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[intrinsic_parity]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I do agree that in the current system, most of the CP get spent on very basic things such as retreat and objective orders, meaning you basically don't get to do anything tactical. If you try to, you will inevitably lose a ship because you couldn't order it to retreat or get out of harms way. I would say in the current system, CP have to be saved for reactionary situations which are annoying/uninteresting but necessary, and can't be used for tactical/planning situations which would actually be fun.

Hmm. How about making new assignments free while the command frequency is open? Just tried that (since it's pretty trivial) and it seems to be alright. Does mean more "eliminate" orders etc being available, potentially.

I think this would be a big improvement in that it allows you to give many orders simultaneously at low cost, which is good for things like escort and capture orders and maybe elimination orders, but I don't think it solves a couple important problems. It doesn't help in situation where you are reacting to an event such as retreating a low CR ship or defending a ship that has overextended since these events tend to happen one at a time and require immediate action. I also think it doesn't work in situations where you want to give consecutive orders such as fighter strikes.

I think that some other improvements may help solve the first problem:

- The ability to give more escort orders (and potentially improved/more granular escort orders) may reduce the number of times you need to micro manage ships to avoid losing one.
- Improved escort logic (as suggested above) may also help. I would suggest the simple logic: if the escorting ship is bigger/more powerful/higher flux capacity than the escortee, it should try to body block damage/protect when it's escortee is in trouble , but if it is smaller/weaker/lower flux capacity, try to focus fire on whatever the target of the escortee is, while maintaining its own safety.
- Improved weapon usage AI (that is in the works I believe?) may also help, since ships will be much more efficient with their weapons. Hopefully this means they will not get into dangerous situations that require action as often. (I am concerned that when the AI learns to use kinetics/HE properly it will make high-tech significantly worse).
- The ability to set retreat thresholds for CR and hull would significantly reduce the need to save CP for emergency retreat orders (I think spending a CP to keep a damaged ship in combat is much more tactical/interesting than spending one to remove the ship from combat).
- Improved AI, specifically improvements in how nearby ships try to help each other. Maybe using a flux threshold (85% flux capacity or something) to indicate when a ship is in trouble and having nearby ships move to defend it when they detect it is in trouble? (maybe this is already how it works, but it needs to be before a ship overloads, otherwise it is too late) Defending a friendly could mean focusing fire on an enemy ship that is aggressing or trying to body block damage if they are bigger. I'm not sure if the AI can tell what enemy ship is causing the most incoming damage, but that would be a very helpful piece of information for any defensive logic. Being able to focus fire on the ship that is doing damage, and being able to decide to body block based on the type of enemy ship (so frigates don't jump in front of onslaughts) would be very helpful.

Maybe the issue of having to spend CP on critical situations can be resolved by reducing the chances of critical situation happening.


That leaves the carrier problem. Usually you want to give one fighter strike order at a time so that the fighters will coordinate, and then once that ship is dead, give an order on the next ship. This CP system would not help at all in that respect since the orders are not simultaneous. Perhaps a skill where you are refunded a CP every time a fighter strike is successful? That might be OP but it would be interesting.

Might have to tone down the number of command points a bit, but will keep it like this for now.

I think the new system makes it so that you really only need to start with 1 CP but CP regen rate is much more important. Since you do not receive any new information until you make contact with the enemy, you can make all tactical decisions at the beginning of the battle at once, but once the battle begins, the situation is constantly changing and so you want to make decisions based on the current situation (i.e. this ship is exposed --> attack it  or  my ship is in trouble --> run away/defend it). In this case, you are not giving many orders simultaneously. I think starting with less and having a higher regeneration rate would be optimal for this new system.

[SafariJohn]

Well, this is a busy topic.

Off-the-cuff idea: player starts out not able to issue orders (more or less), and part of the standard game progression is gaining more control of your fleet.

[Morbo513]

enemy AI would be at a significant disadvantage

Ah, wasn't thinking of that, but yes, that's a pretty big issue.

This is what I was trying to get at with modulating enemy disposition, add a further element of randomness to their behaviour. That along with more "definite" ship-grouping by the AI would go a ways to presenting challenges for which it would be beneficial to manage your own.

An improved escort command

In your experience, would you say the current escort behavior fits either of those roles?

(In general, intelligent escort behavior is... difficult.)

Generally yes, but one much moreso than the other. Regarding "wingman", nowhere near the degree of synergy that makes grouping ships together with it for direct combat purposes really worthwhile - beyond making sure no ship is left alone. Though it makes the escort target much less vulnerable, it neuters its escorts making them cancel out almost entirely.
Simplifying things, when escort target is of roughly equal power, the game could silently give the escorts an "attack" order on ships being engaged by the escort target.
I think this is what'd be difficult to make contextual really because even the parameter of escort vs target strength isn't an exact measure of the player's intent when setting up squadrons with the escort command. UI-wise I don't think this'd take more than a couple extra buttons (You assign a ship an escort target as you do now, and hit one of the other buttons for the particular behaviour you want).

I guess what I'd really like is being able to set up squadrons irrespective of the escort command and command points through numbered groups, and being able to give your own squadmates immediate commands- "Engage my target", "Pull back and vent", "Launch missile salvo" etc.
AI ships squadded up would behave in the manner I'm trying to describe, ie directly supporting the "leader" in combat as opposed to hanging behind them, and randomly (or systematically?) execute the same command the player could give. A multi-ship missile salvo directed at you would be especially intimidating.
Development wise that's a whole other can of worms for sure. In terms of interface fluidity I think it'd have the least impact while making combat in general more tactical, but not to the point the entire fleet's actions require more oversight than otherwise.

