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« on: September 05, 2018, 03:30:31 PM »
Hey there guys, I post here once in a blue moon but I thought I'd make a suggestion, inspired from a discussion in the unofficial discord.
Late game combat/Superfleet Combat is currently pretty wack, as the AI doesn't appropriately respond to the nature and tactics the player usually presents by the late game. Many ships become irrelevant in the face of the scale of the fighting as well. As we move towards orbital stations and outpost control, I feel like the longevity of a playthough is going to be extended without a appropriate change the longevity of late-game combat.
As such, I'd like to propose a few ideas that might be functional.
1. The AI needs balancing in large fights, where it places high cost ships at the start of a engagement on the field.
Presently, the AI tactic in large fights isn't very effective in the early game of a battle. It wastes its deployment resources in buoy captures with frigates instead of offering any meaningful resistance to a well scaled fleet deployed to assault their spawn and push up the map. Many times have I found myself just taking on hegemony fleets where they deploy 5 hounds and some lashers to play with buoys and fall apart when a well balanced fleet rolls up the center to intercept things coming out of spawn.
It's not compelling or fun, because even if you don't wipe them out from spawn they still never present the juicy part of their fleet in full force. Instead, 10 frigates hang about being timid and frankly blocking up deployment resources while a single stronger ship rolls in and promptly dies.
Either it needs to learn to retreat their advanced force more fluidly for the mainstay battle fleet to come out, or more reasonably deploy a good chunk of big deployment cost ships at the start to actually hold a line while they commit to the buoys.
Even conjunction with my following idea, the AI needs to utilize their frigates more effectively and retreat them earlier in the start of the battle. They presently seem to be a detriment to large AI fleets.
2. In huge fights, using the largest maps, Frigates should be able to spawn and retreat from side flanks of the map.
Currently, frigates don't serve the purpose they should be in these big battles. You imagine them pulling off epic flanks skirmishing on line carriers and retreating high flux craft and but instead find them milling about and wasting command and deployment points being re positioned to doing the aforementioned tactic - or being destroyed on the front line. To minimize the micro-management, at a certain size of battle this feature should become available to display the flanking potential.
A possible solution could be make buoys that enable you to deploy/retreat from the flanks with frigates when captured to legitimize capping them in huge battles. It gives your frigates a tool to do exactly what they should be doing, high mobility flanks. However, paired with the ability to retreat them effectively this allows you to cap and retreat them to bring out the big guns faster. It also means you can bring them back in faster, when the battle starts demanding it.
- Note
I understand "Fix the AI" is a generally bad request in general, however ultimately I feel that it's a weighting issue that could produce more compelling fights. Presently, the late game is looking like it's about to get a huge boost in content yet I feel like the combat this update is meant to support isn't going to be as satisfying as one might first hope.
Additionally, I might say this suggestion is based off my experience in the game - and what I have perceived may be incorrect. However, I don't think it is.
