If you set a ship's auto-attack range to weapon range only, and then order it to attack something outside of its weapon range, it will turn as if to attack the target, but will not move to attack it. You have to order it to move closer to the target before it will attack. The exception to this is if the target is a planet, a ship will still move to bomb a planet regardless of auto-attack range.

yeah, I noticed that. if I'm ordering a ship to a target, I think it should move regardless.

I agree, that is a bug we'll fix asap.

I think random solar events would be some nice polish to be sure.

Yeah, but if we do the solar flares thing, nobody will ever want to ever be around stars. So there will never be any huge battles around them like we talked about earlier. = stars become useless zones.

@Para, therein lies the glory my friend. I would want one choke point outside of my systems for any major engagements even with the risk of Random Solar Events (RSE)!! Moreover if an event would happen and severely hurt my opponent then I may want to seize the day and turn my defensive fleet into an offensive one and if all goes well maybe then press the conflict into the enemy's home territory.

With that said I would not want to see a 360 degree flare or Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) -etc... I hope that any events would be realistically modeled and randomly triggered.

Trigger-able solar events might be an interesting ability (racial or otherwise). It would give say the Vasari a big advantage when fighting around a sun. You'd have to balance it by using a lot of antimatter and having a cool down time but it would make the Vasari's tactics and anti-Vasari tactics even more unique.

it would also make them massively broken.
a triggerable solar flare? I dont think so.

oh you coward...
choke points are strategically nice, but unless you have multiple (at LEAST 3) then it stagnates gameplay.

personally I believe the current system of a 700% phasespace increase when going from star to star should be kept, however I would appreciate the ability to go between distant planets with no speed increase. this would allow for a major benefit from using stars, but also it would remove the element of a single chokepoint.

additionally I think that any planet-to-planet jump should not be detected for a long time into the jump, otherwise you face issues with people just building a hell of a lot of static defenses to block incomers.

Hmmm, as long as players can't create facilities and platforms at stars, they won't really become impenetrable choke points. Any battles at these locations will consist solely of fleet versus fleet engagements. If you move your entire fleet to a star in an attempt to create a strategic choke point, your opponent always has the option of sending his entire fleet to engage you at that location. Victory in these situations wills still come down to numbers, quality, fleet content and tactics....as it should be.

Of course, if Ironclad doesn't create a Phase Space Interdiction ship, it will be extremely rare for battles to occur around stars. So please allow us Phase Space Interdiction ships. Perhaps these ships could be balanced by a Interdiction range or by AM usage.

Also, sensors need to have MUCH shorter ranges for detecting inbound enemy ships/fleets. Research upgrades for sensors could increase the range at which inbound ships are detected. This sensor range system should also be used for star to star fleet detection.

all you need to do is place a nice shiny big fleet at the star, and smaller ones around the 4 - connected planets with a few gauss cannons and defense platforms and, wam, impenetrable fortress.

trust me, its an issue. mostly because in the 15 minutes it take one fleet to get between stars, you can already have built a matching fleet to repel them.

no, it will come down largely to production capacity, production capacity, production capacity, production capacity, and the slightest bare hint of higher level thinking in the defender. ah, almost forgot production capacity.

creating a force that is large enough to take another solar system, defeat a fleet, take a planet, defend that planet from counterattack etc. etc. is neigh impossible. its not enough simply to beat the enemies fleet at the star. after that you have to take a planet, colonize it, defeat all of its defenses (of which there should be plenty), defend it from counterattack until you can get a serious defense going. I doubt even Sun Tzu or General Lee could do that.

and why would you say that...

already is, as far as I've seen.

@Schem - one of the reason the devs used to justify the phase lanes was natural choke points. Using the star as the choke point or "gateway" to the system is only reasonable. Additionally I dont follow your need number of three points need with regards to the number of points one would need to not stagnate play especially given that the number of stars is not fixed. Moreover your argument of stagnant play does not wash either, as the stars would be no different then a planet in that respect.

The stars however when used as a gateway to other stars, as it is now and with fleet defense does allow for massive fights between many factions that likely would not normally occur in system combat due to the nature of the game.

I suspect it's because you could jump and jump, particularly if you know where an adjacent planet is and use that as your target instead of the star

yep. The same jumping issue that plagues the planets also plagues the stars. Again as I sad in my prior post the stars are really treated as "planets" except you cant build anything round them. There needs to be some unique dynamic developed for the stars that can be shared or monopolized that players will want badly enough to station fleets at stars other then just for gate keeping purposes.

I've been on the 'make ships that can do phase space interdiction' bandwagon for while now. This will be sure to make stars highly contested critical strategic zones. It will also be very necessary for some the mods we want to do with this game.

However, there are other ideas floating around the forum for how to make stars relevant. One in particular that caught my eye was put forward by Sjet.

Maybe a special ship can be created that sits by stars and generates the necessary antimatter for running your civilization. So, you would create a ship that while it sits around a star, adds ?% bonus to your credit income. Or, that ship could spawn trade-like transports that solely deliver antimatter (credits) to your colonies.

Hmmm, but how do you stop players from making a hundred of these things around each star? Maybe some kind of diminished return % system. Or maybe a planet can only dock 1 AM (credit) transport per every 5 minutes?

