There is a mod that addresses this: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22191.0
Doesn't quite seem right, does it?Fleet slots as they are started at the 0.7a releases. Before that, you had Fleet Points (0.5 releases) or Logistics (0.6 releases), and ships and personnel counted toward that. Before skills were added, player had 100 points. After release with skills, unskilled has 25 points (enough for four or five frigates, or a lone Conquest) while those with max Leadership and Fleet Logistics had little over a 100 (enough for thirty frigates or three capitals).
Doesn't quite seem right, does it?Fleet slots as they are started at the 0.7a releases. Before that, you had Fleet Points (0.5 releases) or Logistics (0.6 releases), and ships and personnel counted toward that. Before skills were added, player had 100 points. After release with skills, unskilled has 25 points (enough for four or five frigates, or a lone Conquest) while those with max Leadership and Fleet Logistics had little over a 100 (enough for thirty frigates or three capitals).
Also, enemy fleets were more reasonable, no bigger than 200k bounties (and they may have been a bit over the limit). Today, we have huge capital spam (and officer spam as of 0.95).
Player can generally use more ships with fleet slots than with Logistics.
As far as I am concerned, the game could simply not have a ship cap at all.
As far as I am concerned, the game could simply not have a ship cap at all.
That could work too.
As far as I am concerned, the game could simply not have a ship cap at all.
That could work too.
Look, the arbitrary fleet cap of 30 may change at some point in the future, but as far as I understand, it only exists now in order to provide a clear baseline for system performance, regardless of how custom and badass or cheap and junky some random player's computer is. You can always just change it but digging around in the code (just like DP and ships battle size being limited to not overload crappy computers).
As for not basically cheating and altering game code, I am of the opinion that SOME cap is necessary, but a soft cap seems more reasonable (varying values for ship class/size, mix and match up to 100 points or something; going over leads to increasing penalties.). Alternatively, keep 30 ship cap, but only for combat ships; player would get 1 "free" support ship per like 5 or 6 ships, which still leads to a reasonable number of ships. Or, finally, maybe some new max skill in skill revamp would allow for some increase to ship cap (though the tradeoff skill would have to be quite good to balance); this last option seems pretty unlikely though, since Alex has basically detailed most of the new max skills in last blog post (albeit not very clearly, in some cases).
But a complete lack of a cap...? Player would burn through too many supplies and fuel just wandering around the core if they are newbs who expand fleet too fast!
It may be a bit of an unpopular opinion but I think when there are too many ships on the field its not even a question of computer resources, the gameplay just gets bad. The AI is all bumping into each other, getting killed by death explosions, getting in the player's way, blocking shots from everyone...
So in my opinion most of the time ship cap doesn't matter, but when it does matter it is often actively making the game better by not having battlespaces crowded by 50 frigates/destroyers...
It may be a bit of an unpopular opinion but I think when there are too many ships on the field its not even a question of computer resources, the gameplay just gets bad. The AI is all bumping into each other, getting killed by death explosions, getting in the player's way, blocking shots from everyone...
So in my opinion most of the time ship cap doesn't matter, but when it does matter it is often actively making the game better by not having battlespaces crowded by 50 frigates/destroyers...
Unpopular it may perhaps be, but that's pretty much why it's there! Also throw in refitting that many more ships, trying to manage them in the fleet screen, etc. It's a "you're about to do stuff that's probably actively going to make the game worse for you, maybe don't" mechanic. And if you really want to, the settings file is right there. It' also my way of disavowing responsibility for how the game plays if you if you *do* do this :)
Not to be the first to jump on Alex responding, but if it has nothing to do with system performance and instead mostly to limit AI interactions over a 2D top-down landscape, can't this to some degree be solved by just having frigates and maybe even destroyers be able to fly over cruisers and capital ships (like fighters)? This, of course, assumes that changing the game so radically doesn't essentially break the AI by expanding certain parameters beyond the AI's capacity to react/proact...
It may be a bit of an unpopular opinion but I think when there are too many ships on the field its not even a question of computer resources, the gameplay just gets bad. The AI is all bumping into each other, getting killed by death explosions, getting in the player's way, blocking shots from everyone...
So in my opinion most of the time ship cap doesn't matter, but when it does matter it is often actively making the game better by not having battlespaces crowded by 50 frigates/destroyers...
Unpopular it may perhaps be, but that's pretty much why it's there!
Reducing the number of ships in battles doesn't fix the issue of ships bumping into each other and blocking each other's shots. It doesn't even adress the source of the issue. It's like fixing the issue of forest fires by cutting down forests and saying "Look less fires now!".
Not to be the first to jump on Alex responding, but if it has nothing to do with system performance and instead mostly to limit AI interactions over a 2D top-down landscape, can't this to some degree be solved by just having frigates and maybe even destroyers be able to fly over cruisers and capital ships (like fighters)? This, of course, assumes that changing the game so radically doesn't essentially break the AI by expanding certain parameters beyond the AI's capacity to react/proact...
It would absolutely break the AI! But more importantly, I think that would be horrible feel-wise. Ships have a solidity to them now, and it feels like they are physical objects interacting in the same space. If they can fly over each other like that, that would be completely ruined. And overlapping ships generally speaking look ... well, very bad. And their weapons would have to act like fighter weapons with regard to friendly fire. So the optimal strat would often be to like stack a destroyer on top of a cruiser and... yeah. Honestly, this just doesn't seem like a good idea :)
Reducing the number of ships in battles doesn't fix the issue of ships bumping into each other and blocking each other's shots. It doesn't even adress the source of the issue. It's like fixing the issue of forest fires by cutting down forests and saying "Look less fires now!".
