Proposed Space Combat/Ship Design Model:

[Combatjuan]

There is a thread that discusses different size classes of ships and naming conventions and whatnot. In it's summary, there are two main and distinct models suggested:

1. ) That there be no defined ship sizes, but rather some kind of Tonnage rating. Under this system, a race's technology level defines the maximum sized ship that they can build. Suppose at some arbitrary technology level, a race can build ships up to size 1000. With regards to capital ships, we could require that all capital ships be between sizes 60% of maximum and 100% of maximum and require that escort ships be lower than 60%.

2.) A M00 system that defines a specific set of researchable size classes (e.g. frigate, corvette, cruiser, battleship, doomstar, etc...). We could require that newly build capital ships be the maximum possible size class and escort ships be at most one below the maximum size class.

I guess these are just the obvious solutions.

-Charles

[utilae]

Besides, in 90% of 4X games, "choosing weapons and shields" actually means "click on the box with the biggest numbers, which is usually the highest tech one". I don't know that that consitutes a great deal of fun to me; I'd rather concentrate on the tactically significant component. YMMV.

It's easy enough to have the highest tech weapon be chosen for you, but the difficulty is deciding the type of weapon, eg lasers, torpedoes, pulsars or bombs. But I guess the weapon type is likely to be based on the role you choose.

Create a leader? Initially I rebel at the idea... after all, an individual person's traits are usually not at the complete control of their parents, let alone the government... but I suppose it's reasonable enough to go with it.

Your right in that leaders changing ships would ruin the idea, so it is probably not a good way to go.

I a better idea is flagships. Basically when you design a ship, you can design a flagship (detailed design) or a grunt (simple design). Maybe you can only build so many flagships based on your 'points' (some kind of system). The ability to choose which of your ships are flagships allows flagships of different sizes, classes, etc. You could make a scout a flagship if you want. A flagship would be different to a grunt in that it has traditions, experience, etc. The only issue is that a flagship would cost more, at least why should it cost more. Because it has better living conditions maybe.

You're right that adding additional FTL modes would certainly increase the strategic and tactical richness of the setting. However, I still haven't seen a proposal for how this might actually dovetail well with the aforementioned need for an in-setting justification for a Detailed Design/Streamlined Design split.

Different travel types would affect how you move fleets of ships to other systems. The presence of a certain type of travel type in a fleet would allow it travel to a system.
eg
Fleet A contains 50 ships.
They can move to another system if one of the following conditions is true:
*each ship has a warp/ftl drive (your normal moo2 type engines)
*there are enough tugs/pushers in the fleet (speed based on ratio of tugs to tugged ships)
*there are enough ships with hyperspace engines (enough to take other ships)
*there are enough carrier ships with some kind of engine and that had enough room to carry the ships
*there is a stargate in the target system as well as in this one

If all you have is ships with no engines, ie only impulse, then they can probably move, though at a very very slow speed to the next system.

I guess some of the details of what constitues an escort and what constitutes a capship will have to be fleshed out at some point. What is a capship in the early game? How about late game? Do Capships have a minimum size requirement (ie: they are all battleships or bigger aka Moo2), and what happens to them when Titans or Doomstars come along?

With my flagship idea, it is based around the player deciding what is a 'capital ship'.

Secondly, I think players will find stranded escorts every frustrating. If escorts needs a subspace drive, they can also double as hyperdrive so that all ships have FTL capability. The large ships can still have personality since they have the space for specials.

This is not related to the escorts/capital ship idea, but to the travel method of using hyperdrives. In this case, that is the disadvantage of hyperdrives. Loose the ships with hyperdrives and your other ships are stranded.

What I am aiming to do is to seperate the 'capital ships' (called flagships in my system) / 'escorts' from the travel types. Since the player can choose which ship is a flagship, the player can make a ship with a hyperdrive a flagship or a big ship a flagship or a scout a flagship or a carrier a flagship (ie battlestar galactica). It's more fun that way.

[skdiw]

What I am aiming to do is to seperate the 'capital ships' (called flagships in my system) / 'escorts' from the travel types. Since the player can choose which ship is a flagship, the player can make a ship with a hyperdrive a flagship or a big ship a flagship or a scout a flagship or a carrier a flagship (ie battlestar galactica). It's more fun that way.

