Proposed Space Combat/Ship Design Model:

[Sapphire Wyvern]

There are two types of warship: Capital Ships and Escorts.

Capital Ships have hyperdrives, Escorts do not.

Hyperdrives are huge expenses, requiring a great many rare elements in their construction, so a Capital Ship is a massive commitment of Imperial resources. However, a Hyperdrive projects a space-warping field for some distance in every direction around the equipped ship, so any Capital Ship is capable of "towing" a number of Escorts with it as a support fleet. Some Capital Ships are carriers, and contain many additional internal parasite craft (fighters, etc). It's possible that the number or total tonnage of Escorts that a Capital Ship can tow is proportional to the size of the Capital Ship; I haven't decided yet. I would recommend having a hard cap of, say, 50 Capital Ships per empire. However, there should be soft caps and disincentives for large Admiralties built into the game design so that the hard cap is almost never reached in practice - the game shouldn't *feel* as though there is a hard cap towards which you need to race.

Another FTL option is Subspace engines. Subspace engines are cheap and easy to build, but no sentient lifeform can survive travel via Subspace unharmed (insanity or death result). These ships are used for automated cargo vessels for redistributing minerals, supplying fleets, etc. Troops and colonists have to travel with a Hyperdrive-equipped fleet. (This is a just a background sanity-check to make the economy and resupply rules logical - I wouldn't expect subspace ships to be directly shown on the map, or directly affect play in any way). Subspace engines might also used for powering missiles or long-range bombardment weapons - neatly justifying FTL projectile weapons in combat. We could theoretically have low-tech automated subspace "Scout Drones" for cheap scouting units; they would be useless in combat due to the absence of sentient control. BTW, the no-sentients-in-subspace rule applies to the AIs within the game setting as well - there are no freebies for entirely mechanical races.

Capital ships have a fairly detailed design process (which I'll leave unspecified for now - there's many possible options). You're not expected to control very many, so each one takes on the role of an Admiral as well as a "unit". They earn XP in combat and might possibly gain Traditions based on their history of performance - this would be similar to Total War's Virtue/Vice system. Capital Ships would be infrequently built, but quite frequently refitted. "Refitting" a Capital Ship can sometimes be a very extensive process, including even changing the size class entirely - this represents taking out the expensive hyperdrive core and rebuilding a new vessel around it, transferring the crew to the new vessel. This would allow you to maintain the Traditions of an old vessel while still keeping it useful in the later game. Alternatively, we could simply say that when you build a new Capital Ship and give it the same name as a ship you once had, it inherits some of the Traditions and XP of the original ship. Traditions could include things like "Bleeding Edge" for a ship that is frequently refitted with SOTA tech or "Glorious Valor" for a ship with a history of charging into combat, or even negative Traditions like "Botched Repairs" for a ship that gets near-destroyed.

Capital ships become tactical interest points in the battles, because they are so strategically important. Capital ships would also be the only ships that carry player-activated Special Equipment. This category would include things like Black Hole Generators, etc - special weapons with unusual effects that the player has to specifically activate for them to be used.

Escorts have a very simple, streamlined design process. They are built in Squadrons (similar to Total War's "Units") of at least 10, maybe up to 100 or more ships per Squadron. My preferred system for Escort Ship design is a process of choosing priorities in the various areas of space-ship competence; the ships are henceforth automatically refitted with the best equipment your Empire has available, in keeping with the specified design priorities. (Priority choices would be things like Missile, Beam, Fighters, Point Defense, Speed, Shield/Armour, Stealth). That reduces micromanagement of your "regular troop" units. With regard to Special Equipment, Escorts would mount only passive gear which is always in effect. Background-wise, this can be justified by saying that the player-activated Special Equipment has extraordinary power requirements that can only be satisfied by Capital Ship systems. This further reduces player micro-management of Escort ships and further emphasizes the tactical importance of the Capital Ships. Thus, Escort Ships must be deployed and maneuvered cunningly for maximum effectiveness.

