Can't progress battle due to large number of ships

I inspected the save (Huge, Average difficulty) and can say that the AI has 17 assault ships and several bombers. It seems you're in a cat and mouse chase, you and the Moltar. They take your stuff, you take their stuff. They did amass a single huge fleet instead of splitting their forces, and I can think of a way where a simple line of code would make your life miserable. The AI would create many smaller fleets and could take over outposts and colonies by the dozens in a few turns. There's an enforced limitation that is causing this and this can be easily fixed.

As for the almost 200 ship fleets issue. It's kind of a limit situation, but it does happen and can happen. This is a Huge game. The AI has 90% of the map, so its ship support is through the roof. Basically, the game should have ended way before. And, with the AI modifications that I have in mind it should.

Now, regarding fleet limits in combat. I think the current limit is 50 ships in each side, but I'd have to check, but it's around that ballpark. Basically, the game picks the best/bigger 50 and the combat starts with those, but I'd have to check to confirm this as well.

So, in "normal" play and after the AI fix we shouldn't see many >30 ship fleets, but they can happen. I took note of this and I'll think in a mechanism to either constraint the number of ships or to go with some form of multi-combat system where you can do several combat rounds until all ships have paritcipated.

I think an AI fix should go up in the next update, or the one after to unchain the AI's hands and let it spread out and take out several systems at a time. That alone should alleviate the cat and mouse effect. As for the fleet ship cap and how to handle >50 ship fleets in combat, I'll have to think on that one a bit more. This does not represent what we can call "normal" play, but it can happen, so we must have a mechanism to deal with it.

Thanks for taking the game to the extreme @medway, this was rather helpful.

 

You aren't the only one reporting rather large fleets though. We are seeing this reported on Steam as well.

As people push towards a longer, more epic experience, I think huge combats will become more common. To accommodate, these massive fights should be longer and more epic, and potentially broken into multiple turns. This would be representative an extended battle with both sides fighting for a long time over a system. It also has the side effect of tying up these fleets for multiple turns. That means putting all your eggs in one basket could have you watching opponents steal things away from you while your main force is tied up. That's an interesting strategic dillema.

Please make me miserable. At least at higher difficulties. I want to see the "this game is easy" crowd (including myself) backpedaling and stepping down to easier difficulties on Steam. The hardest difficulties should crush our souls every once in awhile, even us vets.