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Original post by TechnoGoth Masters of Orion 1 and 2 had the best ship design system in my opinion. Plenty of different ways to design and customize your ships. The first one went with the masses of ship idea, while the second had smaller numbers of ships.

Yes now I remember from MOO1 all those tiny ship stacks (thousands of them or more being destroyed by the hundreds with single shots of doom rays). This ship masses concept of MOO1 was abandoned by recent games but I think it still deserves a second look since it could help on late game fleet micromanagement.

However I have to say that I don't fancy the idea of having thousands of tiny ships crawling around. I would prefer that those ships could be associated with the design of carriers or large battlecruisers as support units (that is what they are anyway). These could be modules of small fighters and bomber units (kinda like the vipers in Battlestar Galactica). After each battle the number of ships could be re-established via normal repair in any nearby planet starbase.

look at how Sin of a Solar Empire uses strike craft. Sure you can go in and directly manipulate each craft if you want, but they group them into squadrens. You can also go in and directly assign squadrons a particular target, but they allow you to assign them to a quick group (or just alt select to select all within a gravity well), and these you can assign to a particular target.

So, if you think about it, if you have an all carrier fleet (and I have :D ) you can literally be directing thousands of these strike craft. At around 6 craft in a squadron and a carrier controlling 2 to 3 squadrons, and having around 100 carriers, this is actually around 1,800 craft.

Now instead of needing the 100 craft, if you allowed ConCom ships and factory ships as the "Carriers", then you could have these thousands of strike craft at you control.

Some suggestions as to the type of strike craft (you don't want many types):
Interceptors: Good at taking out slow moving bombers.
Fighter/Bombers: Good at taking out ConCom/Factory ships, and Fighters.
Fighter: Good at taking out Interceptors.

ConCom/Factory Ships: Defence systems are good at taking out Interceptors and Bombers.

Now, instead of directing every single ship, you essentially direct the swarm of them. The player places a "tactical point" somewhere on the map and the strike craft fly there and take out any targets in their sights automatically.

There is a game called "Attack of the Killer Swarm" at the experimental gameplay project (http://experimentalgameplay.com). The idea of this is that you control a killer swarm by clicking the mouse at a point and the swarm flies there and throws a person up in the air to kill them. Each particle of the swarm is independent and moves by itself, just as each strike craft in my idea would.

Players would not be able to directly issue orders to a strike craft (or even a squad), but would control them on mass, and the ships would try to perform the best they could.

In a way it would be a bit like controlling a single ship where that ship had a lot of weapons that could fire. But, instead of the weapons just vanishing at the target, they would instead return to the ConCom/Factory ship for refulgent and rearming (and they would ahve a longer range, and could destroy each other).

Combat will not be about who has the biggest guns, but who has the greatest stamina and how much resources one is willing to risk for a particular objective or location.

I'm about to commit 4x sacrilege, but here goes: I think Master of Orion 3 was on the right track with its "task forces". Of course, as with everything else in that game, it was a good idea done horribly wrong.

Instead of first building your ships and then assembling them into fleets, I think it should be done the other way around. When I'm preparing for war with another civilization, why should I have to micro-manage every single ship that's built? Given X number of ship classes, I should be able to dictate how many fleets I want, what they consist of, and where they're located, all without having to submit individual build orders. The nice thing about this, IMO, is that building a single ship becomes a subset of this mechanic - in that case, I'm just saying to build a fleet of one ship.

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However I have to say that I don't fancy the idea of having thousands of tiny ships crawling around. I would prefer that those ships could be associated with the design of carriers or large battlecruisers as support units (that is what they are anyway). These could be modules of small fighters and bomber units (kinda like the vipers in Battlestar Galactica). After each battle the number of ships could be re-established via normal repair in any nearby planet starbase.

I sort of feel like I’m waving the Masters of Orion 2 is the greatest 4X game banner but MOO2 had what you suggested for strike craft. There were 4 type (fighter, bomber, heavy fighter, and assault craft) they always had the best tech available and were basically just weapons on a ship. The only difference was that they had to fly to the target, could be destroyed, and if the target was destroyed would attack the next nearest target until they ran out of ammo and returned to the carrier.

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Players would not be able to directly issue orders to a strike craft (or even a squad), but would control them on mass, and the ships would try to perform the best they could.

The swarm concept gave me an interesting idea for battles with hundreds or thousands of ships it would be an interesting concept to set you battles though the old military screen mark up.

You would have meshes that you manipulate to create the size and shape of group in your battle plan. There might be a large wing comprising 1000 lightly armed probes leading the way followed by a block line of missile ships. And you just direct them by drawing lines on the battle map.

If want the probes to advance to wards the centre of the enemy fleet at full speed attacking all target of opportunity. You would select full speed, and attack all and then drawn a line to where you wanted them to go. The game would handle the rest. Like wise you could select the bombardment option and draw a line though the enemy fleet to direct your missile ships to fire an equal spread of missiles along that line.

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Instead of first building your ships and then assembling them into fleets, I think it should be done the other way around. When I'm preparing for war with another civilization, why should I have to micro-manage every single ship that's built? Given X number of ship classes, I should be able to dictate how many fleets I want, what they consist of, and where they're located, all without having to submit individual build orders.

I agree its an idea that has only been mentioned a few times, but it would be nice to design a fleet by selecting the ships and formations you wanted to make up that fleet and then select the shipyards you want to produce that fleet and let the game deal with the production queues for the individual vessels.

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Original post by TechnoGoth I agree its an idea that has only been mentioned a few times, but it would be nice to design a fleet by selecting the ships and formations you wanted to make up that fleet and then select the shipyards you want to produce that fleet and let the game deal with the production queues for the individual vessels.

That's really what I meant - I just didn't go into that much detail. :P