In combat, Escorts can be assigned to guard a Capital Ship or roam the battlefield as an independent unit. Escorts form the bulk of a given fleet's force, but are individually weak compared to a Capital Ship.

By default, each Capital Ship heads its own Task Force of Escorts. Multiple Capital Ships can be formed into a single Task Force and their associated Escorts merged into a single pool. Splitting a multi-Capital Task Force into components will require a dialog box, but that's not hard to achieve. In a multiple-Capital Ship Task Force, the largest Capital Ship is the flag vessel (ie has overall command). This may or may not be relevant depending on whether we track morale or command/control bonuses.

Escorts can be assigned to a System or to a Capital Ship-led Task Force; when built, they are by default assigned to the System Defence Fleet in the system where they were constructed. They can then be transfered to any of your Task Forces that moves into the system. With regard to the Strategic Map UI, there should be different icons for a System Defence Fleet (Escorts only in a system) versus a Task Force (Capital Ship(s) + Escorts). There should be a simple drag-and-drop interface for moving Escorts from one Task Force to another within the same system or to the System Defence Fleet in that system.

We could possibly have Orion Artifacts that can be built into Capital Ship systems; these could grant passive bonuses or possibly emulate advanced player-activated equipment. Some might even be utterly unique. Orion Artifacts would be effectively indestructable; if a ship with one is destroyed, the Artifact is salvaged by the battle's winner. If there is no winner or a Space Monster wins, the Artifact remains in the system for a future claimant. I would prefer not to have recruitable "personalities" in the MoO II sense for Capital Ship captains; it would be better for the ships to have names and take on personalities in their own right. MoO II Heroes were bad for the game because it introduced a very random element that could have large influence on the game (ie, which Heroes you were offered).

[tzlaine]

I like this proposal quite a bit. One problem with this proposal though is that it promotes a certain FTL tech to canon, effectively removing the possibility of having FTL techs change during the game. This proposal might instead be one of several tech-driven combat modalities in FO. We've talked about having interesting tech shifts that change the way war is waged. Using this system in a certain part of the game, and having FTL for all ships later or earlier would provide one such interesting shift.

More importantly though, it would be nice to hear other well thought out ideas for how combat should work that tell a consistent story, as this one does. Anyone else have another take on how combat should be structured?

[skdiw]

This proposal might work well.

Some questions:
1. how do you rush? as in attack enemy early in the game if capital ships are expensive. and in a related problem, how do colonize? if all colony and troops ships must be accompanied by capitals, then how do you out expand someone? would the early game consist of mass capital ships for colony travel, then refit to warships?
2. will there be different classes of ships with in the two types? for example, will there be size differences? how do you improve your ships through tech?
3. how do you or can you design multi-purpose escorts? is there a ship with combat capabilities in between escort and capital?
4. do capital ships have subspace engines? or do they act like your town centers in tactical combat?
5. how will wonder ships work?

Parts that I like are capital gaining xp/traditions and capital enabled specials (although I would allow other mid to large ships to use some specials so we would have more variety to chose from rather than just a handful).

I'm not sure how people will feel if their ships are stuck in the middle of nowhere because their capital gets destroyed. Do you necessary need a captial to salvage them or can they still move but just slowly?

what if you type it by size? so say you have 100 large hull ship and 20 hull small ship. And say hyperdrive costs 60 hull so only a large ship have warpdrive and towing capability. the rest of 40 hull can be alloted to the player's choice such as troops, colony, specials, and weapons.

[zobo]

A colony ship in this system would by necessity be more like a colony pod. The towing ship would tow the colony pod (only one per ship in the early game) to the target system, plant it in the planet and then return back for the next pod.

I think it is rather stupid you have to keep rebuilding all of colony ship. What do the colonists need the spacecraft engines and hull for?

Your tug would early on be a fragile mothership, not a combatant. Maybe later on they would become mighty battleships. But if a ship can act as a tug it can tow a battlefleet or a colony pod or a small spacestation.

