Also, i assume that each frigate and fighter wing will be able to be deployed on a different side of the battlefield, so i can deploy half my fighters on the right and half on the left, is this right?
The way it works right now is clicking on a fighter/frigate cycles through "deploy", "deploy left", and "deploy right". So, any combination you like.
Do you still plan a blogpost about the new combat mechanics? I think they deserve more then a few lines of explanation
And: will missions be influenced by CR or the new combat mechanics in any way? For some of the missions very low or high CR would be plausible. Will there be multi-part missions?
Yeah, I'd still like to write a blog post about it.
As far as missions, still working that through. Definitely no multi-part ones, but whether CR will be adjustable via the API (or whether it'll just default to the maximum value for a given crew level) is TBD.
Hrm, thinking on this, does this affect the pre-battle deployment? I.e., does this mean that the AI always "moves last" in pre-battle deployments and will always commit more than what you've declared, or is it processed in real time on an I-go-you-go system where when you add a ship, it adds a ship (or ships) and then waits for you to commit more, continuing to do so until there are no ships left to commit or you decide not to commit any more?
With the caveat that I haven't touched the AI yet, I imagine it'll probably deploy a fighter wing or a fighter and then escalate from there to match what's on the field. So, like the latter option you've described.
can you add Ship\Person name manager plugins (or name generation event)
static files are OK but there are TONS of runtime generators to do this job much more better then game can.
controlling ship names already possible, but name generation event will improve situation a lot.
I'll take a look. Let's not turn this into "request a feature", though, especially if the feature is totally unrelated to stuff in the notes. There's the suggestions forum for that.
Will this break any mods? Will I have to add anything extra?
Probably, though I'm trying to minimize breaking changes. Wouldn't worry about it overmuch just now, the release is quite a ways off.
I would assume that the inferior fleets always deploys all ships, and the superior fleet, knowing the total enemy strength, deploys that and then some. Or is there any reason for the inferior fleet to under-deploy?
I'd imagine a lot of the time the inferior fleet is the player's, in which case, I think so. You also can't count on the inferior fleet still being small enough to fully deploy within the battlesize limit, which is now player-adjustable.