The super fleet dilema

[Joshinator]

I've been thinking about how in any space based rts or tb stratagy game, there is always the problem of the creation of super fleets. While it's always fun to build massive fleets, there is no stratagy in this other then to have the most ships and shipyards, then purge every planet of life. There's only 1 big battle, then who ever wins wins. I wanna fight till the last system standing personally. My thoughts were that each "choke point" on hyperspace trade routes, would requrire a "garrison" of ships to protect those lanes. If the garison wasnt ment, u would suffer piracy, and income would suffer. As the player expanded, more choke points my come under control. Since this would indicate wealth, the garrison requirements might go up slightly, say to a maximum of requireing sever fighter squads, and perhaps a couple capital ships. I think it would encouage fleets to be spaced out. u wouldn't want to attack one strategic planet with a large fleet, and have the other player choose to abadnon a choke point with his fleet, and run attacks on vonderable systems. Plus there would always be ships around in defence, a back screen, ready to come to the rescue. Conquring would be difficult because the player may have more ships. u couldn't just go on the rampage after 1 battle and win the game. What do u guys think?

[DarthCycle]

Actually, you ask an interesting question.

 

Indirectly, the problem of the super fleet is dependent on the intelligence system. By intelligence I mean information gathering also known in its simpler form as fog of war.

 

When you have little or no information about the whereabout of your enemy, most players tend to group their unit in super fleet. This increase the likelyhood of surviving whatever the fleet encouter. In almost every game, the only way to gather intelligence is to move unit around, so grouping them in massive numbers does make sense.

 

Unfortunately, that's the biggest flaw in most strategy game, in my opinion. Almost all major battles in human history was won due to good intelligence: where is the enemy, when will he be there, what are his forces composition. And there are many ways to gather intelligence. In most games, unfortunately, there's only one...

 

That's the reason why I hate the way the simple fog of war system is most strategy game: you can just send a scout unit, it gets killed but somehow and by some magic, the intelligence that unit gathered for you all makes it back to you (of course duh, you were controlling the scout and saw the forces that destroyed it). In real-life, if you're a general and you send a scout that never returns, you know exactly nothing.

 

If there is some form of intelligence gathering system in SWEAW, that system can greatly reduce the effectiveness of massive fleet. Why? Example: your massive fleet is on the western side of the galaxy. Me, I'm going to split my forces into 3 attack groups and attack your planets on the eastern border. I'm going to cripple your shipyards, bombard your industry back to the stone age and probably capture a few of the really good planets. After doing that, the war is most probably won economically speaking, now it's just a game of attrition: I will be able to rebuild my units faster than you, so it's just a game of mopping up

 

And let's not forget about supply. That's another reason why massive fleet are viable: most game don't support any supply system. Can you imagine what would happend to your massive fleet if somehow, one my smaller attack fleet made it to your supply line unchallenged and cut you from it. Your massive fleet would be out of commission in no time: no repairs, no casualty replacement, no rearmement, nada. In game term, your big fleet is kaputt Check your WW2 history and learn what happened to the germans in russia.

 

If you guys want to read about great space ship battles where intelligence does count in order to win a battle, read David Weber books, awesome stuff. Especially the series with Steve White.

[Joshinator]

A very good point, one i hope petroglyph takes into consideration. Perhaps setting up holo-net networks on all the planets a player visits with special espionage teams, feeding real time info on info in that system. I believe ppl have touched on bothan and probe droid spy net works, it should be expanded. Supply lines would also be a great idea. u woulnd't foolishly just go muckin around the galaxy with 1 big fleet, when someone with a small attack squad goes around killing supplys and ships fall appart. I like that idea a lot Perhaps even capturing them, bringing supplys back for income or something.

[DragonValoo]

Most games as well have the ability to limit super fleets with a population limit. Most times, they're just imposing, and I'd imaging that they would be very imposing in EAW due to the fact that you have to have a space fleet and a ground army. Superfleets also give a disadvantage in a way if you have the whole thing grouped together. In that case, unless the enemy sends in one attack from one direction, youre gonna be hard pressed to split up the big fleet and defend the other attacked areas. Where I can see having a larger fleet spread over a larger area (2 Star Destroyers with one planet, 3 iwth another etc), having one fleet isn't always advantageous just because of the limits of defence of such a large area in EAW.

[Zerogravity]

blah...pop limits suck.

Plain and simple, if you allow your enemy to make super fleets, it's your own fault for not attacking him, and forcing him to use resources to prevent you from taking over his planets.

[Joshinator]

But, no matter the population unit cap, the computer and other ppl usually tend to mass units together. Having to protect certain areas, and also building smaller more efficent attack fleets would make far more sence in stoping the construction of super fleets.

 

True that Marcus.

[Smikies]

I agree with wolf on the population limits, i mean heck each planet only has millions of ppl there, with billions in the core worlds...

 

As for the Super Fleets, they are only useful if the opponent is bad, since all they have to do is seperate their fleet(s) and attack at different points.

