gameshoes wrote:


Rush Tactic

Okay, if this is already in the game, please let me know quickly so I don't look too stupid.

So I've only played 2 games on normal difficulty which doesn't produce much combat opposition, however I never have reached the Melee Phase of combat. This new tactic will help with those who design ships specialized for melee. This tactic will...

• Be categorized under 'Tactics'.
• Counters 'Offense'.
• Reduces the phase time by 25%. If both players use it, it stacks additively to 50%.
• Received kinetic and beam damage reduced by 10%
• -15% effectiveness of anti-torpedo defenses
• Fleet accuracy decreased by 10%
• Reducing the phase time should reduce the overall damage the opponent can dish out making this really nice for those worrying about their ships getting destroyed before reaching optimal distance.
• Do note that this will make torpedoes hit your ships sooner and that the enemy fleet may be better specialized in closer combat. Use with caution.
• This cannot be used in Melee Phase.
  
  

I kinda like this idea (A lot of people seem to have problems with getting to melee, i don't unless i kill them all XD), Would make a good battle card.

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Fleet Formation

So this may lose the focus of simple combat, but I thought I should throw it out there anyway. Currently there is no way to organize your fleet in combat. Though the targeting appears random, it would be nice if you could somehow make one ship get less more or focus than the others. A simple close/medium/long positioning system would work out nicely. So how would this work? It's time for another list.

• In ship creation, you can choose the default position the ship should be in (so that you don't have to mess with it again if you don't need to).
• When you have your fleet selected, there is a icon with 'Formation' to click on.
• The Formation screen will just be a small window with the ships laid out like cards. You can then drag and drop the ships to where you want them.
• We should probably explain what the positions do:
  
  
  • Near: Ship gains +10% accuracy, kinetic/beams weapons deal +3% damage +1 offense to fleet per each ship in this range|||||||enemies firing on ship gain +10% accuracy, and deal +5% damage with beam and kinetic weapons
  • Medium: No added bonuses or negatives. Default.
  • Long: -8% accuracy for ships (torpedoes unaffected), -8% beam and kinetic damage|||||| enemies firing on ship lose 8% accuracy (torpedoes unaffected), and deal 5% less beam and kinetic damage
    
    

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

So yeah, once again, this is aiming towards ship specialization. Got a torpedo or a strikecraft carrier? Set them to the back. Using a lot of Kinetic weaponry? Set that ship to the front and if you're attacking, the offensive point gain will greatly (hopefully) help.

I like this idea, could help fleets that have weaponless ships and such.





Faster Missiles

Maybe it's just me, but these are far too slow to be useful. I may only be playing against bots, but I know you guys know it too. Missiles are too slow. Usually the targeted ship dies before the missiles land and that's no good as that means you've just wasted a lot of potential DPS.

Well if there was a weapon that was meant to be the looming destroyer it would be missiles, if they hit they do a bugger load of damage, but only if they hit.

But more weapon variety is always a good idea.



"Bigger" Weapons

So I've observed that Beam weapons are pretty much the go-to weapon. So why not throw in some more that may balance things out?

What I have in mind for these is for larger variants of the current weapons. These will be very heavy (like say 35 weight for the first level), so putting them on destroyers isn't such a hot idea despite the 25% weight reduction. I'm thinking that the heavier ships (2 CP and up) should get a 10% weight reduction on these. These weapons will have three versions on the tech tree instead of having a better one each level.

• Heavy Kinetic Cannon
  
  
  Accurate at all ranges, hard hitting kinetic weapon, and it cannot be blocked, but it shoots slowly (I'm going for 4 shots per battle phase). Deals +20% damage against 1 CP ships. This is meant for heavier class ships to take out those pesky destroyers.
• Ion Beam Cannon
  
  
  Only works at melee range. Heavy hitting cannon that deals 10/13/16% of the target ship's hull over 4 seconds granted that it hits immediately and stays on target. Of course the beam armor will reduce the damage.
• Swarm Missiles
  
  
  This weapon will shoot a pod of fast-traveling missiles (say 4) that split into 4 more rockets (total of 16). Each missile damage is light, but the damage will increase by 5/10/15% per each missile that hits. Example: let's say we're using a level 1 swarm missile and 4 missiles make it through. We will then add the bonuses percentages together for each missile that made it through, in this case 4x5% = 20% increase in damage per each missile. So if we use some numbers and say that the missile hit for 20 damage each they would then be dealing 24 damage each.
  
