Yeah, ship spam is an issue that I hope is addressed in ES2. I'll leave these two posts I made when discussing in the ES2 speculation threads:

WhiteWeasel wrote:
I'd like to see a CP cap (that can be upgraded with research of course) on fleets where you can only have a certain amount of ships deployed at once, to stop endless spamming and make individual battles more important. As when you reach the cp cap (say 100) you physically can't build any more ships. So if you were to lose a couple fleets, you have queue up more ships-which will take a few turns.



I also want to see more strategic uses for hangars:

Put a CP cap on your hangar-so you can only put a limited number ships in it. Say it starts with a 4 CP capacity by default and by endgame it can be around 35 (about 1 1/2 fleets worth of ships). However this CP cap for the hangar does not count towards the main one. So if you're at the cap, you can still build ships; provided you have room in that planets respective hangar. Also have a repair module type improvement(s) you can build on your star system, so the hangar provides more use than parking space for your reserve ships. I know you can repair your ships with , but that is expensive and this will provide an alternative way of repair your fleets. Cheap, but slow.



Also I want heros to be a bit less influential. I feel combat is way too lopsided.

WhiteWeasel wrote:
Also the current blockade mechanics have got to get a revamp. They are to exploity/unfair depending on which end you are on.



For undefended systems:



1) The systems normal defenses will provide it with it's own ower: (albeit not a ton) . This system MP factor into if it can be blockaded. If the blockading fleet has less MP than the system, it cannot be blockaded. It's silly how a scout can shut down a whole systems trade lanes (when that system has anti-ship measures as part of it's defenses mind you). The system MP won't stop a full fleet, but will alleviate the scout blockade exploit.



2) Be it upgrades to existing structures (like cloud rippers) or a standalone, add structure that can damage an enemy fleet in orbit. These anti-ship measures will deal damage divided evenly amongst all enemy ships in the fleet. The damage is applied on a per fleet basis. The damage will have the enemies defensive modules factored in. Because of this a single ship fleet could be ripped apart in a turn or two, while a full fleet could take very little to no damage at all as a sorts of herd resistance. So say your system defense does 600 damage per turn. You have a 450 corvette that has a total defensive value of 100. A single ship fleet (or a dozen since the damage is reapplied per fleet) will get destroyed. But a single fleet of 6+ of those corvettes will take no damage at all. This will discourage blockading with a bunch of singular weak ships and stalling massive fleets with a bunch of throwaway ships and encourage the condensing of fleets.





For defended systems



1) Your fleet must have at least >=75% of the total enemy ower: (system(if any) + fleet in orbit) in order to blockade it. As I find it silly a hilariously outclassed scout or unarmed invasion fleet can stop your trade routes AND stall your heavily armed forces.



2) A fleet can battle again based on it's CP value. In essence a 12 CP fleet can fight a same sized or larger fleet once, or can fight twelve 1 fleets, four 3 fleets etc... Maybe I'm bashing this over the head now that I don't like fleet spam.

I like your hangar idea, a lot!

Its very disappointing to me that a game with as many patches and add-ons as this still has this issue.

Generalkly the problem is that while people 'say' they dont like ship spam, the moment you put in restrictions on the # of ship people complain about that restriction.

satoru wrote:
Generalkly the problem is that while people 'say' they dont like ship spam, the moment you put in restrictions on the # of ship people complain about that restriction.

I don't think that is true. MOO2 had an Empire Command point set up and you never hear complaints about that. This is close to a game breaking issue late game. If you have three fleets on guard mode on important systems, you can easily fight over two dozen pointless battles a turn just on those systems! Battles that don't have a prayer of putting even a dent in your admiral led fleet. That is not fun. More combat does not = fun. Meaningful combat = fun.

Xtiaan wrote:
I don't think that is true. MOO2 had an Empire Command point set up and you never hear complaints about that. This is close to a game breaking issue late game. If you have three fleets on guard mode on important systems, you can easily fight over two dozen pointless battles a turn just on those systems! Battles that don't have a prayer of putting even a dent in your admiral led fleet. That is not fun. More combat does not = fun. Meaningful combat = fun.