That's my thought, but you still have some of the problems with tugging. And with flagship idea, all the player have to do is build one scout tugger for his whole entire fleet. There's got to be a limit or a rule for the idea to work, something like hyperdrive X can tow a number of ships that their sizes or tonnage added up to Y.

My idea was based the "flagship" by size, if you can fit your hyperdrive on a medium ship, then you got a medium tugger. You never clearly specify how your flagship is going to work; you can make one ship in a TF a flagship, or can you just have a scout tugger for the entire fleet, or discuss the advantages of having a scout tugger or a big tugger like why can't all ships be flagships?




First of all, I think we need to discuss whether we should allow to tug. It is a potential system. If we allow tugging, then we solve planetary space-to-ground defense problem so we don't need spacestations or special defense ships and it will simplify military tech as we can just split the category into cap ships and escorts under sapphire's proposal. The major downside to the problem I see is the amount of microing necessary to move some ships, which carries over to "flagship" and my ship size idea. No matter how much I try to work around this problem to reason how tugging would work, I always return to the micro problem of assigning ships to tugger, even if you reason that we do the assgning like we do with TF, it is still not as easy when you hypothetically play out the strategic logistics and tactical TF organizations. What other pros and cons do you guys see?

Another solution is no tugging and all ships are FTL capable. Ship classes and special non-FTL defense ships/spacestations are researched in parallel research cat/theories, rather in series like in traditional 4X. Each classes has its own special character, such as XP and traditions for large ships, subspace speed for small... and the player can further refine each characteristics. space-to-ground defense and ground combat can be grouped into one UI. If we wanted to, we can make small ship size class more generic as in you research already built ship design model, and save ship designing for larger classes. This solution may cover all the major advantages, while avoiding the disadvantages of previous 4X. What do you guys think?

[Geoff the Medio]

I dislike any system in which a ship requires something else to move it around the map; IMO the basic defining feature of a ship should be that is can move around the map on its own. This avoids the UI and "micro" issues with ships having to be attached to other ships to move, or the messiness of requiring a certain ratio of "tugs" to other ships.

It also avoids the situation where you might have ships that you want to move, but can't, due to lacking a tug or FTL-capable ship to move them for you. Arguably this could be a benefit in some ways, but I'm not convinced it's worth the hassle. In particular, I don't think it's necessary to have "capital ships" be the only ones that are FTL-capable in order to make them important strategic targets in battles. Various other benefits can be restricted to larger / special ships to achieve the same thing, IMO. Carrying usefully big number of ground troops or planetary assault (glassing) weapons or other funky special-effect-giving components that you don't need a copy of on each ship, but rather one or two for the whole fleet, should be sufficient for this.

Aside probably best discussed in another thread #1: I see no need to have system ships (nor tugs to make them FTL-capable indirectly). If you want ships in a system that doesn't have shipyard, just build some normal ships and move them to the system you want to defend.

Aside #2: I also don't think much is necessary in the way of planetary defenses against ships that are used in anything resembling a ship-to-ship space battle. Planets can sit out space battles, and then can be glassed or invaded with ground troops after space superiority is achieved, unless they have a planetary shield, in which case that would have to be overcome, which could be done using fleet strength vs. shield strength comparison or perhaps with specialized components for planetary assault (see above re: special ship parts you don't need a lot of copies of).

A possible way to make smaller ships easier to design than bigger ones is to use some sort of a slot-based design system, in which larger ships just have more slots, and thus can have more possible different designs. As well, there could be types of slots, or sizes of slots, where the bigger and better slots only appear on larger ships, so that smaller ones are also much more restricted in the types of parts that can be put into them, so that you don't end up designing 80 different small ships with a single special part which might be even more time consuming that designing a single big ship with all those parts in the one ship. If smaller ships are available sooner in the game, ramping up the ship design complexity over the course of the game would also be a nice benefit, in that it serves as a nice into to the process and lets the initial few turns go by more quickly without much time being spent on this activity.

I don't see a need to make explicit differences between "escort" and "capital" ship designs or ship functions beyond the above suggestion. I don't think individual ships need to have unique properties and skills or bonuses beyond what could be determined from their design, and a single experience number for the ship, similar to unit promotion in C&C Red Alert 2, in which units get XP for (battles / kills) and get predefined bonuses with each promotion that occurs after a set amount of XP.

I can see some sense behind having a smaller number of important ships ("hero" or special "capital") and then lots of filler ("escorts"), but I don't think it's worth the design concessions required.

