A better way for fleet.

Or the creation of “support” specific type vessels. Ones bolstering heavy defenses yet less squadron capabilities. To the creation of variance of blueprints. One overall blueprint that has been tweaked three different ways. Creating in Era 1. Full fleets of cruisers or heavy/cruiser fleets. That are not so lopsided. Since 12 vs 12 is better as 1 vs 1 when one side has the overall advantage across the board. Due to focusing fire on one target. Yet if you add the most recent BG idea besides mine of one on one combat, or removing fire from the commands. It does not change things much. Since the advantage I speak of is still present.

Not saying the advantage cannot be overcome. Ship size plays more a factor then most realize. Short of the reworking of all of space combat. Which I’m against. The actual fighting system, its good. Very good. Lotj has the best most in depth space combat I have ever seen. Its chopped full of things to be used in fleet warfare. The system of the actual fleet makeup. Needs to be reworked. Giving one side a superior ship, then having them multiple it by 12 is absurd. Creating so that at the end fleets are more balanced is what I’m trying to point out. As for the coding. We currently have ship size correct? Walldo could code pretty easily that heavies have to be in midguard or central. Then add each layer per ship. Sort of like squadrons. Yet on a ship size principle and not a overall number that can be designed per ship. Such as giving midguard on cruisers limit of 50 ship size. Meaning it can have one cruiser. Or at 100. So it can have two cruisers. Essentially you could still have a battleship in midguard at 100. Yet you would lose a overall one against your fleet size. Since you took two slots instead of 1. With outer having a limit of 100 as well making the flagship possible of five total fleet yet paying for it by adding another heavy into midguard. Making it so fleets did not have a overall number of how many you can have. Except via clan limits or planet limits. Also small clans should have limit of 4. Not because current fleet is four. Is that 4 is the most basic fleet that should be given as cruisers. Such as 1 Cruiser as flagship. Then place a overall ship value stat. Such as 150. It can either have 2 in mid 1 outer, or 1 mid 2 outer. With 100 shipsize for top value of that layer of defense. Thats how I think he would take a course of it. Since it seems like the number system is already their, also then could be gauged on strength of vessels or type of vessel. Not making it such a broad system. Since the ships have individual strengths and weakness. Making the fleet standards identical offers one side a severe advantage.

I thought I typed a response to this. I wish I did now, it’d save me the huge wall of texts I have forced myself to endure.

First of all, limiting a ship to center, and maybe even midguard is not a good idea. There are accuracy penalties, SEVERE penalties to center, mild ones to midguard. If you are in center and shooting, you should notice you are missing a lot(Unless this code disappeared suddenly again. Last I knew, it was in and functioning.) and should stop wasting fuel by shooting from center. So if you limit a ship to center, you’re more or less forcing the ship to be a floating piece of invulnerable ship junk until the rest of the fleet is gone.

Second of all, the only real things deterring rock paper scissors are the following:

1) Turrets being OP in the sense that they have 100% accuracy, AND they do MORE damage than a standard laser does from the cockpit.

2) The fact that the difference between heavies vs cruisers aren’t noticeable enough. The only advantage cruisers should have is speed/maneuver/hyperspeed. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Navy battles, it’s generally decided by raw power. If you avoid straight up battles and you have cruisers, you might win harassment battles, but you definitely will not win a straight up fight.

3) Frigates can’t be battlegrouped from what I’ve heard. This cuts down on some of the BG strategy here, since Frigates are what I consider the ultimate Cap Ship killer. The only reason it fails at this is because autopilot has 100% accuracy.

4) See point 3, autopilot has 100% accuracy. If this goes away, I can see the cruiser vs battleship thing working out a bit more, with battleship autopilot being far less accurate than cruiser’s autopilot, or just in general, no need to limit it to autopilot firing.

I would not mind the idea of limiting fleets to 1 Battleship, 3 cruisers, 2 frigates or however you want to divvy the spread, that idea has been brought up several times, and the only reason it probably hasn’t been done is probably because a coder just hasn’t done it, or it didn’t get farther than “That’s a good idea”.

