Hidden in the Personal Contacts comment thread was this big upcoming update to battle objectives:
Oh, this sounds interesting! I do miss having objectives be relevant - there were flaws with the old objectives = deployment value system, but it did two things very well that the current system can't really do at all: it made objectives important to take and hold, and it made small fast ships have a place even in large fleet battles, since you needed to contest with the enemy's screening forces before you could put your main combat ships on the field.
Ah, actually, let me paste the relevant patch notes! Basically, instead of just giving a small buff (which they still do), objectives also let you *do* something - deploy more ships. So that's real, qualitative impact - from playtesting, capturing one actually feels fun, since you're anticipating which ships you get to deploy.
This makes using smaller ships to capture and skirmish over them worthwhile. And there are supporting changes that both don't penalize you for putting officers in small ships, and remove any incentive for lugging around 10-15 "give me more deployment points" Paragons. And, capturing objectives doesn't let you snowball an advantage - it's more about evening out the playing field.
(This also connects up with using story points to temporarily hire above-the-limit mercenary officers; there's a lot of stuff that factors in.)
Combat against REDACTED will have battle objectives (Nav Buoys etc)
Staton battles and battles against automated defenses of salvageable derelicts still don't
Deployment point distribution between opposing fleets now based primarily on number/level of officers
Is no longer updated as ships are destroyed; only computed once when an engagement round starts
Officer contribution does not depend on what type of ship they're in
But they do have to be on a ship, unassigned officers do not contribute
Battle objectives (Nav Buoys, Sensor Arrays, Comm Relays):
Now grant bonus deployment points equal to a percentage of battle size
5% for Nav Buoys and Sensor Arrays
10% for Comm Relays
Total with bonus can't exceed 60% of battle size (which is the normal cap for the larger fleet)
So: no bonus points for a fleet that already vastly outnumbers the enemy
Goal is to give player means to even out a battle where they're outnumbered through aggressive play/splitting their forces
Adjusted enemy admiral AI to value controlling points more
Thoughts:
- The obvious stuff: Fixing the Paragon DP inflater and making frigates (and officers on frigates) matter again is clearly good. It's also neat that holding objectives acts as an equalizer for the smaller side while not making the larger side even stronger (compared to present).
- Basing the distribution on officers seems like a direct advantage to the Hegemony in fights with other factions, with its higher-quality and more numerous officers in doctrine ("5-1-1" memes coming soon to a Discord server near you).
That may actually be good (to keep the Hegs threatening despite all the enemies they have in modded games), but is it intended? Does this also affect autoresolve?
- With objectives mattering again, knowing which objective the enemy fleetblob is headed to suddenly becomes important for the player (previously I'd just wait for the horde to come to me, now I might actually have to intercept them ahead of time). Might we see a return of the Recon order?
- Will positioning of objectives at battle start be changed? As in, seems like if the weaker side happens to get two comm relays spawning close to its edge the map, it's done, it gets the full DP bonus and doesn't have to worry about objectives any further unless it gets pushed back all the way to the map border.
Although, I like that pushing the enemy back to the edge actually has benefits (rather than only making your retreat/reinforcement cycle slower and theirs faster).