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[Helldiver]

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!".

These problems happen in Starsector, and not in other ship games, because weapon range in Starsector is so short most ships have to crowd around a target to shoot it (on top of AI that doesn't care about blocking firing lines) and ships can't shoot over each other.
Increase weapon range on the lower spectrum (no absolute need to exceed the current maximum, just bring up the smaller, shorter range weapons to something more reasonable - upcoming AC range buff is a good step foward) and allow bigger vessels to shoot over smaller ones and smaller ships will no longer have to pile-up like dogs around every target and smaller ships can do what they want without making bigger ships unable to fire for dozens of seconds or until the friendly is dead.

[Alex]

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.

[Deshara]

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...

[Alex]

Oh hah, I remember doing that

[Helldiver]

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.

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.

[Thaago]

I don't really run into my shots being blocked very much tbh. Occasionally yes, but not regularly. I'm usually running somewhere in the order of 15 frontline ships for endgame fleets (that are not purpose built small number of ships fleets - just normal fleets) and a bunch of support ships like carriers/gryphons. The only time blocked shots come into play is vs stations (the AI just doesn't attack stations well) and in endgame mopup where it doesn't matter (its 10 on 1 and the 1 isn't a match anyways).

...

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.

Currently with the exception of missiles, any ship that is shooting you you can shoot back at, if its in range. If big ships could shoot over smaller ships thats not the case: a big ship can fire with over a screen of destroyers/frigates and be immune to return fire. Thats not necessarily a dealbreaker for general space combat games, but one of the key aspects of SS is flux and the balance of offense and defense: firing weapons depletes the same resource that protects a ship (and vice versa), which gets upset when a ship can be completely screened.

If small ships could block for large ships, I'd also want very close positional control over the tanks of the game and it could get extremely bad if they get out of position... but the game isn't currently designed for that level of control. There's also a lot of blurring between ship classes: a heavy destroyer and a light cruiser have a different balance of range and hullmod OP cost, but fundamentally they are still just ships. With overfiring there is a very clear distinction between classes that would need to be part of the game's design. So while general overfiring could work for some different game, this just isn't one of them and isn't designed with it in mind.

[Sutopia]

People tend to forget monitors exist lol.

[KDR_11k]

With overfiring there is a very clear distinction between classes that would need to be part of the game's design.

Also means you have to remember each ship's class in the heat of the battle, with some heavier destroyers and lighter cruisers I could imagine some mistakes sneaking in and an ally getting their engines stuffed full of hellbore.

[Kloranthy]

I think it would be interesting to see what everyone has for fleet composition given the rather low fleet cap.

I increased the player fleet cap to 40 and usually have about 5 or so slots open for recovering ships.
I think that I also decreased the battle size to 200 just because I prefer smaller fights.

Spoiler

in my current play through I have not found any capital ships (or blueprints) that fit well with my fleet composition/strategy.
in a previous play through where I had capitals I would bring 2-4 along for bigger fights, replacing some of the cruisers.

cruisers
  4-8 combat
    dominator, mora, falcon, colossus mk3, etc.
  1-4 logistic
    venture, colossus

destroyers
  3-11 combat
    hammerhead, P enforcer, condor, buffalo mk2, etc.
  1-2 logistic
    phaeton

frigates
  4-8 combat
    centurion, LP lasher, LP brawler, LP kite, etc.
  2-5 logistic
    shepherd


my usual strategy :

• start with frigates and fast destroyers to capture the objectives for deployment points
• deploy a couple more destroyers (non-SO warships or carriers)
• have the frigates either retreat or provide a distraction while the reinforcements move into position
• usually that frees up enough DP for a light cruiser
• have the fast destroyers either retreat or provide a distraction while the reinforcements move into position
• repeat with switching out lighter/faster warships for heavier warships and carriers

[close]

I would say about 1/10th to 1/5th of the fleet is logistic ships of various sizes.

destroyers tend to compromise about half of my combat ships because they are used throughout the entire fight.
the frigates are really only present at the start and similarly the bigger ships are only present towards the end.


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...

maybe having both DP and ship count limits would help?
like you can have up to 50 ships with a total of 500 DP.
spamming all kites would run out of ship count before DP while all paragons would out of DP before ship count.

[JAL28]

you can deploy 30 kites for the same amount of fleet cap as 1 paragon

I won’t lie, that doesn’t sound like a good idea, since only being able to field 1 capital alone would have capitals as a class useless since a capital would have to solo entire fleet to stay relevant(something only the Ziggy can emulate truly)

It would probably be better to add a soft limit that makes it so you can field max say 5 caps before having sever disadvantages perhaps, or simply 1/2 with an escorting fleet(also something that needs to be fixed, the escort command not being able to select specific ships and just picking the closest ship to guard)

Anyways, there is already a “soft cap” on fielding capitals; say you field 30 paragons. For one, you’ve probably wasted 25-30mil getting those paragons, not to mention the costs of getting weapons for them. They would guzzle around 2.4K supplies monthly which would cost about 240k a month. Not to mention the sheer costs of putting them into battle, would strain the finances of all but the richest tycoons(not to mention that not even waystations could support said fleet for more than a few battles per month).

[KDR_11k]

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.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

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 accept that having smaller ships be able to fly over larger ships might not gel with the game's AI as it currently exists, but preventing ships stacking on top of each other has a rather simple solution.  Just have ships compound their flux dissipation if stacked (and/or maybe flux generation, but making it primarily or fully flux dissipation seems more lore accurate).  So flying a frigate over a cruiser might only not dissipate flux as quickly for each ship while one passes over the other, but stacking and firing would more quickly overload both ships (though which overloads faster, dunno; depends on how flux compounding were to be coded).

Plus, in order to balance such an ability, overloaded ships can't pass over/under each other.  Thus, sometimes trying to fly over another ship to escape wouldn't end so well.  However, since only the player would only really effectively know when/how to properly take advantage of such a capability, might not matter in the long run.

[Kloranthy]

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?

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

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!

[Kloranthy]

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!

idk if most frigates outside of the monitor can really tank that much damage.
broadswords have 750 hull and 100 armor which is surprisingly close (about 1/3rd the hull of lasher and brawler) to some of the frigates.
they might not be as tanky but there are 3 in a wing and they respawn.

capturing objectives and being cheap to field is definitely an advantage.
I have not done a wolfpack play through yet so maybe that will change my mind.