A Fleet Template (FT) would allow a player to design a fleet and use it to construct or regroup ships. An FT would have its own name and when used to create a fleet it would be followed by Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.



Creating an FT is limited your empires command points and available ships designs. If you increase your command points and/or design a new ship you have to update your FTs. An FT should always build the latest incarnation of a ships design and this includes templates currently queued for construction. Ships available for a template would be show as e.g. Destroyer and Cruiser not Destroyer 5, Cruiser 6.



FTs in construction

An FT can be used to construct one or multiple fleets by clicking on a single FT icon and queueing it similarly to ships. The shown construction time would be the turns required to build the entire fleet. Ships would appear in the hangar as normally but construction wouldn't be considered complete until the entire fleet is build.



Ships would be constructed in the order in which they were set up in the template. Any changes made to a template under construction would only affect the next ship(s) in the template.



i.e. If a template is at ship nr 3 and you rearrange the template ship nr 4 would be the new 4th ship. If you delete a template under construction the current ship would be finished and production would end afterwards.



Optional:

When construction is complete the ships could be auto launched, grouped and named automatically.



Regrouping

Another option would be to merge ships using a FT instead of manually selecting X of ShipA and then Y of ShipB. The game should pick the latest ship types and merge them into a fleet according to the template.



For example:



A system has the following ships in orbit...

• 1x Cruiser 6
• 4x Cruiser 5
• 2x Destroyer 5
• 10x Destroyer 4
• 1x Scout
  
  

and the template is.

• 2x Cruiser
• 5x Destroyer
  
  

We select all ships and click the 'Assault' template icon three times. Three fleets are created with the following composition:



Assault Alpha

• 1x Cruiser 6
• 1x Cruiser 5
• 2x Destroyer 5
• 3x Destroyer 4
  
  

Assault Beta

• 2x Cruiser 5
• 5x Destroyer 4
  
  

Assault Gamma

• 1x Cruiser 5
• 2x Destroyer 4
  
  

Assault Alpha has the best ships because it was made first. Assault Gamma only has one Cruiser and two Destroyers because it didn't have any more to work with. The scout is ignored because its not part of the template.



Comments and suggestions are of course welcome.



Regards,



M.

This sounds like an interesting idea, but I don't see it being that widely used. It seems like its really only handy if you have an absurd number of ships, and very specific fleet requirements. Making them play nice with retrofits would be a headache as well.

Well retrofits apply to an existing fleet, FTs would just function to create a fleet. The fleet resulting from an FT or one created manually would not be different.



I find myself constantly recreating fleets to max out CP and stuff like that and I like combining a larger ships with several smaller ones so that why I came up with this idea.

Ah yeah, if you're mixing ship classes, I suppose I could see it being handy in terms of fleet construction, or fleet assembly later on. In that case, it does make sense. Can't say I'm desperate for it, but it would be a neat feature to have.

SomeoneStrange wrote:
This sounds like an interesting idea, but I don't see it being that widely used. It seems like its really only handy if you have an absurd number of ships, and very specific fleet requirements. Making them play nice with retrofits would be a headache as well.

Even if the template was simple enough that I could select my 24 ships and it would automatically put them in my 8 CP fleets, that would be a big help.

Stalker0 wrote:
Even if the template was simple enough that I could select my 24 ships and it would automatically put them in my 8 CP fleets, that would be a big help.

Exactly! Rearranging fleets is a pain in the rear. I dread CP upgrades atm but by updating a single template it would be simple.

I was thinking about something along these lines as well. In the Ship designer, have a way to define an Armada, where you give it a name (and not just 8or 10 chars, please!) and define it as 4xABC 2xDEF etc. Then when building an Armada, the game just adds the 6 ships to the build queue as ships like a macro - just less clicking. If you want or need to sprinkle in some other things that become available, you still can - I would not want the template or Armada to be a thing, but just a macro for the 6, 8 or 10 ships it contains.



I dont like delaying completion notices until the entire Armada or template is complete - sometimes you do not have the luxury of waiting.

Upgrades should not be a problem, the game could just use the latest version of the base ABC ship be in ABC 3 or ABC 9. The only issue would be if you delete a ship design, then the template or any Armada definitions would also be deleted.



There also ought to be an option at least (if not automatic) to update build queues everywhere to 'ABC 3' instead of the original. There are some weapons and improvements (like Smart Cargo) that can GREATLY improve a ship. Having to hunt down every place building the old one is tedious.