 

However by spreading out there forces they make it easier for your super fleet to ravage there main bases, or take out there smaller fleets one by one.

 

So really, it depends on both players on rather or not a super fleet is worthwhile :/

 

-Yay! finally got the courage to post!

[Zerogravity]

if they want to mass fleets, thats their own mistake. If they leave planets unguarded, they will surely be invaded. After they lose alot on MP they will realise that there generally is no master strategy, everything has a downside to it :\

 

welcome to the forums

[Joshinator]

Glad u got the courage to post smikies, glad to have u join us

 

I guess it's true that u would have to adapt to the person who your doing battle with. If they go super fleets, usually the only recorse of action u have is to do the same, or get ravaged. or if they spread out, u have to as well, or get hit from several points. Perhaps we should discuess this also in your military tactic's forum wolf?

[Zerogravity]

if i personally was fighting against some1 who likes to mass fleets, first i would get him on the defensive by attacking several planets very early, make him have to split his fleets early is the only way he would stop me. So therefore a super fleets type player would have his plan turned inside out by me ^^

 

The Empire's main power comes from it's overwhelming numbers in its Fleets, the rebels can counter that by making him spread out, that is the only way i see the rebels able to win on MP 1v1 galactic campaign.

 

 

lol it'd be a dream come true if a rebel tried to match the empire in fleet power.....i'd crush him like a bug

[Smikies]

Forgot to mention HyperSpace Routes, since these could probably have a huge effect on rather or not a Super fleet would do. Since they may not be able to spread out as if some of us are thinking. Plus just because someone has a super fleet, doesnt mean he doesnt have some decent defences at key locations.

 

Something i like to do in rebellion is to build minor defences while building my fleets (which i usually have 1 for each sector +2-4 for invasions)

 

/edit Thanks for the warm welcoming

/edit 2/3 typos on edit one

[Joshinator]

This is a good point, hyperspace routes would have an impact.

 

I did a similar thing as u. In the books it taked about sector fleets, so that's what i did. Each sector had it's own fleet, on top of the fighters that would be on each planet in the sector.

[DarthScharnhorst]

Hi all, I have been following the forums for a while but this is my first post.

 

I would really like to see infrastructure play a role in how many capital ships you can build. This would allow the player to build a massive fleet but not until he has the resources and infrastructure to support it. I think this could be easily achieved one of two ways.

 

1st way: Link the total number of capital ships a player can build to a ratio of his total number of ship yards/planets. This would represent the logistical side of maintaining huge armadas. I hate the idea of a static unit cap as I see it as an unrealistic glass ceiling; however, I really hope that this game focuses more on small to medium size ship engagements that focus on strategy instead of clicking 30 star destroyers and sending them towards a rebel fleet. What I mean is that I want to feel some serious pain when an ISD goes up in flames instead of not caring since I have another 30 in the production queue.

 

2nd Way: Make the Capital ships take a decent time to build. No matter what the rules of the SW universe are, it should take a fair amount of time to construct and train a crew to man the Capital ships. Let the player build as many as he/she wants but make them cost a lot in both time and resources. This harkens back to my first point of making each ship mean something to the player instead of having a mindless click fest.

 

As for those wanting a mindless click fest, I have nothing against them and would not complain if the ground battles plaid out that way

[Joshinator]

Yo DarthScharnhorst, always nice to have another perspective, welcome It's nice to get your ideas out, isn't it? i usually would just read forums 2, but this game is so intreging, i had to say something lol.

 

Your infrastrcture idea is a good one, makes perfect sence. It would also tie into supply lines idea where in u would need to supply those ships with those resorses and men. I would prefer no unit cap, instead the time it takes to construct capital ships. But that would also mean that they should be able to take a pounding, far more then we've seen in the E3 video

[DarthScharnhorst]

Joshinator, I agree with you there! I would be very happy if they slowed the pace of the battles down. I've read a lot on these forums about how people want to be able to name ships. I really want to see happen as well. However there might not be much of a point to it if you have over a 100 ISDs and they only last a few seconds in combat. What I am looking for are battles more in line with WWII fleet engagements when it comes to space conflicts, leave the command and conquer style battles for the ground where they belong. Sadly, I think their idea of strategy leans towards the simple Rock, Scissors, Paper format instead of the more stat oriented nature required for epic space battles. To me it looks like we will be getting a homeworld set in the SW universe with ground battles and a galaxy map. I'm not blaming the developers as I am sure that this format will appeal to the average RTS fan. While I think it will be a lot of fun, I hoped for something a bit deeper, maybe more in line with Rome Total war and Nexus than Age of Empires and Homeworld. Hopefully I'm wrong or it will at least it will be mod friendly!

[Zerogravity]

Petroglyph answered a question on one of the videos about capital ships being destroyed so fast, they replied that they had to speed the game up since it was a demo for E3, so therefore cap ships usually don't die that quickly.

[Joshinator]

That's a very big relief. I just hope bombers arn't made all powerful for taking out hardpoints. They deffinatly should be effective, but not a couple passes and the ship is defenceless.

