Assorted interface questions

from Sins Forums

Hi,

Fairly new here, though RTS experienced.  Had a few questions I hoped to run by forums, as browsing posts has not yet uncovered relevant tips and I have as yet found no detailed manual for the game.  Several are interface ease of use questions, surely there are quicker ways of shifting views and manipulating the GUI...?

(edit: added) 0 Is there a setting or way of making the jump lanes and gravwells more visible / brightly colored?  The jump lanes are so subtly colored I've actually explored nodes and not realized a given jump lane line was there when it was.

(PARTLY ANSWERED (reply #1)) 1 Is there a way to warp between planets rapidly?  I tried tab key, hoping it would rotate the view, but alas.  I currently often devolve to zooming out, doubleclick the other planet, and zoom in, which is rather painfully clumbsy and slow vs what a hotkey or direct warp effect would do.  Did I overlook a feature?

2 Is there a way of sorting planets in the left-side, so that they list, say, alphabetically, or in some kind of sane order?  It seems such a beast finding things when I get past 6 planets and the left-side starts to scroll, and nothing is in any comprehensible pattern.  Is there an order?  It seems random discovery order so far to me, which is just confusing,  Currently I usually bite the time bullet and attempt to rename them AAA, BBB, CCC, or FRONT, SAFE, SHIPS, to try and keep track sanely.

(ANSWERED (reply #1)) 3 I would kill to be able to have events contents clickable to warp me to the area of interest, or to have hovers mouse-enterable to click jump to their contents.  But alas, they seem non-clickable in that way, or hovers don't let me mouse into them.  Is there a way of warping to the view of an event / hover contents?

(NOT POSSIBLE?) 4 Is it possible to set multiple waypoints?  Waypoints for different unit types from the same shipyard?

(MOSTLY ANSWERED (reply #1)) 5 What does it mean when my mineral/crystal mines say quota 0/3.  I've played several games and have not yet seen them list another number, and have not figured out what the quota is or why it is underfilled.

6 Can I unpin things like mines / buildings / hanger fighters from the left-side listings under planets?  When I try to unpin currently, they (what the hell) stay pinned.  Seeminly I can either unpin the whole planet, or am stuck with it's contents sucking up real estate.  I looked under options, but can only autopin check/uncheck for autopin of combat ships.  I feel I'm missing something obvious in unpinning not seeming to work as advertised.

(MOSTLY ANSWERED (reply #1)) 7 I read in a post recently about angle of fire of units, a given unit having side fire vs forward fire, etc.  Had I not read said random post, I would still be in the dark on that - have I totally missed some kind of game manual or hud popup on ship details?  Important info like that is in-game somewhere?

(TIP (reply #1)) 8 Is there a quick way of partioning a large fleet into several small fleets.  Since the fleet itself is visual jumble, I usually click the units individually out of the left-side fleet listing, and reform into several subfleets.  This is okay, I was just wondering if there were quicker ways.  I lately favor just keeping 2-3 subfleets and wielding them as a large fleet without actually making them a large fleet, when I need a massed fleet.  Speed/use advice therein welcome.

edit: Yes, I know about Cntl+1 and so forth, but I seemed to encountere very ugly effects where my fleet abruptly followed units subselected in that way, totally hosing up micro or lane jumping or etc.  So I've avoided that since; I'll try experimenting with that again.

(TIP (reply #1)) 9 Is there a detailed manual for the game somewhere?  Or is the closest thing a sprawled collection of semi-buried thread posts where this or that sage waxes eloquent illuminating an aspect of the game with tips and formula breakdown.  The pdf with the install seemed rather vague / high-level.

Many thanks for any tips/answers.

-evoke

12,787 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I just leave everything default on the Empire tree (the thing on the left) so I can't help you much there, but I'll answer what I can.

1. Use the z, x, and c keys. z is very close up, x is the gravity well, and c is zoomed out.

2. No idea, I just leave them the way they start.

3. I assume you mean the little cards down in the left corner? If you click on the card, it will cycle through the events that it displays. If you press the space bar, it should then take you to the selected event.

4. I don't think so.

5. That is how many refineries can be "using" that mine. If you build a refinery on a planet, it will increase the resource income for each mine on the planet it's built on, and every planet (or asteroid field, etc) one jump away from the planet. So basically, it is not a good strategy to just spam refineries on all your planets. It is better to strategically place them so that they have the most impact. Oh, and I think resource asteriods in uncolonizable gravity wells (asteriod fields, etc) can have up to 4.

6. No idea

7. It's not really important. Ships will automatically turn so they do as much damage as possible to their target. If you're playing as the TEC, you'll notice that the Akkan Battlecruiser will automatically go broadside, while the Marza stays facing at the target. Frigates+cruisers generally only have forward facing weapons. Capital ships usually at least have guns on the front and both sides, occasionally the back, but they will always turn to bring the most damage to bear on the target.

If you really want to know, you can convert the game files to txt using one of the converters in the modding section of the forums and open them up to see.

8. Press ctrl+a number key (1, 2, 3, etc) to assign groups. Then when you press the number key, you will select that group.

9. For Windows 7 and Vista: c:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Sins of a Solar Empire. In that folder, there should be a .pdf file called "manual" I don't know the exact path for XP. Just find wherever it installed the game.

Hope this helps:thumbsup:

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Some of those replies were awesome, many thanks.  (How did you know some of those things about z and spacebar and such!)

Misc, I've read that pdf manual, it's overview mostly, vs the tasty detail goodies of your post.   Thanks for posting some answers, several of those will be huge timesavers.

-evoke

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting lllevokelll, reply 2
Some of those replies were awesome, many thanks.  (How did you know some of those things about z and spacebar and such!)

Misc, I've read that pdf manual, it's overview mostly, vs the tasty detail goodies of your post.   Thanks for posting some answers, several of those will be huge timesavers.

-evoke
End of lllevokelll's quote

I knew those mostly because when I bought my laptop 1.5 years ago, the game wouldn't recognize the scroll wheel on my bluetooth mouse. I could still point+click with it, but I couldn't zoom in+out. So I had to learn the hotkeys if I wanted to play normally. btw, v is zoom in, b is zoom out. I finally got a new mouse for Xmas last week that works, but I still end up using the keys from habit.

Also, in game if you open the options menu, then go to "key bindings" you can see the list of all the hotkeys and what they do, as well as edit, add, or subtract them.

EDIT: One other thing I forgot. When you're selecting units, if you hold alt and click on a ship, it will select all of that ship in the gravity well. So hold alt and click on a light frigate, and you will select all light figates around that planet.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Each refinery meets 1 quota.Refineries reach out 1 jump to surrounding extractors.So you have an ice planet and you ut down 3 refineries.You will have met 3/3 quota and all planets 1 jump will have too.So its best to place these were you can reach the most extractors.Like 4 ice connect to 2 or 3 other planets with 3 or 4 extractors on them as well.

There is no way to tell which sides do damage that I am aware of besides looking in the files themselves.Starbases have 4 guns so 100 laser damage is divided by 4.So each side does 25 dps.Flak fire on 4 sides as well.Caps usually have 3 sides and not always divied equally.Place your ships to use the most amount of guns as you can.