Fleet tactic

[Plant]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

One thing that you may not be aware of is that non-hyperspace ships have a significant maintenance discount and without the hyperdrive and extra energy requirements, you can really go to town in other areas.

Regards,

- Erik

I didn't know that! That's actually a really cool game design decision. I wonder how much the maintentence discount is, and the threshold for individual people to regard it as a viable decision to build ships without hyperspace. As the game goes on, the less the maintenence discount is worth though, as there are more systems controlled, and larger ship sizes. For me the threshold would be something like a fifth of the original maintenence and the fraction would eventually become so small, that even no maintenance would not be worth it, as you have to pay for the cost of production.

[lando005]

I guess it wouldn't have to be an escort, I just wanted something small and fast for recon scout missions. At the moment I'm deciding against scanners that large on my ships but that should be ok my fleet and empire activities should stay within the relm of my scan net if I play my cards right

[lando005]

I've been doing some more tweeking of my fleet and base tactics and thought I might share.

For star bases since there's generally no theme to them this gives me a wide range of use. As of right now I've been using them as military exclusive construction yards and command bases. I've also included troops and fighters into the design to help replenish fleet units or to support any worlds that come under attack.

As far as my fleets go there are some technologies that I must take into account: cloaks, area weapons, ion weapons, gravity weapons, remote shield rechargers. I plan on each ship specializing in an area, most likely as a "special feature" rather than simply replacing a weapons system. I'm still tweeking what a 15 ship fleet would compose of, but I have two configurations down for my 10 ship fleet. Carriers will act as the lead ships in my fleets. All fleet designs are around the theme of general purpose, multi role functionality:

Type 1: 4 curisers 3 capital ships, 1 carrier, 1 troop transport, 1 resupply ship
Type 2: 3 destroyers, 2 cruisers, 2 capital ships, 1 carrier, 1 troop transport, 1 resupply ship

I believe area weapons will be equipped on my captial ships as suggested by the game. I haven't decided if remote shield chagers will be included on one of the assult ship types or one of the support ships to give them something to do in the middle of a fight. Gravity weapons seem to be the most destructive and I'm thinking about them on either destroyers or capital ships. I haven't played a game long enough to get to these higher tech levels to see how they play out yet though, for now this is all just idle planning

[Plant]

You say "All fleet designs are around the theme of general purpose, multi role functionality". So what differentiates between your destroyers, curisers and capital ships? Other than area weapon on capital ship. You say Carriers act as lead ship. What does this mean? You give it plenty of shields and send it first to an enemy ship/base?

[Chris21wen]

Just to throw in something different to this discussion. Nearly ever one here has got themselves a set of stock ships and hence a set research approach that they use in the game for every alien race, baring the few special race techs available. Nothing wrong with this as it's how the game plays but I find it boaring.

Already built into the game is the AI set of race preferences for techs used and reseached which is much more likely to happen. History is scattered with differences with how races on earth used the same type of weapon but with different fighting tactics. French Napoleonic Column verses the British Line both armed with muskets; the WW2 Tiger verses the T34 both tanks etc.

Why not give races a bounus for using some technology, e.g the current AI preference setting. That way you won't get the standard approach to playing every race. This would be on top of the current special techs and does not debar you from used other 'aquired' weapons as again this has happened endlessly.

This is a thought and I would like to hear what others think.

[lando005]

When I say lead ship I mean I usually select it as the command ship of the fleet and equip it wth fleet bonus items: fleet combat sensors and the likes. My destroyers are intended to do the highest amount of damage possible, heavier weapons, (I'm leaning more towards them carrying the gravity weapons) while my cruisers I haven't quite figured out yet. I orginally intend curiser designs in space games to have an extremely long range but I dont see that as a good option here so I may equip them with ion weapons.

[lando005]

Personally I would have prefered if each race or atleast each racial type got its own tech tree instead of the three standard ones and you make technologies tradeable or atleast most of them, every racial group has their own mode of transportation, weapons and defenses, this would make the dynamics much more interesting