I think the idea has a solid conceptual basis, but I worry that in practice it would just feel rather gamey unless and until major changes to the 'overworld' mechanics occur. The problem is that when two fleets are hostile and tracking each other, neither one can perform salvage or recovery. This means that profiting from a raid as well as recovering from one both run into the issue of first having to kite and lose the enemy before - predictably - returning to the spot where the raid happened. And that activity is inherently gamey because it doesn't make any sense in a real-world scenario. Unless one of the fleets were forced to retire by some outside force, neither of them would be able to reasonably conduct salvage operations in the warzone in which they are both committed.
AI fleets stand down after a battle, so, for the player, getting away should be easy. Also, I don't know what you're talking about it being gamey; putting people in a situation where they have to abandon their goods, then coming back to loot after they leave has been done throughout history. There's probably even a name for it.
the other reason for raiding; Reducing the enemy's CR by forcing them to commit forces, would more often than not end up being a zero-sum gain.
Reducing the enemy's CR is not a reason for raiding, so I would hope it's a zero-sum game.
- Being able to flatly deny deployment of some crucial ships when enemy raids me (in either raid or main battle) or forcing me to deploy it twice would feel really unfair.
- Then there is problem of officers - they can't be reassigned between rounds. Even if I have empty ships to fight 2 engagements, without officers they are fodder.
It's meant to be a tough choice, and in my experience ships without officers work just fine. However, I am noticing more problems with the two battle arrangement, so maybe the raid should replace the first normal battle. It's not quite that simple, though, so I'll have to think on it.
Defender knows exact raid composition after auto-deploy ships are determined,
I don't think the defenders should know exactly what the raiders are deploying, but they should definitely see which of their own ships are being auto-deployed. I think simply tagging them "Auto-Deploy" or something on the initial deployment screen would do. Maybe there should be a bar showing how many of the raider's DPs the civ ships are taking up so you can guestimate their strength.
The raiders should probably know what enemy civ ships will be deployed given the available DP.
phase frigates or Hyperion from auto-deleting any civ ships in defender fleet.
I think what I've already said covers the rest, but I'd like to give phase ships a special mention. Hyperion is the Hyperion - it's supposed to be amazing.
Phase ships, while I know they're supposed to be good, are currently as, or even more, godlike than the Hyperion at assassinating ships. I am pretty sure you can defeat the highest level bounties with just an Afflictor, since you only have to kill the target to get the payout. In 0.9 the Harbinger might be even better at it; how many things can survive something that can disrupt shields, mount three Typhoon Reaper Launchers, and turn invincible at will?
It's that last thing, I think, that makes phase ships so powerful in player hands. If the AI could exploit phasing the same way then everyone would be complaining about it.
Also, what about hybrid ships like Mule, Venture, etc. Do they also get auto-deployed?
My intent is that only ships with the civilian tag in Ship_Data.csv are autodeployed. (And mothballed ships.) Mule, Venture, etc. do not have that tag. That the game never explicitly tells us which ships have the civilian tag is a design flaw that should really be remedied.
More importantly, every deployment point the raiders don't use forces the defenders' civ ships to deploy at the start of the battle.
Also, please not this. It would allow raider to choose between a moderate threat to large amount of ships (few raiders, many targets) and surefire kill of one target (many raiders, one target).
Given that, as I said, the defender can deploy ships with the civ ships, I don't think the first situation would be that big a deal. For the latter, I think that could usually only happen when the defenders are already super outnumbered, i.e. they are in deep trouble anyways.