiples of the same weapon, IE the Kestrel B. It's also not uncommon for me to wind up with multiple varieties of burst laser that I'll always volley-fire. It's not going to work well with mixed weapons systems of course, but it would be good for multiples of the same or similar systems.