Ideally, of course, we would have ships with phase space interdiction AND AM/credit generating ships around stars. As the great gaming Buddha once said "the more the merrier".

I'm stating that making it one choke point stagnates the game. simple assertion, and I'm pretty sure one that most people would agree with.
its already difficult with your enemy knowing that you're coming with a whole fragment of an hour to prepare, its not justified to have ONE defense point, not in any way I see.

they can do that some other way, without making it nearly impossible to breach a star system.
I for one, am a hardcore defense artist. I prefer a DIFFICULT defensive manuver, countering enemy force flow of many quick units with overlapping fields of fire, fewer, slower, but more powerful ships. that to me is fun. sitting at a star and completely making a metal fortress out of it is not.

it sounds too simple and cheezy to me. I'm thinking something more complex, like a research giving all of your ships bonuses if you have control of a star within a solar system (SMALL bonuses) or like I said, allowing accelerated jumps to other galaxies. I still have an issue with the idea of being able to stop an enemy by simply sitting your ass down on a star and doing crazy-defensive on its ass.

which brings up a proposal; I think planets that have excessive defense platforms should suffer diminished returns. (but for gods sake, boost the power of the turrets).
this would make sense (hey, should we be living here if it really is THIS likely to be attacked???) and it would also bring a more complex duality between your war machine and your civilian engine, beyond the simple economy-stress of the percentile-thingy.

I've been messing with the turrets for awhile now, my favorite mod of them is 3 shots, 0.2 seconds apart with a 8 second cool down, and I doubled their damage output, they now can take out a frigate in 2-3 salvos, making them deadly... I also gave them shields and anit-matter storage, and increased their range by 1000. I feel they are now worthy targets of bombers, as before they were just targets for any ship that wanted to attack them. I think twice now about assaulting them with 3-4 frigates.

I tried that, but it looks cheezy as only the first shot makes a sound/makes a visual explosion
it also doesnt quite fit the look of a large artillery cannon (or railgun)

I'm just posting this not because the damn board posted my response twice, but because you know my typing is hot.

I think what ever if any benefits given for having "control" of an area around a star should be energy based and or have a science bonus. I also agree with the phase space interdiction ship idea as long as it is run off of AM and has a limited range.

Moreover I also agree that the turrets are way under powered and should have shields and modified my game accordingly. I did basically what lordkos did except I boosted the range by 1500.

At the moment the only thing I can see being built at a star is a space station. One that provides diplomatic, cultural, energy and science bonuses. I think it should be very expensive and have a limited defensive ability but also serve as a repair station. It could also store AM for fleets.

I disagree about turrets. Twelve in a pattern with overlapping fields of fire has been plenty to destroy smaller offensive (two or three capitals, a handful of frigates), and turrets alone should not be effective enough to stop a large attack; supporting your defenses should be necessary to prevent a properly-sized fleet from rolling over your planet.

Regarding Legerdemain's comment, neutralization of "the whack a mole" perception, of which I disagree with was the reason for phased lanes. These of course inherently promote a lazy defensive posture as well as counterintuitive platform development. So most people will simply develop a single mega fleet and follow the lanes to each end point repeating as needed and leave cursory defenses behind the "line" as it changes since they know the enemy can basically only come from one or two directions.

Phase Lanes will likely encourage stalemates within star systems and I am pretty sure we will be seeing this first hand when the multiplayer beta comes out. As there are usually only 1 or 2 lane ways to attack your opponent, it is easy to fall into a fortification mindset...especially if both players are about equal in terms of fleets and resources. Sure, they might have the same size fleet, but the defender will have the advantage of first shot, strike craft already in position, cheaper platform defenses and facility based warp inhibitors = death to the attacker. Hell, the attacker could even have an extra planet or 2 and they still won't be able to crack the defenders shell.

IF the developers ever decide to use star to star Phase Lane in series , and fully connected inner star systems, then we might be able to minimize stalemates without experiencing crazy 'whack-a-mole'. Of course, stars will still become choke points, but at least the attacker will have a chance because the defender won't have a ton of more cost effective platforms helping them out.

What do you guys think?

Hmm... flesh it out for me Para!!!

Go-go Para!!!

Er, my point is that modding turrets to be way stronger is promoting the whole fortification mindset--as it stands, a decently-sized fleet can in fact overwhelm a defensive setup (excepting things like the ring of fifty-some hangars and fifty-some bomber squadrons that somebody used). Making turrets stronger means that there's way less of a motivation to keep any ships at all in reserve, and that attacks against the one or two points you can attack against get harder.

What needs to happen is that phase inhibitors can only inhibit one phase lane, and must be placed on that lane's entrance/exit in the system. That way, phase inhibitors prevent instant deep penetration into an empire; the location of the phase inhibitor preventing retreat means that it can be blown easily enough to allow hit and fade attacks, which of course help to prevent massive defenses from being built up.

If anything needs to change about tactical structures, they either need to be limited in number in some way, or their power needs to be /reduced/, so that even in large numbers they don't create stalemates all by themselves.

Personally I dont think a fleet of less then say an equal mix of 50 ships should be able to trash a home world of another player if a basic defense system is in place. Sadly enough that simply is not the case with the game right now. I can trash most home worlds with less then 12 ships on the hard settings. I attribute this to the rather weak static defense gun platforms.