However, until that day arrives, if your opponent gets a nice big ship for their development, maybe your clan should try working on getting those big ships. The only way I can perceive fixing this is to limit the boost that ships get in comparison to their former ship. For example, if the VSD = Nebulon, and the Empire gets an upgrade. Whatever ship they get is better, but not the huge jump that VSD to ISD typically is.

Before I forget, removing space combat from BG probably isn’t the wisest choice. While on one hand, you’re probably giving pilots a chance to survive(But not really against any pilot who pays attention and is up to snuff), you’re really just prolonging space battles as one ship has to mow down 3 fodder ships, and then have fatality on the opposing flagship.

On the point of “getting those big ships” It does not work when the Immortal staff approve it then give you garbage.

I would still love to see stats moved around a bit. All ships need a hull/shield boost. Starfighters should have the hull/shields of a freighter, freighters should have the hull/shields of a gunship, gunships -> corvettes, corvettes… give them a little nudge higher.

I’m still of the mind the fact you feel that way is a result of turrets having a ridiculous damage multiplier added to them, in addition to accuracy multiplier.

So here is a thought. Make it so turrets can only be fired when the piloting station is manned. No throwing on autopilot and running to a turret.

I had another thought last night. A big part of why bigger ships wreck smaller ships is how firing is handled. Someone cues up ten shots and they all hit at once, making it impossible for the pilot to recharge his shields and survive. Is there any way to make ship fire staggered over the duration of a tick? Ie:
Firefirefirefire…
Isd fires turbolaser x4
Turbolaser hits…
Turbolaser misses…
Turbolaser hits…
Turbolaser hits…

I understand why things were done the way they were done; it’s horrendously spammy. But a config option could hide that spam or you could have it hidden for the gunner by default with a summary of what hit or missed at the end of the tick, while the person on the receiving end gets spammed by hits and has a chance to recharge.

And two cool ideas that were discussed:
1 -roll breaking targeting
2-a smuggling feat to be able to roll medium size ships

There is no really way to codely determine that the pilot station is manned for cappies that would fix the problem for 2+ people on a cappie.

In regards to having 10 cued up shots, that’s why (typically) turrets have a short battery life, and aren’t subject to regeneration via the repairship laser hax. Like I said, if turrets/autopilots lost their significant 110% accuracy and damage boost, along with roll breaking targeting lock, it’d be pretty solid.

You could probably very well just code autopilots to have the same accuracy that a player with Space Combat 2 does to fix that part. How easy that would be to do, I would not know.

I like the idea of roll breaking the lock. What level it is escapes me, but I do not recall it being low enough that it’d be a total ground-breaking thing. Maybe a more amendable solution would be to give it a chance based on pilot levels to break lock, and not something that is an instant-break.

i’m not too familiar with bg’s or compositions. so if this isn’t pertinent, just ignore it.

i would like to see certain ship types restricted to certain positions within a battlegroup. i.e. battleships in central, cruisers in central/midguard, and frigates/corvettes in outer. i’m not sure how this would affect the dynamic, but to me, it makes sense in a realistic naval sense. in the rl navy, carriers, being the most important ship, are surrounded by cruisers, destroyers, and battleships to offer protection.

That’s not the best idea due to the fact that center/midguard positions have accuracy penalties.

To everything except turrets apparently….

I’m just gonna pull myself out of this one. This isn’t an arena I know anything about.

Let them take the accuracy penalty. Both sides would be forced to have it. Creating reason to develop better cruisers. Also Kirash I agreed with you in some sense. Corvettes do not refuel in orbit. Frigates would be cool. Yet its still to remove the changing entire fleets from 1 type of ship to another.

the thing is that develop has always been “build bigger ships” with regards to major clans because fleets win wars. people will fight that thought, but it is true. fleets need variety and people need more strategizing. while some would say that there is already strategy, from where i’m sitting, it just seems like a “must have bigger guns all the time” complex