Read by Council Fleet Limits Ideas

[StormWing0]

hmm here's an idea for those that want or don't want a per flagship limit fleet size. The main reason for these is to satisfy both sides in the debate of should they have limits or not. Well in this case they start off without any but the server admins can set them to whatever they like.

MAX_NUMBER_SHIPS_PER_FLAGSHIP = -1 (-1 or less is unlimited, 0 is no fleets, 1 or greater is number of ships per flagship not accounting for a ship of the fleet also being a flagship of it's own fleet)

MAX_NUMBER_FLAGSHIPS = -1 (-1 or less is unlimited, 0 means a fleet cannot have other flagships as part of it, 1 or higher is the number of flagships that can be part of another flagship's fleet)

FLEET_DEPTH = -1 (-1 is unlimited depth, 0 cannot have other flagships in a fleet, 1 or higher means you can have a flagship that also has a flagship in its own fleet up to the depth number so if set to say 5 ignoring the main flagship you could have 5 sub fleets deep so MainFG => SubFG1 => SubFG2 => SubFG3 => SubFG4 => SubFG5)


The first one limits the number of ships per fleet, the second limits how many flagships can be assigned to a given flagship at a certain fleet depth, and the last one says how many flagships deep can you go, sort of like the docked entity chain limit but for fleets. All are set to unlimited by default but could be changed later.

Any ideas?

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Difficult to comment on really until we actually see how ships work. Especially flagships, which from what was described in the previous dev blog sounded like it was primarily there to be the player controlled ship. If that's the case then multiple would be redundant, since ideally you'd have each player have his own fleet.

There isn't really much point in having a long chain of command for AI vessels, since the kind of tactical choices they'll make will be limited. It doesn't really matter which one is leading which. The only exception to this really is if you have say, a defence fleet, that's entirely AI controlled, where you could tell the flagship to go patrol this area and have the rest follow for example. In that case you'd need one flagship. Depending on how complicated group controls are it may be useful to divide fleets into sections, where I guess a sub-flagship may be useful, but any more than that would be pointless.

As for fleet limit? Yeah, I could see why you might want the option. I will say though that in general Starmade handles large group better performance wise than large entities, especially when you get turrets involved.

 

[StormWing0]

Yep but also with this idea it'd also account for both player and AI fleets because of the incoming AI factions or cases where a player wouldn't want to be logged in 24/7 to keep control of the fleet. This idea may be a tad early as you've said though but I figure talking about it now is better than waiting until someone crashes a server with a fleet later. XD