This is probably more about Stellaris 2.0 than the current game, but I want to put it out there and get feedback.
What if Fleets were the basic unit of combat, and not just piles of ships?
What is a Fleet
A fleet is a structured collection of ships. Each ship in a fleet has location and a role, and the role determines the behavior of a ship within the fleet: a screener ship will try to remain between the flagship and the enemy, for example; while a flanker ship will attempt to encircle the enemy to fire from the side or back.
Fleets are your basic units of command. You don't send out a solo science vessel; you send out a science fleet commanded by a Science Cruiser with a number of escort Corvettes. This makes your "first contact" stance is meaningful again -- you have warships with your science vessel, so you can attack someone before they have time to research your comm frequency -- while retaining the idea that you need a science vessel to explore strange new systems.
The most basic fleet at game start is a Cruiser flagship with a number of Corvette escorts. As the game goes on, you'll get both bigger and smaller ship types, and you'll get access to more complex and larger fleet formations.
Carrier-based small ships -- Interceptors and Bombers -- will also have roles which determine their attack paths (or patrol paths). They'll have their own formations in service of their roles.
Doomstacks?
Fleets are intended to impose limitations against doomstacks. You can't pile more ships into a fleet than its organizational structure allows -- the fleet functions somewhat as "combat width", but without reserves always slotting in automatically, and with more tactical implications.
Also, having fleets as discrete units means the game can penalize you for using 2 fleets at once. Perhaps coordination problems mean one of your fleets is considered "primary", and all other fleets suffer -50% rate of fire. This still allows you to send a second fleet to lay down cover-fire to permit a losing fleet to escape, but hopefully not doomstack effectively.
Finally, each fleet would have a Flagship, and the loss of this ship would inflict a significant morale and coordination penalty on the fleet. (As modified by ethics and civics, of course: an Egalitarian + Citizen Service empire might suffer less coordination penalty, for example.)
Fleet Mechanics
Since the Flagship is intended to be a priority target, it must also be a target which can be defended by the rest of its fleet, but defenses should be imperfect to reward good tactical match-ups. Here are some ideas I have:
Reserves, Rear-Guards, and Reinforcements
Since your fleets are designed and not just piles of ships, the game won't get confused about what the Reinforcement button means.
Fleets have a fixed size based on organizational capacity, but you should be able to over-build escort ships as reserves, which immediately replace losses after a battle.
It should be possible to combine partially-destroyed fleets in order to restore one fleet or the other. Remaining ships in excess of your fleet formation's requirements might serve as reserves.
If you are losing a battle, it might be possible to field your reserves as a rear-guard for your flagship to escape. Under a "No Retreat" policy, you might reinforce from reserves during a battle instead of gaining a rate-of-fire advantage -- this would be a notable exception to the fleet mechanics, which normally shouldn't allow mid-battle reinforcement.
Defense in Depth
There should be reasons to want your escorts close and reasons to want them distant. Here are a few ideas:
Close:
Distant:
In addition to distance, you want to pick the right quadrant for your defenders. If you expect flanking attacks, you want a wing of escorts on each side of your flagship / carrier / capital ship group. If you expect charge attacks, you want denser escorts in front.
Fleet Formations
You start out with a very small number of formations, and they're composed of Cruisers and Corvettes.
Discovering new ship types (Destroyers, Battleships, Carriers, Titans, etc.) might be orthogonal to discovering new fleet formations & doctrines, but some types (e.g. Carriers) will need their own formations.
The fact that you have Cruisers available immediately means Corvettes might not need access to missiles & torpedoes -- those can be moved to the domain of Destroyers, which might even define them as a class (instead of cheap & early L weapon slot, they might have a loadout with G slots and better PD).
Fleet formations should allow you to go heavier on capital ships or escorts, to focus on one engagement range (making the others less optimal for you), and to optimize for either speed or durability, both in ship types and in reserve depth. (More reserves = slower fleet; faster fleet = better chance to retreat.)
Engineering Capacity?
Maintaining a different set of ship designs for each formation type might be optimal, but it would demand a lot more micro. Micro sucks. Therefore, there should be a mechanic which rewards having fewer concurrent ship designs, and then making the best fleets from that limited set of designs.
I'm calling that mechanic Engineering Capacity -- dunno how it'll work yet, but the point is that something should (a) justify AIs going all-in on a role-play decision to make one design for each kind of their ships, because figuring that out should be fun for the player rather than frustrating, and (b) reward the player for role-playing into a set of design choices as well.
If NOT indulging in micro-hell has a mechanical benefit, that's great for the player and thus great for the game.
Again, not sure how this'll work, just sure what it needs to mean.
Alright Already, Show Me The Damn Fleet Formations!
I don't have pictures yet, I'm just drunk-posting.
If there's any positive interest, I'll try to work something up this week.
If anyone else wants to post picture ideas for fleet layouts, please go ahead!
What if Fleets were the basic unit of combat, and not just piles of ships?
What is a Fleet
A fleet is a structured collection of ships. Each ship in a fleet has location and a role, and the role determines the behavior of a ship within the fleet: a screener ship will try to remain between the flagship and the enemy, for example; while a flanker ship will attempt to encircle the enemy to fire from the side or back.
