Something I thought of the last couple of days trying to fend off the mega-zerg pirate fleets that have appeared in the beta. I'd like to be able to engage pirates/other factions in between systems, it would be especially handy when a faction you are against has faster ships than you. You could lay a fleet in wait between two systems while having another fleet shepherding your enemy into your trap. Currently if a ship still has a movement allowance when it hits your system it can travel straight through, even if you are laid in wait. Or if you know an enemy fleet is en route to you it's possible to intercept them before they arrive.



Thoughts?

I find it extremely annoying to have a pirate fleet fly back and forth through two systems while I chase it for a couple of turns. Granted, I should have sat still and intercepted it, having a tactic like this might have helped.



This would require a new battle map--a blank one (probably not a big deal), as every manual fight includes background elements from planets on the system the fleets are fighting on.



I have never had a pirate or enemy fleet speed through one of my intercepting fleets. Does this happen on multiplayer?

Opposing Scout ships zip through my systems unopposed all the time, even when I have a fleet on guard, I find it very annoying.

Gadzooky wrote:
Something I thought of the last couple of days trying to fend off the mega-zerg pirate fleets that have appeared in the beta. I'd like to be able to engage pirates/other factions in between systems, it would be especially handy when a faction you are against has faster ships than you. You could lay a fleet in wait between two systems while having another fleet shepherding your enemy into your trap. Currently if a ship still has a movement allowance when it hits your system it can travel straight through, even if you are laid in wait. Or if you know an enemy fleet is en route to you it's possible to intercept them before they arrive.



Thoughts?

You can't really lay in wait between systems. When you travel on the cosmic strings, you're ship isn't really in normal space anymore (or you're at least going very, very fast). Call it what you want, jump space, hyperspace, warp, the ship is doing something to travel at speeds faster than light to get to the next star in days or months, instead of the decades it would normally take. If you just sat and waiting, assuming you even could, you'd see nothing because anyone else along that string is just going to fly by you at FTL speeds to the other end of the string.



If you are laid in wait for a ship, and it passes through you, then you probably don't have your ship set to blockade. That keeps any and all ships (or at least enemy ships) from passing through that system, as I understand it. So if you're doing that and they're passing you by, you should post a bug notice in the Beta Tech Support forum.

FinalStrigon wrote:
If you are laid in wait for a ship, and it passes through you, then you probably don't have your ship set to blockade. That keeps any and all ships (or at least enemy ships) from passing through that system, as I understand it. So if you're doing that and they're passing you by, you should post a bug notice in the Beta Tech Support forum.

I agree, I've never had a problem blocking scout ships. Heck, usually all of my ships are set to blockade, save for colony ships.



As for an explanation of why you can't fight ships between systems because of the speed of cosmic string travel... well, this is a game. Doesn't matter the explanation, just that the game is fair. I'm fine with "cosmic strings have ship-specific warp networks that generalize cosmic radiation into a specific constant with a 0.0001% chance of failure." Or maybe, "this would make the game a bit too complicated, code-wise, and ruin some of the system-specific fighting we have going here." Either makes sense to me.