However: Perhaps something quite similar to the desired capital / escort ship idea could be achived with carriers. Many of the benefits of the proposed capital ships and escorts system could be folded into carriers as just one of several types of weapon systems that ships can use... and this can be done without requiring annoying / inconvenient FTL systems, as discussed. The fighters of a carrier would be part of it, just like the remaining missiles on a missle boat, and would automatically return to it and travel with it around the map. Carriers could also work well for players who want to have a smaller number of ships they care about and remember, and then a lot of generic accompaniment / escorts, as an empire using carriers could perhaps avoid building lots of "ships", but just use fighters launched from carriers to the roles suggested for "escorts".

[utilae]

That's my thought, but you still have some of the problems with tugging. And with flagship idea, all the player have to do is build one scout tugger for his whole entire fleet. There's got to be a limit or a rule for the idea to work, something like hyperdrive X can tow a number of ships that their sizes or tonnage added up to Y.

For a tug, the speed=no tugs / no towed ships
eg 4 tugs, 2 ships towed, travel at 2 parsecs

For a hyperspace equiped ship, it can carry X ships or X mass of ships. Speed is fixed for current tech level of hyperspace engine.

You never clearly specify how your flagship is going to work; you can make one ship in a TF a flagship, or can you just have a scout tugger for the entire fleet, or discuss the advantages of having a scout tugger or a big tugger like why can't all ships be flagships?

A flagship is not something that is needed to meet a requirement, eg a taskforce would not need a flagship. Taskforces can manage on their own with their own fleet leaders, but the presence of a flagship, ie the Battlestar Galactica provides great benefits. A flagship would act similar to how Sapphire Wyvern descibed, with traditions, experience, etc. A flagship is not a grunt/escort type ship (they are simplified in design). A flagship has been designed by the player with greater detail. Perhaps more specials, weapons and abilities are given to the flagship in design, then what the escorts would get. There should be a limit to the number of flagships, though I am not sure what it would be other than a point system, eg an empire is only aloud 5 flagships at a time. Maybe it's some kind of command points or reputation points (each time you gain a reputation you get points, which can be spent on a flagship, the type of reputation affecting the flagship maybe).

First of all, I think we need to discuss whether we should allow to tug. It is a potential system. If we allow tugging, then we solve planetary space-to-ground defense problem so we don't need spacestations or special defense ships and it will simplify military tech as we can just split the category into cap ships and escorts under sapphire's proposal. The major downside to the problem I see is the amount of microing necessary to move some ships, which carries over to "flagship" and my ship size idea. No matter how much I try to work around this problem to reason how tugging would work, I always return to the micro problem of assigning ships to tugger, even if you reason that we do the assgning like we do with TF, it is still not as easy when you hypothetically play out the strategic logistics and tactical TF organizations. What other pros and cons do you guys see?

Must certainly have all these different types of ship travel types, eg tugs, etc. The management would probably be a case of building a good ratio of tugs to tow ships with sublight engines. If you wanted to move ships with sublight engines to another system, you would have to move a tug or more their first, then move the ships. A player should play in such a way that he builds plenty of tugs so that their are always tugs at every fleet location. And enoguh tugs so that if you loose some, you have some spare.

If we wanted to, we can make small ship size class more generic as in you research already built ship design model, and save ship designing for larger classes. This solution may cover all the major advantages, while avoiding the disadvantages of previous 4X. What do you guys think?

It would be cool to research like in an RTS. So you research Carrier, then can build it. But players always like cutomisation and ship design.

[Sapphire Wyvern]

I don't see a need to make explicit differences between "escort" and "capital" ship designs or ship functions beyond the above suggestion. I don't think individual ships need to have unique properties and skills or bonuses beyond what could be determined from their design, and a single experience number for the ship, similar to unit promotion in C&C Red Alert 2, in which units get XP for (battles / kills) and get predefined bonuses with each promotion that occurs after a set amount of XP.

Well, see, this is something I just can't agree with. I think it makes the game much more flavoursome and enjoyable for the most important ships to have some kind of unique identifier that the player can remember, just as planetary colonies are unique and distinct. The "Victory", a battleship with a long and glorious history of defeating foes, is cooler than "Heavy Battleship #39" which has earned enough XP to pick two upgrades from a list in the Civ IV style - or even worse, simply receives pre-determined upgrades. While the actual game rules might end up similar in either case, I find that the latter option loses much of the flavour just because the unit isn't a distinct individual. Again, YMMV.