Fleets are your basic units of command. You don't send out a solo science vessel; you send out a science fleet commanded by a Science Cruiser with a number of escort Corvettes. This makes your "first contact" stance is meaningful again -- you have warships with your science vessel, so you can attack someone before they have time to research your comm frequency -- while retaining the idea that you need a science vessel to explore strange new systems.
The most basic fleet at game start is a Cruiser flagship with a number of Corvette escorts. As the game goes on, you'll get both bigger and smaller ship types, and you'll get access to more complex and larger fleet formations.
Carrier-based small ships -- Interceptors and Bombers -- will also have roles which determine their attack paths (or patrol paths). They'll have their own formations in service of their roles.
Doomstacks?
Fleets are intended to impose limitations against doomstacks. You can't pile more ships into a fleet than its organizational structure allows -- the fleet functions somewhat as "combat width", but without reserves always slotting in automatically, and with more tactical implications.
Also, having fleets as discrete units means the game can penalize you for using 2 fleets at once. Perhaps coordination problems mean one of your fleets is considered "primary", and all other fleets suffer -50% rate of fire. This still allows you to send a second fleet to lay down cover-fire to permit a losing fleet to escape, but hopefully not doomstack effectively.
Finally, each fleet would have a Flagship, and the loss of this ship would inflict a significant morale and coordination penalty on the fleet. (As modified by ethics and civics, of course: an Egalitarian + Citizen Service empire might suffer less coordination penalty, for example.)
Fleet Mechanics
Since the Flagship is intended to be a priority target, it must also be a target which can be defended by the rest of its fleet, but defenses should be imperfect to reward good tactical match-ups. Here are some ideas I have:
- Directional Shields: escort ships have powerful shields in some arc, which means attacking an undefended flank deals more damage.
- Ramming Prows: some escorts might have disproportionate forward armor, which means less damage from frontal attacks, and also the ability to ram any larger ship which attempts to move through the escort's position.
- Blocking / Aggro: escorts must be able to defend the flagship. This might mean blocking (e.g. point defenses to shoot down missiles & bombers en route to the flagship), but it might also mean aggro management in terms of drawing fire from other ship weapons.
Reserves, Rear-Guards, and Reinforcements
Since your fleets are designed and not just piles of ships, the game won't get confused about what the Reinforcement button means.
Fleets have a fixed size based on organizational capacity, but you should be able to over-build escort ships as reserves, which immediately replace losses after a battle.
It should be possible to combine partially-destroyed fleets in order to restore one fleet or the other. Remaining ships in excess of your fleet formation's requirements might serve as reserves.
If you are losing a battle, it might be possible to field your reserves as a rear-guard for your flagship to escape. Under a "No Retreat" policy, you might reinforce from reserves during a battle instead of gaining a rate-of-fire advantage -- this would be a notable exception to the fleet mechanics, which normally shouldn't allow mid-battle reinforcement.
Defense in Depth
There should be reasons to want your escorts close and reasons to want them distant. Here are a few ideas:
Close:
- If long-range weapons are "bigger" (require more slots) then keeping the capital ships and escorts all at the same rage category means your enemies might need to use their big guns to engage escorts, which might be your strategy.
- Screener escorts which want to intercept flankers have less distance to travel to accomplish the interception.
Distant:
- If area-effect weapons can hit both your escort and your flagship, then the escorts are not blocking that damage.
- You might want to equip your escorts with more medium-range weapons instead of a small number of long-range weapons. If your ships are fast enough at closing with the enemy's escorts, you may overwhelm them, leaving the enemy's flagship vulnerable.
In addition to distance, you want to pick the right quadrant for your defenders. If you expect flanking attacks, you want a wing of escorts on each side of your flagship / carrier / capital ship group. If you expect charge attacks, you want denser escorts in front.
Fleet Formations
You start out with a very small number of formations, and they're composed of Cruisers and Corvettes.
Discovering new ship types (Destroyers, Battleships, Carriers, Titans, etc.) might be orthogonal to discovering new fleet formations & doctrines, but some types (e.g. Carriers) will need their own formations.
The fact that you have Cruisers available immediately means Corvettes might not need access to missiles & torpedoes -- those can be moved to the domain of Destroyers, which might even define them as a class (instead of cheap & early L weapon slot, they might have a loadout with G slots and better PD).
Fleet formations should allow you to go heavier on capital ships or escorts, to focus on one engagement range (making the others less optimal for you), and to optimize for either speed or durability, both in ship types and in reserve depth. (More reserves = slower fleet; faster fleet = better chance to retreat.)
Engineering Capacity?
Maintaining a different set of ship designs for each formation type might be optimal, but it would demand a lot more micro. Micro sucks. Therefore, there should be a mechanic which rewards having fewer concurrent ship designs, and then making the best fleets from that limited set of designs.
I'm calling that mechanic Engineering Capacity -- dunno how it'll work yet, but the point is that something should (a) justify AIs going all-in on a role-play decision to make one design for each kind of their ships, because figuring that out should be fun for the player rather than frustrating, and (b) reward the player for role-playing into a set of design choices as well.
If NOT indulging in micro-hell has a mechanical benefit, that's great for the player and thus great for the game.
Again, not sure how this'll work, just sure what it needs to mean.
Alright Already, Show Me The Damn Fleet Formations!
I don't have pictures yet, I'm just drunk-posting.
If there's any positive interest, I'll try to work something up this week.
If anyone else wants to post picture ideas for fleet layouts, please go ahead!
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