Will we never be able to have multiple designs of a class in our fleet comfortably?

[relane]

Hi,
I ask this because i know that the game has gone its past beta stage and i wonder if this is a game design by choice, that there's only one button for each fleet to retrofit to the latest design, and the AI also always upgrades fleets to their latest designs, this means that i can't have different types of a class in my fleet. IT also means that while ai is taking care of ship designs,, i will never be able to make my own design without the entire fleets of the class being upgraded to that design.

[BTAxis]

Definitely maybe.

[Nilserich7]

I have asked myself the same question. I am a very big fan of multiple designs for the same class. However, I find it a bit cumbersome at different points of fleet management.

[AntoneT]

I would like that too. It's probably a bit down on the developers' priority list for the moment though.

[Almora]

Hi,
I ask this because i know that the game has gone its past beta stage and i wonder if this is a game design by choice, that there's only one button for each fleet to retrofit to the latest design, and the AI also always upgrades fleets to their latest designs, this means that i can't have different types of a class in my fleet. IT also means that while ai is taking care of ship designs,, i will never be able to make my own design without the entire fleets of the class being upgraded to that design.

The devs have said that you could have multiple ship designs operating for each "hull" type. But I assume these problems are on the backburner while they fix performance issues

[arvcran2]

It is possible, but as of 1.0.7.3 beta the player will have to resort to manual individual fleet ship retrofits.

Fleet templates would have to support adding additional entries for same 'Role' ships to allow auto retrofitting.

If support is added for more than one design per ship Role, I hope it is not confined to a specific Hull which would prevent the player from having more than one design per Hull included in the Fleet Template.

---

Rambling on about a possible UIX and implementation:

The design side of things:

Designs should have a Hull identifier (HI) and a retrofit associator identifier (RAI) displayed to the player, where the RAI can be defined by the player, showing the list of hulls that precede the design being viewed or edited, in my humble opinion. The RAI's purpose is to identify a series of designs using the same hull that will retrofit upward to the latest. This would allow for a single line of retrofits for the same hull that are essentially revisions. When a design is completed the predecessor's design's follower, if not defined, gets updated. This would allow for choosing the proper next generation design for a given ship, and, ultimately, enable retrofitting directly across multiple hull generations.

How to solve predefining retrofitting old hull designs to one of a next generation of new hulls when there are multiple old designs:

When the player, or the AI, designs several designs for a new set of Hulls within a Role, Fleet Templates can define the new Role-Hi-RAIs. The retrofit of Fleet Ships across Hull generations here would be done as a last pass, assuming some are merely revisions. Those Fleet ships remaining can pretty much flip to new generation hulls without care after choosing legitimate follower HI-RAIs first.

When new hulls are made available, one of those hulls gets to reference the predecessor, choosing from a finite list of previous generation designs (and ultimately HI-RAI combos). This would complement the behavior of the game currently automatically designing one and only one design when multiple hulls are enabled by the research completion. Retrofitting to other designs could be made available implicitly via the Fleet Templates as described previously. This would be optionally accomplished by stating the RAI for the given Hull's Role. This would be a change from identifying a specific design in the Fleet Template and would simplify the player needing to always update revisions.

Retrofitting a solo hull should chose the last 'follower' otherwise there is no retrofit to be done since it is the leader of retrofits .

[zebanovich]

I think there is no point is having different ships of same role within same fleet since the game does not feature special tactical combat screen, instead combat is done in space, although you can command single ships in battle I don't think many people actually do micromanage combat.
Because first of all it's very difficult to command individual ships since there aren't many formation to make manual combat easier, and clicking on each ship and tell it what to do is pain in the arse.
In special tactical combat screen (if it would exist) it should give you options such as formations, tactics, starting positions, but in raw space battle this doesn't exist. (something similar to polaris sector tactical combat if you played it)

However what does work in DW2 is to create multiple smaller fleet templates, ex. heavy fleet, fast fleet and some sort of normal fleet etc. then you command multiple of these smaller fleets into single battle, this way you can have control over how individual ships behave by simply commanding smaller fleet rather than each ship.
And of course each of this small fleet maintains different ships of same role, thus combined you have multiple groups of ships with different purpose.

