Presently, I'm not persuing this issue. As per my article Fleet Doctrine: Practical Evolution it appears that diverse fleet composition is viable, including the use of large ships.



As I illustrate in this thread, the current fleet bonuses, especially to damage and critical hit %, are broken on 1CP ships.



I recommend relegating fleet-wide bonuses entirely to Cruisers, Battleships, and Dreadnoughts as "Command" modules. The Cruiser appears to have been designed with this in mind, and I think it should remain so, but moving the fleet bonuses off the small craft entirely makes more sense from a technological perspective and stops the silly destroyer swarms that appear to be optimal due to those stacking bonuses. +98% critical hits and +96% damage on 22 ships adds up to a total of almost 600% total damage with beams or missiles (3x damage on critical).





Command modules have different scopes, which determines how broadly they disperse their bonuses.



Universal: applies to ships of all CPs of fleet

Repair - current tonnage

Invasion - 300 tons, discouraging 1CP ships



Lateral: applies to all ships of same CP as the carrying ship or lower

Engine - current tonnage

Defence - 300 tons, discouraging 1CP ships

Critical Hit % - 300 tons, discouraging 1CP ships



Cascade: applies only to ships whose CP is lower than that of the carrying ship

Damage - 300 tons, discouraging 1CP ships





Each big ship could specialize in a particular kind of fleet support.



Cruisers:

-can fit fleet invasion modules at -80% (60) tonnage

-in battle, repair modules fit to Cruisers activate every 2 rounds, instead of once per phase



Battleships:

-can fit fleet defence modules at -80% (60) tonnage

-can fit fleet critical hit % modules at -80% (60) tonnage



Dreadnoughts:

-gain +4 blue/+2 green to engine's fleet bonus movment due to field projection to enhance warp jump for nearby ships

-can fit fleet damage modules at -80% (60) tonnage





All of these modules would be limited to one per ship.



For a concrete example of how these changes affect the battlefield, check out my proposal for defence as resistance %.



Finally, with the engine and repair fleet modules bonused on other hulls, what would happen to the Corvette hull? Electronic warfare perhaps, but that's a topic for another thread.

This sounds reasonable, and I haven't heard the suggestion yet. A little finetuning might be necessary but it sounds worth trying.

Liking this proposal. Frankly, i'm liking anything which encourages some diversity in fleet composition, particularly if it brings about some kind of combined arms approach.

Yeah a cool idea, anything that neutralises the domination of glass cannon fleets is a plus imo.

I agree with the others. Most 4x games suffer from a syndrome where a single ship type is easily the best(usually it's just that the biggest ships are the best). Diversity is good.



Of course, you could just eliminate the stacking bonus of fleet weapons, but I think your solution is better.

Tiavals wrote:
Of course, you could just eliminate the stacking bonus of fleet weapons, but I think your solution is better.

The stacking bonus to the fleet weapons could work much like the resistance stacking I mentioned in this thread, with diminishing returns from categories and multiple modules stacking highest-to-lowest. For example, if you were to stack four 8% (if using today's tech) Battleship damage buff Command modules on four different Battleships with the Hissho Deadly Weapons trait, you'd get the following:



36% as a base, then [4x8%=32%] of the remaining 64%. which ends up giving a final damage boost of 56.48% (NOT 68%).

So instead of finding a way to fix the problem, you would just ignore it entirely?

Igncom1 wrote:
So instead of finding a way to fix the problem, you would just ignore it entirely?

I mentioned that there would be a tonnage increase for fleet bonus modules, which would discourage placing them on 1CP hulls. However, your concern is well-taken, and I added the following section to the original post:



Command modules have different scopes, which determines how broadly they disperse their bonuses.

Universal: applies to ships of all CPs of fleet

Lateral: applies to all ships of same CP as the carrying ship or lower

Cascade: applies only to ships whose CP is lower than that of the carrying ship.



Universal: Repair, Invasion

Lateral: Engine, Defence, Critical Hit %

Cascade: Damage

Ship based fleet tonnage altering may be impossible to implement. How would you design ships? Using what mechanism will you be able to fill the extra tonnage available?



A better way would be to have fleet wide +%offense or +%defense.

supersoaker9 wrote:
Ship based fleet tonnage altering may be impossible to implement. How would you design ships? Using what mechanism will you be able to fill the extra tonnage available?



A better way would be to have fleet wide +%offense or +%defense.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. The bigger ship types would have inidivdual tonnage reduction bonuses similar to those they have now, just for different modules. Ships wouldn't give each other expanded tonnage; that would be ridiculously difficult to manage, as you've said.



This thread is closely related to my proposal for defences as resistance %, which may help clarify the effects of what I suggest here.

Igncom1 wrote:
So instead of finding a way to fix the problem, you would just ignore it entirely?

After writing the initial post for this thread, I'm more convinced than ever that the solution is to remove fleet bonuses from 1CP ships entirely. They have lots of spare tonnage, far beyond what I initially thought. I updated the original post to reflect my revised position.

I like it good idea.

good idea.

I'd back this, though the 2 one CP point ships wouldn't be any different then, since the 1 just has the weapon module size reduction. Obviously itd need a lot of balancing and fine tuning though.