ship autolaunch towards rally point help

What is it you're ultimately trying to do? I do something like this in order to minimize the number of ships/fleets that are moving at any one time however in my case I'm talking about a game in which I will literally be building close to 400 ships per turn and ultimately will have on the order of 17,000 ships.

The greater the total number of ships that you have and the more ships that are in movement at any one time can significatly slow the game down so what I do is to have colony rally points set so that my ships are autolaunched but then each turn I go into the governors and set all ships going to my rally point to go to none. This causes the ships built that turn to just sit by the planet that produced them. I then wait a number of turns that's the same as the number of ships per fleet that my logistics can support. In my case building huge hull ships I generally can form fleets of 7 so I wait 7 turns not moving any ships and then on the 7th turn I go to each planet and fleet them by hand and send them off to my rally point.

There are a couple of things that are required to make this work. All planets need to be on the same cycle and be building the same size ship. Also this involves a lot of hand scheduling of many fleets. There are ways to reduce the tedium of this, in particular by holding down the control key and using the mouse to encircle multiple fleets so that the destination of multiple fleets can be set at one time.

However from what you describe about having different sized fleets and ships that would mean that the number of ships per fleet would be different and most likely different planets wouldn't all be on the same cycle.

I think the best suggestion is to use multiple intermediate rally points. For example if you create a rally point at the intersection of 4 sectors and set it to fleet ships as they arrive then you could set the colony rally point of all of the planets in those four sectors to go to that rally point where the ships would meet up, be fleeted there and then you could send them off to your main rally point from there. Then every group of four sectors would have it's own rally point that would be close enough so that all the ships would reach it quickly (hopefully one turn). Then instead of dealing with ships from each individual planet you have to deal with the fleets at a much smaller number of intermediate rally points.

If you're constantly changing ship size and speed this might not be what you want either but I don't see what else you could do. I have always wished for a governor function that would schedule all ships of the same *type* that way you could automatically send all small ships to one rally point, all slow ships to another, etc. but we don't have that option.

I just want to turn off the autolaunch to rally point functionality.

What you need to do then is to bring up the governors list in the Civ Manager, pick the colony rallypoint section, and then instruct all colonies currently sending ships to the rallypoints you created, to not send ships to those rallypoints anymore (by clicking None and then Update, if I recall correct).

Unfortunately if you want to send entire fleets to rallypoints you'll need to launch them and form them up yourself; there is no automation for that at present, unless you park a second rallypoint right next to a planet and make it a 'Fleet' rallypoint which would automatically fleet any ships arriving at it.

Under the circumstances you've listed, I think your best bet would be to turn off colony rallypoints entirely. Just check each planet as ships get done, and launch a fleet when you have enough ships. Sometimes automation is not a solution.

Yes, How do I turn off autolaunch entirely?

 

I would like to use rally points and assign them,

You can have rally points and not autolaunch just don't assign colony rally points.

In the Civilization Manager under governors select "Colony Rally Points". Then under "Ships going to" there will be a list of all the different rally points that have been assigned to different planets. If the only thing available is "None" then you already have no Colony Rally Points assigned and your ships should not autolaunch, if this isn't the case then I don't know what to tell you.

However assuming there *are* Colony Rally Points assigned to at least *some* planets then click on one of the "Ships going To" Rally Points and all the planets that are assigned to that Rally Point will light up in the "Locations" map. To clear the rally point assigned to these planets make sure that "None" is selected under "Should Now Go To" and then click "Update Ship Destinations". Repeat for all rally points listed under "Ships Going To". Make sure "Colony Rally Points" is selected throughout this entire process.

You can then still use Rally points but you won't get autolaunch. You'll just have to set the rally point destination by hand for every ship/fleet individually.

As an aside there's a selection for "Starship Rally Points" that behaves similarly to the one for "Colony Rally Points" except it operates on ships/fleets that have already been assigned Rally Point destinations regardless of how that destination gets set. What I was trying to tell you earlier was that instead of the above you could continue to allow ships to be autolaunched so that you don't have to launch them by hand but each turn you could use the "Starship Rally Point" governor to kill the ships destination, but if you really only want to disable autolaunch the above process is the easiest.

I said as much an hour ago.

All I did was create a "normal" rally point. There are also Fleet and Colony I think as the other options. The Fleet rally point is interesting because ships will automatically join up together when they get there. I guess perhaps I may have used the fleet rally point which triggered the autolaunching.

 

What I generally do is create one rally point for invasions, then start sending ships there and as I take out that world, I create another. I also create 'harrassment' fleets that have no agenda other than to raid the enemy and keep them from massing up at my rally point.

 

 

Colonies which have a rallypoint set will automatically launch their ships, it can't be avoided.

Autolaunching (which is set in the options screen) allows ships to launch even if the colony doesn't have a rallypoint set, but they will await your orders on the turn that you launch them.

Your best bet for forming up fleets if you have a decent-sized cluster of ship-producing colonies, is to set a Fleet rallypoint in the middle of that cluster, and let the ships build up there.  When you have enough ships in the fleet you're building you can quickly forward it on to another rallypoint by pressing T and picking the new rallypoint, or you can set an autopilot destination manually.

now that makes sense Marvin!!!

 

If I have several clusters that would also work. I guess I will have to play with the queues some to see how I can make constructors not go towards the military point.

now if someone can tell me how I can make a map to include dreadlords without the dreadlords overwhelming us in the early-mid game that would be suh-weet.

 

 

It seems that this is best accomplished with colony rally points.

No. You're still not understanding what a colony rally point is.

Colony is not an option of the rally point settings, the rally point settings are normal, fleet and attack. The Colony Rally point is a function of the colony, not a function of the rally point. The only way to set colony rally points are by using the governor to set all colonies that have no rally point to have the same rally point. The only other way to set colony rally points and the only way to have different planets have different colony rally points is to set each planets rally point on an individual planet by planet basis. You can then set planets producing military ships to go to your military rally point and planets building constructors to go to your constructor rally point.

Otherwise there is no way to direct different types of ships to different rally points except by setting each and every ship/fleet's destination individually.

You set a colony rally point for each individual planet in one of two ways. The easiest way is to select the planet on the main screen and click the rally button which brings up the assign rally point dialog box which in this case applies to the planet as opposed to a ship/fleet. This is shown in the following screenshot. The second method is to go to the colony screen and click on "Build Ship"to get to the Starport screen and then click on "Rally Point" at the bottom of the screen but the first method is far easier.

I know. I was just a little more explicit as to precisely what you click to do it.

It appeared he was confused and I wanted to be as explicit as possible. He still later thought a colony rally point was a particular setting of the rally point like fleet or attack as opposed to a setting for each planet. Also I suggested the cluster with intermediate rally points in reply 1.

One thing I didn't know was that there is an autolaunch setting in the option menu. I still only play DL which doesn't have that option. In DL setting a colony rally point is the *only* way to get autolaunch that's why I use it and then each turn simply use the governor to kill the destination.

One final point about rally points is that you can move them. Some folks create new rally points and delete the old as the action moves, it can save a little time to just move the current rally point and all the ships/fleets en route to it will simply adjust their path.

Create a map, give the dreadlords a PQ2 planet to start on. Anything bigger will make them stronger, faster!