Group Bundle Idea

[Shadowed~]

I've seen this done in a few mods to where you have the option of building fleets in which contain multiple ships bundled under one icon so to speak. It'd be easier and more convenient for a lot of player to have three or four of these "fleet sets" if you will so they won't have to worry about always having to build 5 ships at a time if they say have 600k creds at their disposal. Here's what I think- put around 4 or 5 of these different types of "fleets" ranging from a small hit and run fleet to a fleet where if it dropped into your system you'd better hope you got enough firepower or else retreat( in other words a giant siege fleet). Ranging form what ships are actually imbedded in the fleet itself, would determine the overall build time. For instance say a fleet with 2 SDs, 3 Vics 5 lancers would take around and this is just a guess 4 or 5 minutes. (Fleets would be based off (time wise) by each unite in the fleet so if say SD2 has a minute build time, lancers 30 build time, vics 45 buildtime then add up each buildtime of each ship for he build time of that fleet.

Anyone else think this is a good idea?

[tlmiller]

I've seen this done in a few mods to where you have the option of building fleets in which contain multiple ships bundled under one icon so to speak. It'd be easier and more convenient for a lot of player to have three or four of these "fleet sets" if you will so they won't have to worry about always having to build 5 ships at a time if they say have 600k creds at their disposal. Here's what I think- put around 4 or 5 of these different types of "fleets" ranging from a small hit and run fleet to a fleet where if it dropped into your system you'd better hope you got enough firepower or else retreat( in other words a giant siege fleet). Ranging form what ships are actually imbedded in the fleet itself, would determine the overall build time. For instance say a fleet with 2 SDs, 3 Vics 5 lancers would take around and this is just a guess 4 or 5 minutes. (Fleets would be based off (time wise) by each unite in the fleet so if say SD2 has a minute build time, lancers 30 build time, vics 45 buildtime then add up each buildtime of each ship for he build time of that fleet.

Anyone else think this is a good idea?

Not sure I'd like it.  Be good for quickness, but say the fleet uses ISD-II's as the only capitals...then you're going back to build a Sentinal since the ISD-II doesn't have the colonize ability.  I think it's easier honestly the current way, and then just jump between your production planests (usually there aren't that many in ascendency due to the logistics cost of having shipyards), and select all the military vessels in that gravity well and have them all hyper to a rendezvous planet where you combine them into a single fleet.

[Revanchist]

Not sure I'd like it.  Be good for quickness, but say the fleet uses ISD-II's as the only capitals...then you're going back to build a Sentinal since the ISD-II doesn't have the colonize ability.  I think it's easier honestly the current way, and then just jump between your production planests (usually there aren't that many in ascendency due to the logistics cost of having shipyards), and select all the military vessels in that gravity well and have them all hyper to a rendezvous planet where you combine them into a single fleet.

All good points . . . Except this is the ICW forum section and not the Ascendancy section. IMO the only group bundle that comes to mind would be to have Bel Iblis warp in with 3 Katana Dreadnaughts as well as his flagship. Otherwise it kinda clutters things up in most situations; maybe I only want to build a single ISD for a squad, now I can't. It will also clutter up the build bar.

[tlmiller]

All good points . . . Except this is the ICW forum section and not the Ascendancy section. IMO the only group bundle that comes to mind would be to have Bel Iblis warp in with 3 Katana Dreadnaughts as well as his flagship. Otherwise it kinda clutters things up in most situations; maybe I only want to build a single ISD for a squad, now I can't. It will also clutter up the build bar.

DOH!!

[Pali]

Not sure I'd like it.  Be good for quickness, but say the fleet uses ISD-II's as the only capitals...then you're going back to build a Sentinal since the ISD-II doesn't have the colonize ability.  I think it's easier honestly the current way, and then just jump between your production planests (usually there aren't that many in ascendency due to the logistics cost of having shipyards), and select all the military vessels in that gravity well and have them all hyper to a rendezvous planet where you combine them into a single fleet.

Fortunately not an issue in Sins, since you can easily queue huge build orders by use of the shift key (orders 5 of whatever you click on, without any limit on the total queued).

Revan's right, though, it'd mostly just add clutter to the build-bar.  While the easy functionality's a would-be-nice kind of thing, I just don't think it's needed - by the time you've got that kind of dough, you've pretty much already won the game anyways.

[Slornie]

Aside from the issues of build bars, the other main concern I'd have with adding combined fleets is that they would function as a single unit - so you'd have to kill every single ship from that squadron else (as I understand) it could just retreat and come back full-strength at no cost to the other player/faction.  That's not really fair, could easily be abused, and is hard to differentiate in-game too (e.g. how do you know which of the enemy ships are part of the fleet-unit rather than individually acquired ships?).

