Hi everyone.
Very quick introduction:
Hi there, I'm new to this forum and also new to this game, I saw Sseth's video a few weeks ago and been playing this game non stop for the past weeks. Its absolutely awesome!! (yeah I bought it, not using Sseths key).
I could praise this game for hours on end, but that's not what I am here for today.
As you all know (I've been following the forums a bit) there are some things that might still be improved upon, and here is my quick 'n dirty take on how to add multiple player fleets.
Reason for this suggestion:
I understand that the current game mechanics make it very hard to allow the user to operate multiple fleets at the same time, though having only 1 fleet inside this massive galaxy limits the user's influence over this galaxy somewhat (babysitting the colonies, getting to bounties or exploration missions is sometimes impossibly difficult or very expensive).
The actual suggestion
What if you can just switch the active fleet, while 1 fleet being active at any given time (no impact on current gameplay) whilst the others are 'parked' at one of your own colonies (not using up supplies or fuel). You can already 'stash' ships in your colony shipyard, why not allow entire fleets (including all of their contents, fuel, supplies, personnel, cargo) to be put in the parked state at a colony (for simplicity, you could say that only 1 fleet can be parked at one colony at any given time and you can only switch fleets by parking the current fleet at a colony, where obviously there is no other fleet parked yet. It would even be an option to have it cost a very low number of supplies to be 'parked' to make it more balanced, the people on board of these ships still need to eat right...
Use cases:- I come to one of my colonies (where no fleet is parked yet) with my fleet and have the option in the colony menu "park fleet". Then after I click that, I can see all my colonies and whether there is a fleet present or not, and I can click any of those and select either "use fleet" (if there is a fleet present) or "create new fleet" from the ships that are available in that colony's shipyard).
- If I come to one of my colonies (where no fleets are parked yet) with my fleet and I have no other colonies OR no other colonies with ships available in the shipyard, the option to "park fleet" is disabled with an appropriate message "no other fleets available" or something.
- If I come to one of my colonies, where there is already a fleet parked there, the option to "park fleet" is changed to "switch fleet", in which case, obviously, the current fleet will be parked and the new fleet will be the new current fleet.
- If my fleet is destroyed, I get to the colony list where I can select another fleet to "use" or "create" if there are ships in the shipyard.
- On creating a new fleet from ships in the shipyard, note that if no supplies or fuel are present at that colony, the new fleet will be effectively useless, so careful planning is required.
I have no idea how the current codebase is structured (btw I am a java developer myself), but I would guess that a system like this would be pretty easy to implement, since it does not affect the actual gameplay. It would however make the game a bit more realistic (I own multiple planets, why can't I own multiple fleets) and it makes exploration a bit more fun and babysitting your colonies a bit less cumbersome. Why would I have to spend metric tons of antimatter just to fly from colony to colony when I can just park a secondary fleet there.
I hope that Alex will consider this suggestion. Or maybe somebody can make a mod that does this. I could also look into modding myself, but I have never modded a game before, and my attention span can be somewhat limited if it comes to personal coding projects.
Anyway, enjoying this game very much, thanks for all the hard work!!
