Hmmm... I guess I'm nowhere near the power gamer you are. My most powerful fleets are at like 7-8k.

Gort wrote:
Looks like that's exactly what we've got at the minute - the AI sending in a stack of ten fleets to take your stuff over.

But the good old stack of doom would be 100 ships in one stack instead of 10 ships in 10 stacks. Sorry if this wasn't clear.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Gameplay-technical the reason seems to be that the devs want to avoid "stacks of doom". Just putting all of your fleet, sending it off against the others stack of doom or steamrolling over everything.

Looks like that's exactly what we've got at the minute - the AI sending in a stack of ten fleets to take your stuff over.

I'm glad to see others agree that a limit would be a good idea.

Gameplay-technical the reason seems to be that the devs want to avoid "stacks of doom". Just putting all of your fleet, sending it off against the others stack of doom or steamrolling over everything.



Lore-technical the reasoning is that each fleet needs support and above all organisation. That's why the fleet limit can be improved by research that deals with those two limited resources.

Is there a good reason why there's such a low number of ships per fleet? It seems silly to see ten fleets of thirteen ships and then have to do ten different battles.



It'd be a lot faster and cooler to just blob them up into one big fleet which has a monster battle against another big fleet. You could have a limit to how many ships an admiral could affect if heroes became a problem.



Alternatively, make the number of ships you could have a function of your population, or your total industry, so an industrial giant had more "fleet capacity" than a backwater power.



I guess I'd far rather see fewer, more important battles, rather than millions of less important ones.

Syko32649 wrote:
I guess it is not possible with the current combat mechanics......but these mid to late game situations with large numbers of Fleets......makes me long for MOO3's combat. Where all fleets in the system slugged it out at the same time. Would make for some spectacular battles.

True, but DAT CASUALTY COUNT!



You don't just throw all your stuff at the enemy in one go, you do it logically and you spread out your forces to achieve an acceptable success rate.

I guess it is not possible with the current combat mechanics......but these mid to late game situations with large numbers of Fleets......makes me long for MOO3's combat. Where all fleets in the system engaged in battle at the same time. Would make for some spectacular battles.

What? no, the amount of ships you can have should be representative of your economy, not a stupid number that some how holds you back?!?



If you guys are really uptight about it, i suppose you could have a Civ 5 type of limit where you can only have a particular number of ships per system before your economy starts to get de-buffs?

Limiting the totally number of ships each empire can own is a pretty good idea.

I don't like the idea of a hard cap for ships/fleets, even if you could push it by reserch. But:

People don't like war. Some more, some less. Maybe there could be a happiness debuff depending on how many of your fleets are in enemy territory (and of course depending on your race). Just to be sure: I like the command points, and I like to have a lot (A LOT) of ships/fleets defending my territory.

I have a slightly different problem with this, some where between turn 150 to 250 the when i begin to put out fleets with 25000 military power, the computer still has quite a few fleets around that have less then 2000 military power, in most of my late games, i have to slaughter 60+ low powered fleets (75% less power then my fleet (takes about half an hour just pressing auto, quite irritating)). I have no idear why there aint a "Enemy Fleet Run Over" script or something, because a fleet with 2000 mp attacking a fleet with 25000 mp or the other way around, is like a guy attacking a tank with sticks and rocks.

Woolfer wrote:
This would give incredible pressure on the research races and would make research victory condition absolutely necessary. Otherwise they would need to wipe out all the military races as fast as possible while their research bonus slowly melts away before they're overrun.



But i think it could work. Although it would need a lot of balancing to find out the right amount of advantage for the military races, so that researchers can keep up.

Well, the research races point is that they're good at... researching, so the pressure to do it comes with the territory, wouldn't it? It would force them to adopt the whole, "Few big and powerful" instead of the "Many, many weak".



On further thought, it actually appears what I'm proposing wouldn't really do it - or maybe. Here's why...



The issue I was having was tons and tons of single-ship fleets. Putting a cap on fleets wouldn't do anything to do that. However, the logistics or whatever would limit how many you could build and how quickly... But doing that is pretty pointless because the game already does this.



Hmmm... I may have just nixed my own idea. lol

CybrSlydr wrote:
Hmm, hadn't thought about it that way - what about each race having different limits then? Craver and Hissho have a cap roughtly 2x-2.5x of the tech races? Something like that?

This would give incredible pressure on the research races and would make research victory condition absolutely necessary. Otherwise they would need to wipe out all the military races as fast as possible while their research bonus slowly melts away before they're overrun.



But i think it could work. Although it would need a lot of balancing to find out the right amount of advantage for the military races, so that researchers can keep up.

snikch wrote:
In my opinion , it's not a good idea.

a limit to the number of fleet will only result in a huge loss of strategy.

Military races will be fully at their disadvantage and tech races totally advantaged. A loss of strategy and totaly unbalancing.

In your case, it's simply an AI reaction that have to be change, not the system of the game...



plus, for information, Horatio can have a lot more heroes than 3. (that's their strenght). And a fleet without a hero can ... well ... fight... and eventually will destroy one single ship fleet with ease.

(I imagine you didn't had that much fleet and they were all attacking. In That case, the AI targeted your weak point : lack of defense... everywhere)

Hmm, hadn't thought about it that way - what about each race having different limits then? Craver and Hissho have a cap roughtly 2x-2.5x of the tech races? Something like that?

Economic balance should take that role.

In my opinion , it's not a good idea.

a limit to the number of fleet will only result in a huge loss of strategy.

Military races will be fully at their disadvantage and tech races totally advantaged. A loss of strategy and totaly unbalancing.

In your case, it's simply an AI reaction that have to be change, not the system of the game...



plus, for information, Horatio can have a lot more heroes than 3. (that's their strenght). And a fleet without a hero can ... well ... fight... and eventually will destroy one single ship fleet with ease.

(I imagine you didn't had that much fleet and they were all attacking. In That case, the AI targeted your weak point : lack of defense... everywhere)

Originally they did have (Horatio) full fleets or near full. I then started taking over their territories and when they had maybe 4 systems left, they just started spamming Dreadnaught-class single-ship fleets every turn, sending single-ship fleets to numerous systems. It took FOREVER to beat them back.



My thing is that with literally hundreds of fleets, (or more it seemed) it just turns into a spamfest. I can't get attached to a fleet, sensless in plotting any campaign history, you can only have 3 Heros... I just feel like this "limitless supply" hurts late long-game play. If each race could have like... 20 total fleets, it'd make things better IMHO.



It feels less like tactics and more like zerg rush.



Edit: Just had this idea. What about a logistics point system or something? Each planet/system has random amounts of logistics points and each ship costs a certain amount of points. You can never build more than your max amount of logistic points - that way when you lose systems, you lose the ability to build/support them. Or make logistics a function of your industry capacity?



(though a properly functioning guard system would certainly help the whack-a-mole aspect)

I think it is a good idea. However I would not limit the total amount o ships, but the total amount of fleets allowed. A limit that of course should follow your progress. But imagine a competitive game, where one player just spams fleet above his systems. How many turns it would take to put down 200 fleets of crap ships.

Hm, sounds like a bug to me CybrSlydr. When playing I tend to have to face off against large numbers of full enemy fleets (the way it should be) rather than single ship fleets comprising only one dreadnought each (the way it shouldn't be).



How many games have you played so far? And are you sure EVERY fleet you came up against comprised only one ship? Perhaps the enemy simply couldn't produce them quicker than you could destroy them?



Let me know what's going on, I'm curious now!