Nothing forces escorts to have or to lack combat capability, same with the motherships. Of course they would have to be upgradable just
like we plan our general spaceships to be right now.

I am afraid this system might become cumbersome to manage with more of these tugs. I would dislike the hard limit, unless we come up with a reason why. Soft limits that cannot really surpass some value are much more ok than a hard limit, so let's look at those.

[Magus]

I like this idea, though I'm not sure if its the best for this project.

Going with what tzlaine said, this could be the first of several combat paradigms that change over the course of technological development. You could do something like this, for example:

Hyperspace Drives: Very, Very expensive, can tow other ships.
-Followed By-
Flux Drives: Cheaper, but can only move between certain star systems that meet certain qualities. (Alderson Drives, for those who know their sci-fi)
-Followed By-
Warp Drives: Free FTL everywhere, though slower than Hyperspace or Flux.
-Followed By-
Wormholes: Costly to set up, hard to invade with, but has near instantaneous transport
-Followed By-
Foldspace Drives: Go anywhere, very fast. Obviously makes the game quite chaotic, but it is the end game.

And about the same time you gain a new drive tech that alters the strategic landscape, you could begin to get an influx of other strategic techs and new tactical techs. Basically, since I know Sapphire at least has read the Honorverse books, think of all the advancement that takes place between the First battle of Basilisk and the Battle of Manticore, and pair it with a change of FTL tech. Its only like a 20 year span in which the face of war is radically altered.

[Sapphire Wyvern]

This proposal might work well.

Some questions:
1. how do you rush? as in attack enemy early in the game if capital ships are expensive. and in a related problem, how do colonize? if all colony and troops ships must be accompanied by capitals, then how do you out expand someone? would the early game consist of mass capital ships for colony travel, then refit to warships?

Invest early game production in combat-oriented Escorts, with an appropriate mix of forces for tactical advantage, rather than economic enhancements. Refit your starting Capital Ship(s) with the best miltech your Empire has available. Then send in your Task Force of maxed-out Capital Ships with powerful combat Escorts, destroy your enemy's starting Capital Ships, and then take over the crippled Empire at your leisure.

The trick is to make it not too easy....

I'm thinking that each Empire should start with 2-3 Capital Ships so that losing one in the early game doesn't cripple you entirely.

2. will there be different classes of ships with in the two types? for example, will there be size differences? how do you improve your ships through tech?

Oh yes, definitely a range of sizes within each category of vessel. I would say that the largest Escorts would come in small squadrons - say 2 ships per squadron - and would be able to match the combat power of a smaller Capital Ship. Escorts don't earn XP and don't gain Traditions, so as a general rule they shouldn't outmass Capital Ships.

I currently envision Escorts as being automatically upgraded to the latest tech, in keeping with their original design "brief" - so missile boats will always have lots of missiles, sensor platforms will always have good "eyes", and flankers will always be stealthy - they just get better at their particular roles as your Empire's tech improves. For Capital Ships you have total control over each one's design, and you can (and should) refit them as you see fit with the technology you discover over time. If you have a particularly obsolete Cap Ship you don't want to refit, you could use it as a tug for moving System Defence Fleets and Seedships (colony pods) around, scrap it, or sell it to another player who desperately needs a hyper-capable hull...

3. how do you or can you design multi-purpose escorts? is there a ship with combat capabilities in between escort and capital?

Hmm. Offer a "Balanced" priority, similar to Balanced Focus for colonies?

I envision Escorts as actually providing the bulk of a Task Force's combat force. So I don't see the need for a third class of ship.

4. do capital ships have subspace engines? or do they act like your town centers in tactical combat?

Absolutely, they do. Capital Ships should play an important role as a deliverer of combat power, even though they shouldn't be expected to win a battle single-handed. They may be the most important pieces on the chess-board, but they're more like a Queen than a King.

5. how will wonder ships work?

Parts that I like are capital gaining xp/traditions and capital enabled specials (although I would allow other mid to large ships to use some specials so we would have more variety to chose from rather than just a handful).

