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[Shekelstien_bandit]

As I get more and more into the game, my need for speed with my progression accelerates, but there are somethings, and with a few friends who play the games, i think can be more streamlined to be more efficient with game play, but even user friendly.

Im going to list off what im talking about with the ideas I have in my head, and yes im aware that the dev team cant make everything perfect, and im sure they're working hard with trying to get the game to their liking  and to the liking of others, and with other things outside of development have to take place within the time it takes to do all that , but criticism is good when its constructive so here I go:

the games fleet management takes too much time with the current UI. Now lets say im someone who has amassed a nice sum of wealth, and I have quite the lot of ships in my fleet, the one thing I spend the most time on is fitting those ships, clicking on each ship and either auto fitting, restoring, or custom fitting them. Now the problem im having and seeing is, even with the 30 vanilla cap, It takes too much time to go through each ship to fit them or auto fit them to my liking. Now what Im suggesting is instead of having the UI how it currently is(with the ships showing vertically and no way to categorize them.) i think itd be less time consuming to be able to put your ships into groups within the fleet, sort them by ship type/class (Frigate, Freighter, Civ Trans, cruiser, capital, etc..), and have a way to fit all the ships within the group that are the same, and or the ones that at least have the same AutoFit's(by a check box method to where you can check individual ships within the group or fleet screen and choose what to do with those ones. This can also extend to restoring ships with a UI symbol that symbolizes that the ship can be restore rather than just clicking each ship to see if it can or cannot(Im not sure if this takes away from the whole 'do it yourself low tier starfarer' style of the game because i do feel like thats some semblance of hand holding.) but by categorizing the ships and looking at them in a sorted order, instead of the order of purchase, i feel like would take less time out of fitting the ships. If I can look at all my Wolf class's and fit 4 of them to a balanced build, 4 to point defense, and 2 to support, and then customize the ones i want to customize myself, all in the matter of less than 5 minutes, then the rest of ship customization looks more friendlier to me then it does now. Personal experiences with the current UI in my earlier playthroughs scared me away from ship customization because it took too long, and ive now just been getting into it with the help of the console command mod because I can literally do way more way quicker(but thats only because im a puss puss casual so that being added to my experience isnt effecting my suggestion and opinion of the game, just what the base vanilla game is). If i explained this in a bad way, or if anyone wants a TL:DR: I think if the game had a way to group up and categorize ships to a certain sort order or liking, with a more refined UI, new and fast approaching players(In my case my autism really hinders me from taking the time to learn things, so instead I jump right into things head on and learn from trial and error) would have an easier time fleet management within that regards, and combat could be funner. Because seriously, whats funner than loading up 10 heavy missile capable ships with smaller ships that can act as point defense, and being a wall against that 25 shipped pirate fleet that decided to just sneak up on you.

Also side not: I dont think badly of this game, we all know it could use improvement, so heres my 2 cents. Thank you for taking the time to read fellow forum goes and possibly the dev's.

[LucusLoC]

Options I would like to see for fleet management:

• Sort options: Size, class, military/civilian, cargo capacity, various costs and requirements, D-mods type/number etc. (bonus, a custom sort option based off the blueprints screen that lets you rearrange ship classes and set a sort name for use on the fleet management screen)
• Multi-select for storing/selling ships at a colony.
• In the refit screen; ctrl/shift+select to mass set load-outs (bonus, include options to either leave slots blank if equipment is unavailable, or fill in with alternatives, as well as whether to allocate unused points automatically or leave them available)(bonus #2, "set all ships of this type to this load-out" option)(bonus #3, more preset options. Sometimes 4 is not enough).
• In the refit screen; a highlight option to show non-standard components/empty slots for the selected load-out.
• Preset deployment groups ("fleet elements") for the deploy/reinforcements screen.
• "Deploy orders" for battles (or better yet, a box to arrange ships in before battle start, should also work with the fleet elements feature). No more having the capital ship tank deploy at the very back.
• A "fleet formation" screen so we can set our deployment formation for involuntary battles (or just give us a deployment box there too, but that may give us too much flexibility and become a balance issue). 
• A "retreat all ships below X% CR/hull integrity" orders button. (Bonus points for having a checkbox to make it a standing order and ships will automatically retreat themselves.)
• The ability to set orders for a group of selected ships in battle, instead of having to select them one at a time. (my personal example? I like to set "search an destroy" on a small group of ships, but I can currently only use that order when single ships are selected, not groups)
• Related to fleet elements, and order to "stick together" without having to set a dedicated "escort" ship (and therefor have a single point of failure for the "group")
• Ctrl+# groups for ships in the battle space. (bonus, the ability to automatically add ships to a specific number group as they are added to the battle. e.g. "add all "carrier" class ships to control group #4" or "add all ships from Fleet element 6 to control group 6")

[SCC]

Preset deployment groups ("fleet elements") for the deploy/reinforcements screen.

That one is in already (kinda, maybe), though it's somewhat obscure. You can select a deployed group of ships in combat, set them to one group using CTRL+1 (or 2, 3, so on) combination, then press 1 during the next deployment screen.

A "retreat all ships below X% CR/hull integrity" orders button. (Bonus points for having a checkbox to make it a standing order and ships will automatically retreat themselves.)

Check out Automatic Orders mod, it can do that.

Ctrl+# groups for ships in the battle space. (bonus, the ability to automatically add ships to a specific number group as they are added to the battle. e.g. "add all "carrier" class ships to control group #4" or "add all ships from Fleet element 6 to control group 6")

I did not look low enough. Have you tried that, or did you just assume it's impossible? I'm asking just in case Alex has removed this feature somewhere along the way, which is unlikely, but possible...

[LucusLoC]

 could have sworn I tried it already, but I double checked and it does work in battle. I am not having much luck getting it to work for deployments though, but that may be due to running a bunch of expendable ships. . .