Idea for avoiding megastacks of ships

SuicideJunkie · Leaky Guru Joined: May 28, 2005 Location: Canada!

There is a natural tendency to gather all ships into one giant ball of doom, and roll around wiping out any smaller balls of doom in battle.

Supply limitations could be set up to help reduce that and make things more dynamic and distributed.

First off, supplies (and ordnance) should be made important by limiting their production rate and having ships spawn empty so you can't just build a tanker full of supplies in the middle of nowhere.
Ship-borne supply generation should be expensive and/or inefficient. Useful on a deep explorer scout, but not useful for ships of the line.
Stationary bases can be reasonable supply producers, as that will allow the player to create a deep space military post without needing a planet to be there.

Supply production can also be made more distributed by having small colonies produce them too. An additional ability to organics farms and other common facilities for example.

Finally, scripting in a supply use for ships even if they are not moving will complete the system.

Results:
1) Ships can be sent to permanently guard individual colonies, but only in limited numbers based on the infrastructure there.
2) Extra ships can be stockpiled one tile away from the planet and be left there to run out of supply and pseudo-mothball themselves. They won't consume supplies once they're at zero, but can be quickly brought back into service by moving to the planet or fleeting with a tanker.
3) Large combat-ready fleets will deplete local stockpiles of supply when defending a warppoint (for example), so such actions can only be afforded in the short term, such as when an attack is known to be incoming. Inexpensive scouts will be important to predict such attacks!
4) Offensive fleets pushing into enemy territory will not be significantly affected once they are on their way since they'll be moving quickly and fighting hard for a short period of time.
Given the restricted supply generation, however, they will deplete the supply stockpiles back at home as they are mobilized and make their way to the front.
If there are no supply lines going to the fleet from the core worlds, then stockpiles in the border systems they cross through will have to be used and that could leave the system vulnerable to counterattacks.
5) Securing a captured system will be more difficult, since the local ships will need a large influx of supplies to keep the ships combat ready while local infrastructure is built to support them.
Counterattacks from the invaded empire will have the benefit of full infrastructure and local supplies in the neighbouring systems.

ekolis · Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 7:15 pm Post subject:

Interesting.

I don't think you'd even need script to make ships consume supplies each turn, either. Just give the hulls a negative supply generation ability (preferably proportional to their tonnage), and you should be good to go!

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

How about building it into components that would naturally use "power," so it scales to ship designs? A hull value is too static.

Skyburn · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 12, 2008

Giving static defense bases a boost in weapons range also cuts down on big bunched up fleets. The bunched fleet will overkill on its targets and the bases will snipe at them from afar, which makes several smaller task forces useful when attacking arrays of defense bases.