GLobal fleet reserves vs apper when built

[muxec]

In MOO3 we had fleet reserves. This allowed ships to travel through the whole huge galaxy in 5 turns. Just disband your fllet and redeploy it after 5 turns. Wierd and unfun. I do not think that fleet reserves must exist in FreeOrion.

[drek]

They, so far, don't.

[BreadMan]

Since the subject relates to that of this thread, I'm gonna take the opportunity to repost an idea that was in my Outposts thread but never got discussed due to enthusiasm over different types of outposts:

This brings me to another idea, somewhat independent but also somewhat related: an "assemble fleet at this planet" button. I was thinking about MoO3's mobilization centers, and how stupid they were. But I was thinking of what the developers were trying to accomplish with them. In MoO2, as in FO, you build a ship and it automatically deploys at the system its built in. This makes sense. Then to create a fleet you go to all the systems and tell all the ships you built to meet at a certain planet, and then they're grouped as a fleet. This gets a little meticulous when you've got a big empire and multiple ships being built at multiple systems each turn, so why not have a "fleet assembly" button that automates the process for you?
It would bring up a screen listing all your ships that don't currently have any orders and where they're stationed, and you pick the ones you want and tell them "hey, I want you all to form up here" and they set their destinations. You could check back on the screen in later turns to see all their ETAs, maybe via a little "Fleet Pending" icon at the planet you chose to assemble them at. If something like my Fleet Deployment scheme were implemented, (viewtopic.php?t=874) maybe you could set that up as well. Just something to make later game management run a little more smoothly.

[Impaler]

I had a similar idea kind of Inspired by WarCraft 3 Rally Flags, they can be placed on the map OR onto another unit. So I propose we have 2 kinds of Rally Flags that the user can place.

"Go to this system imediatly after being built"
"Go find this fleet and merge with it after being built"

System Flags would use numbers and Fleet Flags would use greek letters. Player could probably have 4 to 10 of each.

And ofcorse you can tell your shipyards to build whole TaskForces from a template without needing to specify each ship individualy and then that Taskforce will wait next to the shipyard untill all the ships are done and then go find the destination as a group.

[Sir Rogue]

Similar methods of assembling fleets have been implemented in other games. I personally like the Imperium Galactica 2 method. It went something like this.

• Ships are built at individual planets/systems.
• Each planet/system can be given orders to deliver new ships to a fleet or another planet/system.
• Newly built ships make the trip at their best speed, merging with other ships at the destination to form a fleet or add on to the existing fleet.

Of course, this almost exactly like how the system was implemented in MoO2, but without the ability to group ships into cohesive fighting units.

[NotComingDown]

This is my first post - I found a link to Freeorion on the IG forum, spent hours reading about this project and immediately donated som cash so you can continue the development of what looks to be an awesome game.

I would like to help the way I can, which is probably testing and bug-finding..

This idea, to me, sounds very interesting:

I had a similar idea kind of Inspired by WarCraft 3 Rally Flags, they can be placed on the map OR onto another unit. So I propose we have 2 kinds of Rally Flags that the user can place.

I'm not sure if you're planning on implementing different types of votes (like in SMAC with the amount generated by trading eg.) however, if you do, races could vote on the number of flags available to each race. Just brainstorming...

Anyway, keep up the good work, you're on to something here...

--NCD

[Sky Keeper]

Regarding ship(taskforce) building:
an AI-helper function that takes a set of ship types and thier quantity and distributes it among a set(defined by Industry orientation for example) of worlds to minimise time being built+ arrival to a sepecific waypoint of the whole taskforce. This could reduce MM at wartimes dramatically.

[Ranos]

I had a similar idea kind of Inspired by WarCraft 3 Rally Flags, they can be placed on the map OR onto another unit. So I propose we have 2 kinds of Rally Flags that the user can place.

"Go to this system imediatly after being built"
"Go find this fleet and merge with it after being built"

System Flags would use numbers and Fleet Flags would use greek letters. Player could probably have 4 to 10 of each.

And ofcorse you can tell your shipyards to build whole TaskForces from a template without needing to specify each ship individualy and then that Taskforce will wait next to the shipyard untill all the ships are done and then go find the destination as a group.

