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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.  (Read 2948 times)

bobucles

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #15 on: October 11, 2019, 05:55:53 AM »

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You didn't describe the right "why" which is "why" you want to  "provides large indirect combat boons targeted at frigate and destroyer themed fleets". But as it is the reason you have given now is sufficient, and it would be acceptable if only you had placed it in the original post, but your the solution seems to be predetermined for a logistical capital instead.
Congratulations on reading the first sentence in the first post. Feel free to read the rest of them as well, and try to keep an open mind. Space is hardly set in stone, after all.

The reason for why a "massive facility intended to dock entire ships, shut them down and fix them in deep space, while still allowing the fleet to be mobile" demands a capital hull is an exercise best left to the reader.

Plantissue

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #16 on: October 11, 2019, 07:00:15 AM »

I already read you post. That's why we can have a conversation in the first place. As it is, it is you first post didn't address "why", as you only written the why afterwards when I asked. Of course you didn't say why you want to to" dramatically enhance frigate/destroyer themed fleets" but I let it go, but you seem rather rude about it, so I'll just straight out and write that needing to procure a giant Capital Ship, is contradictory to the aim of enhancing a frigate/destroyer themed fleet, as it got well, a giant Capital Ship in it. What you actually got now is a Capital ship fleet with frigates and destroyers.

It seems rather obvious that wasn't your aim, as you  didn't wroite of it, till just now, as it is contradictory to that aim, but your aim is for a concept of capital ship as a logistical base ship.
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SCC

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #17 on: October 11, 2019, 09:32:11 AM »

I don't really know why there's a hard ship cap, besides "at some point ship management becomes a chore, so to discourage an already tedious activity I will just put a hard limit there as well", which is a really bad argument to me.
That aside, I believe that Alex intends to somewhat decrease the scale of combat in the next patch. Current capital ship spam is just a consequence of new, untested mechanic (colony fleet spawning and fleet sizes).

Plantissue

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #18 on: October 12, 2019, 06:08:34 AM »

How large should the scale of combat should be is an interesting question. Many people clearly enjoy fighting and having a large amount of capital ship combat. Who ever heard of a fleet made up of a single capital ship back when capital ships was a thing? As a side note I think ship cap exists because you can recover ships, and recoverable frigate hulls are everywhere. It is entirely possible you will end up with hundreds of frigates if you obsessively recover frigates you find.

The main problem comes with battle size. With 500 battlesize, the current scale is fine as most expedition fleets only ever go up to a maximum of 650 DP. If you have default 300 battlesize that is simply awful in feel to fight against, even if you had a similarily sized fleet, assuming the scale of the expedition fleet is not tied with battlesize. So maximum size of a fleet should be tied with battlesize.

Assuming you want to have a pure frigate fleet, assuming 25 normal warships, that would be 100-200 DP. For 25 destroyers this ranges from 200-300 DP. Excluding Harbinger. Assuming that a pure 25 destroyer fleet is viable to the largest expedition fleets, this sets an assumption that the player will have maximum 300 DP available to fight with. So how big should the maximum fleet DP be set at in that case?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2019, 06:21:43 AM by Plantissue »
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Igncom1

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #19 on: October 12, 2019, 06:55:39 AM »

Can't you already play into swarm fleets by having frigates with support modules like ECM?

Even capital ships can only provide up to about 5% boost to that where as any single frigate can provide 2% each. If I recall correctly.

I don't see the problem with a kind of mothership that provides fleet wide buffs of some sort, but I'd doubt it would truly change the style of battle in the current game. Well.... not any more then carrier style motherships already do being support ships for short-range torpedo boats and corvettes called fighters.

Current frigates can't operate for long, which kinda kills them further in the later stages of the game. Something that buffs that could see a mothership allow frigates to at leas operate on the fringes of a battle over the capture points while the proper ships of battle duke it out in the middle.
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Sunders are the best ship in the game.

Plantissue

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #20 on: October 13, 2019, 03:27:55 AM »

The hullmod provide 2% ECM rating for frigates. In practice I found that if a cruiser has DTC, not to mention having ITC, they would outrange the frigate anyways. If the frigate also have ITC as well, then it seems about the same range from my experience.
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bobucles

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Re: Mobile dock: A Capital support ship for swarming fleets.
« Reply #21 on: October 19, 2019, 07:39:20 AM »

As it is, it is you first post didn't address "why",
Because the "Why" you keep asking for is a personal question about slating your own emotional needs. I can't answer that, nor do I wish to. I'm here merely to discuss the "how".

Frigates do have a considerable number of weaknesses over larger themed fleets. They depend on their numbers, they die faster and they suffer a severe attrition from combat losses. Officers provide inherent buffs that allow ships to succeed, but do not scale in effectiveness with small ships. You'll never have enough officers for a frigate fleet, nor can you buff frigates to overwhelmingly survive battles without shifting the entire scale of the ship or doing other kooky things. Instead, the idea is to support frigates from the back end. Don't depend on them being super powerful, or faster, or stronger, or insanely survivable. Instead, make them more expendable by reducing their attrition on the fleet. The direction for using frigates becomes less of a "can I win with them" and more of a "doesn't cost me much to try". And while it is true that frigates are quick and not expensive to replace in the core worlds, that option simply isn't available in deep space. The only solution is to bring the necessary resources with the fleet.

A capital dock supports frigates by reducing attrition losses. Ships blow up just the same, because battles are dangerous and small ships die. It happens. It should happen. It'd be pretty crazy if it didn't happen. Those losses get recovered and they get healed up faster, therefore a fleet can maintain its frigate strength across multiple battles, instead of being utterly devastated after a handful of encounters.

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B-but it's a capital ship! Muh purity of fleet
Yeah so what. The burn speed is perfectly workable in context. It never enters battle, you don't put a prometheus or atlas into battle either. The primary combat still happens with small ships, and the victories/losses depend on them. The only difference is they have a logistic backbone for long lasting support.
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