I'm not sure what you mean by wonder ships. I don't see any reason why particularly large/powerful/ancient vessels wouldn't just be treated as very good Capital Ships.

With hindsight, you're probably right about allowing some activated abilities for Escorts; minelaying is an obvious example of something that wouldn't be restricted to Capital Ships for obvious reasons. Anything really cool/unique/powerful should be reserved for Capital Ships for dramatic and tactical reasons, however.

That said, I would expect each Capital Ship would normally have multiple activated equipment, but there should be enough different activated equipment and few enough slots (or other resources) per ship that no one Capital Ship can have everything. I envision a typical sort of Task Force in the mid-game as having 3-6 Capital Ships and maybe 10-20 Squadrons of Escorts. In the late game, an Empire might control multiple Task Forces of 10-15 Capital Ships each - but a fleet of 50 Capital Ships should be almost impossible to build and maintain.

I think the number of Cap Ships controlled by an Empire should be in the same order of magnitude as the number of Colonies that the player needs to manage. This is because Cap Ships should remain distinct, named individuals. They would not usually be identical to each other, and need to be refitted etc to keep up with the SOTA. That's practical with a relatively small number of ships, but not for fleets of hundreds. That's what Escorts are for. Thus, I think this proposal allows

I'm not sure how people will feel if their ships are stuck in the middle of nowhere because their capital gets destroyed. Do you necessary need a captial to salvage them or can they still move but just slowly?

I hadn't decided - but I think off-hand that you should need a Capital Ship to pick up the fleet. Similarly, you would need Capital Ships to move Escorts from one friendly system to another as a Defence Fleet - unless you had, say, some kind of Stargate. Since a standard Task Force would have more than one Cap Ship in it, if you are getting beaten so badly that no Caps would survive, you should retreat to save the rest of your fleet. Having an entire fleet of Escorts stranded by the loss of one Cap Ship outside of the very early game means that you have over-extended yourself and deserve what's coming to you. This gives clever players a good reason to *not* fight to the death in every battle - which is fine by me!

Of course, if your remaining Capital Ships haven't got enough Hyper Field to tow the remaining Escorts - some hard decisions are going to have to be taken... <evil grin>

what if you type it by size? so say you have 100 large hull ship and 20 hull small ship. And say hyperdrive costs 60 hull so only a large ship have warpdrive and towing capability. the rest of 40 hull can be alloted to the player's choice such as troops, colony, specials, and weapons.

I don't want hyperdrives to be something that makes your ship *less* effective in combat compared to a non-hyperdrive ship, which your trade-off proposal would require. Capital Ships should be cool and valuable, and losing a good one with excellent Traditions should make you upset. I think if hyperdrive ships become relegated to a back-line support unit that doesn't participate in combat, we've lost the coolness of the concept. YMMV.

[guiguibaah]

Hmm - this is a very interesting idea.

You have a mix of your stock ships (escorts) that you can mass produce, AND you satisfy the crowd who likes to fine-tune their ships. You can get the feel of having large battles with lots of ships and so forth.


I take it would be a little bit like homeworld, where anything above a frigate is a capship, and anything below is an escort?

Would be interesting if researching certain technologies would grant the winner different weapons to use. For example. A laser on an escort ship can be a close-ranged attack weapon (good for picking off missiles and harassing ships) or a medium-ranged pulse weapon (for stand-off battles). A laser on a capship could be a point-defence weapon, a skeletal-mounted Beam laser, or a 360 degree arc weapon.


Different techs can unlock different things. You could have some techs that grant some abilities to your capital ships, like an ECM device or Area-effect weapons, or other techs unlock different escort ships, such as stealth ambush ships, assault troopers, bomb ships, fighters, etc...

[utilae]

I don't like this idea at all. It's too limiting. I would like it as an option, if that's what you researched in the tech tree, then it's fine. For example if you researched HyperSpace Drive, then you use this method of travel. You would need only a few ships fitted with hyperspace drives to allow a larger number to travel with them. Not having to put engines on your 'escorts' (ships without hyperspace drives) allows more room, however this is an eggs in one basket situation. Loose your hyperspace ships and your stranded.