I can see some sense behind having a smaller number of important ships ("hero" or special "capital") and then lots of filler ("escorts"), but I don't think it's worth the design concessions required.

I accept that having non-FTL ships in the game is probably a design concession, although it has been pointed out that it may not actually be necessary for the idea to work. The other factors, though, such as a discriminatory design system, more complex stat-tracking, and unique/differentiable major vessels, are IMO major assets, not concessions.

The slot-based design system you propose here is pretty much what I was thinking of when I said there could be a continuum of design complexity across the ship size spectrum. I think I still prefer a more clear-cut boundary at the moment, though.

However: Perhaps something quite similar to the desired capital / escort ship idea could be achived with carriers. Many of the benefits of the proposed capital ships and escorts system could be folded into carriers as just one of several types of weapon systems that ships can use... and this can be done without requiring annoying / inconvenient FTL systems, as discussed. The fighters of a carrier would be part of it, just like the remaining missiles on a missle boat, and would automatically return to it and travel with it around the map. Carriers could also work well for players who want to have a smaller number of ships they care about and remember, and then a lot of generic accompaniment / escorts, as an empire using carriers could perhaps avoid building lots of "ships", but just use fighters launched from carriers to the roles suggested for "escorts".

So under this system, you propose that most empires would control relatively few ships, allowing them to be as differentiable as colonies rather than mass produced, and that the "Epic scale" requirement of FO can be satisfied by use of large number of fighters? Or are you saying that players in general would still build large fleets of relatively generic ships, individual ships would not be distinct except as an incremental counter, and that carriers would simply be a stylistic choice for players who want a lower ship count, with little actual difference in terms of gameplay/ship design?

I don't know. It seems like the "I Can't Believe It's Not Dramatic Ship Combat" option at the moment; at first it looks like it meets the same design goals, but on closer inspection it doesn't seem to actually possess any of the features that I thought made my original proposal worthwhile! Perhaps I'm not fully understanding you...

In any case, I would fully expect carriers to be an element of the game no matter what combat/design model we choose. I suppose you could think of Capital Ships/Escorts as simply being carriers where the "fighters" are built independantly and reallocated between carriers - but that doesn't alter the gameplay disadvantages you've pointed out. In theory, we could even skip ship design as a separate step and simply have "Task Force design", where you stat out the Capital Ship's systems and the number and types of Escorts. It would be identical to designing a carrier in a conventional 4X game as you propose, except at one higher level of abstraction in terms of ship size. I don't actually like that idea myself, but it's a possibility.

Incidentally, how do you feel about having to use transport ships in Civ and SMAC to get ground units from one continent to another, and the need to supply airbases for aircraft? Is it too hard to micromanage? Of course, in Civ/SMAC the problem doesn't arise for normal ground units travelling within the one continent. What about the gameplay in Heroes of Might & Magic? The "regular army" units in that can't move independantly, and the heroes don't even participate in combat directly... although this might be considered an advantage, as it eliminates any possibility of a field army being stranded.

[queue]

I think it would be easier to understand the different ship/ftl ideas, when they are shown in something like a timeline, in which the player achieve them.
f.e.:

1. Subspace travel: Only suitable for unmanned craft like Scouts drones and freighters (not shown in the game), which will be researchable after this and open the first X - eXplore.
2. Hyperdrive/pod-carrier: After researching ships for in-system-travel (colony pods and perhaps frigates for defense of the home system) the first steps for the second X are done - eXpand. The pod-carrier (don't like the word tug, reminds me of a small engineering vessel) is the first manned ship for starlane travel, that can dock and tow a small number of pods (colony, outpost, later stations like listening posts and perhaps defense station for starlane entry points). Maybe we need a size class for pods, where a small outpost or station have the size of 1 and the huge colony pod the size of 3 or so. The first pod-carriers would have a docking capacity of 4, later ships 8 or 16. Hyperdrive is a bit slower than subspace travel, but both will get faster and faster, as ftl-technology evolves.
2b. Combat Pods: At this time of the game, the player perhaps make first contact with alien empires. Now he needs ftl-capable military ships to defend his colonies or attack the enemy. Naturally, an empire at this early stage would eXploit what it already have achieved, to eXterminate the danger (3rd and 4th X). Docking pods can be used to tow smaller ships like frigates (8 each pod) or destroyers (2 each pod) to the enemy. Missile pods or fighter pods would give the Pod-Carrier some long range weaponry. But without short range weapons, pd or combat-like shields and armor, this fragile ship would be hold back from the battle cautiously. Mainly it is an option to rush the enemy in early game.
3. Adv. hyperdrive/battleships: The more straightforward option to armed pod-carriers would be a hyperdrive-capable combat ship, so this is it. Advanced hyperdrive technology made it possible to control hyperdrive field and tow ships without the need of docking. This is your first "capital" ship.
In the middle game technology and hulls for escorts (frigates, destroyers and Cruisers, where late battlecruisers could even surpass early battleships in size and power) and capital ships (Battleships, Titans, Doom Star or whatever) advances till the next stage of ftl is reached.
4. Warp: This technology (which is small enough to be used on frigates) "converts" sub-light speed to much higher, even ftl-speed by manipulating the space around the ship. Hyperdrive is not becoming obsolete, because it gives the warping ships a great deal of additional propulsion. So task forces without capital ships can travel starlanes, but slower than by conventional hyperdrive (let's say 60% normal hyperdrive). Fleets with hyperdrive and warp get 50% more speed (there should be an option to refit all escorts of a fleet with warp drives by one or only few clicks, reducing space for other equipment)
5. Stargates: In the end game, instant teleport, start and destination system need one etc.


I like the capital ship idea, because it reduce the design steps for escorts to the minimum, some meters would be enough. The same time, design of the few capital ships may be much fun.
A system based on slots lacks automatic refits of escorts, which would bring too much micro in the game.

[utilae]

I dislike any system in which a ship requires something else to move it around the map; IMO the basic defining feature of a ship should be that is can move around the map on its own. This avoids the UI and "micro" issues with ships having to be attached to other ships to move, or the messiness of requiring a certain ratio of "tugs" to other ships.

You will not have to manually attach tugs to ships. By simply having some tugs in your fleet, the fleet will then be able to move. Fleet micromanagement was never really a problem in Moo2 anyway. So I don't think it will be in FreeOrion. Once we eliminate the micromanagement of buildings (as they were so bad in Moo2) and space combat (at it's extremes in Moo2), it frees up some room for some good micromanagement.

Aside probably best discussed in another thread #1: I see no need to have system ships (nor tugs to make them FTL-capable indirectly). If you want ships in a system that doesn't have shipyard, just build some normal ships and move them to the system you want to defend.

It's all about technology and playstyle. One player may use FTL drives on each ship. His ships will be more expensive because of that. The other player will use tugs. Tugs would be cheap, being just FTL drives, and the player would take advantage of this system by strategically using his tugs to carry his fleets. Eg, if he wants a new battleship at the border planet quickly, he can just fit more tugs then normal, ie 10 tugs, to move the ship at 10 parsecs (broad example).

Aside #2: I also don't think much is necessary in the way of planetary defenses against ships that are used in anything resembling a ship-to-ship space battle. Planets can sit out space battles, and then can be glassed or invaded with ground troops after space superiority is achieved

I don't see a reason to remove planets and their defenses from space combat. Your removing a very important factor from space combat. Besides, in a system wide space combat, planets form part of the terrain. Everyone has been saying that space needs some kind of terrain, so people try and make something up.

[Geoff the Medio]

This avoids the UI and "micro" issues with ships having to be attached to other ships to move, OR the messiness of requiring a certain ratio of "tugs" to other ships.

You will not have to manually attach tugs to ships.

I didn't say you would. Note the bold and capitalized "or".

It's all about technology and playstyle. One player may use FTL drives on each ship. His ships will be more expensive because of that. The other player will use tugs. Tugs would be cheap, being just FTL drives, and the player would take advantage of this system by strategically using his tugs to carry his fleets. Eg, if he wants a new battleship at the border planet quickly, he can just fit more tugs then normal, ie 10 tugs, to move the ship at 10 parsecs (broad example).

