Idea to improve fleet control

I like this escort idea.  Lets say you have your fleet. (I am going to use the vasari since I like them the best)

So lets say you have your fleet,

It has 3 caps 1 carrier, and 2 others of your choice.

20 Enforcers,

20 assailants

7 Overseer

10 Transporter

7 Subverter,

6 sentinal? (flak)

What if you could assine 2 overseer and 2 flak to your caps,

2 of each to your Enforcers and then the rest can free float.

Now how about your transporters.  what if we could assin the fighters to protect an assinged group of ships. (say the enforcers).

Your subveters kind of have there own thing going on, but what if we could assign a couple for our enforcers again. 

I downloaded the beta patch and I don't really like hows its gone.  I like how carriers are important now, but come on there is just to many strike craft now.  I want my old flak back.  I think it would be cool to allow support ships to either pick there targets or watch over a group of ships its assigned. 

I like this idea, I'd also like to see in a future expansion an entirely new ship that's sole purpose is to protect, buff capital ships.

Personally I think that the second, ect expansion should focus on a very advanced fleet management system. A dynamic and powerful fleet management system has never been developed and I think that this game is a perfect opportunity for one because of its different  races, units and scale. I am talking about a system that can be easy for noobs and as advanced as a player wishes and maybe even an option to not use it at all for those players that would rather just throw there forces in. Below I will detail this idea as best I can:

Why? Well to start off I would like to say that for 1 it would look really cool to have total control over fleet formations. Can you imagine how elegant your battles can be when your fleet sweeps in using a beautiful formation you created to obliterate your opponent. Secondly and more importantly it can open up entire new strats in the game. Especally with the first expansion focusing on bunkering down I think it makes since for future releases to create a way to tune though these defenses. not by having some uber mega fleet that just gets launched at it like lambs to the slaughter but an intelligent fleet that has user created fleet actions that can thus adapt to changing conditions.

How? To simplify this I will first create a list of things that will be needed in order for this to work:

1) Ability to create divisions, squads ect

            a) User can define how many of a given ship will make up the smallest group and how many groups to put in a division

2) Ability to set actions of a per group unit level and ability to tell larger groups such as the fleet to break formation causing it to then split into the next smallest group size that composes it.

            a) User can define a smaller group to only target a particular type of uint at a particular range

            support for target importance

3) Ability to say where in the formation a given unit will go.

4) Ability to define fleet speed and movement

5) Sandbox for fleet testing, allows players to see that there settings work the way they want

6) Formation save system, a simple system that allows users to save advanced custom fleet formations that they can select and use during games. Maybe even support to dl ones that others made on the internet.

Example:

User goes into the fleet editor, they start by defining one small group of units lets call it group 1. The player can then define the types of units that will be found in group 1. Lets say the player decides to put a cap ship and 2 light frigates. Now the user can go into sand box mode for some more advanced configs. Once in the mode the user can now select the frigates and directly place them where he wants in relation to the cap ship. Once saved these ships will always go in this formation when assigned to group 1. Note though that group 1 will only have three units. If you select other units in game other than these three for this formation only the units that support it will fall in. Now lets continue, the user now has group 1 but fleets are composed of many groups ranging in different sizes. So lets create another group called group 2. In group 2 we will have three heavy cursers in a V formation. Now that we have some groups lets make a fleet and even some divisions! The user now selects make new fleet, The user can now select how many sub fleets, ect this formation will have. The user selects the following:

3 sub fleets

            Sub fleet one: 3 divisions -> Division 1-3 = Group 2

            Sub fleet two: 2 divisions -> Division 1-2 = Group 1

            Sub fleet three: 3 divisions  -> Division 1-3 = Group2

The user can now go into the sand box and control where the divisions and sub fleets are in relation to each other. Later special attack rules and even ranges can be given to each section individually. Each low level grouping has an option to override larger orders so that it’s personal settings will be used instead of any commands assigned to a group above it. Lets say that for example the main fleet is ordered to only attack trade ships that come into range and to hold formation. With this setting any ship that is in range of a trade ship will open fire on it and attack nothing else other than that one ship. If however sub fleet one and three had a command to attack any ship that comes into range they would only attack ships other than the trade ship if they were set to ignore large orders. Note though that if the user tells sub fleet 3 to break formation it will then operate independently as it’s own fleet until it is ordered to reattach its self to the corresponding fleet. Users can use generalized commands or even anyone else to define ships and locations that they would not otherwise have. This way if a user wants extra ships that are not intended for the fleets formation to “tag along” they can have a preset space within the fleets formation to place these “extra” ships. Otherwise if a user has like 10 different ships selected and tells them to get into a formation that only sues two types of ships then only that formation will be created. The user ends up modifying this fleet to have a V formation of heavy cursers in independent V formations of 3 with 2 groups of cap ships and frigate escorts backed up by a closing formation of heavy cruisers. The fleet logic is able to predict the most likely place to put an extra ship in the even that there is extra. For example lets say that the user selected all the ships needed for the formation but had selected 1 extra cap ship. The best formation for that cap ship was Group1 division 1 or 2 in sub fleet two. As a result the games logic creates a third division in subfleet two and places the cap ship in there. It will then try to place the ship in the fleet in the most logical place based on where the user put the first two divisions. If the user later builds two frigates and sends them to the fleet they will join that cap ship as escorts in a group 1 formation within the fleet.