But you see thats a DIFFERENT problem. Its not about a command point cap that you're having issues with. Its more the management of multiple combat fronts. That could be addressed via a UI/UX change. Not necessarily via a cap.

I think they are connected. Moo1 has a spam problem and the empire cap in Moo2 largely fixed it. Still, any solution that would keep the focus on empire building and quality, meaningful combats would be welcome. Maybe a maximum number of fleets... based on species, empire size and logistics tech would do the trick. That worked pretty well to streamline the number of battles in ROME2:TW and also made the battles themselves have more impact.



How to tame the late game combat beast? Maybe that's the more relevant question because there's more than one way to skin a cat.

I am looking forward to seeing what the devs come up with to solve the fleet spamming problems in ES1. Whether it be through an empire-wide cap on ships or number of fleets, something needs to be done. Ideally, the AI could be improved enough to learn when its swarm tactics of small fleets aren't working, but if some kind of restrictions or controls are needed to fix the problem then so be it.

Let me say first that I've been playing the hell out of this game. Best 4 x Space game since Master of Orion 2., hands down. I do have a suggestion though that I think will help mid to late game play for the sequel. Currently A.I ship spam is out of control. I find myself fending off seven or eight fleets of inferior fleets with one good fleet turn after turn. It becomes a little repetitive and takes a lot of the drama out of combat. Having your best fleet 'pinned' in a system by 10 interior fleets turn after turn because you can only fight them one at a time also can become really aggravating.



It's not that it's impossible to combat this computer tactic but it does mean creating a huge amount of fleet spam yourself. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks there should be a better solution.



My suggestion is that along with the maximum fleet CP cap we currently have... that each empire has a maximum 'empire' CP Cap as well (Maximum amount of CP allowed across the entire empire).



The maximum universal CP would be based on your species, the number of systems owned, total population, tech level...ect.



I'm thinking that the universal CP would cap out at about 20x the maximum fleet CP your empire had.



There would still be plenty of fleets, plenty of combat... but each battle would be more important.



This set-up would also streamline multi-player and make some of the cheap strategies currently used in multi-player irrelevant... 30 cheap missile ships hidden in every hanger, anybody?



Sorry if this topic has been brought up before... I really do think it deserves some discussion. It would be really interesting to hear what the Dev Team's take is on this issue.

A large war is always going to be more about the logistics then the heroics of a single battle.

I haven't play game long but even at newbie levels when I'm still learning last thing you need its the game tied in endless battles so boring after a few battles when AI just spam ships with no hope of victory or plan other that to bore me to death and notice AI appears be able to slip out of system to avoid battle and my ships refuse to move and just get locked in endless combats before AI sends ships to battle or after a battle

If if remember correctly the Total War games had the same issue and solved it by reducing the number of army you can create: in Rome 2 you cannot have an army without a general to command it and the number of general you can have at the same time is limited by the width of you empire.

Maybe we could apply the same solution with the heroes? It could be tricky since heroes are used to command system too and some faction from ES1 would be advantaged (like the Horatio). Moreover I cannot find a way to apply it to the Harmony.



But, in the end, each empire would have a limited number of army and would solve conflict trough great battle since lonely ships would be a waste of generals. The limit could be 2 at the beginning and could evolve with technology or the number of system.



What do you think of it?

Igncom1 wrote:
A large war is always going to be more about the logistics then the heroics of a single battle.

Yet all wars had their battles which went down in history.



When I hear Napoleon i hear: Austerlitz, Marengo, Dresden, the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig,Waterloo etc

When I hear WWI I hear: Battle of the Somme, of Verdun and Tannenberg

same with WWII: Dunkerque, Stalingrad, Kursk , Battle of Midway etc etc



you get the point.





besides that its just no fun to destroy hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of AI ships (especially on higher difficultys) till you almost get your science victory solely trough the knowledge gathering trait.

And there is no real logistic at all. The only logistic is annoying micromanagement and as you can build another 100 ships next turn you just set a waypoint and dont even care about merging them all to fleets because its just annoying and killing any fun of a full scale war. Its so annoying i dont even care to select battle cards on endless difficulty anymore cause i would have to do it like 20 times every turn.

