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[Debido]

I have been thinking about the changes with CR, and the issues with harrying, speed de-buffs and all sorts of changes. I've come up with a solution to the issues with large fleets being to slow, the following post is fairly long but comprehensive to so that the game remains balanced - and with any hope makes it more exciting.

Similar threads have been discussed before and I've drawn a bit of inspiration from them to provide mechanics that are suitable for the star StarSector universe. What I would like to see introduced is 3 fleet formations that give strategic advantages and disadvantages. These formations only occur on the main map, but does affect combat and deployments, the details are as follows. Please forgive my bastardisation of Microsoft Word Art



Layered Defense (The Rock)

•   Mainly used to give time to slower logistics ships (superfrieghters, frieghters, tankers) or large and valuable ships to get away. Can also be used to catch up to burn level 1 enemies sooner, and force encounter on slower fleets to silly to get close enough. Useful when camping near jump points
•   Self explanatory. Slower ships on the inside. Faster ships on the outside.
•   As soon as enemy fleet is targeted and layered defense is initiated, immediate additional circles are shown around your fleet.
•   When you or an enemy force encounter on enemy fleet in this formation. 30 second time begins. In the first 30 seconds burn level 7+ ships are available, in the next 30 seconds burn 4-6, next 30 seconds burn 1-3.
•   If an enemy fleet attempts to harry you, or you harry an enemy fleet – only burn level 7+ ships will have their CR reduced
•   When en enemy fleet forces an encounter on you, if you choose to disengage/flee only burn level 7+ ships are available for the encounter.
             o   If you lose the encounter, the remaining fleet will be ¼ to 1/3 of a screen further away from the enemy in the original intended direction. The assumption is that during the fight the remaining fleet got away. The ‘jump’ distance is determined by ‘Advanced tactics’ skill
            o   The AI supply fleets should use this ‘layered’ defense’ by default, when you force an encounter where they fleet the first time you will only face their burn level 7+ fighters/frigates. After it is resolved the AI supply fleet jumps ahead ¼ to 1/3 of a screen away as well.
            o   If you WIN the encounter, you receive the ‘jump’ ahead of the enemy and your fighters are maintained at your perimeter.
•   Pros: Harassment has less effect on your fleet capability, your more valuable ships get to ‘jump’ away from a battle.
•   Cons: Your ability to harass supply fleets is reduced (two way street :-D ), harder to reap fuel/supplies fleets (again :-D). You can still be attacked repeatedly if they catch up to you, peeling away your outer defensive ships – leaving you vulnerable, but possibly closer to a base/jump point.





Aggressive Posture (The Paper)

•   Allows some of fleet to catch up with enemies that are generally 2-3 burn levels faster when close enough, forcing an encounter sooner. Instead of the overly dull ‘are we there yet’
•   After target enemy fleet is targeted, standard posture changes to aggressive posture with the tip of the triangle elongating further out over
•   The speed of the slowest ship still determines the speed at the base of the triangle, the top of the triangle elongates out to contact the enemy fleet. There is a maximum length of the formation/triangle that is determined by Logistics and Advanced Tactics skill.
•   After encounter is instigated only ships with burn of 7+ can be deployed initially. A 2 minute timer begins.
•   After 2 minutes, then ships with burn level 4-6 are available for deployment
•   After another 2 minutes, ships with burn level 1-4 are available for deployment.
•   Pro: Allows you to catch up to medium/large size fleets that are slightly larger than you in more situations, maintain availability of ships for combat, but there is a waiting period
•   Con: Still as slow as the slowest ship, you will likely need to wait for re-enforcements based upon the speed composition of your fleet.




Advanced Task Force (The Scissors)
•   Intended to allow a large fleet with some small/light/fast task force to catch up with fast/light enemies
•   Effectively splits your fleet into 2 parts
•   After you select this formation, you are prompted with a deployment screen. You select which ships to be used for the advanced task force. You cannot select any transport/carrier/freighter/tankers/battlecruisers
•   You now have an advanced fleet that moves ahead of the rest of the supply/slow fleet. A line is drawn between the two fleets, the slow fleet will always try to catch up to the advanced fleet along the path between them.
•   The maximum length of the line between your advance fleet is determined by Logistics/Advanced Tactics skills
•   The advanced fleet’s CR slowly drains whilst away from the supply fleet.
•   Whilst using the Advanced Task Force formation, you cannot manoeuvre through jump points
•   If you run out of fuel whilst at warp, your fleet always reverts back to layered defense.
•   When you encounter an enemy fleet with the advanced fleet, you can only engage with ships in the advanced fleet. You cannot ever use the slower/logistics fleet as re-enforcements.
•   If you win against an enemy engagement, but there are more salvage supplies than you can carry, you are given the choice of ‘wait for fleet’. In this case your advanced fleet must remain statically fixed in space whilst the supply fleet catches up. This leaves you and your supply fleet vulnerable.
•   Whilst your advanced fleet moves ahead of your supply fleet, your supply fleet is vulnerable if it is left with no large ships or defences. A near by enemy fleet may choose to change from a defensive to aggressive formation and quickly catch up to your supply fleet etc.
•   Pro: Excellent at catching up to enemy fleets to engage them
•   Cons: Cannot jump, advance fleet CR goes down and does not replenish, supply ships can be vulnerable.

Ok I think covers the basic concept, it would make the game more dynamic with more scenarios and make battles more interesting. The fleet mechanics would only kick in when your fleet is large enough, in a campaign it may only be unlocked when you have enough points in the leadership skills. The dynamics of the new gameplay element has enough variables in it to make it easily balanced so no one particular formation type has more of an advantage over the other. I had thought that the timer on the layered defence fleet may be to high, and I can't give any definitive lengths of the fleets as I am unable to program it into the game.