  The main purpose of these however are to waste the missile defenses and allow the heavier torpedoes to hit.
  
  
  

Love the bigger weapons, but instead of being more effective VS 1 CP target why not just make them very effective, that way they can also be very effective very well defended larger ships.



The rest is in bold,

Stalker0 wrote:
I like the rush tactic, seems a good way to try and work the battle distances in the way that makes sense for ES.

Please do support it in the Proposal category.

I like the rush tactic, seems a good way to try and work the battle distances in the way that makes sense for ES.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Renamed to become a discussion. If you want to submit any of this as a proposal, please open single threads per suggestion in the proposals section.

Thanks for the heads up. Sorry for posting this in the wrong section to begin with.

Renamed to become a discussion. If you want to submit any of this as a proposal, please open single threads per suggestion in the proposals section.

You can have unlimited ships in a fleet, but a command ship would dictate how many ships were allow in combat at any one time, a larger command ship could command more ships, if a ships dies then a new one warps in, but you can also retreat damaged ships back into the reinforcement pool.



Thus the problem with compatibility is that ships in ES can jump away from wherever (Where as in SOTS you have to move out of the gravity well.)



And another problem is that we can't just use this in ES, we need it to be original.

Igncom1 wrote:
For both really.



A SOTS method to the CP cap might be interesting, but im not sure how you would do all of the warping in stuff.

Sorry I never played SOTS ...how does that work?

For both really.



A SOTS method to the CP cap might be interesting, but im not sure how you would do all of the warping in stuff.

The CP cap quite simply exists for technical reasons. They can't let people have 100 destroyers because it would demolish their minimum requirements.



Same reason SotS has CP limits, Total War has max unit numbers etc etc.

First of all - some great ideas floating around ...



The fleet formation idea got me thinking of how it might be combined with another wish I would have for the game.



Large Battles - I realise the CP cap has been put in for a reason, probably to limit super stacks. I just find the solution with a hard limit to be too hard, I would rather love some kind of dwindling efficiency as you add additional ships. One idea I got could be to see the fleet formation option to define also which elements of a fleet would be: Lead Element, Main Element and Reinforcement Elements ... now Im not sure exactly how this could be implemented but I was thinking that it could be cool to have large fleets come within engagment range in stages, effectively allowing you to overpower opponents by numbers as more and more ships arrive, but where the full force is not available at the get go - whereas a smaller hightech lean and mean fleet would be right there from the get go.



An alternative approach to defining fleet elements (lead, main, reinforcements) could be to utilize ship speed ... having the fastest ship in the battle (you or enemy) deploy immediately with all other ships having to roll %chance based on ship speed to enter the battle - with an escalating %chance x speed to enter the battle each round. Instead of imposing a hard CP limit, the better command-and-control you have you get a bonus to reinforce, with an overall penalty the larger your fleet is. - thus effectively making large fleets arrive more piecemeal than smaller fleets.



I dont know if I explained my idea very well - but I would like to see a battle system which penalizes huge fleets (declining efficiency) while at the same time allowing for battles of epic scope - and avoiding the multitude of small skirmishes ...each round.



EDIT:

A further enhancement could be to give defensive fleets (blocking the system) a bonus on speed to reinforce, with a larger bonus to slower ships ...ei. making slow moving battle ships/dreadnoughts slightly better at defending and holding systems than used in strike forces ... - you could also add a Starsystem improvement called 'Fleet Beacon' giving yet another bonus. Likewise you could have a scouting module, give a small bonus to reinforce with other ships ei. having a fleet include a fast screen element of destroyers with fast engines escorting a scouting vessel with a scouting module to enable the slower moving bulk of your fleet to reinforce faster.

Indeed, nothing like watching a monkey knife fight!

Igncom1 wrote:
Love the bigger weapons, but instead of being more effective VS 1 CP target why not just make them very effective, that way they can also be very effective very well defended larger ships.



The rest is in bold,

Thanks for the feedback again. The Heavy Kinetic Cannon is my counter to the Destroyer w/ beam weapon spamming that's currently the trend. It'll still effective against larger ships but it'll be extra deadly against the smaller ones. The other two weapons will be effective against all ships.

Personally I would love to see the Ion Beam Cannon in action. A weapon encouraging melee seems rather exciting.