What I *could* see working, assuming it /would/ actually work, is building a dummy unit on the galactic map, with appropriate cost/build time which on completion then triggered a piece of story script to despawn the dummy item and then spawn at the same location a pre-set selection of regular units.  So you'd be building a fleet as a defined single entity but then ending up with a series of individual units that can be moved/sold/killed independently.

[tlmiller]

Aside from the issues of build bars, the other main concern I'd have with adding combined fleets is that they would function as a single unit - so you'd have to kill every single ship from that squadron else (as I understand) it could just retreat and come back full-strength at no cost to the other player/faction.  That's not really fair, could easily be abused, and is hard to differentiate in-game too (e.g. how do you know which of the enemy ships are part of the fleet-unit rather than individually acquired ships?).

What I *could* see working, assuming it /would/ actually work, is building a dummy unit on the galactic map, with appropriate cost/build time which on completion then triggered a piece of story script to despawn the dummy item and then spawn at the same location a pre-set selection of regular units.  So you'd be building a fleet as a defined single entity but then ending up with a series of individual units that can be moved/sold/killed independently.

I want to say that the mod I remember using this didn't have that problem.  While it was a single button, the fleet it built was independent ships, it didn't fuction as a single unit.  Been a few years, but I do remember that in one of the mods I used to play.

[Corey]

The ships are independent in battle, but the game can't track them individually; if they survive, they all survive. I've never liked this system for a few reasons.

1. That one, that it effectively makes ships function like ground units and not matter individually. With ground units it kind of has to be this way because the UI cries if it isn't, but in space it doesn't.
2. It doesn't really add anything. It just means you press fewer buttons sometimes. It effectively takes away choices from players.
3. Our build bars are too full to have space for them.

[gerfand]

the best thing to do would involve make changes the engine...

let's assume that we can make changes in the engine, we could make this:

-Give the ability to make garrisons(garrisons would be the units in the planet that would appers in a tatical battle... even if you don't have full population in garrisons they would be the only to apper... and if you move your units, those units would stay in the planet... this way you would not loose time to micro the units, and would be able to get all land units in a land combat)

-Give a "Fleet" grouping... (the fleet grouping would make certain units to be in a fleet, and when deployed, they would be deplyed on a the way that you want)

-Make units move only by selecting and Right clicking in the galact map (Because EaW sucks!)

[Senza]

Phoenix Rising I believe had fleets you could build as a unit and I did not like them (like most things from that mod, but my thoughts on PR are another matter). I found them generally to be pretty clunky and fairly pointless, it's a neat idea, but it doesn't really add anything to the game, on top of causing more issues than it's really worth.
My biggest problem with preset fleets is just that, they're preset. If you intend to use one in battle, you cannot adjust your fleet's composition on the fly to adapt to changing battle conditions, which is absolutely vital in long battles in EaW, and especially in ICW.

Plus, preset fleets play havoc with build limits, which the AI already ignores as a matter of course, but they allow the player to ignore them too. The reason for this is that, if a ship is destroyed in the fleet that has a build limit, the game thinks the ship is gone forever, so it subtracts from the build limit in order to allow you to build more. But if you have the fleet moving as a single unit on the galactic map, then the ships will always respawn the next time they go into battle unless the flagship is destroyed. This allows you to cheese and ignore build limits entirely by simply sacrificing the ship you want to build more of during a battle. Granted, I don't think this would be much of an issue in ICW, since only the largest and most powerful ships have build limits, but the problem is still there.

Basically, I think they're a neat idea, but EaW is simply too limited in what you can do with it to make them really worth having. Also, Gerfand, on the "fleet grouping" idea, I really like it, and I really wish that formation controls were something Petro had implemented in EaW. I would love to have something like that in the game, I can't tell you how many times I've needlessly lost ships during a battle simply because the game decided to spawn my fleet in an idiotic configuration with my light carriers out front and center for the AI to shoot at as I frantically order them to retreat to a more sensible position, etc. Unfortunately, though, I think that even if implementing something like this were possible, it would take far too much work.

[Pali]

I would love to have something like that in the game, I can't tell you how many times I've needlessly lost ships during a battle simply because the game decided to spawn my fleet in an idiotic configuration with my light carriers out front and center for the AI to shoot at as I frantically order them to retreat to a more sensible position, etc.

Honestly, that right there is probably the EaW engine feature that I find most annoying... you can somewhat get around it by using only heavy ships for garrison duty, but then you're stuck with a low-versatility and expensive defensive fleet.  And if you have the bad luck of having your main fleet get caught after an attack, the fleet that wins most battles with no losses ends up having half a dozen small ships blown away by an SSD before you can even hit pause.