Have you ever been entrenched behind your frontline worlds, waiting for that second fleet to build, or research to be done, or even for the other guy to attack you first?
And all of a sudden, you get the generic "Enemy Fleet Incoming" cue. You get excited, and a bit worried, and scroll to the planet in question, and......!!!!
A single scout ship, or carrier, or something silly.
The backstory to this: in standard Sins, its easy to ignore, but im playing a Battlestar Galactica Mod atm, and everytime an incoming ship is detected and announced, the game plays a clip from the series, something like "Cylon BaseStar, co-ordinates blah blah blah". its very cool, rather informative, or it would be, if it didnt refer to a single scout ship or light carrier as a BaseStar. (i personally consider a BaseStar like a capital ship). as it is, its really annoying to have 2 or more ships arrive one after the other and set off this 15 second alert sound, with no real benefit.
now, i realise thats a mod, and not reflective of what happens in normal Sins, but it got me thinking
Wouldnt it be much more helpful if Audio Cues and the Status Popups at the bottom of the screen would reflect exactly what is happening? So, if the audio cue said something like "A single ship is enroute to one of our planets?/enroute to <insert planet name here>?"
or a medium size fleet is enroute to X, so on and so forth. in general, the audio cues in general are so unhelpful. even when AI or your own announcer says: our re-inforcements are joining the battle at... wait, what re-inforcements? i didnt said any reinforcements... oh, yeah, there is a battle at a planet where Trade/Refinery Ships are going... so yeah... i sent some unarmed cargo ships as reinforcement, yay me!
Even when your ships are being attacked: Our Fleet is under attack!!
wait, what fleet? oh yeah, that scout ship or colony ship or cargo ship is being attacked, i guess that constitutes a fleet...
basically, it needs a major overhaul... well, doesnt need, but such a system has such great potential, and leaving it as is is a travesty.
Recommendations:
- Creating some sort of generic fleet sizes. So 1-6 ships is a 'scouting party', 7-21 is a 'Strike Force' 22-40 is a 'Task Force', 40-60 is a 'Strike Fleet', 60-80 is a 'Medium Fleet' 80-100 is a 'Large Fleet' and 100+ is an 'Invasion Fleet'.
If a Capital Ship is part of a group or fleet, then each grouping would have 'Command' added as a prefix of suffix (as required)
- Cargo Ships should be somehow removed from being considered part of a battle. But if a number of Cargo Ships are being destroyed within a short period of time in the same GW, then some sort of cue like "Our Trade Routes are being attacked/pirated/disrupted" etc etc with some sort of locational info.
- Using the fleet sizes from point 1 to describe incoming fleets, what size of friendly fleet is under attack etc etc.
- A Notification when a large number of enemy ships build up one jump away from one of your planets.
- Making AI 'reinforcements' only count as such when they are actually joining a battle with one of your 'fleets', and not a scout of cargo ship
there are many other things that could also be changed, this is just a few things to put the thought out there and get the ball rolling.
i think this is definitly a good idea for Diplomacy, if not simply in general.