I would think letting a few of the more general orders not cost command points would be an effective solution to allowing anyone to never lost complete control of their fleet, while still leaving the CP function (with perhaps a few reduced points if more general orders would no longer cost CP) in place to reduce the dependency on micromanagement of every vessel.
Hmm. It's an interesting idea - and I think it would work. It adds a bit more complexity (keeping track of / explaining to a new player that some of the commonly used orders are free), and I don't know that it actually *adds* much. Command points would need to be rebalanced so you have fewer of them, and you're basically back to square one.
Now, you would never actually run out completely. But being able to run out completely is actually a good thing. One - even though it doesn't happen very often - just the threat of it adds importance to the choices you make. Two, if it does happen, you get another interesting choice - order an all-out retreat, or order search-and-destroy. Try to fight it out, or get out?
As the battle goes on, it slowly spirals out of the admiral's control. Comm systems go down or are more effectively jammed, casualties among the ranks of senior commanding officers mount. Both sides are fully engaged, and some ship commanders are so focused on their immediate situation that they are unable to effectively respond to orders. Finally, all fleet cohesion is lost, and the admiral faced with a choice - order all ships engage the enemy at will, or sound a general retreat?
To me, that's a compelling situation. Facing it (or, more often, just its possibility), for me, increases immersion greatly. It also presents some interesting gameplay choices when it happens, and makes preceding choices more meaningful. So it's not certainly something I want to get rid of, and not something I feel needs to be "fixed"!
As I said, nomatter if I run out of command points or not, if they are in I will be forced to take them into consideration. To me that's about as interesting as having rainbow ponies on the field that give you a 500% damage bonus for 10 seconds. Sure, you can implement it in a balanced way, but I'll never play a space game where I enjoy having to take rainbow ponies into consideration in my battle plan. Command points are about as real and immersive as rainbow damage bonus ponies for me.
It's a silly analogy but my point is that while I don't care about hardcore realism (near infinite acceleration in space, near unlimited range on weapons, etc.) because most of those things aren't fun, I DO care about immersion so I would like to go into a space battle thinking about the battle, my ships and weapons, my enemies... not the "CP : 5" at the top right of the screen.
Immersiveness greatly depends on context. For example, a game of MtG is immersive - but having an MtG-like card in, say, Mount & Blade (or ponies in Starfarer) would be very much out-of-context, and immersion-breaking. On the other hand, I would claim that CPs contextually fit in well with the rest of the command mechanics.
So, I hope you'll withhold your final judgment until you've
actually played the game 
By the way, you already could turn off CPs my modding individual missions. Most of them are extremely generous with the CPs already, though, so you hardly ever run out. I almost never do - though of course if you're experimenting with/learning the mechanics, that's going to happen more often. The new version addresses that a great deal (refund for cancelling assignments w/o unpausing, immediate feedback on what would happen, some other things along those lines).
I want to also stress that you don't lose control completely when you run out - as I mentioned before, you can either sound a general retreat, or order all ships to engage the enemy at will.
As for saying Command Points is on par with allowing an AI to cheat... I have that hard to believe. The AI is simply using the same AI your own fleet will use sans-orders if I'm not mistaken.
Just a bit of nitpickery: the enemy AI will attempt to capture objectives; on the other hand, the default state for your own fleet is seek & destroy, so they won't make an effort to capture objectives without being ordered to. This is as it should be. I doubt the enemy AI is restricted by command points, but surely it wouldn't make the game unduly difficult if it cheated a little in this regard.
Then I am mistaken! But, unless Alex confirms that the enemy is bound by CP too (which very well could be, but I certainly doubt that) then it still could be. 
That's why I think I'll still propose free CP costs for capture/assault/defend at least... unless that's been tested, discussed and/or tossed.
The AI plays by exactly the same rules as the player in regard to command (and just about everything else, really). It creates assignments, changes them around when necessary, and is limited by command points.
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Topic: Alternatives to the current command points system (Read 8919 times)