Stacking of ships and convoys?

from Stardock Forums
After a particularly painful trek across the width of a gigantic map I have a question:

Will GalCiv allow us to stack ships into groups that we can then convoy at the movement rate of the slowest ship in the group via autopilot?

It's a real pain when one ship in a group is either faster or slower than the rest of the group, especially when that ship is supposed to be protecting transports, freighters or constructors.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I 2nd that motion. The OS/2 verion had convoys. I forgot the key combo that created the convoy but all convoy ships traveled at the same speed: the slowest ship in the convoy. When the convoy was attacked, battleships took hits before transports.
When the final verion of the game comes out and Excaliburs and BattleStars are again available, I would like to see fast transports. It does not make sense for Excaliburs to travel at 20 with transports at 1.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad did mention somewhere how to gather ships into groups, but I have yet to try it and I do not remember the sequence of key/mouse actions or where it was given. And it is not yet listed in the user's guide in the "encyclopedia". If someone will repeat the instructions I think we should test this function to see if it works well.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I think it had to do with mass selection of ships rather than grouping as discussed here. IIRC it was something along the lines of shift-leftmouse and drag to select the ships and some other key combo (perhaps control) to select the individuals ships. but don't quote me on that, I've never actually tried it (big fleets are not usually in my playing style)

As far as "fleets" go, this is a really easy way (and also less graphically demanding) to move large amounts of ships to a given point.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
"Holding down the Control key (Ctrl) while left clicking on multiple ships will allow you to select multiple ships. Holding down the Shift key while left click-dragging on the map will allow you to also do the same."

From the GalCiv User's Manual.

Although this does not make the ships "convoy" at the same speed, it is helpful to move many ships to the same location



Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
"Although this does not make the ships "convoy" at the same speed, it is helpful to move many ships to the same location"

The problem with this, as other people have mentioned, is that different ships move at different speeds. It is impossible to protect the transports in auto-pilot, even when the two ships leave from the same coordinate, have the same speed, and arrive at the same coordinate. If any enemy ship is in the path, the defending ship will go out auto-pilot and attack the enemy ship. I think that along with convoys, it would be best that ships on auto-pilot go around enemy ships until they reach their destination. It is too tedious to move all ships manually to try to protect the transports.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I would like to see the convoy feature as well, as other mentioned already, without it, Transport guarding is a pain. Thanks ! :)
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Yea, we really need to do this.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
bump.