Taking out ways to abuse the enemy by smart understanding of combat mechanics is probably bad.
Well, it's good or bad depending on whether the gameplay this engenders is fun or not, right. Here, we're talking about something that occasionally creates gameplay that's very obviously not fun.
What about fights where we underdeploy strategically, or when are reserves are already CR damaged? And what about civilian ships?
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I have often been in the situation when getting chain ganked by remnants that my main combat ships are starting to be in CR trouble from repeated deployment. I start to deploy less of my fleet, sometimes down to just the bare minimum of ships I think can scrape a win. If the reserve is being CR damaged, then I can't do that, which I think would be a shame: These tense battles are some of the best fights.
Hmm - so "no CR ticking down for reserves" mostly does take care of this, right? If you strategically under-deploy and win, you're fine. If you lose, you either still have enough peak time on reserves, or you retreat and redeploy.
I don't deploy frigates in large fleet actions as they are too vulnerable, but keep a few around for chases. If I'm in a tough battle where I don't hold the center that much, but manage to win in decent time with my destroyers starting to tick down, then my chase frigates will be completely wiped.
Do you mean chase frigates for the separate pursuit phase? (If so, then naturally we're good since peak time would be reset for that.)
What stops the player from harassing the enemy fleet to CR exhaustion with a few ships, full retreating to end that combat round, then crushing the enemy in a new round? Same effect, just a little more waiting.
I think a combination of a few things: if they only deploy a few ships, the AI will not over-deploy very much, and the few/faster ships that might be used to harass to CR exhaustion also have lower peak times, so not being able to effectively chain-deploy them (as a result of reserve peak time ticking down) will limit how much you can actually wear the enemy down this way. E.G. if you use a single Tempest or Medusa to wear down maybe 4-5 times their weight in ships, but at the cost of extra CR loss by that ship (or other ships), then you might as well deploy 2-3 of them and just win outright.
The scenario in the OP is a bit unique in that deploying and then hiding extra ships causes the enemy to over-deploy, making them much more vulnerable to getting CR-exhausted efficiently.
Adding a "control point" (or several) seems like overkill to solve /just/ that, but I like its potential to 1) replace other objectives entirely, with something that matters, and 2) naturally cause fights to drift to the center of the map, helping to reduce the amount of map border cheese and just awkwardness from fighting near one.
Instead of (or in addition to) making the enemy readiness timer tick, the center objective stops your own. This still allows for legitimate hit and run strategies against a larger AI, such as using your own fast ships in one wave to deal with the enemy fast ships, then deploying heavier ships, but removes the CR advantage element of it. It is a slower tempo correction though, which might be bad.
Can't do it because of phase ships and SO builds.
Another suggestion: One AI change that would really alter game flow: have the AI retreat when they start taking CR damage. And if this leaves the forces left too small, have them retreat as well. This would make engagements have more "rounds" and be more punishing and expensive, so there would be balance consequences. However, it would stop the 'corner hiding' cheese because the player would take the full CR hit each time.
It might work, but I think the main issue with that is it can lead to boring fights. If enemy phase ships retreat when their peak time runs out, for example - which is smart! - then just ugh. You certainly can't catch them, and this would mean waiting out their peak timer as many times as they decide to re-engage.