So we know about the problem everyone has with doom stacks, not only it makes wars boring, it also makes any kind of fixed defenses obsolete and useless. How do we fix it? Well, idk if any of have played game named Sword of the stars, but it has a very simple and elegan way of dealing with fleet size.
There is a cap on how many ships can simultaneously engage in battle from both sides which is determined by presence of "Command ship"s. Every ship in fleet has a point value, lets say 1,2,4,8 points for frigate, destroyer, cruiser and battleship correspondingly. And lets say if we have no command ship in our fleet, we can only use up to 8 points worth of ships in battle, also lets assume that our enemy has a command destroyer in his fleet, which lets him use up to 24 points worth of ships in battle. So if we have fleet 1, consisting of 100 frigates and no command ships, and fleet 2 consisting of 10 frigates and 10 destroyers and 1 command destroyer. If these 2 fleets meet in battle the following should happen: fleet 1 deploys 8 frigates and tries to close with fleet 2, which deployed 10 frigates + 6 destroyers + command destroyer, 8 frigates from fleet 1 get beaten by overwhelming present force of fleet 2, and suffer losses, after that replacements from fleet 1 come to the edge of the system and try to close again with fleet 2 and so on until either fleet runs out of ships.
That kind of system achieves a few goals, it makes stacking everything in one fleet less attractive, it gives smaller empires more of a chance fighting big threats, it also gives further importance to ship design and fleet composition since its more difficult to win through sheer numbers, and, most of all, it gives us some kind of idea how powerful of a fleet we can expect player to have at various stages of the game, which allows us to balance everything else around it, starting from static defences and finishing with Unbidden fleets.
There is a cap on how many ships can simultaneously engage in battle from both sides which is determined by presence of "Command ship"s. Every ship in fleet has a point value, lets say 1,2,4,8 points for frigate, destroyer, cruiser and battleship correspondingly. And lets say if we have no command ship in our fleet, we can only use up to 8 points worth of ships in battle, also lets assume that our enemy has a command destroyer in his fleet, which lets him use up to 24 points worth of ships in battle. So if we have fleet 1, consisting of 100 frigates and no command ships, and fleet 2 consisting of 10 frigates and 10 destroyers and 1 command destroyer. If these 2 fleets meet in battle the following should happen: fleet 1 deploys 8 frigates and tries to close with fleet 2, which deployed 10 frigates + 6 destroyers + command destroyer, 8 frigates from fleet 1 get beaten by overwhelming present force of fleet 2, and suffer losses, after that replacements from fleet 1 come to the edge of the system and try to close again with fleet 2 and so on until either fleet runs out of ships.
That kind of system achieves a few goals, it makes stacking everything in one fleet less attractive, it gives smaller empires more of a chance fighting big threats, it also gives further importance to ship design and fleet composition since its more difficult to win through sheer numbers, and, most of all, it gives us some kind of idea how powerful of a fleet we can expect player to have at various stages of the game, which allows us to balance everything else around it, starting from static defences and finishing with Unbidden fleets.
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