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[Morbo513]

Big fan of this idea; it would be nice if you could control your individual picket fleets as well with rts like controls.
But then; does it reach the level where you are microing your entire fleet ship by ship in hyperspace as if its the combat minigame itself?? it could get very extreme.

With intelligent design though; I think it could work very well.

I think the best (Simplest, most feasible) way to handle it is you can only detach one pre-designated group from your main fleet, and only with a specific target at that, rather than issuing them orders separate to your own. It might also be worth separating the ability into "Detachment: Chase target" and "Detachment: Rear-guard"

The point is that it's balanced:
A detachments gives fleet A a chance to catch and force fleet B to fight.
But it also give fleet B the chance to escape a far larger fleet A.

And either way, it enables more opportunities for battles that otherwise wouldn't occur due to the AI not recognising when they can't catch up to, or outrun a given fleet

Agreed.  Between the unilateral use of Sustained Burn and timing gymnastics with emergency burn, a savescummer i.e. "PC has empirical evidence there is a god on his side" can pretty much catch everything if his fleet has a rated maximum burn of nine, and almost everything at a rated maximum burn of eight.  (The target fleet needs a maximum burn rating three higher than the PC to reliably escape.)

So ... there is no point in this except for ironman play; the deploy screen is where you choose the fleet detachment for the task at hand.

If you ask me, savescumming removes the stakes in any action that normally carries risk/reward - battles, missions, trading, exploration. So why, for example, add the ability to salvage your own lost ships after a battle if it's of no use to players who choose to reload their save if a single ship of theirs is destroyed? Why include battles in the first place if a player's going to reload the save if they don't win/disengage without casualties?
As for E-burn/S-burn, I suggested that use of E-burn be mutually exclusive with use of detachments, delaying use of either action past the point of the other's completion.
The S-burn mechanics in my opinion are quite broken, especially due to the AI's inability to use it.

[zaimoni]

Agreed.  Between the unilateral use of Sustained Burn and timing gymnastics with emergency burn, a savescummer i.e. "PC has empirical evidence there is a god on his side" can pretty much catch everything if his fleet has a rated maximum burn of nine, and almost everything at a rated maximum burn of eight.  (The target fleet needs a maximum burn rating three higher than the PC to reliably escape.)

So ... there is no point in this except for ironman play; the deploy screen is where you choose the fleet detachment for the task at hand.

If you ask me, savescumming removes the stakes in any action that normally carries risk/reward - battles, missions, trading, exploration. So why, for example, add the ability to salvage your own lost ships after a battle if it's of no use to players who choose to reload their save if a single ship of theirs is destroyed? Why include battles in the first place if a player's going to reload the save if they don't win/disengage without casualties?

Tactical stakes, not strategic.  Also, for newbies who don't know the game inside out ironman simply isn't practical.

As for E-burn/S-burn, I suggested that use of E-burn be mutually exclusive with use of detachments, delaying use of either action past the point of the other's completion.
The S-burn mechanics in my opinion are quite broken, especially due to the AI's inability to use it.

I don't have a visual on how the UI for detachments would work.  The detachment needs to have an independent position to not be a functional no-operation.  And the main problem they're supposed to solve, is already solved in-game with S-burn.

As far as I can tell, S-burn is not broken technically; there just wasn't time to adjust the AI for it before release.

[Morbo513]

Tactical stakes, not strategic.  Also, for newbies who don't know the game inside out ironman simply isn't practical.

Granted, and I wasn't suggesting that Ironman be enforced in any way. This is still zero reason not to include this mechanic.

I don't have a visual on how the UI for detachments would work.  The detachment needs to have an independent position to not be a functional no-operation.

Essentially you'd go through the fleet menu, and there'd be another little box on each ship to designate it as part of the detachment. The ability its self would be triggered by mousing over the fleet and pressing the appropriate number, or in the case of a split rear-guard action, just pressing the number for that.
As for position, again, it doesn't need to be a separate fleet to be able to work out the distance between it and the main. It still could be for readability's sake, but mechanically creating a separate fleet would probably be impractical

And the main problem they're supposed to solve, is already solved in-game with S-burn.

Again, I disagree. S-burn as far as it appears to me is simply to shorten the time travelling from A-B. The whole reason I imagine it forces the fleet to stop before being engaged is to prevent it from being used to outrun or catch up to fleets where you ought to be using E-burn for that purpose, or a detachment as an alternative in this case. Also why I imagine its acceleration is slower and maneuverability reduced.

[Megas]

But you can use your own detachment to stall THEIR detachment, don't you get it?
You can use YOUR faster ships are a rearguard, to stall the enemy and prevent them from catching up to your main fleet.

Given the way the game works, the detachments will suck everyone in like a black hole.  The detachments meet, everyone gets sucked in.  In effect, the detachments are making the circles bigger, not letting one side escape as suggested.  The game would need to be changed to support this.

[Morbo513]

But you can use your own detachment to stall THEIR detachment, don't you get it?
You can use YOUR faster ships are a rearguard, to stall the enemy and prevent them from catching up to your main fleet.

Given the way the game works, the detachments will suck everyone in like a black hole.  The detachments meet, everyone gets sucked in.  In effect, the detachments are making the circles bigger, not letting one side escape as suggested.  The game would need to be changed to support this.

The battle-joining mechanics would not factor in, since the people who would be creating the feature are conscious of it. One way or another, the game would be aware that a detachment is a detachment, and which fleet it originates from, by it technically being part of the same fleet or otherwise. And honestly, I think change is due in the battle-joining mechanic too, but that's for another discussion.

[zaimoni]

Given the way the game works, the detachments will suck everyone in like a black hole.  The detachments meet, everyone gets sucked in.  In effect, the detachments are making the circles bigger, not letting one side escape as suggested.  The game would need to be changed to support this.

Yes; that's why large fleets can be slightly slower (max burn two slower) and still catch up with a favorable start: they have larger circles.

That probably won't change materially after the AI is taught to use/recognize S-burn.

[TrashMan]

I think the best (Simplest, most feasible) way to handle it is you can only detach one pre-designated group from your main fleet, and only with a specific target at that, rather than issuing them orders separate to your own. It might also be worth separating the ability into "Detachment: Chase target" and "Detachment: Rear-guard"

Perhaps, but I have an aversion to everything being a special ability, instead of a organic thing.
Organic is always more flexible and gives more opportunities.

[TrashMan]

But you can use your own detachment to stall THEIR detachment, don't you get it?
You can use YOUR faster ships are a rearguard, to stall the enemy and prevent them from catching up to your main fleet.

Given the way the game works, the detachments will suck everyone in like a black hole.  The detachments meet, everyone gets sucked in.  In effect, the detachments are making the circles bigger, not letting one side escape as suggested.  The game would need to be changed to support this.

There should be no immediate auto-join, rather distance should be taken into account.
Rather, any hostile fleet in vicinity would be able to (but that doesn't mean it would. Each fleet would decide separately, and any fleet that already has a task would ignore you) enter frey after X time, depending on distance.

So, Fleet A is chasing you, but fleet B is also near.
Fleet A sends a detachment, you send a rearguard.
They meet.
Fight starts
A main fleet will be able to enter battle in 500 seconds.
Fleet B decides to join in, but it further away and it will take it 800 seconds to join in.

The longer the battle lasts, the greater the distance you main fleet moves away (could simply be a speed bonus or the fleet could be move away)

The only issue here is - what is fleet A and B are also hostile to each other?