The few hard lessons I learned playing this game.

[Foraven]

-Large fleets are a bad idea.

The way the game works, fleets will use one station at a time when refueling, repairing or retrofiting. When you have many ships in the same fleet, they end up in queue forever. They also become sitting duck if the station gets attacked, and unavailable to respond to attacks elsewhere.

-Multiple invasion fleets are a bad idea.

Armies takes a long time to build and can become quite expensive to maintain. The AI may have a hard time making sure all those transports are filled up while keeping some troops on planet.

-Neglecting maintenance reducing tech a bad idea.

Maintenance can drain income really fast, especially with many ships and defensive structures.

[Nightskies]

I agree about the first two, but the third one, not so much! Maintenance reduction actually has a very, very weak effect. Try saving a game and switching to Feudalism, with a +50% ship maintenance reduction bonus, and then retrofit all your ships to practically the same design they were already (say, change a fuel cell to a basic fuel cell). The difference isn't much- to the point, you can practically ignore maintenance reduction entirely.

The reason this is like this is that it was all too easy to stack maintenance reduction so high that you'd be EARNING money for maintenance instead of paying. So the devs had to do something drastic. Now, it's pretty much worthless- I figured out the exact math on it before, but it's fine to leave it at that.

[Foraven]

I agree about the first two, but the third one, not so much! Maintenance reduction actually has a very, very weak effect. Try saving a game and switching to Feudalism, with a +50% ship maintenance reduction bonus, and then retrofit all your ships to practically the same design they were already (say, change a fuel cell to a basic fuel cell). The difference isn't much- to the point, you can practically ignore maintenance reduction entirely.

The reason this is like this is that it was all too easy to stack maintenance reduction so high that you'd be EARNING money for maintenance instead of paying. So the devs had to do something drastic. Now, it's pretty much worthless- I figured out the exact math on it before, but it's fine to leave it at that.

Oh well, not much to do for that overly bloated navy I tend to have then.

[scotten_usa]

-Large fleets are a bad idea.
The way the game works, fleets will use one station at a time when refueling, repairing or retrofiting. When you have many ships in the same fleet, they end up in queue forever. They also become sitting duck if the station gets attacked, and unavailable to respond to attacks elsewhere.

I agree with this, but... what is your choice? Many/smaller fleets? I find that to be a pain,too, when I have many ships.

[Foraven]

I agree with this, but... what is your choice? Many/smaller fleets? I find that to be a pain,too, when I have many ships.

Many smaller fleets seems to be the best overall. Larger fleets may have the firepower but that's worthless if they are not available to fight. Also it's rather hard to protect your empire when you have many systems to cover with an handfull of fleets.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is rare for me to have more than 10-15 ships in one fleet... many fleets are much smaller and some even only have ONE ship.

Every fleet in my empire is very specialised on one specific task and fleets work with each other to be stronger as a group.

I also don't run allot of really small ships, escorts and frigates I mainly use for system patrols and their role is mainly to skirmish with an enemy until a real fleet can arrive and deal with a threat. Most of my fleets have at most three different ships in them... a core, escort and a command ship variant. Each fleet is then specifically tasked for a purpose.

Keeping your fleets small makes you flexible and less susceptible to losses as you need to repair ships and not send huge fleets back to base for small repairs or refueling. I also find that using multiple fleets in battles can be very effective as you can leverage their strength and cover their weaknesses by using them differently and confuse the opponents defensive or offensive forces.

[maggiecow]

-Large fleets are a bad idea.
The way the game works, fleets will use one station at a time when refueling, repairing or retrofiting. When you have many ships in the same fleet, they end up in queue forever. They also become sitting duck if the station gets attacked, and unavailable to respond to attacks elsewhere.

I agree with this, but... what is your choice? Many/smaller fleets? I find that to be a pain,too, when I have many ships.

That's why you automate most of your fleets and only manually control one or two. You have no chance against the AI if you're trying to coordinate your 6 fleets against their thirty. You need thirty AI fleets of your own. It's why the fleet designer is so important. Like Jorgen said, you get incredible versatility by designing multiple different fleet styles.