I bring up the dirty word Formations once again, and will only touch on how I'd imagine the actual mechanics to go.
You squad a set of ships together with succession of "command" being slowest-fastest (Player ship would take precedence when involved). Depending on what formation you set (Line, Wedge, V, Column, Box), its subordinates have rolling movement waypoints at positions relative to the lead ship's heading. They maintain these relative positions until the formation is given an order (or in the case of AI squads, when the "lead" ship engages something) at which point they're free to break and pursue whichever targets they would normally attack, returning to formation after maybe 5-19 seconds or until given the order to do so in the player's case. They'd automatically break formation if necessary to vent etc.
I understand this would be by no means easy to implement. Having both the player able, and the AI autonomously set up squadrons (and formations) would maintain the balance between the player and enemies, while in my mind making the enemy AI much less exploitable and generally more dangerous.

Deconfliction of carrier and fighter commands

IIRC, it sort of implicitly works that way - you can give a fighter strike order, and the carrier will use its fighters to attack the target, while still remaining near/behind the largest friendly, only leaving them if the fighter strike target gets too far. Generally, though, that seems a bit too fiddly for me to want to provide explicit controls for.

I'd argue that it's a lot more awkward to have carriers only ever behave in such a manner, especially when some have firepower greater than what's projected by their fighters.
Fighter commands could be fleet-wide, ie you select a ship and assign "fighter escort" "fighter strike" etc. Could lead to a further expansion there with separating them between fighters and bombers. This way all you determine with the positioning of the carrier is how much distance and how much of the enemies' fields of fire they have to traverse between the targets and resupply. It'd give you a lot more definite control over the fighters and carriers without making it more complicated and eliminating the frustration of not being able to tell the carrier exactly what you want it to be doing.

More lenient command points

Hmm. How about making new assignments free while the command frequency is open? Just tried that (since it's pretty trivial) and it seems to be alright. Does mean more "eliminate" orders etc being available, potentially. Might have to tone down the number of command points a bit, but will keep it like this for now.

It's also cleaner in that there's no special rule for when something is or isn't free, and that's nice.

I see that as more viable, yeah, since it lines up with not having the player be in the command screen every other 30s, and gives us a bit more flexibility. intrinsic highlights the concerns I'd have - particularly regarding retreat. Honestly, I think retreat should be free. Not being able to tell a ship that will die to the next machine-gun shot it takes to get off the map because you've been spending those CPs trying to prevent others from reaching that point is one of the most frustrating things about the current command system

Well, this is a busy topic.

Off-the-cuff idea: player starts out not able to issue orders (more or less), and part of the standard game progression is gaining more control of your fleet.

I actually like this idea. Eg. a pirate captain probably wouldn't give a damn what his fleet is doing as long as it's in line with getting the loot. Neither too would players with scrap-ball fleets I imagine. The only issue I'd have is command as it currently stands is barely rewarding enough for a player to be encouraged to spec into it over something else. The highest level would have to offer greater control than what we have now for it to be worth pursuing both as a player and development-wise.

[Megas]

If not for various skills, the three CP would be gobbled-up immediately by capture orders.  Thanks to Coordinated Maneuvers and Electronic Warfare, objectives are obsolete aside from cheesing the AI.  (Well, Sensors remain important if enemy has EW too, the rest, not so much.)  Now, I save all of my CP either to retreat ships (low hull or CR) or focus-fire at a priority target via Eliminate or Fighter Strike.  The only time I really need more CP is if I Fighter Strike every enemy (or if I play Helmut commander).

If we only start with one CP, and objectives reclaim relevance, then it should not be an automatic two to four CP tax to capture objectives.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think the idea alex suggested was that while the command window is open, you can do whatever you want, so it costs 1 OP to open the command window, and then you can give as many orders as you want. So all orders are effectively free, which is why 1 CP was suggested

[SCC]

This is kind of what I meant by macros (as used by Phantasy Star IV).  In that game, you could program a set of actions for your party to do instead of manually inputting every thing.  Okay, maybe this is not the best example...

Or something like Madden football, you choose a play, the other team chooses a play, before offense hikes the ball.

For Starsector, you effectively have one play (maybe two once faction aggressiveness becomes enabled).  What would be nice is you set general fleetwide orders before the fighting starts (and between rounds).  You may simply want everyone to do whatever and kill everything that moves, in which case, you use default behavior.  If you want to automatically capture the nearest points (without wasting all of your CP), you pick the capture play (we don't have that now, of course).  If you want ships to retreat when some ammo or peak performance threshold is met, you pick that play.  It should not be any more complicated that marking which ships and weapons your colonies prioritize to produce, can it?

I know what you mean and it's not exactly what I meant. I want something that allows me to choose per ship behaviour before battle begins, and then it's mostly about setting the limits for a ship. I know that even if I tell every ship "retreat at 50% hull" it won't save each one of them, but it'll save at least some and it most likely will save these that I usually save with orders. Getting ships to withdraw when CR starts falling is good for me too, since I don't usually deploy all of my ships, so I can reinforce my fleet if I need to.
Macros (or, essentially, battle plans) would be a nice thing too, but I expect them to also be a fair bit more complicated, so I'm not too hot about them.

[Inventor Raccoon]

Well, this is a busy topic.

Off-the-cuff idea: player starts out not able to issue orders (more or less), and part of the standard game progression is gaining more control of your fleet.

Please no. The early game is already difficult and unforgiving enough without being unable to tell my few wingmen what to do.

[atreg]

Off-the-cuff idea: player starts out not able to issue orders (more or less), and part of the standard game progression is gaining more control of your fleet.

I feel this is already covered by being limited to a certain number of officers.