Along with that option, I would like others all based on what engine/other tech your research.
eg
Hyperspace - Ship with engine opens hyperspace window, taking other ships with it.
Carrier - Carry's ships, usually smaller ones.
FTL - All ships have engines capable of travel between systems.
Tug/Pusher - Additive speed, eg 2 warships and 2 tugs = 1 parsec. 1 Warship and 4 tugs = 4 parsecs.
Stargate - Instant travel between systems, however a stargate must be on the target system as well as the source system. Getting the stargate onto the target system could vary in methods, eg mass driver to launch it their. On a missile. On a ship. A stargate would be hard to invade the enemy with, but it would be doable. When they see a stargate deployment probe crash into the planets surface or go into orbit, then they know you are coming.

[Magus]

Another possible option is to vary the FTL tech that different races start with, this being one of the options. The upcoming 4x game Sword of the Stars uses this system, with 4 races and 4 different types of FTL (Basically: STL+Hypergates, Conventional Warp, Starlanes, and "Stutter Drive... many many many tiny teleports")

[utilae]

Had a good read of the wiki relating to that game. It looks like it should be a good game. Lots of unique ideas, eg the different space travel types of each race, but also different weapons and techs that do a bit more than just causing damage of varying degrees. Eg a weapon that can push other enemy ships into minefields.

[Sapphire Wyvern]

I think it might be worth pointing out the principle gameplay advantages I see for this proposal. These are:

1) A detailed ship design system is used for at least some of the ships in the game. This deeply appeals to me, and I expect many other people.

2) The most important vessels in the game become personalities, unique and identifiable, with names, Traditions, levels of experience, unique equipment loadouts, and so on; they are Jedi, not Clone Troopers. Thus, we retain drama.

3) We can still have fleets of hundreds or even thousands of vessels leading to battles that are Epic in scope, without players needing to track the state of their entire navy in such great detail as exists for the important vessels. It is unnecessary to repeatedly upgrade every ship you have, or tweak your ship designs every time you learn a new tech, but every (naval) tech is still beneficial to your military forces.

4) Players still get design input into every unit they deploy, even though the level of micromanagement of Escorts is massively reduced compared to, say, MoO II. I would think that a new class of Escorts could be designed with as few as 3-5 mouse clicks, and automatic upgrades ensure that the design remains useful for the entire game.

In summary, I think my proposal combines the best of both worlds of Epic Scope and Dramatic Play. Unless we draw some kind of distinction between major and minor vessels, I don't currently see any way to preserve these advantages under other FTL fysics paradigms. Yes, my proposal is not egalitarian with regard to strategic ship movement; that was a deliberate design decision because it was the best way I could think of to justify the difference between Important Vessels and Regular Vessels.

So, if you believe that the game really requires multiple FTL rulesets, please feel free to make some suggestions as to how the advantages I outline above can be retained. If all ships are capable of full FTL mobility, how do we reasonably draw a dividing line between high detail and low detail ships? If we don't draw such a line, the principle of KISS dictates that we go for simple design for all vessels.

[utilae]

So, if you believe that the game really requires multiple FTL rulesets, please feel free to make some suggestions as to how the advantages I outline above can be retained. If all ships are capable of full FTL mobility, how do we reasonably draw a dividing line between high detail and low detail ships? If we don't draw such a line, the principle of KISS dictates that we go for simple design for all vessels.

Ok, so the main thing about your proposal is that you are simplifying every ship except for the Capital Ship. So all escorts are super simple, there is no fun in designing them, cause you basically don't choose their specific weapons and shields, right. Capital ships are what you design in detail. So the main thing is to decide which ships are the important ships/capital ships. In your proposal they are the ships with hyperdrives. Maybe if we have multiple FTL types, where a player may not have ships with hyperdrives, the ships with leaders are the capital ships. Or maybe the player chooses how many capital ships they want. Maybe this is done by creating leaders, like you would design a ship or your race.

