Are you using the crew positioning buttons?

[shadowcrust]

I tried them out, but I find it oddly satisfying to micromanage my crew all way round. Also, whenever I've saved the positions, I lose a crew member or two, necessitating repositioning and that is just too much work

So I don't use them anymore since 20 games or so, and I'm not missing them. What about you?

[tempthomas]

I use them. Saves me 10 seconds here and there

[Leylite]

I generally use them as a way of reminding myself which crew I'm training and which crew are already gold-level: e.g. if I've already trained 2 out of 4 members of the boarding crew, I'll use the crew assignments button to keep the gold-level crew on doors and sensors, and the two trainees on the teleporter.

It also helps me remember to move everybody back to stations after having them fix systems or healing them in a Medbay - with hacking, mind control, and manning doors it's somewhat important to have everyone in place as soon as you arrive, rather than just moving them around after the battle starts.

It sure beats leaving a Rockman on the wrong side of the ship

[itg]

It took me a few games to get in the habit, but I like the "return to stations" button. It streamlines things like post-fight healing and repairs nicely.

[Levgre]

Another good, albeit uncommon use is if you have a main guy on a station, and also a 'trainee', who you want to eventually replace him with.

So you have the trainee preset spot as 'observer', and the veteran as manning the station.

But you start battles with the trainee manning. If you encounter a tough battle where you need to be at max capability, you can quickly switch around 2 people in the same room.

[5thHorseman]

I don't think I've ever clicked the buttons but I have used the keyboard shortcuts since the first game I ever played in AE. I think they're the best addition to the game, frankly.

The only thing that would be better is to have a 3rd key that would only send the selected crew back to their workstations.

[shadowcrust]

I pondered a bit. After a fight taking damage, I typically want to heal one or two crew members, whose rooms have been hit. I move them to the medbay, and then assign them back to their rooms. The buttons would not help with moving them to the medbay, and only help in getting them back if there's more than one guy to move.

If there are many crew members to heal, I have to juggle them in and out of the medbay anyway, and I can move the just healed ones back to their room to free the medbay slot. Can't make use of the buttons.

If all hell breaks loose on the ship and there are breaches and fires to avoid, the buttons are useless as well, as I have to find the least dangerous path on my own.

So actually, I have very restricted usage scenarios for the buttons which rarely come up, so I tend to forget I even have the buttons, and also forget to assign positions and then I never use them at all anymore.

But seems I'm a bit special again

[5thHorseman]

I realized I didn't say HOW I used them, just that I did. Oops

Essentially before every jump, I hit enter and everybody goes to their posts. I don't try to put anybody in their posts at any time before that unless I'm micromanaging a battle that requires micromanagement. You know the types, lots of fires and breaches and boarders and damage and warning beeps about being under 25 health and ... yeah, those kinds of battles.

At the ends of the nasty battles I run people around healing them, fixing whatever needs fixed, healing the guys again who fixed hull breaches, etc. I will manually run the pilot back to his post sometimes so I can look at the sector map (to see if there's a store or whatnot to jump to) Everybody else I just leave standing in rooms once they're not needed to repair and have full health. Everybody else heals up and when the whole ship is back up and running, I hit enter.

As I said, I'd rather be able to select the 3 guys in the medbay and hit... \ maybe - whatever - and have just those 3 guys go back to posts so I can bring 3 more guys into the medbay, but it's not THAT much of a bother to just get the guys out of the way and hit enter for all of them once done.

[shadowcrust]

One more point why I like micromanaging better: if you remember who's captain, engineer and weapon master, then you grow more attached to your crew.

Although getting too attached isn't good either, the angry spiders are always hungry...

[Jai]

I use them all the time!

Things get chaotic in battle, and it's not easy to remember which zoltan was crewing the engines and which were chillin' in shields.

Also, if I have a boarding team, I'll generally have them hang out in doors/sensors between jumps, and this is an easy way to send them back after teleporting home.