Mass Activating Skills

Good question, sadly I don't know the answer but maybe a bump will get someones attention that does know.

Surely this isn't a tough question to answer....maybe I'm just being impatient...

I don't know if there's a way either, I really wish I did <_< This is especially true with things like Assailant/Sentinel range bonus+ae, where I really have no reason to micromanage each one but don't like the way autocast handles it.

Tab targeting does work, if I'm reading you right on what you're asking. If you have a group of 20 ships selected, hitting tab will cycle your ability focus through the selected ships, which is particularly nice with groups of caps. Shift+tab goes the other way, by default.

Yea, autocasting can be a real hassle, especially if I'm sending a unit from the factory directly into a battle where I don't autocasting turned on. Its 1 more thing to micro. I wish there was a way to set the autocasting default from "enabled" to "disabled".

Hi,

Unfortunately there's no way for you to do what you describe. Activating abilities applies only to the single subselected unit. In stack view, only the unit on top of the stack is subselected, and there's no way to subslected other units in the stack. (This MAY be addressed in an upcoming patch.)

So if you want to force the ability on all twenty illuminators, you would have to First, make sure your not in stack mode. Then hit q to cast, tab over to the next illuminator, q again, tab-q-tab-q-tab, etc. For all 20 frigates.

It's kind of a pain, but for each example that you can give for why abilities casting should apply to the whole selection, there can be a compelling counter example for why it should be this way. In the end, given the quality of autocast behavior, i think they made the right choice.


The good news is auto-cast toggling DOES apply to the whole group. And auto-cast can and should be trusted to handle nearly all frigate abilities. If you're taking the time to cast frigate abilities manually (some capship abilities are a different story), then you're probably missing the point, because you should really be taking that time to continue developing your economy.

In most cases the unit is built with auto-cast on by default and you don't really have to mess with it.

The only exception as mentioned above is the assailant/sentinel range thing. Because it disables movement and can cause some really wierd things to happen. I haven't used this ability enough to come up with a good way of dealing with it, but I think you just need to turn autocast before battles, turn it on when you want them to use hte ability,a nd remember to turn it off afterward. With any luck, the autocast behavior for this ability will be improved in a future update.

Hope this helps.

Yes, I just wish there was a way to specify (for example, have all my illums use their ability when I hit it, but only one of my Iconus's.) however, I do agree, the overall intelligence of the autocast system does help (although more customability is always welcome!).

I think that what you are look for, require for your ships to be both in a fleet AND for the stack command to be turned on.

Once I had 8 Stilakus Subverter in a stack, while in a larger fleet. I then told the stack to use there Distortion field abilitie on a group of TEC ship(I was playing against the AI at the time). All 8 ship jumped and used there Distortion fieled together. And at the time I didn't think any thing of it. I mean sence the auto cast for all 8 could be turned off with one command, while in a stack, then why not for using the abilities too.

I tried it again on other TEC fleet, but only 3 jumped?!

The only reason that I could think of was that the fleet AI controls the group actions of the stack. That would explain why 3 jump instead of 8, when the second TEC fleet, was smaller. I also found that it took a whole min, to carry ou the command, for some reason. Also it does not work, for ever type of ship. If I was to use the Overseer reactive abilitie, it would use only one ship, but would still show that the abilitie has not been used, even when I can see that the very ship that I commanded did in fact used that abilitie. I think that it just leaves the abilitie open as not all the ships have used that abilitie.

You need to unstack and manually activate the ability on the intended targets. This can be a royal pain in the keyboard if you have a large fleet with loads of fighters filling up the area.

One major downside to SINS... You can't delegate orders or queue things up when paused. Also, stacking fighers/bombers leaving your fleet unstacked would be nice. Would be sweet especially for when you want to FRAPS a battle.

What is this "stack command" exactly? I'm still fairly new to the game--and while I know what it is, how do I go about activating it/intiating it/using it?