This is a very good idea but I believe that some modifications need to be made. I am assuming that TFs will be the way battles will be run and not individual ships. If this is correct, then wouldn't having ships that are not assigned to a TF wondering around the galaxy could cause some problems.

I think that the idea of telling shipyards to build entire TFs and have them be automatically assembled would be the best way to go with the original ship building. The "Go to this system flag" would apply to the entire TF instead of just individual ships.

Adding ships to existing TFs has two different options.

1) TFs that have fewer ships than the maximum would automatically request additional ships.

For example: There are different TF sizes that can be assigned when the TF is being created. Fleet, Armada, Pack, Flotilla and Squadron are some options. Lets say a Fleet has 26-30 ships allowed and an Armada has 21-25. If you build a TF as an Armada and only put 21 ships in it, it would request 4 additional ships to fill it up.

This request wold only be valid if it is in a freindly system. Ships would not be sent to it if it was travelling between systems or in a neutral or enemy system.

If you decide to upgrade the TF, you can order it to increase to a Fleet and it would request 5 more ships. You can also downgrade fleets which would order ships to return to the nearest shipyard to join up with a different TF or go to a TF that was already requesting more ships.

If a TF was made up of obsolete ships, it would no longer request ships to fill its empty ranks. This would prevent a TF which had warp level 5 ships from getting filled with warp level 6 ships.

2) You specifically access the individual TFs and order additional ships to be sent to them.

This allows for you to decide which TFs would be filled and which would remain at their original size. TFs would still be upgraded if you wish but you would still so the additional ship ordering.

I also had a thought about merging TFs. If you have two obsolete or even current TFs in the same system together, you could merge them, as long as they wouldn't go above the maximum number of ships allowed per TF.

[noelte]

I think that the idea of telling shipyards to build entire TFs and have them be automatically assembled would be the best way to go with the original ship building. The "Go to this system flag" would apply to the entire TF instead of just individual ships.

Good point. I hated the way moo3 is doing it. "Do i have enought pd ships to build my task force ....". Having a TF design which could be build would be realy nice.

[utilae]

I think that the idea of telling shipyards to build entire TFs and have them be automatically assembled would be the best way to go with the original ship building. The "Go to this system flag" would apply to the entire TF instead of just individual ships.

Good point. I hated the way moo3 is doing it. "Do i have enought pd ships to build my task force ....". Having a TF design which could be build would be realy nice.

The simple solution to the 'need X, need y to build TF' would be just get rid of the requirements. I mean what was the point of building a long range taskforce of type long range. Why not just be able to build a task force and put heaps of long range ships in, then it will be a long range TF. It should be the player who decides whether the mixture of ships they put into a taskforce is long range or just random.

[Impaler]

In response to Task Force sizes:

I would avoid the Moo3 system entirely, think Taxonomy. Every animal is in larger group that is inself in a larger group, theirs no way you can find a Dog that is not also a mammel. Likewise ALL ships are members of Taskforce AT ALL times even if they are the only ship in said TF. Likewise all TF are in a Fleet and all Fleets have atlest 1 TF. This will clear up any possible confusion when performing mergers/splits.

The terms Task Force and Fleet have no berring on size. A TF template consists of a listing of ship designs, possibly Core/Escort/Picket division of that list, a # for each ships and possibly some default TF AI setting like thouse found in Stars! (run away and shooot, close and blast them away).

When you have a TF built all the ships in its design go into the Queue and if you wish it can have a "goto" order which give every Queued ship a "Go to and create/merge with new task force". As each ship is produced it is at first in its own temporary fleet and task force that goes to the desired location and merges with the other ships of the task force. When they merge the incoming ships temporary fleet and TF are deleated and its ships are inserted into the destination TF.

When ever a TF losses ships and is no longer "filling" its design template it is flagged for optional replacments. The player can order "Replacments for this TF" and put it in the Queue like any other ship group production order. The ships get made and have "move to and merge into target TF" orders that are automaticaly set. The order can also be given at the Fleet level so that you can quickly and easily have your battle losses replaced with macro-managment.