 

I wanna name my ships as well, gives an amount of attachment to them. I think the space battles will be good. But there could be a lot more from what we've seen. But hey, they're still makin it, so let's keep hoping

[Foshjedi2004]

I was just thinking about the crew. To limit over expansion of Crews you have a crew pool like in ST Armada. You can only construct certain ships when you have the Crew for it, enough credits and a certain planet. I.e For the Mon Cal Cruisers you need to hold Mon Calamari. For the Imperials you need to hold Kuat and Fondor to build Super Star Destroyers. These point would limit the speed of construction and mean that there will be certain places which if you hold are key resource points for your armada and As Josh put it Sector fleets.

 

Will there be the oppotunity to give characters ranks like Grand Moff or Grand Admiral? Supreme Commander of Alliance Forces, Admiral Solo

[Arathorn_pff]

Seems like a good idea, but would if the Empire captures/destroys Mon Calamari? Wouldn't that the Rebels at a huge disadvantage for the rest of the game (because they won't be able to make any more Mon Cal Cruiser)? I think that if you hold Mon Calamari, you will be able to build faster and more of them, but I doubt all the Mon Cal Cruisers would come from Mon Calamari.

 

And I hope they have ranks, always fun to make random people higher ranks.

[Ghostly_Substance]

yawn, cant bother with this topic or it'll put me to sleep. As Wolf said it would be your falt for giving them your power since you were unable to finish off their army the first time.

 

If your smart enough you'll use your numbers to hit their weak spots but well whatever. as I said I wont bother with this topic.

[Foshjedi2004]

If you control Mon Cal you unlock the Mon Cal Cruiser so can create it anywhere. Or maybe there are certain planets that cannot be destroyed.

[Stellar_Magic]

Better yet would be to make it so that there are multiple planets in the Mon Calamari System. I'd say the same could go for Bilbringi, Kuat, Fondor, or any number of other places. Maybe you could make it so that instead of building ships when you didn't own those locations you could purchase them from those systems (For a much higher cost). Sort of like you were buying a ship on the auction block or black market.

 

A great way to eliminate the super fleet syndrom would be to add an NPC gang of pirates, smugglers, and other fringe characters that would prey on your worlds if you didn't have sufficient forces to defend them. This would force a player to spread out his forces.

 

Other possiblities would be to require the deployment of X number of freighters in a fleet per Y number of combat ships or the combat ships begin to degrade in capability (Or you could have the computer simply scrap em). Maybe having supply requirements for each vessel and making it possible to assign ships to supply a craft and force that vessel to fly from a supply dumb (A Buildable ground or space installation that would be really expensive) to the ship whenever supplies were needed.

 

The best way to eliminate super fleets however would be make the production of combat vessels a time consuming and costly process. If it takes you months to build an ISD and you try and build six of them the AI will try something before hand. An aggressive AI designed with smaller fleet actions in mind would definitely be useful in this area.

[Ismael]

I don't think we will have in EAW fleets as large as in Rebelion. But smaller or larger fleets always have something cool about them.

 

I prefer the small-medium ones.

[Jahled]

Just a point for thought. In the first world war the British and the Germans more or less had this problem of superfleets. They briefly skirmished their fleets of Dreadnaughts and both more or less retired, both claiming victory; the Germans because they sank more than the British, the British because the Germans never ventured out of harbour for the remainder of the war. Both sides realized the destruction of their fleet and the victory of the other would swing the war.

 

But the war went on...

 

In Rebellion, fleets are more or less a threat to panic about for most of the gameplay, it's not such a bad thing, because it means you have to concentrate on intelligence with characters and special forces, deploying the fleet when the time is right. Any other use of fleets is the realm of comics and cartoons without much realism. Building capital ships is a massive investment in any tactical environment, by very definition, loosing them en masse should be a devestating blow, one to be feared. Gameplay where it is not will quickly become comical. I think what I am more or less mumbling on about is strategy, and the importance in a good game title.

[DarthScharnhorst]

I like your analogy Jahled. However in WWI the German and the British Fleets were about equal. I equate the SW galaxy more on par with WWII, with the Rebel fleet being similar to the Germans and the Empire like the United Kingdom. While the Empire has a much larger fleet, it also has a lot more ground to protect and should have to spread out its ships in order to do so. The Rebels on the other hand have a smaller fleet but can do some real damage to the empire by attacking the gaps in the Empires protection.

 

Now as the game moves on I wouldn't mind seeing some truly large battles. However, I think the overall balance should reflect the Rebel need to employ hit in run tactics. As the Empire loses ground both sides can consolidate their fleets leading up to the huge battles that will most likely be game breakers, think Midway WWII.

 

One thing I hated about Rebellion was that when you did have a huge space battle with the AI, you usually steam rolled them, taking minimal losses. This allowed you to basically play mop up the rest of the game. I hope that Empire at War allows the AI of both sides to alternate between hit and run tactics and battlefleet engagements depending on the situation.