In general I manually control my Invasion fleet and let the rest look after themselves.

[Jorgen_CAB]

-Large fleets are a bad idea.
The way the game works, fleets will use one station at a time when refueling, repairing or retrofiting. When you have many ships in the same fleet, they end up in queue forever. They also become sitting duck if the station gets attacked, and unavailable to respond to attacks elsewhere.

I agree with this, but... what is your choice? Many/smaller fleets? I find that to be a pain,too, when I have many ships.

That's why you automate most of your fleets and only manually control one or two. You have no chance against the AI if you're trying to coordinate your 6 fleets against their thirty. You need thirty AI fleets of your own. It's why the fleet designer is so important. Like Jorgen said, you get incredible versatility by designing multiple different fleet styles.

In general I manually control my Invasion fleet and let the rest look after themselves.

I usually do both... I quite often manually control fleets in larger numbers or at least tightly control their engagement ranges if on automatic.

In addition to this I play the game at very slow speeds... playing the game at 1/2 speed is not very uncommon for me, sometimes even slower when allot of stuff is happening such as in wars with other empires.

[maggiecow]

I agree with this, but... what is your choice? Many/smaller fleets? I find that to be a pain,too, when I have many ships.

That's why you automate most of your fleets and only manually control one or two. You have no chance against the AI if you're trying to coordinate your 6 fleets against their thirty. You need thirty AI fleets of your own. It's why the fleet designer is so important. Like Jorgen said, you get incredible versatility by designing multiple different fleet styles.

In general I manually control my Invasion fleet and let the rest look after themselves.

I usually do both... I quite often manually control fleets in larger numbers or at least tightly control their engagement ranges if on automatic.

In addition to this I play the game at very slow speeds... playing the game at 1/2 speed is not very uncommon for me, sometimes even slower when allot of stuff is happening such as in wars with other empires.

Hilarious we still don't have an ingame explanation of engagement ranges for fleets, isn't it? How long is a piece of string? Sector range. Okay, the rest are self-explanatory maybe but at least in DWU, you knew what a sector was.

[Nightskies]

We're getting a measuring tool very soon :3

[Jorgen_CAB]

Hilarious we still don't have an ingame explanation of engagement ranges for fleets, isn't it? How long is a piece of string? Sector range. Okay, the rest are self-explanatory maybe but at least in DWU, you knew what a sector was.

I'm not so sure it is hilarious... ...but you can to some degree make some rather good estimation of ranges, especially when using the jump range of your ships hyperdrives as a reference. With this you can get a rough estimation of ships engagement ranges.

It is not the best way to do it but you can do it.

Luckily we will get measuring tools added to the game soon in addition to more dynamic engagement ranges settings. Eric described in the last stream that we will be able to set engagement range by more or less drag and drop the range and then to see the ranges set. This will help allot for the player to manage their fleets and what targets they want the fleets to react to.

[AKicebear]

Eric described in the last stream that we will be able to set engagement range by more or less drag and drop the range and then to see the ranges set. This will help allot for the player to manage their fleets and what targets they want the fleets to react to.

This is excellent news - I really missed the fleet engagement ranges map overlay from Distant Worlds Universe.

[maggiecow]

Hilarious we still don't have an ingame explanation of engagement ranges for fleets, isn't it? How long is a piece of string? Sector range. Okay, the rest are self-explanatory maybe but at least in DWU, you knew what a sector was.

I'm not so sure it is hilarious... ...but you can to some degree make some rather good estimation of ranges, especially when using the jump range of your ships hyperdrives as a reference. With this you can get a rough estimation of ships engagement ranges.

It is not the best way to do it but you can do it.

Luckily we will get measuring tools added to the game soon in addition to more dynamic engagement ranges settings. Eric described in the last stream that we will be able to set engagement range by more or less drag and drop the range and then to see the ranges set. This will help allot for the player to manage their fleets and what targets they want the fleets to react to.

Yeah, that does sound cool. Can't help but feel there are a few fundamental UI things they should be looking at first but maybe they'll get to those eventually.

Is the streaming being done on Slitherine TV on Twitch? - edit: Looks like it is.