Suggestion: Individual Ship Retreat

[RobT99]

I suggest allowing individual ships to automatically attempt to emergency warp out of combat when seriously damaged. This would be triggered when a specified % of hull damage is received. I suggest 90%hull damage, but this is just an arbitrary number. The retreat would have a chance of succeeding based on a few factors.

Precondition: Emergency Fleet Retreat must not be on cooldown.
#1 a base value of say 20%.
#2 modified by ship evasion, say 10% of ship evasion. (giving smaller ships and higher tech ships a small increase in success.
#3 modified by current combat odds. Enemy Fleet strength in system divided by Own fleet strength ion system. multiplied by 3% Only applies to outnumbered fleets. If your fleet is bigger, no bonus. This may not be realistic, but I believe it will help in game balance. See below.

Example: (sorry if I am fudging numbers, I don't have specific ship evasions memorized and such) A corvette with 60% evasion belongs to a 5k fleet, fighting an enemy 15k fleet. The corvette crosses the 90% threshold. The corvette will attempt to emergency warp out : base 20% + 6% (10% of ship evasion) + 9% (3/1 odds x3%) for an attempt chance of 35%.

Example: A battleship with 0% evasion is involved in the same fight as above. However it is later in the fight. Friendly fleet has been reduced to 3k without any loss to the enemy fleet. The battleship passes the 90% threshold. It will attempt individual evasion: base 20% + 0% ship evasion + 15% (5/1 odds x3%) for again a 35% chance.

Example: A battleship with 1k power is the last ship alive in the above example. It passes the 90% threshold. It attempts evasion: base 20% + 0% ship evasion + 45% (15/1 odds x3%) for a total of 65%.

Example: A cruiser with 20% evasion is on the bigger (15k) side against the smaller (5k) fleet at battle start. The cruiser passes the 90% threshold. It attempts evasion: base 20% + 2% (10% ship evasion) - 9% (3/1 odds in own favor x3%) for a chance of 13%.

Note: Another [possibility would be to allow emergency individual retreat only for the losing fleet.
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When a ship performs an emergency warp it is removed from the game temporarily. Follow the standard times for how long a ship is "lost in the void" or whatever when performing a fleet emergency retreat. Next add the time to repair the damage sustained. Next add some sort of small penalty increase. (I do not consider this as a means to sustain a war, rather a means to recover from a loss.) After the end of this time allotment the ship is added to a pool of "lost ships". This pool appears in the spaceport build menu as "re-commision disabled shipname Corvette: x available" These ships can be built (rebuilt) at a spaceport for say 20% of cost and time. Up to the number which successfully disengaged.

Option: Spaceport module: Repair Yard. Allows re-commisioned ships to be rebuilt at 5% cost (or no cost) and 10% build time.
Option: Admiral abilities altering retreat chances.
Option: Edict altering retreat chances and repair cost.​

Notes and thoughts. This will be a small inconvenience against doomstacks. Not gamebreaking against them since they tend to take negligible losses anyways when in the advantage. This will not help a smaller empire to win a lost war. The intent is to give a losing, outnumbered empire a a little boost in recovery after a bad war. I just started playing a couple of days before Heinlein. So my experience is not much. Thanks for reading.

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[Aries666]

I'm not sure it would make much of a difference if set at 90% hull damage because the way combat mostly works is that 1 ship gets focused down at a time so probably wouldn't even get a chance to escape with the sheer volume of incoming fire. There is also the added problem (particularly if the threshold is lower) that you are effectively limited to fighting with x% less of your fleet power. I think it is sufficient to order whole fleets to disengage as you can tell pretty early on in a fight if you are going to lose, the only exception being a fight against a fallen empire (their fleets have too much damage concentrated in too few ships making them very susceptible to swarming)

 

[RobT99]

I see that the 90% threshold would be unworkable. Perhaps it could be calculated upon ship destruction? So in effect a small percentage are able to slip away with seconds to spare. That wouldn't affect combat. It would however give the loser a small recovery boost down the road. My goal is really after war recovery, not to supply an endless stream of cheap combat replacements Perhaps having ships not becoming available to be recommissioned until peacetime? As it is now, one bad battle can be game ending.

 

[Philthy]

I think there is some merit here. I would simplify.