Bobledanois wrote:
If if remember correctly the Total War games had the same issue and solved it by reducing the number of army you can create: in Rome 2 you cannot have an army without a general to command it and the number of general you can have at the same time is limited by the width of you empire.

Maybe we could apply the same solution with the heroes? It could be tricky since heroes are used to command system too and some faction from ES1 would be advantaged (like the Horatio). Moreover I cannot find a way to apply it to the Harmony.



But, in the end, each empire would have a limited number of army and would solve conflict trough great battle since lonely ships would be a waste of generals. The limit could be 2 at the beginning and could evolve with technology or the number of system.



What do you think of it?

Yeah but Total War did an overkill with that. Even in all the prior Total War games i found that a few single major battles could have had a major impact for an entire war. They even marked the spots of that "heroic" battles with some little swords on the strategic map as an memorial.



Dont know why they did that in Rome 2. In all the other series the upkeep costs were totaly enough to regulate the army size of an empire appropriate to its scale and prosperty.











And just be honest upkeep in ES was never rly an issue. (Execpt maybe for a Sophon who had to keep his taxes down)



Every race was like the Harmony because you never realy felt the upkeep costs at all!

So the problem here is: the IA (and some funny guys in mp) build hundreds of useless ships to exploit the fact your own fleet can only fight one per turn. This way, your fleet is "pined" in one system while all your systems are under blockade. And we don't mention the fact that, if you ever split your fleet yourself, the IA (or the funny guy) can gather his ships and fight yours. For what I see, the main points of the problem here are:



- A fleet can fight just one enemy fleet per turn.

- A ship can blockade a whole system by himself.

- There is no cap lock.

- Any ship can block every fleet (with no open frontier treaty) in a system.





The solutions proposed here are:



Xtiaan

- Creating a cap lock for the global .



WhiteWeasel

- Making the system able to defend himself against the little fleets.

- Creating more condition to blockade (in particular : the fleet should have a minimum ower: ).

- Changing the amount of attack a fleet can do each turn. A fleet of n can attack n , all together or one after the other.



Sovereign

- Changing the upkeep?



Bobledanois

- Creating a cap lock for the number of fleet.

and I'll add:

- Forcing the ship to fight all together in a system. So, if 10 ships in different fleet but in the same system get attacked, they will fight as one fleet of 10 ships. It looks like the solution proposed by WhiteWeasel but the is left aside in this case: every force go with his full strength every time.

- Changing the blocking option: how can possibly a scoot block an entire fleet? Maybe a fleet can be blocked only by fleet with more ower: or .



By looking at these we can see there are 2 different spirits here:

1. Forcing the player to have less ship or fleet, so every one count. We expect it will make the players gather their ships instead of spreading them. It should solve the "pinning" and the blockade problem. This can be made naturally (upkeep) or forced (CP).

2. Changing the way fights and blockade are managed by the game. Making huge fleet able to fight multiple time a turn or forcing the little fleet to assemble for the fighting part. Making systems able to handle little fleet by themselves for the blockade part.



Am I right?



If it is that simple maybe we can settle this with a vote, we have to choose if we want to solve this problem and which way to go.

To some extend its in the game: Ships are forced to fight together to match the CP of the attacking fleet.

This was a heavly needed nerf for the OP glass cannons back then.



But this only occurs if those 1 CP fleets are defending not when they attack you.







I think and hope the whole blocade system is also something which is hopefully reworked in ES 2.

You notice that Endless Legend doesn't really have this problem because spamming armies would be economically unfeasible. Perhaps increasing fleet upkeep costs is the logical first step. Of course, who knows how that would effect A.I behavior in general.

Endless legend doesn't have this problem because some issues of endless space are not in EL.

The major issues are :

your army cannot be pinned down by a single unit.

your cannot separate your army in many different units this easily (it takes more place) and if an enemy attack one of your separated units, they will gather to fight (no more "one turn per unit to kick them out").

and, as you said, the upkeep is more important.



Still, to blockade all the city of your enemy is still possible. But since your main army can move freely, you just have to go from one city to another to "free" them. It is more a strategical choice than a real trick.



Maybe focusing on these points would solve the problem and could even bring closer the gameplay of the 2 games.