It would be nice if carriers had a pause button, which causes them to stop at their next waypoint (or, if they’re already parked on a system, to stay where they currently are) and wait until they’re unpaused.
Sometimes, I have carriers in a loop ferrying newly-built ships to systems with a warp gate, but I think “these systems might be attacked soon, it might make sense to just stop moving ships off them for a while.” I could delete all the waypoints from each carrier, but then I’d have to re-create the movement orders later. Being able to pause them indefinitely without changing their waypoints would make this much easier.
You can already do this! It’s not hugely obvious to the player, though- just click again on the latest system you’ve already added to the route. You’ll add an extra step to your flightplan, pausing your carrier at that star for one tick.
Really could do with being made more obvious, but it’s possible.
YEah, this is a good idea. I never no want to do when a huge invasion fleet smashes into my empire. Its such a pain to have to reprogram all my looping carriers.
I mean, it’s not as good as a build in pause. However, it’s better than Exceptions method.
Open the carrier screen, click edit next to the first command with a 0 under the delay column. To the left of the screen is a box and label saying Delay. Enter a really high number into this box and the carrier will stall until you remove it.
I do use delays (although, I’ve noticed some bugs with them not counting down on tick—I haven’t seen it enough times to be able to usefully report it, though), but the advantage of a pause option is that you could put some kind of UI gloss—like a “pause” icon—on the carrier icon, and in the Galaxy -> Carriers list, to show that it’s paused. That way you can see at a glance which carriers you’ve got paused.
(Some indication of ship delays would also not be amiss. Off the top of my head, maybe the same pause icon but with the number of ticks delay next to it?)
I think a recall option would be better than pause. If you recall then any loops or destinations should be removed on that carrier. Once you recall and save it, you cannot take it back. You can still create new paths if you need.
These two ideas serve completely different situations.
The whole point of the posted idea is to allow people to temporarily stall carriers from moving and then restart them later without having to manually recreate the waypoint paths.
You can already “recall” carriers by clicking the large X button when editing the path. This button will remove all waypoints like you suggest. It’s not a bad suggestion to also have an X in the carrier status screen, however it doesn’t solve the same problem as the original post.
I like the idea of pause, though agree that delay should work – but pause would be better. I’ve also seen the delay not count down – I think the times I’ve seen it has been after I’ve gone in and checked on that carriers orders – perhaps the delay gets marked dirty on the client and then overwrites what’s on the server after the tick changes?