Why?
With this suggestion I want to tackle two major, in my opinion, problems with the current combat system
- Doomstacks
- Deepstriking/Free Movement in enemy space
and two minor ones
- Weapon balance
- Uselessness of planets in a war, although that kinda combines with Deepstriking
What?
To keep the micromanagement low it should be more a supply flow system than tracking actual supplies, although that is also necessary with my suggestion. But it can be abstracted in a supply limit per system similar to CK2/EU4 (I do not have played HoI so I don't know how similar this system is).
The basis of my suggested system is a limit of how many ships can be supplied in a single system and tracking the flow of supply from a source system with a planet or frontier outpost to the fleet. Also, each fleet would have a supply value, the current supplies shared over the whole fleet, and a supply consumption which is modified by outside factors.
-- Supply Value
Each ship would carry a base amount of supplies with it based on size.
A new class or modules would allow for more supplies to be carried or reduce the consumption. As supply is shared across the fleet this would allow a new class of ship with lots of utility slots but hardly any weapons (but that would require some additional fleet wide utility slots like planetary bombs or repair facilities to be really useful)
-- Supply Consumption
The base consumption of a ship would depend on the fitted equipment with higher tech equipment having higher supply consumption but better a better supply/damage(or shield, etc.) ratio. It would also add another variable that can be used for weapon balancing.
The base consumption would be modified by the current activity of the ship. Being in port would drastically reduce the consumption, normal flying in own or neutral system would leave it at its normal value. Being in enemy territory increases it and being in actual combat vastly increases it.
-- Supply regeneration
Ships supplies constantly regenerate. The resupply rate is modified by several factors
- Distance to next planet/outpost
- Tech level (either rolled into an existing technology or new ones
- Ethos
- Infrastructure (Spaceport modules in the nearest starbase or planet. Unsure if that is too much micro)
- Enemy activity
Enemy activity comes in several versions.
- Empty enemy sectors (no planets or enemy fleets) count for more than neutral sectors in the distance calculation
- Enemy fleets between your own fleet and the nearest planet(s) causes a sharp penalty to resupply (Maybe by Fleetstrength but in order to not make Doomstacks best for this there should be a cap and some ships should be better at this than others like destroyers or corvettes)
- Enemy planets between the fleet and the supply source block it nearly completely
-- Effects of supply
Full supply has no advantageous effects
Once a fleet reaches 50% supply value it get progressively worse penalties to fire rate, shield regen, sublight speed, evasion and FTL entry time farther supply goes below 50%
At 0% supply a fleet, while not completely disabled, should be close to be useless
-- Supply calculation
The carried supplies of all ships in the fleet (maximum and current) is added together to decide the fleets maximum and current supply value. Those are represented in number in the fleet overview and as a bar on the map below shields
When a new ship joins its supply values (max & current) are added to the fleet
When a ship leaves or is destroyed it takes supplies equal to the ships max value times the fleets current % value with it (so when the fleet is at 50% and the ship has a maximum value of 200, it takes 100 supply with it)
Concerns
As such a supply system affects the attacker much more than the defender care must be taken that it doesn't make defence too strong. Also it does not prevent doomstacks completely as one can still form them for specific battles if you focus on high supply. So this works best with damaged ships fleeing the battle automatically so that a single battle is not decisive
Exploits to watch out for
If the increased supply consumption in combat is measured by time spend in combat and not shots fired then feeding a fleet a constant, cheap stream of corvettes will sap its supply and make it easy to kill with the real fleet
ToDo
Make FTL type matter in the supply calculation. Warp is straightforward, hyperlanes the supply moves along the lanes. Wormholes are complicated as beaming supplies directly without the chance of blockading supplies is a huge advantage and also goes against what this supply system tries to prevent. Same goes for the Jump Drives.
Conclusion
I think such a system will, while not totally preventing doomstacks make smaller fleets more common and allows more tactics to cut supply lines with small strike fleets. Also, invading planets becomes much more important in a war in order to secure supply lines which provides the groundwork for an army/invasion improvement.
It would work best imo if fleet battles were also less decisive, for example my making heavily damaged ships try to emergency FTL away and rendezvous back at the planetary rally point for repairs.
TL;DR
- Ships consume supply based on activity
- Limit the amount of supplies you can get into a system by tech.
- Enemy planets block supply and have to be invaded to proceed further.
- Running low on supply gives progressively worse penalties.
