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[Krytor]

Hey Alex,

The endgame is currently 30 minute slugfests between fleets of mostly capital ships.  This is because:

1. The highest tier bounties use mostly capital ships
2. The player only has so many ship slots
3. The amount of ships you can deploy is a ratio of your DP to the enemy DP
4. You only can have 10 officers
5. A capital ship easily can destroy more than it's DP worth of smaller ships

This results in the optimal fleet being 11 capital ships + logistics and maybe backup capital ships, if only to raise your DP ratio.

My assumption here is that most people do not enjoy these kind of battles.  The most fun happens early/mid game when smaller ships are viable and capital ships are few but meaningful.

Here are a few solutions I've seen/thought up.  None are perfect.
1. Restrict the number of capitals and probably cruisers.  Increase the allowed number as a function of level perhaps.  This is the simplest solution, but very artificial.
2. Increase the DP of capital ships to the point where deploying more than a few doesn't make sense.  This solution would be hard to balance.
3. Have something like "Fleet Cohesion" which is a measure of how pyramid-shaped the fleet is (Few capitals/some cruisers/destroyers/lots of frigates).  Reward high cohesion and/or punish low cohesion.  This is the most complicated solution with many challenges that I haven't solved such as "what role to logistic ships play?"

In any case enemy fleets would need to be created more pyramid shaped as well.  The amount of capitals deployed should probably raise if the DP limit slider is raised.  The end goal being a fight where all ship sizes are useful and capitals feel special.

[Alex]

Hi! Roughly on the same page here, I think. If you take a look at the skills changes blog post, it talks a bit about addressing this, though what's mentioned there isn't comprehensive or the full set of changes. Basically it's a variation of approach number 3 in your list, with smaller ships providing various bonuses, making them more desirable and making a mixed fleet more effective. This, of course, comes alongside changes in how AI fleets are generated, as well.

[Krytor]

Hi! Roughly on the same page here, I think. If you take a look at the skills changes blog post, it talks a bit about addressing this, though what's mentioned there isn't comprehensive or the full set of changes. Basically it's a variation of approach number 3 in your list, with smaller ships providing various bonuses, making them more desirable and making a mixed fleet more effective. This, of course, comes alongside changes in how AI fleets are generated, as well.

Thanks!  I really should check your blog posts more often.

[Mordodrukow]

I hope, you ll keep a backup for current combat, because right now it can be pretty hard and intense. You have to do the best you can during 10-15 minutes with a room for a one or two mistakes. And it is really satisfying to win those challenges.

The only thing i dislike is fighter spam. Especially in mods. Herons are annoying, but you can deal with them. It is harder to do if mod creator thinks, it is best idea to make every ship in a fleet to have some fighter wings or things like fortress shield or similar systems for frigates. Also pretty "balanced" fighters with shield of Odyssey and a barrage of homing reapers on the bourd.

As for capital spam... Is it a problem at all?! I mean: yeah, it is bad if smaller ships have little use, because you put some effort making them. I really like games with a balance, allowing to use every option in proper situation. But  the solution must not look too artificial.

I mean: all factions in sector (in the meaning of role-play) want to live better. They wanna get most effective fleets counting strength and cost. So, if they can use capitals, because, you now, they dont die that often, so they need less money for replacemen... shy wouldnt they do that? You already made living economy. Not artificial-looking. Well... may be a little bit, but in Nex tariffs are more reasonable, and the system still works. And you can make good non-artificial looking reasons to use small shieps too.

You know... there are already some reasons! It is easier to stack Nav and ECM % on smaller ships, for example. And i d use it... But i dont. And do you know why? No, not because there is officer limit. I dont use small ships, because AI always tries it best to suicide, and capitals just live long enough, so i dont have to babysit all of them (and i dont wanna half of my fleet to be cruisers).

The reason is half psychological and half economical. I just trying to win with no ship losses every time, because it is easier to buy new ship then to restore one from D-mods (although, erratic fuel injector is often a buff ). Without yellow skills maxed there is no reason to recover trophy ships, because you will spend way more money on them than you can when you just buy them on the planets. And the only reason, why i ever recover is because some hulls are rare and hard to get in other way.

Also mention that when you take (decide to clear it), for example, bounty mission, the bounty looks big. 150k, 300k... Looks great... But... If the target is far away, you easily can spend like 30 or 40% just to buy fuel to get there and return back. And you still need to pay for supplies, and crew and officer payments... So, you literally cant allow yourself to waste money losing ships. I m talking about midgame, ofc. In the lategame you have millions of cash, but at this point the run can be concidered as solved, so any economical discussion is pointless...

So. If you wanna ME to use small ships, just rework AI. At least, if i m picking one ship and sending him to the point in space to do nothing else, i want him to do just that. You may say that it works like that right now, but no... The friendly AI behavior is very annoying. Besides the behavior reasons small ships are OK right now.