[Erik Rutins]

Per item #2 on our updated roadmap, we plan to add the ability to have multiple designs per role in a fleet template.

[Jorgen_CAB]

However what does work in DW2 is to create multiple smaller fleet templates, ex. heavy fleet, fast fleet and some sort of normal fleet etc. then you command multiple of these smaller fleets into single battle, this way you can have control over how individual ships behave by simply commanding smaller fleet rather than each ship.
And of course each of this small fleet maintains different ships of same role, thus combined you have multiple groups of ships with different purpose.

This is basically how I play the game... a fleet is more like squadrons or small task-groups with a specialized purpose. So perhaps 5-10 ships in a fleet, sometimes a bit bigger.

[zebanovich]

Per item #2 on our updated roadmap, we plan to add the ability to have multiple designs per role in a fleet template.

That is good to hear!

I only wish along with this to come more fleet formations to fine tune positions of different ship within fleet.
I think current picket\escort\core is insufficient for many ship roles that the game features.

for example there are 3 types of frigates, 3 destroyers and 3 types of cruisers and X battleships etc., which gives a lot of possible formation combinations, but currently we have only 3 positions or formations.

This is basically how I play the game... a fleet is more like squadrons or small task-groups with a specialized purpose. So perhaps 5-10 ships in a fleet, sometimes a bit bigger.

I find it cool to attack with heavy fleets some targets but keep a fast but weaker fleet in reserve to jump in as needed.

This is basically how napoleon waged wars he never attacked with full army but instead kept some 20-30% in reserve behind lines because his famous saying was "what if major battle will be tomorrow and not today, if I don't keep the reserve and do full attack with what army will I fight if my enemy prepares for major battle tomorrow"

This is what "fast" hulls are specifically most useful in this game, to keep ships and fleets in reserve for fast response if battle goes wrong here or there.

[arvcran2]

In order to maintain a 'formation' the fleet ships have to be able to maneuver at the same speeds.

[arvcran2]

Per item #2 on our updated roadmap, we plan to add the ability to have multiple designs per role in a fleet template.

That's encouraging! (I must have missed it on first read)

" and more detailed fleet template management by ship hull"

I believe the above implies allowing for different hulls as opposed to ship design lines. Meaning no ability to state different designs of the same hull?

Would be nice to allow for multiple variations of hull designs. Admittedly it is a more complex feature to implement.

[arvcran2]

The concept I proposed in this post -> https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0#p5040970 may also enable defining an end of the line by not having a follower design.

During the Mortalian story line, a ship that I captured was retrofitted accidentally by me when retrofitting a fleet. It was a significantly more advanced in tech ship than I could build except for the Worm Hole Drive component.

What I am getting at is, there needs to be a way to prevent unintentional retrofits.

In hindsight, more thought needs to be done re upgrading designs, creating new ones, defining design association for the purposes of retrofitting, and allowing fleet templates to function in unison with the concepts.

When fleet ships within a fleet are being retrofitted, they should probably conform to the fleet's template result. Especially if the "Fleet Ship Management" policy is enabled and automated.

What does this mean for retrofitting:

• Ships with no specific follower design inherently do not have a retrofit target and hence will not be retrofitted to any new resulting design.
• Ships with a specific follower will retrofit to the new design.
• Any resulting ships designs that are not conforming to the fleet's Fleet Template may be removed by the Fleet Ship Management automation policy and made available to the Solo ship 'pool' for reassignment.

This paradigm would be a strict version of retrofitting ships, regardless of being assigned as a fleet ship or not. It would prevent retrofitting to random designs and would grant more control to the player's administration of designs. The unfortunate outcome of this method does make the player, or the game, be more careful about modifying existing fleet's Fleet Template reference, and what kind of modifications can be made to 'in use' Fleet Templates. The game should probably allow for a nonspecific or any designs allowed Fleet Templates. Enabling a flag on a Fleet Template to disable Fleet Ship conformity in numbers and design only to specify role and tactics.