Capped Fleet Size

Capped Fleet Size

Phenoca 1250627235|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Let's draw upon an idea from another game.
The idea is: Put a hard cap on a player's attack fleet size, and defense fleet size. This means that when you fleet is destroyed, it is only a small percentage of your actual ships available, and so the fleet can easily be replaced!
Hmmm.

Perhaps the attack/defense fleet size could be limited by your population.
Or by the planets you control (too many ships in orbit means that planetary fuel runs-out)?
And the most complicated possibility would be planets supplying fuel to other planets, thus increasing the maximum attack/defense fleet size.

But basically, the premise is that I feel:
1) In an RTS, players want to relax. They do not want to deal with fleet-loss.
2) If fleets are easily replaced, then the stress is lowered.
3) If the fleet size is capped, this adds more strategy to fleet-formation and ship-design.
4) Capping the maximum number of fleets being sent out on attack will also limit the time that the player spends in-game, so that they do not get bored of the game, yet instead have to login consistently in order to be there when their attack fleets return home.
5) Attack fleets can raid… So changing your formation gives you an increased chance to 'evade' defenders and pick-up loot.
6) Since the game is based-upon resource production with respect to time (instead of large stockpiles), the 'raiding' system will have to be carefully designed.
7) If your attack fleet or defense fleet is destroyed - no problemo! It is automatically replaced (when the enemy leaves), until you run out of ships. E.g. A raiding fleet can attempt to evade defenders, or else form a "blockade" that can only be broken when the player comes online or the attack fleet departs (and the defense fleet is automatically replenished).

I apologize for not being able to find the name of the game. Fleet-size caps are uncommon in browser-based games, yet caps on number of raid-fleets is common.

Re: Capped Fleet Size

Craig Macomber 1250630973|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

It is an interesting idea, however I think we already have a mechanism designed that can be made to serve this purpose rather than introducing a hard cap: Support/maintenance costs. They soft cap your fleet size based on economic output (We obviously can't let people just keep making ships or the server would die). We can make producing ships rather quick and cheap, and thus replacing lost ships is easy. Potentially producing ships could take no more than their maintenance costs, and could take how ever long we want (effected by techs and extra available resources). This simplifies some aspects of the economy, and would allow a player to do something as simple as set some ratios of ship types, and keep his fleets stocked automatically with as many ships as he can support. Some resources could be diverted between research, economic/colonial growth and ships with basic sliders or a pie chart type of thing.

Hum, ship type ratios could be derived from the formations, so it could actually come down as little as design formations for your fleets, and ship designs to fill them. Then specify ratios for how big your fleets should be relative to each other, and then specify ratios for how much spending should go to different areas. That really comes out very simple conceptually. You could even just have one big spending pool, and allocate percentages to specific fleets and colonies and such. Very interesting.

Completely centralized budget based system. Such a setup would allow aspects of the game to be completely separate. So the aspects of the game would then roughly be:

• Budgeting
• Space combat
  • Design
    • Ships
    • Formations/Fleets (Including AI)
  • Commanding fleets
• Diplomacy
• Ground/Colonies
  • Economy
  • Ground combat

Well, thats an idea for another thread/topic.

Anyway, do you feel that a soft cap based on maintenance costs and the available budget for supporting ships would work well and solve the issue you raised? I don't see a need to cap the number of fleets. Having many cheap fleets is probably a bad strategy, as is having one massive one. Strategically, I can't invasion a reason to need more than 3 or 4 fleets ever for a given assault (1 would normally be enough given the customizability of sub formations).

As far as auto replenishing, the main issue is where the ships go when finished. I see a few options: Stream over to the destination fleets as produced, or queue into new fleets/sub formations what will ether merge with the damaged fleet or form separate fleets that can be used as replacements. Specifically what is done in any given case can be player configured. (Oh, another element of strategy!)

Sound good?

I'm really glad to have someone around actually thinking about making gameplay fun. We need that.