Ah, I just realized that there's a specific thread for this kind of stuff. Reading helps, eh? Move as needed.



Hey guys, I'm a new guy around here and I've played only 2 games so far but I've sunk in 18 hours of gameplay and I would like to suggest some things. Note that these suggestions may not fit the image of the game or perhaps they're already implemented in the game and I just haven't realized it yet. Some of my suggestions will have already been discussed before but I really thought that many of the suggestions were too complex so I want to put out my own variation.



Most, if not all, of these suggestions are aiming towards ship specialization. Instead of just crudely throwing a fleet together, those who want to take advantage of making most specialized ships can be rewarded.



Though I would like to see all of my suggestions put forward it would probably only be best to consider some of them, not all.

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Strikecraft



To be honest though, I don't give a crap about strikecraft. It's just that many people here seem to want it.

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Rush Tactic



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Fleet Formation



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Faster Missiles



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"Bigger" Weapons

I've added some more things. More feedback please

I definitely think strike craft would be a cool idea.



I do think battles in general need to be ever so slightly better explained. I come out with my latest version of battleship, have three of them in a fleet and some pirate fleet decimates them in short order!



I like the idea about fleet formation. I think it's good when the ships are at a distance, but it would be good if sometimes they intermingled and got close and personal.

Thanks again, guys.

I was thinking about just saying unmanned drones instead of strikecraft to better explain the instantaneous loss of them (upon losing carrier), but I thought some wouldn't care.

Making strikecraft fight each other is a great idea!

Having 3-5 formation cards to choose from may be better than individually lining up your ships in my suggestion. Plus there can be some bonus/negative stats that come with each formation. Perhaps one's better for defense, or one's better for melee ranged combat, etc.

i also agree flak is fine for strikecraft, but i also think a strikecraft can kill another strikecraft. Making them battle each other at phase 2 instead of firing at the ships.



Why make each other fight? Because this way you have to choose.



A) Bring a big number to kill their fighters and quickly start firing again.

B) Bring a small number to defend yourself and keep the enemy fighters too busy to kill you.

C) just bring flaks... tons and tons of it.



The B option would cost less in weight but bring the risk that if you don´t have enough you will be punished by it.



About drones/fighters i think its more about what race is using. Empire/pilgrims would go with pilots, others would go with AI drones :P.



I liked a lot the idea of fleet formation. I can think of maybe 3-5 classic air formations giving a bonus/penality effect. Also a formation that give nothing. This way you can add more to the game strategy.

By the looks of the combat sequences, fleets battle pretty close to each other. I don't think manned strikecraft make sense, it should be drones. And yeah, I don't think we need a fourth defense option to counter strikecraft, I'd say flak fits in fine.



I like the hangar module idea weighting less the more you build. And I got a logical explanation just for that! Two modules, a flight deck (an opening in the ship), and a hangar (where you store strikecraft). So you need one flight deck and you can squeeze as many hangars as you like. Or with the addition of more decks, you can fly more sorties per round.

gameshoes wrote:
Thanks for your feedback once again.

I have always seem them being activated by the cards anyway, as for actual different one i couldn't agree more, we don't need that type of micro!



Seemed a little cheap for possible pilots to be insta-killed because the carrier blow up!



Instead of a new defense, i mean the anti-torpedo defense! Give it more targets to shoot, then compromise with fighters being able to also shoot down torpedoes (when commanded), bam! more uses for fighters, anti-torpedo and a reason to create more diverse torpedoes in the game!



And your more then welcome!

Igncom1 wrote:


Well the battles are played out, but still one type of craft! Unless you mean how use use them affecting their strengths and weaknesses?

The strength and weakness part is what I'm after. Sure you can just have a slurry of bombers and fighters and just have them go on auto-pilot. But in the end that results in more work for the player having to choose between the two instead of just one.

That seems fair, as long as they don't just randomly explode when the carrier does, let them finish the phase then go inert.

Perhaps. I just thought having them explode on spot would be fair.

What's wrong with kinetics! you give them no love!....But couldn't flak defenses cover this instead of your main guns?..as well as other strike-craft.

Having another defense option means that you need to divert space for something that may not even be deployed in battle. Of course this also applies to having torpedo defense with no torpedoes being used, but let's try to minimize the occurrence of such things. Plus strikecraft are technically an offensive unit you want dead before they reach you. Why not let Kinetics act like flaks?

Thanks for your feedback once again.