You mean a flotilla? interesting... but with the limited number of ships in PSS it may not work as intended. (Normally hate stacks as you describe but I recall IG2 would do both, few ships in a battle meant individual units whereas many ships meant stacks of three)
From what I can extrapolate, having 2 dozen ships in a fleet is going to be quite a challenge to achieve, hence limited number. It is in line with the "fewer but more important ships" philosophy the devs have described throughout various posts.
I enjoyed this well thought out post Tylendir and may address it more in the morning as it is getting late here. For now I want to touch on your closing paragraph. This is somewhat mis-leading and also somewhat correct. In another post, I explained how a modern Destroyer is now the size of WWII "pocket Battleship", in excess of 10,000 tons. Similarly other smaller classes are also larger. This is in part to keep the politicians happy, much easier to allocate funds for a Destroyer than a Cruiser when it comes to budget minded legislators. Defensively these ships rely on active and passive counter-measures, not armor s in past days. Today we try to avoid the hit, in WW2 we had to absorb it. The problem is obvious, usually, if the "hit" makes it through the ship is sunk. Speed is irrelevant when it comes to defense. No ship can outrun a targeted missile and no evasion is possible based on speed in that situation. I actually think this is where games could take a possible direction. Ships easier to kill would change many things. This can tie in as more ships would be vital and so would diversification of those same ships in size and capability,
Ahah I had forgotten a Destroyer is easier to fund than a Cruiser part. So true. And yes I agree with your statements and obviously you know your stuff better than I do (that is to say I don't know much ;p). It's quite a shame that we won't have access to a lot of ships. From a narrative standpoint it doesn't make sense that a spacefaring empire would only have a few dozens ships to defend itself at the peak of its power (that is to say endgame). Even a couple hundreds ships wouldn't make sense, there should be thousands. Obviously from a gameplay standpoint, more ships is equal to more micromanagement and thus less enjoyment for a significant portion of players (there's always the possibility that some players relish in micromanagement, I have yet to encounter their kind). To come back to your statement on "no ship can outrun a targeted missile" and thus that's why active and passive countermeasures are preferred over speed; I agree and PD defenses should be a thing to allow spaceships to survive. However as in the space 4X game traditions, missiles are not the only thing that can threaten a spaceship; kinetic weapons,as well as lasers and plasma can too. Thus a lot of armor makes sense and bigger bulkier ships too. I actually have no idea what I want to say with that statement but I said it lol. I actually do not think that ships should be easy to kill. I think that it should take overwhelming forces to destroy a ship in one turn and that it should take a few turns worth of tactically decisive actions for a ship to destroy another ship. Thus smaller ships could have their role to play in large scale battles by allowing for that tactical diversity necessary to win fights. We are faced with a few conundrums to consider when dealing with this issue of allocating different roles for different hull sizes: - If smaller ships are meant to deal more damage then why should you not focus them and focus the bigger ones if they are supposed to be tanks? - If smaller ships are only there to tank the hits and get destroyed instead of the bigger ones, then why would you focus them instead of the bigger ones? - If smaller ships are used to flank then why wouldn't a full fleet of small ships viable as they could swarm the bigger ships easily? Sorry those are kind of scattered ideas.
This will be longer than needed but maybe people are willing to read long text. In augmenting MoO1 combat to more of a 1.5, I had kicked around the idea of specializing smalls and huges. Mediums and larges would be very similar to their MoO1 roles. All sizes would continue to be in stacks, therefore the player contols at most 6 'units' per fight (even though a stack may have 100,000's of ships). Huges would have better cost/space efficiency than their MoO1 counterparts. The theme for huges is long range damage. Beam weapons on huges would have a MINIMUM range as well as a slightly longer MAXIMUM range. Think of them as some serious turrets. However, they would be susceptible to enemies in close range. Another way of implementing this could be through +ATT modifiers rather than hard ceilings/floors on range. Perhaps the huges lose +ATT bonuses when enemy stacks are 1 space away (even if that huge is targeting a stack that is farther away). Smalls would also have better cost/space efficiency than their MoO1 counterparts. The theme for smalls is that they need high mobility and be 'in the mix' to do the most damage. When firing beam weapons from a stack of smalls, only HALF* of the beams on the stack fire. The second half can only fire in the opposite direction--somewhere in the 180 degrees opposite of the first target (potentially at a later time in the turn). Therefore in order for a stack of smalls to unload both volleys on the same target, it must have the move speed to GET IN RANGE, SHOOT, MOVE TO OPPOSITE SIDE OF TARGET, SHOOT AGAIN. Hence the focus on smalls needing high mobility. Another scenario is positioning the stack of smalls in between 2 targets. This way they can deal their full damage potential (split across 2 enemy stacks) without as much movement requirements. The themes are pretty straight forward. Don't let enemy smalls get close to you because then their firepower potentially doubles (if they start their turn close enough to get 2 shots off). As well as close in on enemy huges so that they cannot attack at full strength/range. It turns out that this makes smalls excellent escorts for huges. This adds just a bit more tactics while keeping the MoO1 combat map and mechanics. Notice none of these extensions require anything to do with rotation or shield arcs. Just positioning. I specifically did not want Mediums and Larges to have any changes. This lets players still deploy a functional fleet without these 2 modifications coming in to play for them. If they want a lot of regular ships -- go mediums. If they want a smaller number of regular ships -- go large. *Firing half the beams twice in separate 180 degree arcs could be extended to 3 volleys of 1/3 the beams in 120 arcs or even 4 across 90 degree arcs. This is abstracting the idea of a a swarm doing strafe runs across a ship. Their best damage comes from combination of close range and mobility. Hence the emphasis firing multiple times requiring movement in between. I could potentially see 3 shots across different 120 arcs working but 4 may just be tedious. I would also work with the second volley (of 2) targeting something outside a 90 degree arc from the first target. This way you could get 2 shots off by firing straight in front of you, moving up above the target, and firing again (as opposed to needing to move directly behind the target). **I would also be open to having all beams fire on the first volley but then have potential for a 50% of beams firing a second shot if re positioned correctly.
Good post Tynendir These are valid concerns, true in both a game and in real life, indeed these concerns are also a determining factor in tactical and strategic considerations for any commander, virtual or real. There needs to be a correlation at the strategic level, one of the benefits of smaller hull classes in real life is that you can field more of them. They are cheaper to produce, quicker to produce, easier to upgrade, cheaper to uograde and less expensive to maintain. The cumulative strategic effect then is that you have more of them and as a result can field forces in more theaters at the same time. PSS can replicate the need for this in many ways, strategic depth of the play area, minimal planetary defences etc. In other words need. Once you get to the tactical level and the benefits of hulls, it should come to a few key points but the main one is the balance and relation of ship sizes. This would stay in line with my stand of favoring neither approach but rather to make both viable and effective. (win, win situation) A player then could field heavies only or mixed forces according to preference and need. Perhaps if you are spread out with little industry you go with more small ships. Another session you may find your territory more compact and go fewer but heavier. I would favor that kind of flexibility.
I disagreed with this but feel I need to be clear why. It is not that it is a long read and obviously it is well thought out. It is rather that I have no interest in stacks as proposed, anything above grouping small flotilla size units makes me lose all interest, just my personal preference.
I have to agree with Chris on this one, 6 giant stacks of ships is one level of abstraction too far which - for me - would completely suck a lot of the fun and immersion out what I enjoy with tactical combat. I can see some of the gameplay advantages that you point out but IMO it throws the baby out with the bathwater and overall you lose a lot more than you ever gain. I liked MOO 1, but for me MOO 2 tactical combat was about 1000x better.
