Hello.



While I have only a small amount of hours into the game, and I understand that this is an alpha(and I'm happy to be able to test it - this game is very reminiscent of a forum-based space TBS I played some time ago, so lots of praise to the developers for this AND the Games2Gether initiative We need more devs like you around.), I did feel it a bit weird that all the orders I give to different vessels in my fleet apply universally. Another is that I don't really feel much of a drawback from spamming ships, since I can still develop my systems with ease.



If possible, could there be more Battle Planning in the sense where, we group specific vessels up into x roles based on the info we gain? These could define bonuses/penalties during battle - like say, ships with lots of long-range modules with minimal defense would benefit a lot from sitting at the back(could be combined with the formations suggestion someone else made!) - but if the enemy very, very fast vessels who they assign to entering "melee" before the actual melee phase(close-up glass cannons for example), this bonus to the long-rangers is mitigated provided the early-melee ships are effective enough(depending on their loadout - I'm sure this code is already in the game). Maybe some ability to manipulate phases to an extent during battle planning in general - I could certainly see the Hissho doing short-distance jumps to get right into the midst of the enemies' fleet.



It might be just that I'm used to more micromanagement in strategy games, but I feel like this could make combat more engaging and more interesting to watch, and with the diversity between species, obviously there could be some slight variances in how they handle tactics, too - giving you different options, like my Hissho example above. And, perhaps, seeing as how there's a variety of elements in battle scenes, we could make use of some of them in our tactics - e.g with stealth tech that overpowers enemy sensors, you could hide your fleet somewhere and when the enemy passes or gets close enough, emerge and strike them, gaining a bonus.



As for my second suggestion - this relates to feedback from fleet upkeep. I honestly don't feel like it has any kind of a drawback if I just keep building and building(I'll chime in with another suggestion here and say, maybe you could mimic CIV in the sense that while on the galaxy map, your resources are displayed near the various menu buttons? And if you hover over them, you can see their net gains/losses)



Could it be possible to introduce a Manpower resource, wherein you gain X Manpower per turn, but none of it is stored - you need to use it up by assigning ship build orders, or what you gain is lost. However, the more ships you have, the less you gain unless you boost your "manpower cap", so to speak, allowing you to build more ships and giving you the impression of a gradually growing, battle-ready population. The lost manpower would equate to people finding other jobs(or maybe in the Cravers' case, being eaten?), giving you slight more of a feel of your populace doing something.



E.g you start with 10 manpower/turn, ships with Cruiser chassis' cost 3 manpower, while corvettes cost 1 manpower and transports 2. Building a corvette means that while your "cap" is 10 MP/T, you only gain 7 MP/T to use per turn unless you settle another lush world, develop it and start getting Manpower bonuses from it, raising it to 20 MP/T - by which point I figure you have more tech, maybe a new hull to use.



What do you think?