This is not really anything interesting and new enough to warrant the extra micromanagement. I see no interesting strategic benefit that you couldn't get by having ships all have engines. If all ships have engines, then you'd just build a ship with a bigger or more expensive engine if you want it to move faster. This actually makes things more strategic, in that you presumably have to pick between a faster ship and a bigger and more powerful ship, rather than always building big powerful ships and then building a bunch of tugs to move it around as fast as the others (even if it takes more tugs, you'll presumably have enough around to move smaller numbers of ships as fast as you want). It's also not like moving ground units with a sea transport, in that there's only one kind of map-terrain in question, so no real justification for th extra micro entailed.

I don't see a reason to remove planets and their defenses from space combat. Your removing a very important factor from space combat.

I don't see a reason to add them. We have ships to fight eachother. Why do we need planets in combat as well?

Besides, in a system wide space combat, planets form part of the terrain. Everyone has been saying that space needs some kind of terrain, so people try and make something up.

I didn't suggest removing planets as terrain. I want combat to be system wide, with the star and planets on the map. The planets would be terrain features, which you could go into orbit about (for some purpose) or which might affect movement rates. But they wouldn't be something you'd shoot at or be shot at by. That would be the role of ships in combat.

[skdiw]

In theory, we could even skip ship design as a separate step and simply have "Task Force design", where you stat out the Capital Ship's systems and the number and types of Escorts. It would be identical to designing a carrier in a conventional 4X game as you propose, except at one higher level of abstraction in terms of ship size. I don't actually like that idea myself, but it's a possibility.

This crossed my mind too and I don't think it will work either. It requires too much commitment of the player to have to build a TF at a time. Plus you still have some micro problem when you have to detach the escorts during tactics or if you want to swtich escorts around just to make a move.


Ships within ships, as oppose to fighters within carriers, is same as untilae's carrier idea. I don't think that would work either. Forgot the reasons, just remembered the conclusion :p.

It's all about technology and playstyle. One player may use FTL drives on each ship. His ships will be more expensive because of that. The other player will use tugs. Tugs would be cheap, being just FTL drives, and the player would take advantage of this system by strategically using his tugs to carry his fleets. Eg, if he wants a new battleship at the border planet quickly, he can just fit more tugs then normal, ie 10 tugs, to move the ship at 10 parsecs (broad example).

This is not really anything interesting and new enough to warrant the extra micromanagement. I see no interesting strategic benefit that you couldn't get by having ships all have engines. If all ships have engines, then you'd just build a ship with a bigger or more expensive engine if you want it to move faster. This actually makes things more strategic, in that you presumably have to pick between a faster ship and a bigger and more powerful ship, rather than always building big powerful ships and then building a bunch of tugs to move it around as fast as the others (even if it takes more tugs, you'll presumably have enough around to move smaller numbers of ships as fast as you want). It's also not like moving ground units with a sea transport, in that there's only one kind of map-terrain in question, so no real justification for th extra micro entailed.

I agree with Geoff that tugging is not a good idea, as the cons > pros. I think we can achieve our objectives better in another way.

I think wonder ships achieve the uniqueness already. Keep in mind there is a gradient of "uniqueness" of wonder ships, just like our design of buildings. Also, if we go with ship-class parallelism idea, we can maintain the flavor or each major category of ships, such that we maintain the epic feel and less monotony in tactical combat.

I don't see a reason to remove planets and their defenses from space combat. Your removing a very important factor from space combat.

I don't see a reason to add them. We have ships to fight eachother. Why do we need planets in combat as well?

Presumably, we need planet defenses to give you the edge when defending a colony. We still need to satisfy defense > offense > growth strategic criteria (this should be rule #0)--this is utmost important fundamental building block of 90% games, maybe even 100%. It can't be just ships vs. ships and see who is quicker with the mouse or who has the most power. it is necessary to have a strategic manuever overriding tactics. so we need to somehow give the defender a boost, ie. such as a special ships or more efficient ship for defensie purposes, which the cap/escort idea would happen to satisfy. If we don't go for the cap/escort idea, then I say we allow planetary defense and have it be a contending force in tactical map. We can group planetary defense build with ground force UI, although I haven't really thought how compicated should ground force be, and I don't know our position on planetary defense--is it really uncontrollable meters?

As an aside, the slot-based design is just an idea. There is one variant that I think could work, but otherwise a more traditional design is more appropriate and better. I just wanted to make sure that we aren't fixated on slot idea without fully understanding it yet.

[Moriarty]

3-5 mouse clicks would be impossible, but a small amount anyway.

