Yet increasing the fleet size in reality only makes your small number of fleets even larger so to make defense weaker. Also as some players here noted sometimes it better to sacrifice a few planets to focus on wiping out one AI.
So the real problem with large maps isn't not enough fleets as much as it takes more time for your huge fleets to go from point A to point B.
Using your Toast example even if you have 4 pats of butter and 4 pieces of toast is still better to put all 4 pats of butter on a single piece of toast to make your enemy "Toast".

It doesn't really scale linearly like that. If you have a fleet of size X, then it doesn't follow that a fleet of size X*2 will take twice as long to defeat, assuming you bring X*2 forces as well.

I'd just like to be able to field fleets of approximately the same size in more places than I currently can to supplement the hard-locked static defenses. With an increased fleet cap I could have moderate sized fleets that can move in and extend my planet's ability to withstand a siege. Right now, the static defenses, even perfectly set up only buy so much time, but they DO force an attacker to bring a certain amount of force in order to overcome them. The ability to bring in reinforcements in waves and potentially move others behind to trap a retreating fleet is something we simply can't do in larger scenarios because of the cap- you just can't field enough units.

It's simply impractical to be able to defend in wide-open Huge maps with few or no chokepoints. You can defend but never advance, or you can advance but only if you lose other planets.

As far as I can tell, the *minimum* a planet can make is around one third of what your homeworld makes, as long as it has culture. Is 1/3rd the income capacity of your homeworld really 'nonexistent'?

That's where strategy come in. You can't have your cake and eat it too. At least with the AI and when I have a huge empire it's no big deal to loses a few planet if I can wipe out an AI player (at least destroy it's capital) as this is much closer to victory than gain a few more planets.

It's not a question of whether or not I lose planets; I'm saying that after a certain point on Huge maps it's simply impossible to continue to advance.

If you eliminate enough AI opponents, you leave open swathes of neutral worlds and their resources to conquer.
If you take them, you can't defend them because there's too many avenues of approach and you lose them.
If you leave them, your opponents can take them while you're trying to crush them elsewhere, making it effectively impossible to eliminate the last couple of positions.

At some point it's just whackamole once enough open territory remains after crushing a few of the AI players. You may be unbeatable, but you're also unable to close the deal. This is based on my experiences playing the AI on FFA in the largest map available with no locked teams.

If you're truly a galaxy-spanning empire, you should be able to field the fleet to defend it.

I believe a better idea would be to scale how tough defense and planets are relative to map size. A large map defenses needs to survive longer so you huge fleets have time to respond from greater distances compared to small maps.

A fleet twice the size won't cut through the defenses in half the time, making it simpler to capture a truly massive fleet like that and just grind it to meat. There's a point where it's not really useful to have more ships in a fleet, but rather more useful to have *more* fleets, which is the real crux of the problem.

Right now at various points a fleet has to be a certain size (depending on defense or offensive use) to be of any utility. The utility of a fleet does not continue to scale forever as it increases in size.

Personally, I'd love the scenario you described above. If an opponent pulled that stunt, I'd tank a few worlds around them while they're chewing on one, then pick them to death with several smaller fleets I could maneuver into various positions to trap them, cutting off escape routes, etc- "smaller" being relative, of course.

That's not really a viable alternative now because the fleet cap is too restrictive to allow more than two or three fleets of useful size at once in the endgame (when you've got most of the tech and it's just about the strategy).

With the exception of travel time, a fleet twice as big cuts through defenses in *less* than half of the time.

Just an example, If they did fleet caps like they did in the beta:

Of course there is more of a colony rush, because without more planets than your enemy, you cannot field as large of a fleet as him.

So lets say you get 3 planets and he gets 6 planets.
Well, now, whats the point of playing anymore if right off the bat he can field twice as big a fleet.

Its a game, and it has to be fun for both players, and the losing player has to feel like the have a chance, or they quit. And if they can't build a fleet because they have lost planets, then they don't feel like they have a chance. I have seen the beta replays.

Yeah, I'm not sure it's a good idea to tie it to number of planets.

My thoughts, with no particular emphasis on what would be better:

Tie it to some kind of combined economy/culture/empire index. The cap is based on your "might", meaning that an empire with fewer planets could focus on defense (easier to do with fewer planets) and improve economy in order to increase their fleet. Probably not really workable because by the time any meaningful change had occured they'd be dead in the water, *unless* the scale were pretty small, meaning that having twice the power only gets you 25% more fleet cap?

Tie it to map size. Instead of a hard cap of 2000, make it 1500 for small maps, 2500 for medium and 10000 for the huge ones. Just spitballing numbers.

Make ships cost a specific amount regardless of how many you have. If you don't make enough, your ships start disbanding/scuttling or going inert until you can pay for them.

Just thoughts, probably full of holes big enough to drive a Marza Dreadnought through.

So many people in this thread are replying with theory that doesnt work in real application. The only person thats actual seems to really understand the problem fully is Cyclometh, and I wager its because he actually has played a huge map, like the ones I've played and encountered the same problems.


JaundiceDave wrote:




1. While this sounds nice in theory, it doesnt work when you have a large number of planets. When you move your capital, the outer planets are now close, but that just makes other planets now farther away. It also still doesnt solve the problem when you have planets in MULTIPLE STAR SYSTEMS. Unless you could make a home planet in each star system, you with still incur corruption costs.

2. Sure you build trade ports. Lots of them. Now Luke Skywalker and Jack Sparrow are suddenly swooping in at your out rim planets continuously, destroying said trade ports. Rebel attacks are constant once you get so many planets, and planetary defenses arent good enough to stop them. The rebels come with heavy cruisers and seige ships, and they attack multiple systems at the same time. Meanwhile, your main fleets are often busy defending more vital positions since when you are the largest empire, multiple smaller enemies often attack you on 3-4 fronts.

Again, there is no benefit to actually having more planets once you get to a certain point, which is in direct contrast to how the game is supposed to be. In my huge games, it gets to a point where its more beneficial to find planets and just destroy them back down to nuetral rather than take them, since if you colonize them pirates, rebels and smaller empires come and attack them and you dont have the resources to defend them.

I thought a huge part of this game was battle tactics and strategy. If this theoretical game of yours only has 9 planets in it, then I doubt either of you would be maxed out in ships because it is such a small game. You could easily fight back and win. Of course the person with 6 planets has the upper hand, but shouldn't he? After all he managed to get twice as many planets as you in the same amount of time. If you feel the need to give up when the odds are slightly tipped in his favor, just because YOU failed to expand as well as he did, then maybe you shouldn't be playing in the first place.
BTW I'm not trying to be mean, just trying to argue my point that the current system is flawed.

Thats why I really beleive an empire should be able to build ships based on its economic standings, which may not be the same as the number of planets it controls. I don't entirely follow this argument of giving up once you're at a disadvantage. Wouldn't you be at a disadvantage say, if your opponent out manuevered you and destroyed your fleet?