Hey, everybody I'm new to the forums and just wanted to say that I'm enjoying the game immensely but there a few things which I think would greatly improve the overall experience. Aside from the very-lacklustre diplomacy and trading, which I hope will some large improvements before the final release, the only other major improvement I would like to see are some more tactical/strategic options for managing fleets. I personally love the hands-off approach the game has to combat and love the card system although I feel it could use a bit more diversity (the retreat card mentioned in the latest vote is a good example).



However what I'd really like is the ability to customize the composition of the fleet by being able to control things like formations. One Idea I had was the ability to assign ships "roles" within a fleet. For example you could set certain ships to act as support which would cause them to take 50% less damage and deal 50% less damage. To rationalise this think of it like them sitting in the back of the fleet as opposed to being on the "frontline". Additionally it would also help to have modules that have fleet-wide effects to help flesh out the idea of having multiple ships within a fleet each fulfilling a different role. Another idea is to have certain "roles" to be unlockable as part of tech (think of it as researching new strategies and tactics) in the military tree.



Some other ideas I had for roles include being able to set one ship as your "flagship" (perhaps one for each hero assigned to a fleet?) which would give it bonuses such a 25-50% boost to attack and defence. So does anyone else think being able to have more defined roles for ships in a fleet would be a good idea? Or does anyone have any other ideas for unlockable "roles" that could be assigned to ships? I just don't like the very generic approach of building as many big ships as you can loading them up with guns and armour and just throwing them at the enemy which is currently the most effective strategy in the game I find.

The role of a ship should be reflected in its Mods. And non-combat ships should be shelterd by the fleet accordingly.

Roles seem a little excessive for the function they seem to serve

-Hull roles should be "General"

-Each ship design can be modified to fit specific purpose, especially now that the +% tonnage works, small ship now have tonnage increase edge. Check these calculations

supersoaker9 wrote:
-Hull roles should be "General"

-Each ship design can be modified to fit specific purpose, especially now that the +% tonnage works, small ship now have tonnage increase edge. Check these calculations

Yes but as it stands ship modifications don't really do a lot to create multiple ship roles. As I said before, the most effective strategy is just to build a whole bunch of (smaller?) ships and load them with weapons and armour and a couple of suport mods. This just Leeds to very homogenous fleets with little to no diversity. We need at least something to try and promote fleet synergy and encourage diversity. So if not predefined hard roles, then perhaps a major overhaul of mods to make ships that aren't combat oriented more useful? The other way I suggested doing this was to create support mods with fleet-wide effects to encourage support-orriented ships.

I like the idea of roles, but think they should be established during the design phase.



I mentioned in another thread that I thought that role-specialisations could be an unlockable tech associated with ship design, whereas hull sizes might be all unlocked initially and be more of an economic decision than a technological one. Technology-locked roles would also allow the "role modules" to be potentially quite powerful and useful.



I am not really wild about micromanagement of fleet formations and I am not sure how a flagship is more powerful than other ships simply on the basis of being the flagship - I think a lot of the effects of this part of the proposal are already taken care of by the existing Hero mechanics.

Trithemius wrote:
I like the idea of roles, but think they should be established during the design phase.



I mentioned in another thread that I thought that role-specialisations could be an unlockable tech associated with ship design, whereas hull sizes might be all unlocked initially and be more of an economic decision than a technological one. Technology-locked roles would also allow the "role modules" to be potentially quite powerful and useful.



I am not really wild about micromanagement of fleet formations and I am not sure how a flagship is more powerful than other ships simply on the basis of being the flagship - I think a lot of the effects of this part of the proposal are already taken care of by the existing Hero mechanics.

Well the flagship thing was just a suggestion. The bonus's it would gain would come from the morale and efficiency boost gained from having the fleet commander on board. The performance of a ship IRL as drastically affected by the effectiveness of its crew and having a strong leader on the ship leading it amplifies that. Alternatively you think of the flagship as being crewed by veterans in addition to having the best officers as it would IRL.

Trithemius wrote:
I like the idea of roles, but think they should be established during the design phase.



I mentioned in another thread that I thought that role-specialisations could be an unlockable tech associated with ship design, whereas hull sizes might be all unlocked initially and be more of an economic decision than a technological one. Technology-locked roles would also allow the "role modules" to be potentially quite powerful and useful.



I am not really wild about micromanagement of fleet formations and I am not sure how a flagship is more powerful than other ships simply on the basis of being the flagship - I think a lot of the effects of this part of the proposal are already taken care of by the existing Hero mechanics.