Upon taking (100-((evasion+10)÷10))% the ship attempts an emergency jump taking (10-(evasion/10)) days. if the ship survives it is added to a phantom fleet of ships temporarily lost in space. then if the entire parent fleet retreats or is destroyed, the struggling remnants are brought back to relative safety, but severely (1hp) injured. they must be repaired.

 

[MrSoulbinder]

It is not exactly what you want, but I made a mod that grants a ship a chance to retreat heavily damaged instead of being destroyed. SGM Battle Survivors is meant to address the "One-Big-Battle-Winner-Takes-It-All" problem. The inferior party in an engagement is given a chance to retreat ships heavily damaged, instead of having them destroyed. This effectively reduces the severity of a lost fleet battle against a superior opponent.

 

[RobT99]

I think there is some merit here. I would simplify.

Upon taking (100-((evasion+10)÷10))% the ship attempts an emergency jump taking (10-(evasion/10)) days. if the ship survives it is added to a phantom fleet of ships temporarily lost in space. then if the entire parent fleet retreats or is destroyed, the struggling remnants are brought back to relative safety, but severely (1hp) injured. they must be repaired.

This sounds good too.

 

[RobT99]

It is not exactly what you want, but I made a mod that grants a ship a chance to retreat heavily damaged instead of being destroyed. SGM Battle Survivors is meant to address the "One-Big-Battle-Winner-Takes-It-All" problem. The inferior party in an engagement is given a chance to retreat ships heavily damaged, instead of having them destroyed. This effectively reduces the severity of a lost fleet battle against a superior opponent.

I will check this out.

 

[Dalinski]

Policy - Preserve the fleet
A military policy that tells ships to warp out of combat when they receive a certain percentage of damage and automatically make their way back to the nearest rally point. This could be a normal warp so no extra damage is taken but the vessel does not fire as its winding up, aura's are disabled and shields are shutdown.
Individual ships break off combat after having taken 95% hull damage (Militarist)
Individual ships break off combat after having taken 90% hull damage (Spiritualist)
Individual ships break off combat after having taken 85% hull damage
Individual ships break off combat after having taken 80% hull damage (Materialist)
Individual ships break off combat after having taken 75% hull damage (Pacifist)
- damaged ships could perhaps make their way to the back of the battle in an evasive stance doing less damage but having increased shields and evasion.

 

[Darkscis]

The problem as I see it; the more of your fleet that disengages, the more firepower is concentrated onto the remaining ships. This will cause the last ships to pop even quicker and likely with no chance to escape if they are focus fired down before the emergency jump engages. A fleet full of Cloud Lightning suddenly disintegrates your corvette screen in 0s flat, as even if they don't die they all disengage and start ftl'ing away. All of a sudden your battleships are left without support and get focus fired down before they can escape. Now you have made things even worse than they currently are, because the cheap easily replaceable ships you are supposed to lose have escaped and the expensive, slow building ones you should have preserved have been outright destroyed. Complete opposite of what you want ...

Fact is... it is very simple to watch the doomstack v doomstack fight and know it is going badly and jump away with the current system. Problem is, most people are too stubborn to do so. If the fight is not going well (and it is usually pretty obvious in the first month that emergency ftl takes to activate) then JUMP THE HELL AWAY. You should have paused during that month and taken a look at their fleet composition and what components they are using. Take what is left of your fleet, retrofit to counter, rebuild what you can and live to fight another day. Don't just leave your fleet in combat watching it disappear because you think "hey, they might miraculously make a come back!". The AI is not afraid to retreat when things are going bad, the player shouldn't be either.

 

[Sandermatt]

I'm not sure it would make much of a difference if set at 90% hull damage because the way combat mostly works is that 1 ship gets focused down at a time so probably wouldn't even get a chance to escape with the sheer volume of incoming fire. There is also the added problem (particularly if the threshold is lower) that you are effectively limited to fighting with x% less of your fleet power. I think it is sufficient to order whole fleets to disengage as you can tell pretty early on in a fight if you are going to lose, the only exception being a fight against a fallen empire (their fleets have too much damage concentrated in too few ships making them very susceptible to swarming)

Probably it would then help if the combat was overhauled to distribute the damage more. It would definetly make the battles more like crusader kings/EU/HOI (or human history), where after a lost battle the mafority of your army is still intact.