I like that you can only hold up a fleet for 1 Turn using Guard, but that leads to a serious cheese tactic.   You can basically send a handful of fleets of 1 ship each to a location that is guarded.  Then you can get all of them through on the next turn, minus the ship that was destroyed by the enemy fleet.  The system should automatically lump all defenders (up to the Fleet Command Point cap) when you attack multiple fleets.  This one ship a turn tactic is a terrible play style to encourage with the new Guard system.

This "grab x number of command points to defend" would also make it so my reinforcement ship, who just barely got to the system before my big fleet was attacked, also gets included in the defense of the star system.  It would also make you think carefully before sending exploration and colonization ships close to the fray.

Or make that instead of having 1 attack per fleet, you have N attack where N is the number of command point in your fleet and attacking another fleet consume M attack point, M being the size of the opposing fleet.

C0ldSn4p wrote:

Or make that instead of having 1 attack per fleet, you have N attack where N is the number of command point in your fleet and attacking another fleet consume M attack point, M being the size of the opposing fleet.

That's a really good idea.  Though I would just like to see additional ships added to a partial fleet for defense, so, if you wanted to cover a single ship, you would need an entire fleet to do so.  The extra ships would only be added if you have unused command points in the defending fleet.  This cheese tactic made it so I had enemy ships come at me in 3 groups of single ship fleets and they just waltz into my home system to harass me.  I had fleet move of 8 and they had fleet move of 9, so it was like the Benny Hill of space chases.

C0ldSn4p wrote:

Or make that instead of having 1 attack per fleet, you have N attack where N is the number of command point in your fleet and attacking another fleet consume M attack point, M being the size of the opposing fleet.

Oh, that's a great idea.  I saw this after coming up with a far inferior idea of just giving a limitless attack capacity to fleets in guard mode.  This is great, and makes a whole lot more sense than one fleet being able to blockade tons of other fleets.  well done!  Post in ideas!

C0ldSn4p wrote:

Or make that instead of having 1 attack per fleet, you have N attack where N is the number of command point in your fleet and attacking another fleet consume M attack point, M being the size of the opposing fleet.

I would have to say this is the best idea I have read on this topic and, if you would create the idea thread (it is your idea after all), please provide a link to this idea so I can follow it.

I was thinking about this exact same issue today - but from another direction :)

I was in a war with the Vodyani, who kept sending random tiny fleets at a key system I was blockading.  They'd send like two leecher fleets and small fighting fleet (three fleets total).  In order to fight them all, I kept having to split by big fleet (13 fleet cap size) up into a bunch of smaller fleets, kill all the enemies in 1-turn, then re-merge the fleet and fly off to attack somewhere else (or leave to defend in case of a big attacker).  Anyways, basically I was constantly juggling fleets, splitting and re-merging them over and over to net myself more attack opportunities.  This is pretty tedious and NOT FUN.

Some of the ideas above make a lot of sense, which is to give fleets some number of action points so a big fleet can attack many smaller ones in the same turn - but attacking a big fleet vs. big fleet could consume all the actions points.   Or maybe fleets just have a fixed number of action points based on your command cap.  E.G., every four command points (or part thereof) gives your fleet an action point.  So a 13 command fleet could attack 3 times in a turn.

Alternatively, have a better reinforcement system as part of the revamped combat mechanics, so that all fights are "system wide" and all ships on both sides are dragged into the conflict over the course of multiple rounds or something.

Yeup, I'm with you.  I agree it would solve a whole bunch of issues with the game.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

That would mean a small fleet can't attack a big fleet though.

The attacking empire could pay the difference in war  ?

We are attacking 1 vs 5 => -4 war

We are attacking 5 vs 1 => no problems and we can attack 5 vs 1 four times again, with no  malus. The sixth time, it's -1 .

 You could have it set up so the initail attack each round is able to attack any size fleet, so this could be worked around.

10 cp could attack > 13 cp

10 cp could attack > 4cp + 4cp + 1cp + 1cp

10 cp could attack > 7cp + 3 cp

10 cp could attack > 4 cp

10 cp could not attack > 8cp + 5 cp

so if M = number of attacker cp 

and N = number of defender cp

then

if M₁ ≤ N₁ then M₁ can only attack N₁

else M₁ can attack multiple ships when N₁ + N₂ + N₃ ≤ M₁

Something like this would allow an attacker to fight multiple ships up to and including his current cp value, but would also allow the same fleet to attack a single larger fleet it encounters.

MadMyke2010 wrote:

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

That would mean a small fleet can't attack a big fleet though.

The attacking empire could pay the difference in war  ?

We are attacking 1 vs 5 => -4 war

We are attacking 5 vs 1 => no problems and we can attack 5 vs 1 four times again, with no  malus. The sixth time, it's -1 .

 You could have it set up so the initail attack each round is able to attack any size fleet, so this could be worked around.

10 cp could attack > 13 cp

10 cp could attack > 4cp + 4cp + 1cp + 1cp

10 cp could attack > 7cp + 3 cp

10 cp could attack > 4 cp

10 cp could not attack > 8cp + 5 cp

so if M = number of attacker cp 

and N = number of defender cp

then

if M₁ ≤ N₁ then M₁ can only attack N₁

else M₁ can attack multiple ships when N₁ + N₂ + N₃ ≤ M₁

Something like this would allow an attacker to fight multiple ships up to and including his current cp value, but would also allow the same fleet to attack a single larger fleet it encounters.

I suspect devs have something similar in mind for next update. suppose this is the automerge mentioned in roadmap.

I don't this is automerge. I think automerge is launching fleets directly from hangars, or hangars growing orbiting fleets.