1) A detailed ship design system is used for at least some of the ships in the game. This deeply appeals to me, and I expect many other people.

No problem here, more travel types means more detail. Your system doesn't really have detail in spades since you take the detail away form escorts and give it to capital ships.

2) The most important vessels in the game become personalities, unique and identifiable, with names, Traditions, levels of experience, unique equipment loadouts, and so on; they are Jedi, not Clone Troopers. Thus, we retain drama.

Addressed in first paragraph I wrote above.

3) We can still have fleets of hundreds or even thousands of vessels leading to battles that are Epic in scope, without players needing to track the state of their entire navy in such great detail as exists for the important vessels. It is unnecessary to repeatedly upgrade every ship you have, or tweak your ship designs every time you learn a new tech, but every (naval) tech is still beneficial to your military forces.

Yep, auto upgrade escorts. Maybe you just design the kind of roles you want, eg a carrier. But you are not specifying tech level of weapons, just generalities, eg 50% fighters, 25% beam, 25% missile and that's you carrier.

4) Players still get design input into every unit they deploy, even though the level of micromanagement of Escorts is massively reduced compared to, say, MoO II. I would think that a new class of Escorts could be designed with as few as 3-5 mouse clicks, and automatic upgrades ensure that the design remains useful for the entire game.

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

[Sapphire Wyvern]

Ok, so the main thing about your proposal is that you are simplifying every ship except for the Capital Ship. So all escorts are super simple, there is no fun in designing them, cause you basically don't choose their specific weapons and shields, right.

I think you just drew a conclusion that wasn't supported by the premise. Designing a new class of Escort should indeed be a very *fast* process, but a clever player should have enough influence over the resulting stats that they can create a set of Escorts capable of totally reaming their enemies. It's amazing how much damage a 5% edge in both speed and weapon range can do, sometimes. And if that's not fun, I don't know what is.

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.

Thirdly, regular refits of your Capital Ships should provide a player with more than enough opportunities to satisfy their desire to tweak things. Restricting such things to important vessels make it less of a chore and more of an opportunity.

Capital ships are what you design in detail. So the main thing is to decide which ships are the important ships/capital ships. In your proposal they are the ships with hyperdrives. Maybe if we have multiple FTL types, where a player may not have ships with hyperdrives, the ships with leaders are the capital ships. Or maybe the player chooses how many capital ships they want. Maybe this is done by creating leaders, like you would design a ship or your race.

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. Secondly, I'm not certain that player-designable races are a Passed Feature; the game would certainly be easier to balance without them.

Thirdly, players do choose how many Capital Ships they want under my proposal. It's not like you can't build them! They're expensive but not impossible to build - much like starting a new colony or building a lesser Secret Project/Wonder.

I guess that to me the problem is that without a clear technological dividing line within the game setting, the distinction between a small Cap Ship (with XP tracking, detailed design, etc) and a large Escort (none of those things) becomes rather arbitrary. This may or may not be a problem, I suppose, but it doesn't have quite the same "ring of authenticity" to my mind. This may just be protectiveness of my initial idea speaking, though...

Off the cuff, I don't like the idea of ships gaining or losing Capital Ship status as leaders are assigned or removed from them. This is because: it makes it impossible to fairly discriminate between Cap/NonCap ships at design time; it means we have to make decisions about how to handle ships that have earned XP and gained Traditions, but are no longer Capital Ships; and it means that important ships are no longer unique and identifiable in their own right, which I consider a major advantage of my system! In short, it puts the strategic emphasis on leaders, and not ships - and that's the opposite of what I intended.

1) A detailed ship design system is used for at least some of the ships in the game. This deeply appeals to me, and I expect many other people.

No problem here, more travel types means more detail. Your system doesn't really have detail in spades since you take the detail away form escorts and give it to capital ships.