Sounds a bit like Sword of the Stars, where various types of configuration modules could be unlocked as well as the hull types, but you could use the same type of module on different hull types (so little Destroyer ships could have Assault modules that take up their entire midsection, whereas on a Cruiser class it only affects their cockpit nose). Though I'm not sure the type of design variety could be justified for a SotS-type system, I'd be interested to see something like a role giving certain buffs when percentage of tonnage is devoted to X or Y modules.

I like the idea of roles, but I have some more basic things that I would like to see.



For example, when fighting later in the game it's usually a ton of fleets vs a ton of fleets. The AI and myself usually have the same loadouts on our own ships, so I find myself using the same series of cards over and over. I'd like to see an extra 3 buttons below automatic and manual that have pre-made card selections that I can click to have it done already. Then if I wish to watch the fight, I can. Or I can skip it and still get the card bonuses. I like the fights, I really do, but watching the same fight 100 times in a row gets boring. Or if you don't think one of your pre-selected card options will work, then you can just go full manual and do it the way we do now.



Another thing that could be useful for fleet management is making armadas. Assign a number of fleets to an armada, select armada, move it where you want.



And to go with that one, i'd like to be able to set fleets as non-combatants. So when i've got all fleets selected (as what happens after you fight) and I click the Attack button, then my fleet of invasion ships doesn't go attacking their main line ships. This could be used also to make certain fleets "safe" behind your combatant fleets.

Just posted this elsewhere, but it fits here:

Sacru wrote:
Slowing down or speeding up the phases is also a decent idea, but if you know your ships and cards available the current time allocated is more than enough. What I'd prefer is instead of just varying the speed - vary the amount of phases in a battle. This could provide more time over-all, though less time should be added with each phase, so the more micro-management you try to squeeze in the quicker you need to be (e.g. 3-phases=30 seconds, 5-phase=45, 7-phase=60, etc). You could even have the battle cards have the number of phases worked into their calculations so that more phases results in each card having less effect.



Building on that:

Things like making custom battle cards, pre-defined fleet and individual ship tactics, or keep the phase based battle but remove the 'long range', 'medium range' aspects of each phase and make them time windows where the range/etc varies dynamically. I'd like more ship variations (apart from just size), such as ones that that can be stealth and so appear in short range almost immediately, long range missile barges that try to keep far away constantly, flak ships that aim to shoot down all incoming missiles and generally over-see the battles mid-ground, etc etc. These 'behaviour' options with cards that play on these attributes, and battle cards for pre-battle (or 'battle prep') would be awesome and allow for flexible tactics and would keep the same 'phase' system.

The other idea I had was battle-cards based on either, or both of the hero's level and specific attributes. A high level diplomatic hero could use a card like 'call in favour' resulting in a random pirate ship joining the battle your side, or have a weak enemy ship join your side? An intellectual hero could have a pre-battle card that reveals their card choices and maybe even the cards they have picked. Full-on combat would just, of course, have awesome offensive & defensive boosting tactics. A hero's level could also be used when calculating the effect of certain cards, so simple cards that are at first mostly useless might become the BEST with the right use of ship layouts and hero build.

damien007 wrote:
... As I said before, the most effective strategy is just to build a whole bunch of (smaller?) ships and load them with weapons and armour and a couple of suport mods. This just Leeds to very homogenous fleets with little to no diversity. We need at least something to try and promote fleet synergy and encourage diversity. So if not predefined hard roles, then perhaps a major overhaul of mods to make ships that aren't combat oriented more useful? The other way I suggested doing this was to create support mods with fleet-wide effects to encourage support-orriented ships.

Well, if you do look at the math, bigger ships benefit more from the +% offensive/defensive power modules simply because they can carry more base equipment to multiply onto the +percentage.



Anyhow, there is a balance between a fleet swarm and bigger hull sizes. The main reason for balancing is that a fleet of 5xDN currently lack the ability to focus fire to drop smaller ships in one salvo, and is not versatile enough to effectively defend against most swarms of smaller ship with one weapon type per ship but varying weapon types across the fleet. On the other hand, a fleet of 20xDD will be dropping ships like flies if they meet the wrong combination of weapons and defenses, and this swarm will have swiss cheese for defense per ship wise.



It is better to have a more BS+CA focused fleets with 1 or 2 DN, and 1 or 2 DD/K because they are a balance between having swiss cheese defense per ship and the ability to not be massly out-numbered or outgunned.



