Fleet interface and other improvements in Retribution 1.1

Hi all and happy New Year!

I would like to tell you about a cute little change we will be making in Retribution 1.1.

First off, I know for a fact that all the fleet leaders out there just love to move people around in fleet. I mean, what is there not to love about the 5-layer right click menu they get to use for every single pilot they want to move?

Well, as great as it is now, it appears that not everyone loves those menus, as some of you have been asking us to implement drag and drop to move people around in fleet. When I read the first post suggesting that, I thought to myself, "Yes of course we should do that, it makes perfect sense and would simplify this moving business so much".

So that is the cute little change: after Retribution 1.1 you will be able to drag people in the fleet window, and drop them on the wing or squad you want them in.

It's worth noting that this change will only simplify the process, but the rules for the organization of fleets are still the same. To refresh your memory, here are the rules:

• there can be at most 10 pilots in a squad, including the Squad Commander
• there can be at most 5 squads in a wing
• there can be at most 5 wings
• a fleet can only have 1 Fleet Commander
• each wing and squad can have only 1 commander
• the commander positions do not have to be filled
• Wing Commanders can move pilots around in their own wing, including making people Squad Commanders
• Fleet Commanders and Fleet Bosses can move anyone around in the fleet, including making people Squad and Wing Commanders
• Fleet Bosses can make a pilot a Fleet Commander
• when free move is on, anyone can move themselves in any squad, but cannot appoint themself as Wing or Fleet Commander (unless the rules listed above allow them that)

So how does this drag/drop business work? It's very simple:

• when you (as a commander or Fleet Boss) try to move people around, the "cell" you drag them over is highlighted white if you can drop the pilot there, otherwise it's highlighted red (meaning you are not allowed to move them, the position is filled or the squad is full)
• if you drop a member on a Fleet/Wing/Squad Commander "cell" and there is not member in that position, the dropped member will be moved to that position
• if you drop a member on a Fleet/Wing Commander "cell" and there is member in that position, nothing happens ("cell" would have red highlight)
• if you drop a member on a Squad Commander "cell" and there is a member in that position, the dropped member is added to that squad if there is room in it
• if you drop a member on a squad member, the dropped member is added to that squad the other member is in

*cell = an entry in the hierarchy view of the fleet.

And where do you find those people to drag?

The most obvious place would of course be in the fleet window itself, but you can also drag people from the watch list, channel member list, contacts list, fleet composition window, and pretty much anywhere you have a character listed.

One of my favorites about this feature is that you can drag and drop a character link from chat, which can be pretty handy when you ask people to "x up".

Up to this point I have been talking about moving pilots who are already in the fleet, and that is what I originally set out to do.

When I was testing my work, and I was dragging people from all over the place to move them in the fleet, I felt it would be a bit strange to leave out those poor souls that were not lucky enough to be in the fleet already. If I'm organizing my fleet and I want my dear friend skills as a Wing Commander, who cares if he's already in the fleet or not? I'll just drag him over there and if he's already in the fleet he's moved, but otherwise invited to the fleet as a Wing Commander and will fill that position if he accepts the invitation.

Additionally, if you just want to invite someone to be in your fleet as a general member, and don't really care in which squad they land, you can drag them onto the "My Fleet" tab and they'll be invited to your fleet.

I think it would be super cool if it was possible to mass-move members, for example to select and drag all the logistic pilots in the fleet composition window and drop them in a squad, but that improvement will have to wait for now.

I hope you like this feature and that it will make your lifes easier when you are organizing your groups to go kill others (or hug, or whatever it is you like to do in your fleet ops).

In addition to these awesome enhancements, we have done a few other Little Things recently:

• When you drag a fitting to the Quickbar tab in the market, the ship itself is now included in the folder that is created in the Quickbar and contains all the fitted items
• Logs in the Notifications and Log window are not cleared anymore on session change, so you can try to figure out what the hell happened when you got podded without having to find the log file for the fight
• The module tooltips were added to the fitting window (and actually A LOT of new tooltips were added, but that was continuation of a work done in the fall). This will for example allow you to easily see how damaged your weapons and crystals are while docked
• The windows to edit corporation and alliance details are no longer modal, which means you can add links (such as Kill Reports, websites, corporation recruitment ads) to their descriptions.

With lots of love and all that stuff,
-CCP karkur

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