That's like saying Warhammer 40K doesn't have detail because high-ranking characters are allowed more customization choices for their gear and abilities than regular troops. Totally specious, I'm afraid.

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.

I suppose we could instead go for a continuum of design complexity, with increasing large ships having an increasingly rich set of design options. Off the cuff, I would say that Traditions and XP wouldn't fit as well into that system, as there would be no clear cut-off point dividing "Personality" ships and "Regular Grunt" ships.

I don't think it's desirable, necessary, or likely that we'll implement a full-detail design system for every ship in the game in the fashion of MoO II, and I'd rather have a gloriously detailed ship design model for some ships than none.

So this gives us three levels of customization:
Capital Ship design
Escort Ship Class design
Task Force design (by combining particular Capital Ships & the mix of supporting Escorts)

All three will be necessary for victory... although the game would probably come with a fair few pre-designed classes of Escort to ease the load on newbies.

2) The most important vessels in the game become personalities, unique and identifiable, with names, Traditions, levels of experience, unique equipment loadouts, and so on; they are Jedi, not Clone Troopers. Thus, we retain drama.

Addressed in first paragraph I wrote above.
[/quote]

I have a slight preference for ships to be the named significant entities rather than the Commanding Officer of that ship, as described above. I'd rather follow the story of HMS Indefatigable rather than Commodore Hopkins. It's just a minor tweak to the setting emphasis to suit my personal tastes and to emphasize the epic scale of the game; YMMV.

3) We can still have fleets of hundreds or even thousands of vessels leading to battles that are Epic in scope, without players needing to track the state of their entire navy in such great detail as exists for the important vessels. It is unnecessary to repeatedly upgrade every ship you have, or tweak your ship designs every time you learn a new tech, but every (naval) tech is still beneficial to your military forces.

Yep, auto upgrade escorts. Maybe you just design the kind of roles you want, eg a carrier. But you are not specifying tech level of weapons, just generalities, eg 50% fighters, 25% beam, 25% missile and that's you carrier.

Yeah. In most games, you use the best tech you have available anyway; managing obsolete units simply becomes a tedious bore.

A priority-type system for Escort design would effectively reduce Escort design to specifying a desired role for that class of Escort. So yeah, I think we have an understanding on that point.

4) Players still get design input into every unit they deploy, even though the level of micromanagement of Escorts is massively reduced compared to, say, MoO II. I would think that a new class of Escorts could be designed with as few as 3-5 mouse clicks, and automatic upgrades ensure that the design remains useful for the entire game.

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".

[guiguibaah]

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?


Although it would be pretty cool to have different classes of Capships. You could have an Enterprise - E type of capship that's fast, nimble, and multipurpose...

... Or you could have a Collosus type capship (from Freespace 2) - which is basically a huge, giant, slow ship with a huge beam cannon.

[skdiw]

2) The most important vessels in the game become personalities, unique and identifiable, with names, Traditions, levels of experience, unique equipment loadouts, and so on; they are Jedi, not Clone Troopers. Thus, we retain drama.

We have wonder ships that are even more unique than capitals, not that I'm opposing capitals, but under your definitions, a wonder ship could fall under escort category.

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?


Although it would be pretty cool to have different classes of Capships. You could have an Enterprise - E type of capship that's fast, nimble, and multipurpose...

... Or you could have a Collosus type capship (from Freespace 2) - which is basically a huge, giant, slow ship with a huge beam cannon.

By sapphire's definition, cap ships have hyperdrives and escorts do not.

I like to reason more along guigui's lines however. I found the hyper tug idea interesting, but I think the cap and escort distinquition should be drawn more by hull size, rather than a hard line using two different templates.



I'm still a bit hang up on a few problems with cap ships. If every empire starts with same number of cap ships, then the rate of colonizations is the same and that troubles me. Building a colony ship is already taxing, not to mention building a capital too.

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.

Another thing is the amount of micro you have to do each time you want to make a move. Instead of just moving, you have to first assign the escort to a cap ship.