"Fleets" - How to make them useful

Remember Conquest:Frontier Wars

from Sins Forums

So, fleets are not useful.  If you have a capital ships and others in a fleet they move rather slowly and ultimately not useful for multiplayer.

How could they be useful?  An old game called Conquest:Frontier Wars had "admirals" that you could hire and place in your fleets.  The admirals had AI as well as giving a boost the fleet.

In sins we don't need Admirals per se, but at least we could have some AI on the fleets.  Simple, like, "defend gravwell" or "attack ships/buildings/planet in gravwell" either "focus fire" or "split fire".

Ideas?

2,910 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Conquest was a good game, slightly like Sins too with the system amount you had compared to other games of the time.

 

It would be nice if Fleets had a few more options than jsut being able to jump together, I agree with you.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

For example I would like to see a 'Fleet sub-warp speed'  improvement, which would boost the fleet's speed. That would counter that slow-fleets-to-a-crawl-flying-at-the-slowest-ship's-speed effect while not being balance-breaking.

The tech justification is simple: warp engines are altered to operate in a sub-warp power level, which in a single ship is not enough to make a difference, but the multiple sub-warp waves of the ships resonating cause a mild space-wave distortion (like surfing man!) which helps propelling the fleet forward. The effect could be dependent on the number of ships in the fleet (with a max effect level to avoid super fast humongous fleets).

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I like the idea of being able to form a fleet but feel it needs a few more options to manage it.

While I haven't really noticed it, an indicator for overall fleet speed based on the ships in the fleet would be a nice addition. This would also mean showing the speed of the ships in their stats which would be nice.

Some options for fleet stance would be great. Much like the hold postion/local area/gravity well option, a fleet formation toggle would be great. Offensive/Defensive/Mixed for example, with the different option putting ships in the fleet into different positions based on their purpose.

Setting priority targeting for the individual ships would also add to the versatility. Once again a simple toggle, but available at a ship level so you can have a mix of different priorities in a fleet would be good. I would have though the specialist ships would have this already but it doesn't really seem that way. Plus the option of giving the player the control is cool. Something like a toggle between Strike/Frigate/Cruiser/Capital/Structure/Planet/Auto.... or something like that.

A better way of selecting the fleet leader would be handy it seems a bit too random at the moment.

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I mentioned this in another thread but I'd like to see fleets turn together like a school of fish instead of like they're being lead on a leash by the lead ship.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Brazilian_Joe, reply 2
For example I would like to see a 'Fleet sub-warp speed'  improvement, which would boost the fleet's speed. That would counter that slow-fleets-to-a-crawl-flying-at-the-slowest-ship's-speed effect while not being balance-breaking.

The tech justification is simple: warp engines are altered to operate in a sub-warp power level, which in a single ship is not enough to make a difference, but the multiple sub-warp waves of the ships resonating cause a mild space-wave distortion (like surfing man!) which helps propelling the fleet forward. The effect could be dependent on the number of ships in the fleet (with a max effect level to avoid super fast humongous fleets).
End of Brazilian_Joe's quote

Good idea...

Quoting mbaron888, reply 4
I mentioned this in another thread but I'd like to see fleets turn together like a school of fish instead of like they're being lead on a leash by the lead ship.
End of mbaron888's quote

Brings up memories from marching band...

 

Anyways, some things I would like to see would be:

Return Fire: In line with auto-attack, this would allow ships to defend themselves and only return fire, rather than kill everything...

Lock Formation: Creates a 3D map of all the ships in the fleet (frigate types are recorded rather than the individual frigate's ID).  This way, you could design your own fleet shape and could send it into battle...  Now, you could have up to 3 different formations and you could switch between them.  Upon picking one, your ships would fly into formation with the capitals going exactly to where they are supposed to be and the frigates just going to the nearest postion of their ship type.  The formation would be set in reference to the flagship.