Tactical Interface

From SOTS

The SotS interface is both elegant and to the point, and the Kerberos staff have done their best to remove unnecessary things entirely while still providing clean and pleasant-to-the-eye functionality.
Contents 1 Camera 2 Fleet Commands 2.1 Reinforcement Queue 3 Ship Commands 3.1 Squadrons 3.2 Movement 3.3 Attack 4 Sensors

Camera

The camera is always centered on an object. You can change the camera focus to the object under the mouse pointer by pressing the middle mouse button or "f".

The camera has full 360° by 360° range in both the main tactical interface and the Sensors Interface. Hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse to change the camera angle.

Zooming is performed by scrolling the mouse wheel or holding both mouse buttons and moving the mouse up or down.

Fleet Commands

These buttons order your enitre fleet to take different stances. From left to right, the commands are: retreat, break off, standard tactics, standoff tactics, and close to attack.

• Retreat orders the fleet to withdraw from combat and plot the fastest course to the nearest friendly planet.
• Break off is used to pull a ship out of combat and retreat behind the "battle line" to rejoin the reinforcement pool, allowing another ship to come in and take its place. This command can only be used if you have an active command ship on the battlefield.
• Standard tactics is a neutral setting where it follows your exact orders. Ships will always fire at targets of opportunity.
• Standoff orders the ship to engage the enemy at maximum range.
• Close to Attack orders the ship to pursue targets and to engage at will.

While not shown here, there is a set of pulsing lines in the upper left corner, with the planet name, above the Fleet buttons. This is the general population level of the planet. See the Kerberos forums for more details. Additionally, Standoff, Break off and Retreat are described in more detail on the tactical combat information page.

Reinforcement Queue

The small orange arrow under the Fleet commands drops down the reinforcement list when clicked. This will only show up if you have a CnC ship in one of your fleets at the combat location. This list will display the available reinforcements, in whatever order you set up in the Fleet Management Interface. If you have multiple fleets at the combat location, there are some specific rules that will effect the order of reinforcements in Tactical Combat:

CnC ships are auto-sorted to the bottom of the in-battle reinforcement queue, regardless of which fleet they are in prior to combat.

The rest of the reinforcement queue is by fleet with the designated primary fleet first then other fleets in alphabetical order, with original fleet sorting as per the player assigned via Fleet Manager listing.

If a fleet did not have a CnC ship, then the ships from that fleet appear in battle in alphabetical order.

Ship Commands

The same commands available to the fleet are also available for individual ships. You can box select multiple ships that will then be listed in the HUD. You can then double click on the HUD line to filter particular ship types.

Squadrons

Squadrons (aka Hotkey groups) can be set on the fly during battle. Outside of combat, squadrons can only be set or changed if the fleet has CnC capabilities. A flight group will hold formation unless otherwise ordered. Squadrons will try to keep the relative spacing they are currently set to when orderd to move as a group. Each AI paths itself to its destination individually so there is no strict formation flying.

Movement

Movement is a simple matter of selecting the ships desired and right-clicking on an area of space.
Ships may be ordered to hold their formation and move as a group.

Attack

Attacking is a simple matter of left-clicking on an enemy ship. Ships may also be ordered to attack empty space. This allows a ship to lay down a barrage of inaccurate fire. This can also be used to rout out jammed vessels, or even cloaked vessels if their position is evident. However, not all weapons can be force fired.
Ships may be ordered to fire on a particular weapon, section, or poly of an enemy ship if they have weaponry that is accurate enough for the job. This will cause ships to maneuver to bring weapons to bear on that target. Auto-locking and dumb-fire missiles are examples of where this level of targeting is impossible.
Ships may not fire on jammed or cloaked ships accurately. However, force firing on such ships is certainly allowed.
You may issue orders to attack targets that are out of visual range through the sensors screen, if you possess the proper technology.

Sensors

Selecting the Sensors button brings up the Sensors Interface
Advances in technology will allow a player to give orders to ships from the sensors screen, target something beyond visual range and share sensor information between ships and allies.