[Moriarty]

I'm not sure if this one has been suggested before, but i believe it would meet the requirements:

If you have a global shipyard screen, you could put orders for ships onto it (say 10x battlecruisers, 3 scouts, 1 battleship, and a partridge in a pear tree), and the shipyard would then automagically allocate those ships to the planets that would be best able to build them.
i.e. the battleship would go to the fastest building planet, the scouts to the slowest.
The end result is that your fleet is produced in the most effective way time.

Plus it gets rid of the micromanagement, which is i believe something of a goal for the game.


Similar thing could be used for taskforces if they are implemented.

[Ranos]

I would avoid the Moo3 system entirely, think Taxonomy. Every animal is in larger group that is inself in a larger group, theirs no way you can find a Dog that is not also a mammel. Likewise ALL ships are members of Taskforce AT ALL times even if they are the only ship in said TF. Likewise all TF are in a Fleet and all Fleets have atlest 1 TF. This will clear up any possible confusion when performing mergers/splits.

This is even better. However I don't think that we want dozens of single ship TFs. There are two solutions to this problem. Let me give a little scenario to explain exactly what I'm talking about.

The Shipyard in the Toliman system has just built a ship. There are no set orders to build a task force and there are no task forces requesting to be filled. The ship can't just be deployed by itself since that would create a single ship TF, which in and of itself is not bad but if this were to happen every time a ship was built, there could potentially be dozens of single ship TFs. Here are the three solutions to this that I can think of.

1) The ship remains in the shipyard until it is requested in a TF, whether a pre existing TF or the beginning of a new TF. This causes the slip that the ship is in to remain in use and will result in no more ships getting built in that slip.

2) The ship does not remain in the shipyard but is considered to be unmanned. This results in one of two possibilities. A) The ship exists but will not show up in battle if the system is attacked. B) The ship exists and will show up as an object near the shipyard if a battle occurs. It may be targeted and destroyed or be easy prey for a bording party.

3) A new TF is automatically created and the ship is added to it. All ships being produced from this shipyard will be added to this TF regardless of what their size or design are.

I am personally in favor of either 1 or 2 since these would require the players attention and not allow the player to just sit and let the TFs build on their own. Of those two options, I favor 2. It would mean greater risk because of the possibility of your ship getting captured in battle.

When ever a TF losses ships and is no longer "filling" its design template it is flagged for optional replacments. The player can order "Replacments for this TF" and put it in the Queue like any other ship group production order. The ships get made and have "move to and merge into target TF" orders that are automaticaly set. The order can also be given at the Fleet level so that you can quickly and easily have your battle losses replaced with macro-managment.

This requires the player to go through a lot to get a TF refilled. If TFs that were filled with obsolete designs didn't request new ships and TFs with current designs did request ships, this would just make fleet assignment easier on the player. The TFs wouldn't request a new ship be put into the build queue but would request a shipyard already building a ships to send a new ship to the TF.

As I sit here typing, I am thinking about how it would request a ship. To do this, we first need to figure out the details of TFs. How many ships are allowed in a TF? Will all TFs be made up of multiple different kinds of ships or will each TF have a mission, ie Long Range, Short Range, IF, etc.? Presumeably, there would be picket ships, escort ships and core ships. What would the percentages? If there were either programmed numbers or numbers set by players at the beginning of the game (after the game starts in the shipyard screen or something like that have all the options in there).

For example: There are a maximum of 50 ships allowed per TF. 10% of those must be picket ships, 60% must be escort ships and 30% must be core ships.

When you order a shipyard to build a TF, you tell it what kind of a TF you want and how many ships maximum you want in the TF. It will then build the ships that you put into a queue, or we could make it easy and it will automatically queue up the ships needed to build the TF.

When the first ship is completed, the TF is created and named (automatically or prompt for name?) and the ship is placed in the TF. As each additional ship is completed, it is put into the TF. If a certain area is full, you have all of the core ships you are allowed, and another ship of that type is built, a new TF is created.

When the TF is full, the player is informed that the TF is completed and is ready for commands.

When a TF loses some ships in battle, it sends a request out for the types of ships it needs. 1 core 5 escort and 2 picket or something like that. If the TF is in a neutral, enemy or contested system, the order will not be responded to. If the TF is in a friendly system, the nearest shipyard will send the ships requested as soon as possible.