With this suggestion I want to tackle two major, in my opinion, problems with the current combat system
- Doomstacks
- Deepstriking/Free Movement in enemy space
and two minor ones
- Weapon balance
- Uselessness of planets in a war, although that kinda combines with Deepstriking
What?
To keep the micromanagement low it should be more a supply flow system than tracking actual supplies, although that is also necessary with my suggestion. But it can be abstracted in a supply limit per system similar to CK2/EU4 (I do not have played HoI so I don't know how similar this system is).
The basis of my suggested system is a limit of how many ships can be supplied in a single system and tracking the flow of supply from a source system with a planet or frontier outpost to the fleet. Also, each fleet would have a supply value, the current supplies shared over the whole fleet, and a supply consumption which is modified by outside factors.
-- Supply Value
Each ship would carry a base amount of supplies with it based on size.
A new class or modules would allow for more supplies to be carried or reduce the consumption. As supply is shared across the fleet this would allow a new class of ship with lots of utility slots but hardly any weapons (but that would require some additional fleet wide utility slots like planetary bombs or repair facilities to be really useful)
-- Supply Consumption
The base consumption of a ship would depend on the fitted equipment with higher tech equipment having higher supply consumption but better a better supply/damage(or shield, etc.) ratio. It would also add another variable that can be used for weapon balancing.
The base consumption would be modified by the current activity of the ship. Being in port would drastically reduce the consumption, normal flying in own or neutral system would leave it at its normal value. Being in enemy territory increases it and being in actual combat vastly increases it.
-- Supply regeneration
Ships supplies constantly regenerate. The resupply rate is modified by several factors
- Distance to next planet/outpost
- Tech level (either rolled into an existing technology or new ones
- Ethos
- Infrastructure (Spaceport modules in the nearest starbase or planet. Unsure if that is too much micro)
- Enemy activity
Enemy activity comes in several versions.
- Empty enemy sectors (no planets or enemy fleets) count for more than neutral sectors in the distance calculation
- Enemy fleets between your own fleet and the nearest planet(s) causes a sharp penalty to resupply (Maybe by Fleetstrength but in order to not make Doomstacks best for this there should be a cap and some ships should be better at this than others like destroyers or corvettes)
- Enemy planets between the fleet and the supply source block it nearly completely
-- Effects of supply
Full supply has no advantageous effects
Once a fleet reaches 50% supply value it get progressively worse penalties to fire rate, shield regen, sublight speed, evasion and FTL entry time farther supply goes below 50%
At 0% supply a fleet, while not completely disabled, should be close to be useless
-- Supply calculation
The carried supplies of all ships in the fleet (maximum and current) is added together to decide the fleets maximum and current supply value. Those are represented in number in the fleet overview and as a bar on the map below shields
When a new ship joins its supply values (max & current) are added to the fleet
When a ship leaves or is destroyed it takes supplies equal to the ships max value times the fleets current % value with it (so when the fleet is at 50% and the ship has a maximum value of 200, it takes 100 supply with it)
Concerns
As such a supply system affects the attacker much more than the defender care must be taken that it doesn't make defence too strong. Also it does not prevent doomstacks completely as one can still form them for specific battles if you focus on high supply. So this works best with damaged ships fleeing the battle automatically so that a single battle is not decisive
Exploits to watch out for
If the increased supply consumption in combat is measured by time spend in combat and not shots fired then feeding a fleet a constant, cheap stream of corvettes will sap its supply and make it easy to kill with the real fleet
ToDo
Make FTL type matter in the supply calculation. Warp is straightforward, hyperlanes the supply moves along the lanes. Wormholes are complicated as beaming supplies directly without the chance of blockading supplies is a huge advantage and also goes against what this supply system tries to prevent. Same goes for the Jump Drives.
Conclusion
I think such a system will, while not totally preventing doomstacks make smaller fleets more common and allows more tactics to cut supply lines with small strike fleets. Also, invading planets becomes much more important in a war in order to secure supply lines which provides the groundwork for an army/invasion improvement.
It would work best imo if fleet battles were also less decisive, for example my making heavily damaged ships try to emergency FTL away and rendezvous back at the planetary rally point for repairs.
TL;DR
- Ships consume supply based on activity
- Limit the amount of supplies you can get into a system by tech.
- Enemy planets block supply and have to be invaded to proceed further.
- Running low on supply gives progressively worse penalties.
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