Why should fleets be limited? The AI has the same options the human player does. GC1 didn't have a limit that I could find (I had a fleet of well over 100 ships at one time).

Fleet Control (or swhatever you wish to call it)

I thought Stardock was planning on calling it "logistics".

GC2 already has a logisics system (its planned at least, I think its in place) which limits the numbrr of ships you can have in your empire. Astax's suggestion is to restrict how many ships can be formed into a fleet.

Well from what Frog said yesterday, there will be a max number of ships you can put in a fleet. He said a "dozen or so." This is mainly because you want that little window that pops up (or rather will pop up) when fleets engage showing the minibattle to be fairly accurate. So since they still havent decided on the number of ships in the fleet that probably means its not coded yet so I picked a good time to put my idea forward.

basically I fear that a fleet of (using some numbers here for an example) 9 big ships will pupvarize a fleet on 9 smaller ships largely unscathed and will be able to continue a rampage through more fleets of ships. Now someone above mentioned somethign about industry, whereby you having behemoth ships has less to do with industry than with technology. I can have more industry than you and field an impressive 9 fleets, but your tech is higher and one fleet of your big ships just mowes my 9 fleets like a lawn. So that would make the strategy of higher tech seem more powerful than strategy of getting more industry.

Now let's say you have to have smaller fleets because your ships are bigger. I mean this won't be pernament, I forsee a system where your fleet size can grow with other factors (I did say tech up there but I don't know if that will be balanced so well, sicne if you obviously have the tech for large ships you will get the tech to have large fleets sooner than your opponents assuming the tech tree is fairly linear, I mean it might work if you put it in a different area of research). But for now lets say your ships are one hull size bigger and you can only have 4 of your ships vs the 6 of your opponent per fleet. So in a strategic war you have to pretty much match him fleet for fleet. Ofcourse your fleet will more often than not come out on top beacuse your ships have more guns and better tech, but there will be times when some ofleets will loose ships, some of your ships are beaten up and your fleet has to replace them or sit out a few turns. I jsut want to stay away from the kind of combat I hated in many games, galciv had the problem with your starting ship becoming so powerful you didnt even need a fleet :/ but that was nerfed.

Ok I should stop here, lot of you guys seem to like the idea, it gives intrigue tot he game, its a bit different. I thought it a good idea myself, too good not to mention. Let me not go on beacuse I don't even know where Im going myself

I read this under databank:

Fleets. In (I) players could stack together ships and move them. Stacks of ships will still be there as a convenience but (II) will also have real fleets that will taken advantage of in combat. Fleet size will be limited by the player's logistic ability. So one of the many technological paths will be focusing on logistics. Big fleets of small ships or a few capital ships in a massive fire fight? Players will have that ability to choose those kinds of strategies.

It does seem like exactly what I was looking for hmmm Although implemantation is yet to be seened since there are no fleets in beta 3, maybe 4?

The number of ships you can put into a fleet is based on your logistics ability. 

Different sized ships use up X amounts of logistics:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Large: 5
Huge :6

Different civilizations start out with differing amounts of logistcs points (typically between 5 and 7).  There are technologies (basic logistics, advanced, logistics, expert logistics, ultimate logistics) that add points to this.  Eventually you could have  up to around (if memory serves) around 50 logistical points.

So in theory, you could have 25 tiny ships in your fleet or 8 huge ships.

The game will be balanced (or will try to balance) such that you simply won't have that many ships floating around out there.  I.e. if you have 200 ships you awnt to move together, we screwed up somewhere.

The number of ships you can put into a fleet is based on your logistics ability. Different sized ships use up X amounts of logistics: Tiny: 2 Small: 3 Medium: 4 Large: 5 Huge :6 Different civilizations start out with differing amounts of logistcs points (typically between 5 and 7). There are technologies (basic logistics, advanced, logistics, expert logistics, ultimate logistics) that add points to this. Eventually you could have up to around (if memory serves) around 50 logistical points. So in theory, you could have 25 tiny ships in your fleet or 8 huge ships. The game will be balanced (or will try to balance) such that you simply won't have that many ships floating around out there. I.e. if you have 200 ships you awnt to move together, we screwed up somewhere.

*Hugs Brad* i agree i belive it would be funnier to see a few huge ships (Think ST the enterprise a bit larger) than a million enterprises its disgusting in a way for me at least contrary to my warstic status i think limits make a game more fun (more challange makes it funnier IT DOES)

True, Lowa11, the Avatars were far superior to the Battleships in the first game, but keep in mind that ship *size* had little function in the first game. There were simply *classes* of ships, and pretty much everything from Battleship on fell under the "Battleship Cutscene" classification, as I called it, which simply marked the evolution of more capable combat craft. It was implied that every ship design following the Battleship was simply a bigger, meaner class of capital ship (with the notable exception of the Phoenix, which I believe was supposed to be an advanced fighter-class ship.) Being able to *design* ships in the sequel, however, has broadened the scope of ship class considerably, and consequently I hope that the scope of combat (i.e. size, maneuverability, # of weapons, rate of fire & weapon fire arcs etc.) has broadened to match. For instance, in GC, only a fool (or a scaled-down AI) would throw a mob of Corvettes at a Terror Star or Overlord -- in the sequel, it seems that "corvette" is a mutable name, and implies a *size* of ship rather than total armament, armor etc., and a swarm of carefully designed "corvettes" might be able to do some serious damage (if not lethal damage) to capital ships and/or star bases.

Damn! *Calls back Imperial Fleet*

Just so long as the game doesn't favour the player who has the largest hulls I'm happy.

I love small ships!

What about the "4 Gods of Mt. Olympus"? (IE:Los o Avatar like ships!)

Sorry, if you can't tell, I've had a few and am waxing faux poetic!!