Idea for Fleet Control tech

You are suggesting a limit to which ships can combine to form a fleet right? To prevent killer fleet blobs. Hmm. It's an interesting idea.

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).

i agree with lucky jack on the killer fleets

granted there should be some sort of limit on the total amount of units that can be built so that the end game dosnt become one massive unit spral (my only disappointment with civ 3 was that the endgame in a conquest victory usually meant 10 minute turns moving 100s of units across the board) but that should not limit on how many ships you can put into one fleet

Fleet Control (or swhatever you wish to call it)

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

MOO2 idea .... I find it logical but somehow too limiting ...
I think your idustry level - ability to produce a lot of ship is limiting enough no need to limit it by "logistics" tech .

After all again - if one player have industry able to produce in X time let's say 1000 production "units" then he can build either 100 ships with cost of 10 "units" or 10 ships cost 100 "units" and this will make things "equal".

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.

I think that the existing "Logistics" rating was supposed to determine how big your fleets can grow. I believe that's what Stardock said in their original plan for GC2.

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

The thing that bothers me a bit is that restricting fleet sizes restricts the concept of swarm warfare, where you build cheap puny ships in vast numbers to mug the opposition's big expensive ship. It will need some balancing I think.

Fortunately, if an empire has focused on high power ships they wont have been able to research larger fleet techs to the same level as an empire that has gone for quantity over quality. In theory anyway. I do agree that a game could hit critical mass once an empire is able to assemble a large fleet of powerful ships, say you were concentrating of the Drengin and the Drath had time to build up unhindered, that fleet may just become unmatchable.

I dunno, maybe beta 3 will help me decide on this one.

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?

I belive some one mectioned tyeing fleet cap to hull size. So with a fleet cap of 9 for example, that gives you 9 lvl. 1s,
1 lvl. 9, 3 lvl. 3s, or any other combination, and they'd all be pretty equal.

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.

Thanks for the explanation, FrogBoy! Nice to have the logistics system explained so clearly. One aside, however. If logistically speaking a 25-tiny-ship fleet is identical to a 10-large-ship fleet (both 50 logistics points) will the large ships simply whomp the tiny ones in each battle, or will the swarm stand a chance? I ask this in full knowledge that the outcome of said pitched battle would be heavily influenced by what techs have been researched, but for the sake of argument let's assume that both civs have pursued identical tech trees and are at the same point in their evolution. (Therefore both fleets are outfited with the same level of weapons, shields, armor, what have you.) Will there be any influencing factors in said conflict, such as ship speed or size determining how easy they are to successfully hit? Will there be any reason at all, once larger ship chassis become available, to still produce smaller ships? I sincerely hope so. After all, even a rhinocerous won't go near a driver ant swarm! (Once more, I hope this question came across clearly! )

Thanks in advance,
KIY

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)

Thanks for the explanation, FrogBoy! Nice to have the logistics system explained so clearly. One aside, however. If logistically speaking a 25-tiny-ship fleet is identical to a 10-large-ship fleet (both 50 logistics points) will the large ships simply whomp the tiny ones in each battle, or will the swarm stand a chance? I ask this in full knowledge that the outcome of said pitched battle would be heavily influenced by what techs have been researched, but for the sake of argument let's assume that both civs have pursued identical tech trees and are at the same point in their evolution. (Therefore both fleets are outfited with the same level of weapons, shields, armor, what have you.) Will there be any influencing factors in said conflict, such as ship speed or size determining how easy they are to successfully hit? Will there be any reason at all, once larger ship chassis become available, to still produce smaller ships? I sincerely hope so. After all, even a rhinocerous won't go near a driver ant swarm! (Once more, I hope this question came across clearly! )

also i will bet the swarm will stand a chance if the pilots are quick Larger ships naturally have a hard time movin around quickly smaller ships are MUCH better at it And can more easily survive Laser blasts bein shot at it... But whatever this sort of works isn't intended so in GC1 A Large Avatar fleet would totally own a Large battleship fleet Hell, Just 3 of them could take out 20 BSs

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.

Going off all the previous stuff, it is intended that a full fleet of tiny hulls is equal to a full fleet of huge hulls. The winner will be decided by your weapons and defenses vs theirs, not by who brought the biggest ships.

It's going to hinge on balancing for sure.

Damn! *Calls back Imperial Fleet*

We're not sure how it will work out in terms of a 25 tiny ships vs. 10 capital ships yet.  It's going to be interesting because the 10 capital ships will obviously be more than 2.5 times more powerful than each tiny ship.  But the dyanmics seems to slightly favor those who have more ships.

That is, in play testing, we've seen 4 fighters take out 2 medium sized ships.

 

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

I love small ships!

I concur. It adds to the game to allow the "Swarm of Ants" stratagy, as well as the "Twelve Titans" idea.

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

Heheh.... looks like my horde tactics might still hold water...
The pirhana shoal still eats the bull shark in the great Amazon River basin of space.

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

So the more you drink the more articulate you become? Funky.