Comments are welcome, good? bad? too complicated? an exciting change?

[Plasmatic]

I like the idea as early game often involves the cat-mouse game where there is a fleet you can beat, but they are just as fast as you, so you just tail them, hoping they run into a bigger threat and turn around..

This could alleviate that, but early game, having only fighters with burn 7+ could mean you lose the first encounter before 2 minutes are even up..

Are there even frigates with a base burn of 7+?

[Debido]

Hi Plasmatic,

Thanks for the feedback. Are there frigates with a base burn of 7+? From the ship_data.csv

Wolf   Frigate   7
Hound   Frigate   8
Hyperion   Frigate   7
Tempest   Frigate   8

Other ships

Talon      8
Dagger      7
Wasp      8
Thunder      8

My hope is that early on pirates or other belligerents more often fly in 'Advanced Task Force' (ATF) formations. You can then knock out their supply ships, back off a bit and avoid them whilst their CR drops like a rock without supplies - then re-engage their attack fleet when they're weaker.

[Gibbatron]

It would certainly add another layer of tactics to the campaign map, which is a good thing. I can't really picture how well it could be displayed, as you would need to able to see enemy fleet compositions immediately. I'm sure it could be done.

[rex]

I think tactically, the game would benefit from allowing the user to use preset formations.  Say... having the option to run a destroyer based carrier fleet(to take advantage of navigation MB bonuses), surrounded by PD/Interceptor frigates, using fighters/bombers to dole out damage, without this costing like 5 command points to arrange every time you went into combat.   A system to allow the player to actually configure these things would be very nice. Let them predefine 1 or more tactical packages--multiple to account varying DP and opposing make up.


I hate rock paper scissors mechanics, and I dislike the idea of such, kinda restricted, hard coded tactics. Firmly defined bonuses seem like they are going to dictate fleet composition.   Say for the effects on harrying, why would a player not just run in rock mode, with a minimal number of high speed ships they don't care about? Those take the CR hit, but it doesn't matter because they aren't important to the combat role. How is a carrier fleet going to deal with ATF? Without flight decks, which I reading as not being available in combat, their survivability approaches 0 in actual combat. 


With tugs+navigation skills, I don't feel large PC fleets need to be particularly slow. Given there are eventually going to be NPC fleet commanders with skill points(I think), I feel this is kinda a problem that already has a solution.


An obvious mechanism for showing this on the campaign map would be simply to have the fleet on the map fly around in their assigned formation. The current default mechanic more or less is Rock. I don't imagine it would be to hard to code in the other options, if there were a need.

[Debido]

Hi Rex, thank you for the feedback. I would love to run a destroyer based fleet as well, kind of like playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with Chuck Norris who instead gives you a round-house kick to the face though just so we're clear the formations I'm discussing are fleet formations for the Navigation screen, and not the deployment/combat screen. I would certainly like there to be formations in the combat screen as well, and there are threads out there on that topic - at the moment it's just spaghetti and custard they way ships work together as teams...

Say for the effects on harrying, why would a player not just run in rock mode, with a minimal number of high speed ships they don't care about? Those take the CR hit, but it doesn't matter because they aren't important to the combat role.

A player can definitely use this as a strategy and is encouraged to discard ships they don't care for to 'get away' from larger enemy force as a means to delay them and get to safety if possible. As for indefinitely running in a layered defence, from what I've been reading about the harrying option it may get tweaked in future so that it will force an engagement rather than just reducing CR to zero. Either way a layered defence is intended to make the player work a little harder to hit supply fleets, and conversely delay an enemy fleet a little longer from attacking your main forces.

On the other point it's still the slowest formation of them all so there is less opportunity to attack enemy fleets. Navigation skills certainly help in addressing speed, and with enough tugs you can you can bring even an Atlas up to burn level 9 (I think...in theory) - but that is skill points spent in navigation and not in say Combat or Leadship areas, and those tugs burn through fuel and consume supplies etc.

So you can definitely go down the ship tug+navigation skill, that's definitely a choice, but if you don't go down that path there are still ways of making your fleet effective. Using a combination of them both would probably give you the most fun and choices later on in the game.

[Alfalfa]

This sounds like it would be a lot of work.  You'd need to create the system, then the UI and assets, then you'd need to code the AI to both use it and respond to it, so I doubt anything like this is going to be happening soon.  That being said, this actually sounds pretty boss.

This offers quite a few possiblities.  As you've already pointed out, it offers many alternatives to large, slow fleets for both catching and avoiding enemies other than simply becoming fast.  You could also whittle down larger fleets by engaging them, taking out some of their advanced forces, then retreating.  Beyond all the strategic offerings, it simply creates multiple new battle types which, considering how much I've enjoyed the new 'chase' battles, can only be a good thing.

About the aggressive formation, if you attack that formation from the backside it would make sense for them to deploy in reverse order (perhaps even a forced deployment of non-combat ships), allowing you to gain control of the battlefield while they sort themselves out.

@King I would think that if the outer layer is beaten or harried into inoperability all further engagements and harrying would happen to the second ring (inoperable ships get pulled back into the core or something).

As for representation, I'd say big circle for layered defense (current), triangle for aggressive, and two small circles with a line connecting them for advanced task force.

[Morrokain]

I really like this idea and I agree that it would add new strats and tactics to the campaign map. It does seem kind of complex though when already managing the logistics system currently in place. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something to consider.

Rock/Paper/Scissors is not really quite how to put it though. Which is a good thing since it is generally a horrible game mechanic to follow unless it is an rts. I'd more say its like sacrificing one strength for a boost to another.