Playing with some of these options, I'd love to be able to give "role" orders to certain ships, as well as default orders.
A default order, given to a ship, will mean that ship will always do that thing unless told otherwise. This means I can have a fast frigate who always has the order of "capture strategic points" unless I tell it otherwise, or a PD focused ship might always have "escort the nearest carrier and intercept incoming attacks" unless told otherwise.
Here's some role orders I'd imagine, which would then be modified a bit by the personality of a hero. It might even be interesting to have certain heroes get benefits in certain roles, like timid heroes getting 5% damage reduction when given a hang back order.
1) Vulture: Find the most damaged/highest flux ship near you and attack the hell out of it. Hang back otherwise.
2) Hang back: Stay out of weapons range of enemy ships, but use your own weapons if you can. Most appropriate for carriers.
3) Interception Escort: Stay near a certain ship, such that your point defense weapons can hit incoming projectiles/fighters aimed at that ship. Focus on shooting those down.
4) Predator: Hunt down smaller ships and destroy them, avoiding large ones
5) Capture Points: Run around the battlefield grabbing sensor relays and nav buoys
6) Assisting Escort: Stay near a certain ship, shoot at whatever it shoots at
I'm also imagining being able to give these orders to a group of ships, which makes them do it together... assign "predator" to a pair of Wolf ships as a group, and they'll stick together while hunting other ships.
Anyway, could be fun to play with. Additionally, if designed well, it would give the AI more strategies as well.
