Fleet logistics and fleet control options?

[thecrazy13.main]

So I was thinking that fleets are a little difficult to use right now, you tell them to go somewhere, and some of them might make it, but there are still some bugs that result in lots of ships getting lost, I was thinking maybe this could be solved if people could set fleets to preset formations all based around the mother ship, and then set any sector containing, or near a mothership, to remain loaded so that ships don't accidentally get lost, and also to perhaps make some way for ships to avoid colliding with random objects in their travels. Also perhaps would you consider creating a way for players to make their own formations using a 3d grid where they could perhaps drag and drop (using a method similar to moving sectors in the map) ships into a 3-dimensional grid. Perhaps this could even be used to develop actual battle plans, and work with real-time strategy, to give a more realistic feeling of being an admiral standing on the bridge of the mothership commanding their fleet to take formations.
I also had another idea, perhaps fleets could be bound to a faction based on ship ownership, and the faction leader would be able to see all fleets in the faction and each fleets commander, and maybe even assign control of fleets to new commanders if they feel one commander is not doing their job properly, and perhaps establish a hierarchy in the factions, where the faction leader would command all fleets, but they could have the officers command separate branches of the faction, with several admirals, each commanding a fleet, under each officers command.

Sorry if this is a long, hard to read block of text, but I really think the additions of things like this could add a lot of interesting fleet, and fleet combat based dynamics, to the game. Thank you.

 

[terra mining corp.]

I think the important thing right now should be to stop fleet ships from shedding their turrets on load in,but having some kind of pathfinding would be nice also.Good suggestions made though.

 

[thecrazy13.main]

I think the important thing right now should be to stop fleet ships from shedding their turrets on load in,but having some kind of pathfinding would be nice also.Good suggestions made though.

it just kinda bugs me that when I call a fleet to a location, the mothership will arrive, but most other ships have done something stupid like stray off the path and into an unloaded sector, or they hit an asteroid and got left behind, and so I go back and check the path and I find lost ships everywhere. I just really want them to fix that issue because you can lose a lot of good ships that way. And space battles just aren't interesting unless you have a player to fly every single ship because all the AI's do is circle endlessly or until they die. And that's just not interesting, also a targeting system would be nice, maybe some way to "rank" ships in targeting importance, for instance you could set the mothership as #1 target and try to scatter the enemy fleet by destroying their mothership, or you could target ships that are important to their attack pattern or defense, or you could set your ships to all attack one position on the field of battle.
I just think that being able to command ships in real time while they attack an enemy fleet would be an interesting addon to the game, and perhaps it could also be used as a way to keep players from just sending AI fleets to attack everywhere because the fleets would have crappy strategies without an allied player in the sector to command them.

 

[NeonSturm]

Please add paragraphs… 5 lines are enough for a walloftext

​

Combat:

In ancient times, peoples lined up with 100 peoples in a row, 100 behind them and again 100 behind those +++
They had no chance of fighting 1vs100 because every human had the same size and it was a 2D plane with a 1D combat front (except arrows).

But now we have weapons which target anywhere without us being able to defend everywhere. Attack became the best defence.

In StarMade-future, shields made atomic bombs incapable of destructing things way above their own size.
Point-defence turrets discourage from using glass-cannon-missiles and pulse-weapons prevent the use of nano-robot-swarms to infiltrate the enemy weapon systems. And there is a reason a Destroyer is not superior to 10 drones - the drones can be in 10 places at the same time, making the Destroyer "shoot at birds with a cannons" by trying to chase them.
​

Pathing:

Have a loose formation where every ship has a target desired position toward the greater whole.
Ships create an elliptical evasion test through asteroid perimeters. Their AI folds everything along their flight path into a 2D plane to scan for obstacle-outlines.
Additionally, they create opaque areas where there is no obstacle for 3 times their length within which they could search paths ahead of them).
If they get (or would get) stuck, they can always jump or retreat backward, trying a different approach.

​

General tactics:

If it weren't for the home-base or only-one-player-position limit, You have to big enough to kill and small enough to be efficient.

The choice or availability of the ideal size against your target would be the primary concern.​

 

[thecrazy13.main]

Please add paragraphs… 5 lines are enough for a walloftext

​

Combat:

In ancient times, peoples lined up with 100 peoples in a row, 100 behind them and again 100 behind those +++
They had no chance of fighting 1vs100 because every human had the same size and it was a 2D plane with a 1D combat front (except arrows).

But now we have weapons which target anywhere without us being able to defend everywhere. Attack became the best defence.

In StarMade-future, shields made atomic bombs incapable of destructing things way above their own size.
Point-defence turrets discourage from using glass-cannon-missiles and pulse-weapons prevent the use of nano-robot-swarms to infiltrate the enemy weapon systems. And there is a reason a Destroyer is not superior to 10 drones - the drones can be in 10 places at the same time, making the Destroyer "shoot at birds with a cannons" by trying to chase them.
​

Pathing:

Have a loose formation where every ship has a target desired position toward the greater whole.
Ships create an elliptical evasion test through asteroid perimeters. Their AI folds everything along their flight path into a 2D plane to scan for obstacle-outlines.
Additionally, they create opaque areas where there is no obstacle for 3 times their length within which they could search paths ahead of them).
If they get (or would get) stuck, they can always jump or retreat backward, trying a different approach.

​

General tactics:

If it weren't for the home-base or only-one-player-position limit, You have to big enough to kill and small enough to be efficient.

The choice or availability of the ideal size against your target would be the primary concern.​

I don't think I fully understand, the collision avoidance sounds good, but I have no clue what the rest of that was

 

[thecrazy13.main]

I was thinking maybe they could update the current AI with a series of tactical strategies that could be customized on a grid like the map, and through this you could have them preform maneuvers and other tactics.

For fleets, you could have a system of A-Z with a number (0-9) or (1-9), with some being attack and some being defense, and could be customized for individual fleets, or generalized using ship classes to apply to all the AI fleets universally. I also think an in-fleet command structure should be present, with the mothership being directly in command of assigned support ships that will be in command of the smaller fighters, and if you destroy one of the support ships than all the ships under that support ships command will scatter. and destroying the mothership will cause the entire fleet to scatter into their individual groups under the command of the support ships (essentially creating new fleets for each support ship)

The factions also need more ranks, maybe 10-20 ranks, and players could be in command of support ships or even individual fighters in the fleet.

The new ships class system is pretty great, but it could use some more diversity, like boarding craft, and juggernaut class. speaking of boarding, I think on-ship battles should become a thing, maybe it could be achieved by having each ship have a crew, and you can use a ship to latch onto another ship and have the crew of the latching ship try to get into the ship they are boarding and fight the crew of that ship for control.

so basically, formations, tactics on a kinda map-like grid (place ships in a grid system to make tactical formations) boarding, better AI's, really I think the whole combat aspect of the game is really lacking, you can't get awesome space battles with just lasers and missiles and the ships sitting back and circling.