I have an idea that could possibly reconciliate both sides (overkill stacking and endless number of battles).



Combats could be managed as they allready are but with a tweak: any additional fleet in the system could feed it's ships to replace the destroyed ones, but as they enter later in a combat their range to enemies ships would be greater and the combat fase would be the respective one between the new ships and the ones allready fighting, constantly forcing the use of all weapons at a given time, only the targets being different ones. This would give aditional strategy options (why not send long range speciallized ships later in the combat to finish the job?)



Meanwhile you would have to limit the total number of ships in a system.

I propose it to be proportional to what the system can support (itself proportional to FIDS) in case it's yours. Otherwise if the system isn't yours the amount of ships would be limited by the supporting capability of the attaking system and you could not attack a system with more than two systems at once.

Any ship over those limits would have to remain in the hangar or leave the system for another one. Ships in the hangar could not be fed to a fight but you could replace your destroyed fleets after the combat is over preparing so for the next turn. Of course you would have to render an invasion on the same turn as a combat impossible and to equalize chances you could only stack in your hangars the same amount of ships that you're supporting in orbit.



This would better render the differences between systems, turning better developped systems better defended!



What do you think? Let me know.

Moved to the proposals, renamed to a more meaningful title.

To the content: Wouldn't the support cap lead to making players move around fleets constantly, since it takes a few turns to invade a system, so that there's still no limit?

Also the enemy system wouldn't support your ships. How would you motivate staying in enemy systems' orbits?

Finally for rendering invasion/combat impossible at the same time: This lead to the famous scout-block of invasions. Sacrifice one scout, block with the second, another round without invasion gain for the enemy. How would you avoid this with your system?

First, moving around units wouls be limited by both your ship production rate and the number of systems you own, since you can only stack so many ships on one system and it's hangars. And allthough you might think that you can continuously send units to protect your system, so can the attaquer to keep up the pression.



About the enemy's system not supporting my ships, maybe I wasn't to clear, but what I said with the supporting capability of an attaking system was all about that. Basically, you would have a system that supports a fleet and has more ships in it's hangars. If you'd like to attack someone you would have to send one or more fleets supported by it's home system, therefore my limit proposal to maximum two attacking systems. So you could not send fleets from more than two different systems towards one single system, but you would still be able to attack more than one system at the same time using fleets from different systems but with a limit of two sytems for each attacked system. You would only have to choose if your ships are best used on your system to defend or sent away to some attack, maybe even split it up in two even or uneven parts, one defending the other attacking. The attacking fleet would still be linked to it's home system since it would be from there that it would get its support.



What concerns the scout-block I must admit I didn't thought about that possibility, but I still found a workaround:

First you would have to assume that any defending ship coming from outside the attacked system could not interfer with an invasion, more precisely he could attack the invading fleet but unless it could destroy it it would not mean that since a battle has been fought that the fleet cannot start an invasion, respectively continue it. Secondly, you have to assume that a tippical invasion would occur in this precise order:

1st, attackers arrive (attackers turn)

2nd, if defending ships are present, a battle occurs, if not attacking ships start moving to a "bombardment position"

3rd, (let's assume the attackers destroyed all the defending ships), in wich case they cannot invade but start moving to a bombardment position



4th, (defenders turn) attaquers ships gain the bombardment position

5th the defender gets the choice to move his ships from the hangar to orbit, they can only engage in a fight, no escape from the system possible, attackers wouldn't let them

6th, other choice is to keep ships in the hangar and send fleets from an other system to defend

7th, if a battle occurs and the attackers end winning, there are two outcomes, if ships came from an outside system, bombardment position was not compromized, if ships came from the hangar, then attaquers had to retreat and therefore need to move back into bombardment position



8th (attackers turn) if last battle was with system ships, bombardment position is gained and hangars get bombarded destroying all ships in the hangar (invasion still not begun, no more time since bombardment position was still being gained), if last battle was with outside ships then hangar ships get bombarded and invasion begins in the same turn.



9th (defenders turn) defender has no more ships in hangar and even if the constuction of a ship ended it will not be able to gain orbit because bombardement has allready begun, only option is to defend system with outside ships.

10th if attacking fleet suffers a battle but isn't destroyed, bombardment position is still not affected



11th (attackers turn) Invasion position is now acertained and will proceed until destruction of invading fleet or invasion completed, at any time during his turn the attacker can reinforce lost ships by transfering ships from the supporting's system's hangar until support limit is reached but they allways need to spend one turn moving to bombardment position before joining in on the invasion force.



Since the attacker can have fleets from two home systems and the defender only one and since outside defending ships cannot be supported by the system under siege because the enemy is in between, i suggest them to be supported by their respective home systems like the attacking ships do. And to maintain a certain equilibrium between attackers and defenders, there should be an outside defending system cap. I propose only maximum two such as the attackers. This could mean a constant moving around of fleets but since there is a support limit of ships and since the number of supporting systems is finite, there would be less individual fights and system capture would be more challenging focussing the most battles.



I apologize for the long post and thanks if you read it!