To go with your analogy, it's more like putting a few firebreaks in that forest.
The "source of the issue" is a positive quality and an absolutely key ingredient in how combat feels. Turning away from that because "more ships!" (never mind the problems that come with it, including out-of-combat) would I think be closer to what you're criticizing here.
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I'm not arguing for more ships, and reducing the number of ships hasn't even fixed the issue at all and all the frustration is here. And how would allowing bigger ships to shoot over smaller friendlies affect any "positive quality"? Certain missiles can already fly above allies so why can't a cruiser shoot over an allied frigate or destroyer? The constant frustration of shots being blocked by smaller allies is not positive in any way, it just makes you want to remove every small AI ship from your fleet because they harm you more than anything right now.
With overfiring there is a very clear distinction between classes that would need to be part of the game's design.
you can deploy 30 kites for the same amount of fleet cap as 1 paragon
I wish that I could have a pool of a dozen or so LP kites with hammers to send out in batches as the enemy deploys certain ships.
however it is really hard to justify the fleet spot for a ship that will probably last less than a minute...
Not to be the first to jump on Alex responding, but if it has nothing to do with system performance and instead mostly to limit AI interactions over a 2D top-down landscape, can't this to some degree be solved by just having frigates and maybe even destroyers be able to fly over cruisers and capital ships (like fighters)? This, of course, assumes that changing the game so radically doesn't essentially break the AI by expanding certain parameters beyond the AI's capacity to react/proact...
It would absolutely break the AI! But more importantly, I think that would be horrible feel-wise. Ships have a solidity to them now, and it feels like they are physical objects interacting in the same space. If they can fly over each other like that, that would be completely ruined. And overlapping ships generally speaking look ... well, very bad. And their weapons would have to act like fighter weapons with regard to friendly fire. So the optimal strat would often be to like stack a destroyer on top of a cruiser and... yeah. Honestly, this just doesn't seem like a good idea :)
flashbacks to versus mode in l4d where the meta survivor tactic was for the entire team to back into a corner & stand inside of eachother turning themselves into an 8-armed shiva firing multiple machineguns at the same time...
Oh hah, I remember doing that :)
I wish that I could have a pool of a dozen or so LP kites with hammers to send out in batches as the enemy deploys certain ships.
however it is really hard to justify the fleet spot for a ship that will probably last less than a minute...
I think at some point the intended approach for getting that many torpedo bombers would be fielding a carrier.
I wish that I could have a pool of a dozen or so LP kites with hammers to send out in batches as the enemy deploys certain ships.
however it is really hard to justify the fleet spot for a ship that will probably last less than a minute...
I think at some point the intended approach for getting that many torpedo bombers would be fielding a carrier.
this version of the game is a lot better about it but in the previous version frigates felt like fighters that did not respawn or have their missiles restocked.
like why waste 2-5 DP and a fleet spot for a frigate that runs out of missiles and does not respawn when you could bring a 10-20 DP carrier with a broadsword and a bomber?
I wish that I could have a pool of a dozen or so LP kites with hammers to send out in batches as the enemy deploys certain ships.
however it is really hard to justify the fleet spot for a ship that will probably last less than a minute...
I think at some point the intended approach for getting that many torpedo bombers would be fielding a carrier.
this version of the game is a lot better about it but in the previous version frigates felt like fighters that did not respawn or have their missiles restocked.
like why waste 2-5 DP and a fleet spot for a frigate that runs out of missiles and does not respawn when you could bring a 10-20 DP carrier with a broadsword and a bomber?
Because frigates have shields and can act as bullet sponges much better than fighters. Plus can capture combat objectives for MOAR DP. Which, gotta say, out of context just sounds like a porno... but anyway, and frigates are much cheaper in terms of supplies and fuel usage compared to any larger carriers (cruisers/capital ships). And usually faster in terms of burn level. A new strategy some peeps now use is to just explore the sector initially with a bunch of frigates (and wolfpack skill), since much more cheap/efficient to go the distance with frigates, then come back later with bigger guns... personally, I find it just more min/maxing and not the "right" way to play the game, but you play the game how you want!
40 just fells as a better option for the cap.Also to the enemy. In 0.9a, when we had fleet cap but NPCs did not, they had about sixty ships in an endgame fleet. Instead of something like ten capitals and twenty cruisers, they had fewer big ships more smaller ships.
You normally have >10 logistic ships in larger player fleets.
1-5 caps 3-6 cruisers and some destroyers wont allow ~10 Frigattes, which are needed to replace them.
Like say, a ship can "pass over/through" a friendly ship that's 3+ sizes (ie a frigate can move past a Battlecruiser and Battleship, a destroyer only a battleship) while a larger ship can 'shoot over' a friendly 3- sizes smaller. I'd be interested in seeing the video if anyone ever plays with those parameters, should be quite a show. ;D
I already literally suggested that, and Alex literally already shot it down (pun not intended). Mostly because AI in its current configuration would not be able to handle it. Although adding some evasion to frigates and fighters so that sometimes larger shots sometimes "miss" (ie, fly over target) would be cool and prolly wouldn't break AI too badly.Oh I know it'd break the AI, I just think it'd be fun to watch regardless. ;) Sometimes you just have to throw things at the wall and see what happens, actual results may surprise you.