Fleets... as institutions

[Kushan04]

I have forgotten which game restricts fleet size... was it sword of the stars? I found that unintuitive and arbitrary, and poorly justified-- an important balancing tool for multiplayer, but annoying.

Sins of a Solar Empire limited both your fleet size and the number of capital ships you could have.

I agree with the OP on all his points. I'd personally like to see fleet coordination get better as technology improves. For example, Travel and fight in formations, travel at the speed of the slowest ship instead of getting strung out as they travel through hyperspace individually, and also jump out of hyperspace closer together as well.

Kushan

[thiosk]

I don't know that it should get much better as technology improves. For example, a warmongering race could have poor technology, but because of their military traditions, they could have spectacular coordination between ships in their fleet.

Some race of techy eggheads, on the other hand, could build amazing individual ships, but have more difficulty in getting them to operate together as a fleet, lacking the centuries of military tradition.
I'd envision that fleet behaviour would improve as a function of usage, rather than a function of raw technological advancement.

[Wade1000]

ORIGINAL: elliotg

ORIGINAL: Wade1000
-Maybe when we select a ship to build we also could select which fleet it goes to and merges with. AI opponents or Automation should do this also. It's like Thiosk states about waypoints; fleets as moving waypoints instead of traditional stationary wayponts...or I suppose both would not hurt.

Things actually work this way already: if you assign a fleet to a ship under construction (e.g. in the Ships and Bases screen), then that new ship will travel to the fleet location when it's completed.

Cool. Thanks, ElliotG. You've created a great game.

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

ORIGINAL: thiosk

I have forgotten which game restricts fleet size... was it sword of the stars? I found that unintuitive and arbitrary, and poorly justified-- an important balancing tool for multiplayer, but annoying.

I don't know what game you mean but SotS does not restrict fleet size. It does restrict the number of ships you can have in combat at any one time based upon your level of command and control research and how advanced your CnC ship in the fleet is.

I will state any time it's in a disscussion that I dislike artificial limitations in a game.

I think it'd be good to have fleets maneuver better according to both technology and military traditions (and genetics of potential updates with new of a new family called Avian. )

[Fishman]

More macro-management functionality would be nice, like an order for "Gruesomely Kill Every Enemy Ship Here". Because it's a right pain in the ass trying to shoot down a bunch of random ships flying around while trying to remember which ones haven't declared war on you yet. Especially since the targeting reticle gives no indication of whether you are firing on a neutral ship, or an enemy ship, and many of the colors are so similar. Once I declared war on a guy simply because his red color was too close to the other guy's red color, so after being unable to tell them apart, I just decided EVERYTHING RED IS DEAD.