[Suggestion] Individual autofire buttons for guns

[Nantes]

Just like the title says. Rather than a global autofire button that affects all guns, each gun should have its own autofire setting. It's really frustrating when your ship is low on missiles and the game wastes them because you forgot to remove the aiming for a gun that uses missiles, or when your boarding crew gets killed because you forgot *that* gun was on autofire too as a side-effect of autofiring your main gun. It's just a really dumb system, the current one.

Thanks.

Oh, and hi all

[Baby Fark McGee-zax]

Well, being that the error is human, I would go as far as to say the "dumb system" is not the game.

I've had that happen myself, quite a few times. I don't think individual auto-fire for each weapon is a bad idea.

You have to realize though, that there are plenty of subtle elements in this game that are defining factors of why it is so great.

To take out the depth of involvement by the user and make things more simple would possibly make the game lose a little of its magic touch.

[Life Star]

Hi.

And yes, you are 100% correct. Of course I want my ion gun autofiring on their weapons system while my anti ship drone wrecks their ship. That doesn´t mean I want to waste my missiles on their weapons system when my ion gun got it under control, anyway, though. I´d rather use it only when absolutely necessary. And when I turn the power off, that means I have to recharge it when I want to use it. Which is bad.

Good thread!

@Baby Fark McGee-zax:

To me, there is no "magic" involved in manually firing an ion gun 10 000 times per second. I´d replace the word "magic" with words like "tediousness" or "absolutely horrifyingly boring micro management"(granted, more than one word).


I´d say either individual autofiring or putting systems on hold without the need to recharge them would be nice.

[Vost]

I think that individual autofire buttons (or even one autofire button, with check-boxes under each weapon, and perhaps even a "volley" option) would be very handy. I can understand how automating the weapons further might detract from the already minimal depth of the combat, but having to time volleys and such manually is a real pain, especially if you're doing it over and over as I often do in the end fight.

[Didero]

And yes, you are 100% correct. Of course I want my ion gun autofiring on their weapons system while my anti ship drone wrecks their ship. That doesn´t mean I want to waste my missiles on their weapons system when my ion gun got it under control, anyway, though. I´d rather use it only when absolutely necessary. And when I turn the power off, that means I have to recharge it when I want to use it. Which is bad.

You can clear a weapon's target by clicking on it to re-aim it, and then right-clicking anywhere that isn't the enemy ship. That way it'll keep charging until it's full, but it won't fire anymore since it doesn't have a target.


But yeah, individual auto-fire buttons sounds like a good idea.

[Gorlom]

Hi.

And yes, you are 100% correct. Of course I want my ion gun autofiring on their weapons system while my anti ship drone wrecks their ship. That doesn´t mean I want to waste my missiles on their weapons system when my ion gun got it under control, anyway, though. I´d rather use it only when absolutely necessary. And when I turn the power off, that means I have to recharge it when I want to use it. Which is bad.

Good thread!

@Baby Fark McGee-zax:

To me, there is no "magic" involved in manually firing an ion gun 10 000 times per second. I´d replace the word "magic" with words like "tediousness" or "absolutely horrifyingly boring micro management"(granted, more than one word).


I´d say either individual autofiring or putting systems on hold without the need to recharge them would be nice.

You don't need to remove the power on the missile launcher to have the ion gun on autofire while the missile is not firing.
If you simply select no target for the missile launcher it wont fire. if it currently has a target select the launcher as if you are going to select a new target and instead of clicking somewhere on the ship just rightclick anywhere in space.

For most of us that know this tip autofire for individual guns would remove some of the magic.

[splette]

Sounds like a great idea.
Keep the Autofire button but add a small checkbox on each weapon.

The way you can disable individual weapons now is a bit complicated and confusing. Especially in the heat of the battle.

[Lurkily]

I +1 this idea. Especially with mixed varying cooldowns, I've often wanted autofire to continue with weapons whose cooldowns match, while I could manually handle weapons with much longer cooldowns.

[Gorlom]

I +1 this idea. Especially with mixed varying cooldowns, I've often wanted autofire to continue with weapons whose cooldowns match, while I could manually handle weapons with much longer cooldowns.

You can already do that. You don't need a (3-4) new button for that.

[splette]

Yes, I know it's already possible now. But it's not a very straight-forward solution and many people don't even realize that they can do that.
I, too, keep getting confused, sometimes accidentally unloding the weapon by right clicking on the icon instead of right clicking somewhere else in the screen.

Anyway, the new buttons would be a useful addition in my opinion. They don't need to be big. It could be something subtle. Like a small yellow square in each corner of the weapon icon. When you activate <autofire> all weapons would be activated by default. By a click on the small yellow square you deactivate them (like the Pegasus in my example below):