As for the components that can effectively mod a ship, I agree. More of those are needed. Currently the only "mods" for ship ability are the +% offensive and +% defensive modules, allowing you can change is whether you want the ship to be superior attacker or superior tank.





SUGGESTIONS:

Adding more fleet-wide-effect components may be the way to go. Similar to the current fleet wide combat repair, maybe add some fleet wide accuracy booster or enemy accuracy reducers, etc; balancing this with tonnage cost.

supersoaker9 wrote:


Adding more fleet-wide-effect components may be the way to go. Similar to the current fleet wide combat repair, maybe add some fleet wide accuracy booster or enemy accuracy reducers, etc; balancing this with tonnage cost.

This.



If we think of a modern fleet centered around a US carrier, you'll find ships with very specific roles. There'll be vessels for ASW (dd, ff, ssn's), air defence (CA, FFG), ground attack (CA, FFG), anti-shipping (CA,FFG,CV), etc. In fact, in fleet action at long ranges, the carrier is the only offensive punch while everything is providing cover from sub surface, surface, and air.



This could be implemented in the game with a combination of ideas. One is to have a fleet configuration where you have screening ships and positioning so that ships with a particular role are situated so as to affect that role. Perhaps the positioning of a vessel or its role can determine if it can participate offensively in a phase.



The second element would be modules, weapons, defences that have fleet wide effects. As it stands right now, the air defence module is the equivalent of a CIWS like Phalanx. It shoots down whatever is flying directly at its own vessel but doesn't have range to cover other ships (not strictly true in real life, but wtv). Imagine fleet and single ship defences. You could have area defence missiles for shooting down torps that threaten any ship. You could wild weasel type vessels for reducing the effectiveness of detection and possible reducing weapon accuracy for say beam weapons. And the brains at Amplitude could certainly come up with something that counters kinetic weapons.



The idea with all modifications, I believe, is not to introduce complexity, but to force players to make difficult decisions. Do I build fleet air defence? I won't unless I know I'll be facing torps. Ditto beam and kinetic defence. If I only build fleet defence and my cruiser is taken out then my fleet is entirely vulnerable to that type of attack. Perhaps I should build defences on my other ships also, but this comes at the cost of other types of defences or other offensive options.



Combine fleet effects with roles and you would have a satisfying and challenging combat element that is nevertheless simple to implement: assign roles at fleet construction or right before battle and let fleet affects do what they do during the battle. Simple.

hobbes wrote:
This.



If we think of a modern fleet centered around a US carrier, you'll find ships with very specific roles. There'll be vessels for ASW (dd, ff, ssn's), air defence (CA, FFG), ground attack (CA, FFG), anti-shipping (CA,FFG,CV), etc. In fact, in fleet action at long ranges, the carrier is the only offensive punch while everything is providing cover from sub surface, surface, and air.



This could be implemented in the game with a combination of ideas. One is to have a fleet configuration where you have screening ships and positioning so that ships with a particular role are situated so as to affect that role. Perhaps the positioning of a vessel or its role can determine if it can participate offensively in a phase.



The second element would be modules, weapons, defences that have fleet wide effects. As it stands right now, the air defence module is the equivalent of a CIWS like Phalanx. It shoots down whatever is flying directly at its own vessel but doesn't have range to cover other ships (not strictly true in real life, but wtv). Imagine fleet and single ship defences. You could have area defence missiles for shooting down torps that threaten any ship. You could wild weasel type vessels for reducing the effectiveness of detection and possible reducing weapon accuracy for say beam weapons. And the brains at Amplitude could certainly come up with something that counters kinetic weapons.



The idea with all modifications, I believe, is not to introduce complexity, but to force players to make difficult decisions. Do I build fleet air defence? I won't unless I know I'll be facing torps. Ditto beam and kinetic defence. If I only build fleet defence and my cruiser is taken out then my fleet is entirely vulnerable to that type of attack. Perhaps I should build defences on my other ships also, but this comes at the cost of other types of defences or other offensive options.



Combine fleet effects with roles and you would have a satisfying and challenging combat element that is nevertheless simple to implement: assign roles at fleet construction or right before battle and let fleet affects do what they do during the battle. Simple.

Yes. <(^_^)>

I think part of the problem with coming up with really role specific ships is.... CP. It limits the "fleets" to some pretty small sizes. They're really flotillas. But I do like the above idea of the Carrier fleet and support roles. but to really flesh that out, we need actual fleets, not flotillas pretending to be fleets.