This is a bit disappointing, I was looking forward to three-way battles. A scenario in which both enemy fleets by themselves would be too much for you but if you sneak into their battle and try to pick them off one at a time while they are locked in battle with each other sounds very appealing to me.
Unfortunately it might be prevented by practical concerns regarding the AI. Modding experiments with adding additional sides resulted in some issues, though it's been long enough that about the only thing I recall was the side 3 ship, which if memory serves was hoped to be neutral, was instead hostile to everything. This may no longer be the case given the modifications to the AI this change would have necessitated, but it may still be beyond what the game can handle.
It just occurred to me, since I'm assuming (and you confirmed) three-way battles would be a pain code-wise, what if we could choose to assist one of the hostile factions? As in after you click their battle you have a choice to [Assist X Faction] [Assist Y Faction]
Then they'd be neutral to you in that battle I guess but turn hostile if you open fire to any of their ships. It'd make for a nice way to get some rep points with hostile factions since getting those are incredibly difficult and perhaps this might be a good new option. Of course we could also have some limitations, like not being able to assists fleets with the upper hand or having a hate level above "hostile" that would deny even actions like this.
As far as 3+ side battles - yeah, it's just too much of a pain code-wise. I also think it's one of those things that sounds like more fun that it would be in practice. The "right" AI behavior would be to play defensively; anything else would just open it up to player abuse. I mean, the whole idea behind what makes it sound fun is basically abusing the hell out of the AI. Those things are fun for a bit but lose their luster longer term, and take away from the game overall.
As far as helping a hostile faction: in-world-logic wise, in that scenario, neither faction would trust you to help. In game design terms, I think it'd cause problems where, you know, you might decide to take out a bunch of your "allies" by "accident". You know, pretty much the reason neither faction would trust you to help in the first place. And if they turn hostile to you if you start doing that, then we're back to the 3-fleet thing. It's just super messy for what feels like, at least to me, ultimately dubious reasons.
Nuts 'n bolts questions:
- How do allies interact with the FP/logistics limit for ships in a single battle? Do they share a common cap?
Same cap, which is the same as for normal battles. Allies will leave you some points to deploy, to a minimum of your flagship, and more if your fleet is comparatively large.
- Say an NPC-NPC battle takes two days. Joining at 1.99 days is functionally the same as joining right at the start, I take it?
Not exactly, since at least one autoresolve round will have happened by then.
Unrelated thought: Officer portrait above the flux/CR bar on every ship looks like clutter, at least judging from the screenshot. They tell you there's an officer on board, but unless you remember which face is which officer it doesn't seem like they communicate more info than that (like the key "what combat skills will this ship have?")
Could ships instead get a "has officer" icon, with the portrait only on targeted ships and in places like the ship info card?
This shot is particularly officer-rich. It doesn't feel cluttered in practice, at least so far. The main thing the icon communicates, aside from the fact that an officer is on board, is the officer's level - which is a very good indicator of their overall strength. I did think about showing this only for targeted ships, but it's just too important a piece of information not to have up at all times. But I guess what you're suggesting would still do that, just with a smaller and different icon. Hmm. I think I like the portraits better - they look nice, convey more information if you *do* recognize the officer, and are more intuitive than a "hey, what IS that icon" that a different - and smaller - icon would be.