You're right. I plead guilty to exaggeration. I'd like to revise that estimate to "Under 12 clicks, certainly not more than one dialog box, and maybe not even a dedicated full-screen UI for the task".

I think it would be very easy to design an "anonymous" escort in 3-5 clicks:
1) New ship
2) Choose ship size
3) Choose weapon types (torps, missiles, lasers, etc)
4) Build

As stated above, these ships won't need any "specials", that's where the capships come in. And you are almost certainly going to want the best that's going on them. Thus 4 clicks.
Sure allow users to customise them if they need to with the "25-click super-deluxo self-refining" option, but 99% of players arn't going to need that complexity, and so shouldn't have to deal with it at this level (escorts).

[Combatjuan]

WARNING: I prefer Warcraft III to just about any other RTS game because of the tiny unit cap and the significant impact of heroes. Those, for me, make combat much more manageable, tactical, and interesting; so my ideas are probably not in line with 'the masses'.

*** Regarding Space Terrain: ***
One of my gripes with MoO 2 was that I couldn't attack more than one planet in a system per turn. If we decide to use an RTS battle engine, then I think that it should involve the whole system. While I think that this discussion deserves a thread of its own, I'll spell out a couple ideas here.

Each jump point/star gate/star lane in the system should be represented and these should represent exit points: for retreat, or for moving through an occupied system without necessarily engaging the enemy.

Each planet should show up on the map. It's relative size and distance from its sun should be dramatically scaled to make the vast distances between things much smaller. It's missiles and beams while probably bigger and higher ranged should follow the same rules as that of ships. Space stations and orbital defenses should actually orbit planets in 'real' time.

Asteroid belts/nebulas/debris clouds should act as sensor barriers (see the Electronic Warfare thread: viewtopic.php?t=1208)
Furthermore, assuming proper algorithms can be used, I should be able to hide my fleet behind a planet or behind the sun relative to the enemy to obscure my location.

The speed of the battle should be proportional (within some parameters and accomodating certain variables) with the minimum distance between enemy fleets so that it doesn't take ridiculous amounts of time finding your enemy.

There should be an (optional) time limit on battles especially for multiplayer. Ships should be forced to stay near/within the solar system's radius.

*** Regarding Capital Ships/Flagships ***
A game is ever so much more epic when the player cares about his ships. That's one of the things that makes the game less of a graphically enhanced spreadsheets. Having ships with 'traditions' or 'experience' is a good way to do this. These ships should be widely variable, but their demise should not spell the end of the battle or cause the rest of the fleet to be stranded. While that is a good way to differentiate between capital ships and escorts, in the end, it's simply not fun. There should be another way to differentiate. It could merely be size and the way they are designed. It could be that you must spend 'reputation points' or something to build them - and these reputation points would be earned primarily by attacking (either other empires or space creatures). This is would be an excellent way to solve the problem of the third party not being aggressive enough (See this thread: viewtopic.php?t=1190).

Finally, I think it would be cool if the experience gained could be either passive benefits (e.g. +15% to repair rate for fleet, +20% beam accurracy, etc..) or specials that could be activated (e.g. Sensor Ghosting, Heroic Self-Destruct, etc...), though I can see how the latter would be problematic to program.

*** Regarding Movement Methods: ***
I don't like the idea of tugs. I've never liked the idea of special ships like 'Outpost', 'Colony', 'Freighters', etc... While I'm not proposing one, there is surely a better game mechanic than that. I don't want to build the infrastructure to move my fleet around and keep it supplied. I want to build glorious warships.

[Combatjuan]

Sorry, I guess most of this stuff has been discussed to death. I had read a lot or previous threads on it, but it's a popular topic. I've gone back to do my homework and read some more.

[Moriarty]

I prefer Warcraft III to just about any other RTS game because of the tiny unit cap and the significant impact of heroes. Those, for me, make combat much more manageable, tactical, and interesting

I'm sure most of the folks here are aware of this, but just to make sure, WC3 is really a RTT. It's about tactics, not strategies.

Should space combat to be like that, where you choose when to fire, which specific ship to fire at first etc etc (ala homeworld, MOO 1+2), or should it be more along the lines of grand-strategic oversight stuff (ala Moo3) where you are controlling whole divisions and you leave the minute stuff to the AI. Personally I think both could be implemented together and would allow for a awsome space-combat sim albeit rather a lot of work as well.

I don't recall reading any (recent) discussions on this point. Have I missed them?