Granted, this is automation, but it is a solution to having to keep track of, at least in the late game, a dozen or so shipyards and hundreds of TFs.

I'm not sure if this one has been suggested before, but i believe it would meet the requirements:

If you have a global shipyard screen, you could put orders for ships onto it (say 10x battlecruisers, 3 scouts, 1 battleship, and a partridge in a pear tree), and the shipyard would then automagically allocate those ships to the planets that would be best able to build them.

I suggested this in this thread viewtopic.php?t=907&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=00, but mentioning it again can't hurt. I don't think I ever got a response to it.

Instead of including ship building in the global queue, yes I know the idea is to eliminate microing but hear me out, have a single ship building queue. Its one more queue which adds a minimal ammount of microing. This queue would get its pps from either a slider or a numeric field in which the player would set the exact ammount or percentage, whichever works better, of pps that would go to the shipbuilding queue.

The player would queue up the ships that he/she wants built and the queue would assign them to the individual shipyards based on space availability, maximum size capacity of the shipyard, etc.

I think that this would be much better than including ships in the regular global build queue.

[utilae]

The ship can't just be deployed by itself since that would create a single ship TF, which in and of itself is not bad but if this were to happen every time a ship was built, there could potentially be dozens of single ship TFs. Here are the three solutions to this that I can think of.

Why can't you have a single ship TF? I would like it if it were more like Moo2. First of all, let's not call a group of ships Task Forces (sounds lame), we should call them fleets (like in Moo2, also sounds cooler).

I would like it if I could just build whatever ships I wanted. They come out, etc etc. Then when I want to make them into a fleet, I will do so, however I can put any ship I like in the fleet, no silly requirements. Of course you could still have ships join a certain fleet when they are built, but theat should be optional.

I am personally in favor of either 1 or 2 since these would require the players attention and not allow the player to just sit and let the TFs build on their own. Of those two options, I favor 2. It would mean greater risk because of the possibility of your ship getting captured in battle.

Another alternative is have the ships come out as not being in a TF, and thus be flagged as 'not being in a TF'. Whether they should be in space combat as single ship fleets depends on whether you control ships or groups of ships. So whenever a new fleet needs a ship, ships 'flagged as not being in a fleet' are contacted first.

[Impaler]

I see nothing wrong with single ship Task Forces though I agree they should not proliferate to rediculous numbers, If the player is just ordering single ships to be built then thouse ships should all enter into a new TaskForce at the shipyard and sit their untill the player sends them someware.

Utilae: The name Task Force is differnt then Fleet because they are 2 seperate things. Task Forces are how you comand ships in BATTLE, one task force dose this, another goes their, yet another blows up that planet. Fleets are Groups of Task Forces and are serve as unit of movment over the Galactic Map. Their purpose is to alow you to comand numerous task forces to move around the galaxy map as a group.

Their should be no arbitrary restrictions on how many ships can be in a Task Force or requirments that their be any number of ships in any groupings like "picket" "Core" "Escort" these serve only to help organize the ships in battle. All the ships could be in the Picket or all in the Core (if we even have such a destinction).

Another alternative is have the ships come out as not being in a TF, and thus be flagged as 'not being in a TF'. Whether they should be in space combat as single ship fleets depends on whether you control ships or groups of ships. So whenever a new fleet needs a ship, ships 'flagged as not being in a fleet' are contacted first.

Instead I would say let the player flag ships or TF in the Queue as "Reserve" in the same way they flag it for "go-to" and "merge-with" when these ships are completed they stay in the system ware they are build and create/merge-in-to a Reserve Fleet for that system. They will stay their untill the player initiates a "call up reserves" order to replace loses that some Fleet has suffered. The needed ships will be pulled out of the nearest reserve fleet and fly off to merge with the Task Forces that need it.

All such replacments need to be player initiated, nothing would be automated becuase this involves moving ships that may be defending some important place or putting a build order in the Quee. These kinds of replacment orders can be given at fleet level though so they is virtualy NO micromanagment involed unless the player wishes it.