Ordnance Series
Ordnance Series is similar in concept to Unit Series. You specify a connected group of missiles, or other ordnance, along with the priority of each one. When a ship tries to load its normal ordnance loadout and cannot, it will look instead for lower priority ordnance in the same series.
Ordnance Series are created on a new tab in the Class Design window by clicking the Create Series button. They can be renamed or deleted. The top item of ordnance in the series is the highest priority, with the others shown in descending priority.
Three sections are shown on the new tab. The left-hand section contains a treeview of existing ordnance series. The centre section contains a list of ordnance available to the viewing race that has not been assigned to a series. This can be filtered by removing obsolete ordnance, or by showing all ordnance, regardless of series assignment. Clicking on an item of ordnance in the centre section will display the details of that item in the right-hand section.
To assign ordnance to a series, drag and drop any ordnance item to that series.
- Dragging an item to the name of the series will place the item at the top of the priority list.
- Dragging an item to an existing item in the list will place the new item just below the existing item.
- You can drag an item from the centre section, or from another series.
- You can drag items within a series to change priority.
- An item can only be in one series at once, so dragging an item from an existing series to a new one will remove it from the old one.
Clicking an item of ordnance in a series and clicking the Replace Lower button will check every class loadout for any lower item in the same series and replace it with the selected item. There is a waning popup before this executes. For example, if you clicked Theseus II-E and clicked Replace Lower, any class that currently has Theseus or Theseus II missiles in its standard loadout will replace those missiles in the standard loadout with the Theseus II-E, consolidating any duplicates. Note this is only changing class templates, not missiles loaded into magazines.
When a ship tries to load ordnance, through movement orders, loading from a mothership or loading from a collier in the fleet, it will cycle through the ordnance in the class default (or the ship default if an override is in place). For each item, it will try to load the specified item first. if that is unavailable, it will work through the other items in the same ordnance series that have a lower priority, in descending order of priority, to see if they can be loaded instead.
A ship will not load a higher priority item, even if it is in the same series as a standard loadout item that is not available. This allows you to control which ships will have access to each item in an ordnance series.