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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); In-development patch notes for Starsector 0.98a (2/8/25)

Author Topic: Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet  (Read 412 times)

nathan67003

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Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet
« on: June 07, 2024, 03:52:52 PM »

Basically, the player would be able to have a fleet follow them around (you can tell it to "follow" or "standby" but nothing much more precise).

Such a fleet would require an officer to lead it (at the very least) and would either be hired as a mercenary fleet (some limits to what they're willing to do, upkeep is wholly monetary) and could therefore not be changed or fiddled with in any way or would be made up of elements of the player's faction (and BE of the player's faction), resulting in a fleet that you can customize to your liking but need to supply with fuel, supplies and credits to keep running.

The goal of such a feature is to make late-game threats more approachable (for late-game players) at a cost. Notably, one wouldn't be able to bring along an escort fleet on 'special outings' - into the Abyss, transverse jumping, having it keep up with the player's abilities, etc.

A dedicated tab in the fleet manager would probably be the easiest place to put everything about it.
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I have some ideas but can't sprite worth a damn and the ideas imply really involved stuff which I've no clue how to even tackle.

Amoebka

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Re: Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2024, 04:04:39 PM »

I think this is the endgame for that "orders" tab in the colony menu that has been teasing us since forever?

Imo would make more sense to tie this second fleet to colonies, to give more importance to having your own military base, production and blueprints. So, basically, a heavy patrol your colony spawns but you can order it to follow you for assisting with tough battles.
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Bungee_man

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Re: Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2024, 11:30:48 AM »

I think the reason the game doesn't have escort missions (in either direction) is twofold. First, if you have two fleets that are supposed to move together, one can get distracted and wander off, or get into a battle without the other, or do any number of janky things that would be unpleasant to have to work around. Second, given that "fleets" are essentially an arbitrary construct - just groups of individual ships that decide to move and fight alongside each other - an "escort" is substantially more effective if it just joins your fleet directly.

That said, it could be interesting to have commissioned and player factions offer some ships and officers to the player as a quick, cheap, immutable bundle, rented at a discount and less expensive than normal to lose. This would serve the same purpose without the risk of jank - sort of like Nexerelin's mercenary packages.

For example, the Hegemony has a tough bounty, and they want the player, who has a Hegemony commission, to take it on. His fleet isn't strong enough to do so alone, so they give him the equivalent of a heavy patrol worth of non-customizable ships and officers for the duration of the mission, with a fraction of their cost being deducted from the payout when it completes if they are destroyed. Lets early and midgame players get into harder fights with reduced risk, and also lets players feel like they are meaningfully part of their selected faction.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2024, 11:34:19 AM by Bungee_man »
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Cryovolcanic

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Re: Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet
« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2024, 01:52:04 PM »

I think the reason the game doesn't have escort missions (in either direction) is twofold. First, if you have two fleets that are supposed to move together, one can get distracted and wander off, or get into a battle without the other, or do any number of janky things that would be unpleasant to have to work around. Second, given that "fleets" are essentially an arbitrary construct - just groups of individual ships that decide to move and fight alongside each other - an "escort" is substantially more effective if it just joins your fleet directly.

Warband already has this mechanic, including the all of the flaws you point out, and it adds positively to the charm of that wonky game rather than detracting from it.

One of the things that Warband has (which Starsector currently lacks) is endgame challenges powerful enough to justify creating an armada of individual fleets. I play a Warband mod where enemy armies of 3000+ soldiers can spawn, while my endgame army is ~400 troops only. To beat that enemy army I need a dozen of my own vassals with me.

I don't know how to create a challenge in Starsector that requires 100 ships to beat, but that is what we would need to have in order for support fleets to be useful.
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Bungee_man

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Re: Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2024, 03:31:54 PM »

I don't know how to create a challenge in Starsector that requires 100 ships to beat, but that is what we would need to have in order for support fleets to be useful.

Nexerelin lets you do that kind of thing, but there's only so much you can do with a really large battle before it gets repetitive. Only so many ways an Invictus can get blown up, so an LC armada with forty of them going up against a player faction armada of similar size isn't going to be anything new past the first six or so capital ships to go down.

As our talented youtubers have shown, even deliberately overpowered threats like the Remnant can be fought off effectively indefinitely with a well-designed fleet. 240 DP of Paragons can stand against thousands of DP worth of alpha-cored Radiants, Brilliants, and Lumens.
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Beep Boop

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Re: Allow a player to hire/assign an escort fleet
« Reply #5 on: June 08, 2024, 08:30:26 PM »

Basically, the player would be able to have a fleet follow them around (you can tell it to "follow" or "standby" but nothing much more precise).
This seems like it would be counterproductive, like most cases of allied "assistance": they'd just chew up your DP and thus prevent you from properly deploying your well-honed and familiar battleforce, and you'd thus have to wait until they all die or rout before you can finally start fighting.

could therefore not be changed or fiddled with in any way
In addition to the above, this would effectively make them pretty useless. Now they really are just useless wastes of your DP allowance that you're just waiting for to get killed so you can finally start fighting.

What would be more useful is the ability to dispatch such units on independent missions, thus enhancing the player's ability to get into more fights (that YOU get to fight, mind you). Because I recall Alex said the entire point of Starsector was to get us into cool spaceship fights, and after a certain point, the number of spaceship fights I can get into becomes hampered by the fact that I can only exist in one place at a time and am limited by CR-replenishment in how frequently I can get in fights. If I had an entire second fleet that I could get into fights with somewhere and somewhen else when my main fleet is unavailable for getting into fights, I could be having more fights, with a variety of more different spaceships. There's just plenty of cool spaceships I find and go, "Gee, it sure would be nice if I could build a battleforce around this new toy, except that I already have a battleforce, can't exceed 240 combat DP/30 ships, and can't otherwise do anything with unless I first kill off my entire existing fleet". If I could build a separate fleet and send them off to terrorize a different corner of the map and get in even more cool spaceship fights, that'd be great.
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