I know that this sounds really confusing but I really do think this can be done in a simple and powerful way that opens up amazing possibilities for this game. I hope that some people can understand the direction I am going in and build on it so that we can hopefully get some amazing new features like this in future versions. I figured I best stop here before this single post gets any longer than it needs to be.

 i definitely think there should be a defend button as in idea one .  the third idea is the same actually since you would be able to select the units you want to use as defense and just use the defend command on the ship you want them to defend and the others should still be in attacking anyway. 

To zeroibis.. the division system might get too complicated it might be easier for someone to position the ships in a formation ingame and then having an UI button that would set the fleet at that formation.  Another way would be to have a unit behavior button that would assign all units of that type to stay at the front, middle or back of that units fleet.

Yes but, what I am also saying is the ability to have some ships attack only particular targets. For example

When you fellt moves past 1 enemy unit each ship fires 1 shot at it and by the time the fleet has passed it it has been destroyed. (assuming your formation is in a single file line)

Or you have the fleet in one formation and then instantly split it into several to turn the tables on your oponent and begin to out flank him.

Maybe i should word this more as a "defend lock" command so unless it is unlocked they stick close to their escortie rather than following other orders.

-G

Now there is the answer.

In that case there should be the ability to set them from that formation to one where the samller ships put themselves in the way so that they will take the hits from enemy weapons thus protecting the bigger ship with there lives. This would be usefull for defending a cap ship that you need to escape with.

i see what you mean. that is a great idea.  It would also be nice though if you could right click on a friendly target(including structures and planets or maybe even allied targets) to temporarily defend it as well.

anyone here played cossacks? or watched legend of galactic heroes?

in cossacks you can win even if it's one squad versus 3 squad, that if, you are a good commander, in sins, number plays the major role

in legend of galactic heroes, there are many fleet battle so it's also a good example for my suggestion

i think what is lacking in sins is that, the fleet control is way too simple, the game is just "hit the enemy" and that's all...

anyways, what im suggesting is that it should have formations and orders

formation- + formation, X formation, line formation etc, like rock paper scissor, each of them have advantage and disadvantage

orders- order 1- attack randomly, order 2, only attack 1 target, order 3, encircle the enemy

another things that are missing are

the range and dexterity - the attack and accuracy should be stronger if the target is nearer. of course there are ships that are strong in far places, but they will become weak in near fight

ship experience - each ship should have their own kill count, and every fight they make will make them stronger

I heavily agree with this. Sins needs a more strategic fight system.

more often then not numbers play a huge role in the game. granted if you have more you should win more often but even in close fights its basically about micro and hope you win.

One of the things I hate about the RTS model is that you end up "swarming" units all the time. Battles resemble sheepherding more than they do real fights, and tactical decisions are meaningless because skills such as focus firing prove decisive. It is basically just a clickfest. As previous posters have noted, this does not resemble real fleet engagements at all.

Military diagrams are often drawn with symbols representing bodies of troops, not single troops. See for example http://www.zoi.wordherders.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/austerlitz_map_battle.jpg. Since Sins is supposed to be less hectic and more fleet oriented than a pure RTS, this suggests a simple solution to the problems ZEROibis has.

Instead of making the player control formations, the stacking idea in the fleet menu could be used to group ships together. In a fleet, the designers could specify that there could be no more than, say, ten groups of frigates/carriers/heavy cruisers at a time. If you have more than ten frigates, they would be grouped into units which move and are commanded together (a "stack"). On the zoomed out version of the map interface, they would appear as a single, larger version of the empire symbol.

This would solve many problems. The load on the player to manage fleet movements would be lower because you would be handling less objects on the map. You wouldn't have trouble selecting a single icon out of a group of 50 because there would only be, say, 10 icons. Performing tactical movements like flanking would be a real possibility, as opposed to the current system where you are mostly group selecting and directing ships as if they were fish.

I'd also suggest that units grouped together in this way have damage distributed between them according to some algorithm. This would represent ships blocking fire for each other and taking advantage of being grouped together. This would reduce the reliance on focus firing in large battles. Groups could also be affected together by skills such as ion bolt. Using such skills in large engagements on smaller ships would then be worthwhile.

Of course, that would require changing the game much more than the designers probably feel like doing.

#1 #2 #3 #5 are about fleet control,

how about the idea about the capital ship is the only one who can form fleet, and killing the capital ship will cause the disbandment of the fleet formation, of course the capital ship can order other ship to block the attack by sacrificing themselves. To block the attack, the defender should be in front of the attacker, meaning, if many attacker will attack the capital ship, then many defender should block the way for the capital ship to block all attacks

i also like to add that the no. of fleet the capital can control are all will depend on the level of the capital ship this way the problem about "the capital ship is not too useful in later fight" will be solved

2 capital ship in 1 fleet will minus the lower-leveled capital ship's fleet control by 50%, if they have same level, the system will choose randomly or the one with higher experience

#4- i like this idea, a must! first for strategy purpose, strategy game must have!

One thing that I think is clearly needed would be the development of range based dammage. This would then create huge changes in the way that diferent ships need to engage in order to be effective.

I agree with everything here, this game is based around the fleets so it seems only natural to improve upon the managment of them with a few simple ideas that honestly seem overlooked.