For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit?

2. Agreed, researching sensor techs should slightly increase the sensor radius around planets IMO.

I second that motion. All ships in orbit really ought to be fleeted automatically, with a few limitations in the early game. You could even limit Fleeting in Orbit to your Logisitics score, with Orbital Fleet Manager allowing you to max to the 10 ships without being limited by your Logistics.

It made sense to me. I prefer to think of it as defending ships being on opposite sides of the planet during the firefight. There is an improvement you can build which allows defenders to act as a fleet.

As the original poster said, a change would be beneficial if only to stop the cheesy tactic of picking off the AI ships one at a time. It would also give the defending player a bit more of a chance, at the moment the odds are stacked way too much in the attackers favour. The fleet manager just seems a needless level of fiddly complexity.

Sure, but that's just a rationale. If entire moons can orbit a planet in basically just one isolated location, surely a couple ships, or even a couple hundred ships, could do the same?

Fleeting ships around orbit makes better sense from a gameplay standpoint - it's more intuitive, you don't leave you fleets out of orbit for defending planets, and it rewards the AI for doing what's natural.

It would also save a lot of time wiping them out in one battle instead of attacking ship at a time as you currently have to   

I second the motion.

All ships in orbit should be automatically fleeted, and the orbital defense manager changed somehow to give some attack/defense/hitpoints advantage to the defending fleet.

That this would make it too easy to defend planets really is no valid concern, since as attacker you could still simply strike the less well defended planets (kind of logical, but you don't need to at the moment), and to defend all planets with enough ships to defend successfully against a strong attacker fleet would bancrupt even the strongest economy with the maintenance costs.

Does everyone only look at it from a single perspective?

The advantage could be to the non-fleeted ships in orbit if the attacking ship/fleet is superior to the defending planet's 'fleet'. Movement points are expended with each volley fired. So, in the end the defending planet could still have a ship left to defend against that transport.

Live with it. And possibly, use it to your own advantage.

addendum:

at the moment, by far the best use you get in a war out of a given number of ships is to fleet them up as much as possible and to defend your planets in space.

The AI doesn't seem to understand that, and loses countless ships in meaningless skirmishes defending their planets one at a time. Also, because of the ships they use around their planets, they don't have enough ships left to mount a successful offensive unless their advantage is already overwhelming.

With the suggested change, it would at least be useful to directly defend border planets, instead of none at all.

I second this motion too ; everything that improves the way the AI defends its planets is good, and to do it with a local change seems better than to wait a global AI warmongering skill tweak

Hi!

It should also give additional ~25% bonus to attack and defense to ships in orbit.

And Omega Defense System should give significant bonus to HPs for every ship on every planet of the player that has built it.

Made them so, and I'll consider using them for the first time in a game.

BR, Iztok

Wonder if it's moddible to add OFM effects to colony capitals?

That's what I was thinking. I would think you could, they're just two different buildings. Just need to take out the line that says ships are a fleet and put it into the initial colony piece.

The logistics are limited because of the fact that you have to re-supply the ships. This may be difficult in space, but If the ships are orbiting it shouldn't be much of a problem. So why don't you give the defenders unlimited logistics?

I agree as well, this has been sorely needed in this game. Just doesn't make sense that planets let you pick off their ships one at a time and does make the AI sitting ducks.

Surely if a planet was ever attacked it, the defenders would have the sense to mobilize it's ships to meet the attackers at once, rather then sending off one at a time.

I agree, it simply doesn't make sense not to have fleets in orbit of planets

Because if normally logistics shouldn't be a problem, during a battle it will be for sure. Resupply takes time and resources.

Seconded (thirded? fifthed?).

I like to turn to the Honor Harrington military sci-fi series on this. The series has a very long span, and all space battles are based on Newtonian motion; a ship speeding in direction A will continue to drift after powering off it's drives, etc., so it can be considered "realistic" as far as battles based on technology not even imagined yet can be called realistic.
The book has quite a few planetary assaults, and the defending ships are always orbiting, and always manuever as fleets once an enemy attack is detected. (See Manticoran Home Fleet.) Being in the planet's shadow is actually beneficial for the defending party, as they can ambush or outmanuever the attackers (see Honor Harrington's raids in At All Costs where the Havenites do exactly this), not a factor working against them. (The attackers cannot risk firing freely, to avoid hitting the planet's surface, restrained by the Eridani Edicts - our ships cannot risk firing freely, either, because GalCiv2 has no orbital bombardment implemented )


Anyway, as much as I'd like to see this made feel more realistic (along with creating a believable economy model, etc), the game is pretty neat as it is.

In a game like Civ IV it's very difficult to take cities due to tons of defensive bonuses. It's so difficult that the AIs hardly ever take out cities, and it's even more rare that one AI completely wipes another AI out.

One thing I like about GalCiv2 (most of the time, hyper aggressive AIs are annoying at times) is that they fight - fight amongst themselves - take each others planets, and wipe each other out.

I think if you made defending planets as fleets automatic that it wouldn't affect the player's ability to conquest much at all, but it'd make it way harder for the AIs to successfully fight amongst themselves.

Even the OP says he "defends" by having roaming fleets. A lot of players do that. You're usually better off attacking incoming ships rather than sitting back and defending.

The AI is very poor at this - it usually just sits with lots of ships in order. Were the AI to must up some "threat response fleets" with all those ships, they'd probably be much tougher to attack. An AI might have 3 planets in close proximity with 5 ships on each - and you can take them all out with a fleet of 5, because it never takes leverages its numerical advantage.

Another point the OP makes is that there's no warning when you're getting "invaded." I wouldn't disagree, but there are easy ways to deal with this.

Zoom out to icon level and make a sweep of your territory, make super cheap tiny hulled ships (1/2bc maint, use 1 per planet) to deter unguarded transport surprise attacks, etc. I often use the tinies becuase I'm lazy/inconsistent about checking, and because it's so sad to see the AIs send their unguarded transports out constantly.

I do with there was a concept of respecting one's space in GalCiv - like if influence worked like cultural boundries in Civ IV. I like the extra diplo options that arise and I like not having annoying AIs build stupid starbases in my space and similar crap that should be equivalent to a declaration of war (and yes, you can declare war to deal with the idiots, but if they had a shred of respect you wouldn't have to ruin otherwise great relations just to clean up after stupidity).

In my current game I saw two events I loved. For one, you had to declare war before attacking, and wait a turn after declaring. For two, there was a rule that made all ships clear out similar to in Civ IV when war did break out. So it's definitely possible for "your space" to be respected in GalCiv2.

my support for this motion is hereby added.

I understand that it is unrealistic to expect your ships to all be in the same place at the right time when a surprise attack is launched, but even with warp drive it is insanely hard to pull off an effective planetary assault due to gravity wells and such. the defenders would have enough warning to fleet up, and thee invading fleet would not risk going around them for fear of being picked off from above (the absolute space superiority mechanic for invasion that is already in place)

I understand planetary defenders being at a large disadvantage, it is march harder to move around a planet ON the planet than in the planets atmosphere.

I liked the suggestion to fleet up automatically in groups that best fit your current logistics ability, and then make the Orbital Fleet Manager and Omega Defense add certain bonuses to the defending ships

my 2 creds on the matter

I doubt it would make a dent on AI on AI wars, though. If the player can figure out to attack lightly defended planets instead of major fleet garrisons, then I think the GalCiv AI is also smart enough to do the same to other AIs and to the player.

As noted, there are also offensive advantages to having all the defenders bunched up.

but the fact that you would have to attack more lightly defenders planets would make a difference, if your empire starts getting picked up, you can up your production on key worlds, bunch of your ships, and then focus on directing one or two fleets to defend your space, letting your fleeted ships defend planets, instead of directed a couple of fleets around and checking your borders every turn to see if you have missed an enemy fleet that you need to manually take care of (really, really tiresome)

I agree, I never understood why orbiting ships didn't fleet up by default, either.

I also think it would be cool if planets had +100% planetary defense tiles. You build a Planetary Defense structure there, you get an extra +25% soldiering bonus. You usually wouldn't take advantage of it, but...sometimes you would....

seconded

With the changes to how attack and logistics effect an outcome, defending with a single ship is now never a good idea. If you ARE going to be on the defensive (not a good idea, but a position the AI will certainly be in at some point) - you really want the bonuses logistics gives you. Making this change would make it feasible to defend low PQ worlds as well, that wouldn't otherwise have the space for an ofm - from the AIs point of view.

The OFM could still be changed to add other bonuses to defensive ships. Right now, this is kind of a player exploit vs the AI (I always have an OFM over a threatened world, they are cheap to rush buy and then build over - the AI isn't so clever about it)

I agree, this would be a good change.