i don’t know about you guys with your fleets and stuff, but i think the campaign needs a HUGE overhall
I’d agree there, even though I don’t know what your specific gripes are. So, to give folks something to comment on, I’ll post my own.
1. Random Challenge Fleets vs. Go With What You Got
The enemy fleets are all drawn from posted challenges. However, in normal challenge play, you at least know in general what you’re up against and can build a whole new fleet from scratch at the spur of the moment. In the campaign, however, you’re stuck with the fleet you’ve already built. Given that challenge fleets are full of every conceivable AI exploit and rock/paper/scissors idea, your existing fleet might whip one enemy but get slaughtered by the next. So, to get around this, the best strategy seems to be sitting and hitting “Next Turn” 99% of the time building up enough resources to create an unstoppable juggernaught. No matter what the enemy shows up, you can at least swamp him with sheer numbers. Boring.
2. Inconsistent Enemies
Consider “The Veiled Region” to the right of, and connected ONLY to, your homeworld. It doesn’t have a shipyard, so whatever enemy fleet is there when your first recon fighters slip in for peek and immediately retreat should still be there a few turns later when you’ve built a fleet to crush this enemy. But now there’s a totally different enemy fleet there. How?
3. Enemy Ignoring Anomalies
Suppose there’s a system that doesn’t allow cruisers in it, and you don’t have enough frigates handy to attack it. So you leave a small fleet of frigates guarding the adjacent system while your cruisers go attack something else. But guess what? Attacking from out of the anomaly is a huge fleet of cruisers that quickly vaporizes your frigates. Huh?
4. Pilots vs. Crew
Others have mentioned this. Suppose you don’t want to build hundreds of fighters, but can’t build enough cruisers because you’re short on crew. Why can’t you repurpose pilots as crewmen? Or vice versa? I think it would be better if you always had enough crewmen but the academies only made pilots.
i have to say yes to all of these
i was thinking some stuff to though
like, territory for the enemy, doesn’t seem a bit weird that it’s you vs the world, or ,maybe the galaxy in this fashion, so the enemies have territory that fluctuates and limits what they can build just like us. there needs to be mod support to this cannot be stressed enough it is far to bland by itself. we need to be able to build buildings on planets its gets you more involved with the game. ability tho edit a fleet design even though its already in the campaign, how this works first you upgrade it then all the previous ships get a temporary save file for their design if you move the ship to a shipyard that can handle them a button shows up that says “refit” with a money figure, that makes the ship advance to the latest design
@Dafrandle
I’d rather not mess with all of the Realistic Space Empire stuff of building planetary infrastructure. This game is GRATUITOUS, after all :).
I would prefer something that lets you customize your fleet during the deployment screen, to give you a better chance of dealing with whatever random enemy shows up. But doing this requires some form of plausibility, even in a gratuitous campaign. So here’s what I propose…
When you zoom in on the map, the links between stars always have HUNDREDS of ships zipping back and forth between systems, thumbing their noses at blockades and mooning customs officials. I suggest that these non-combatant ships serve military purposes.
First, they provide intel of what’s in the next star system. So, when a battle starts and you’re at the deployment screen, you can click on the enemy ships and see what modules they have.
Second, they are your FLEET SUPPLY TRAIN! We already have a fleet supply train–it’s what fixes all the damaged fighters and restocks repair modules after battles without needing to visit a shipyard. I merely propose adding to it some large transports that carry around scads of modules of different types. This would allow you to swap out modules on your ships during the deployment phase. I mean, why else build ships on a modular construction system? THIS is why!
So, you’re at the deployment screen. You know the enemy numbers, formation, and modules, but not their orders. You now have limited access to the Ship Designer. You cannot build new hulls (that takes a shipyard), nor can you remove existing ships from your order of battle, but you can swap out any and all modules on your existing ships to meet the enemy you now face.
Now, this will require changes in the accounting system. First off, crewmen, because different module combinations will change crew requirements. But as I said before, I’d prefer that the game always assume you have enough crewmen. I mean, worst comes to worst, you can always impress crewmen off all the passing non-combattant ships, like the Royal Navy used to do.
So then there’s money. You should, in theory, have to pay for all the spare modules youre fleet trains are lugging around. But rather than be all anal about having to buy specific extra modules and keep track of which ones are used, just do this. When you build a new ship, make all its modules cost 2-3 times as much as normal, this money being assumed to go into buying the spare modules carried by the fleet trains.
There’s also the question of damaged modules. Well, if the fleet trains can fix fighters and restock repair modules, why can’t they also repair ship modules? So, let them. Have all damage be repaired after a battle, not just to fighters. Then there’d be no need of repair yards, and they could be replaced by shipyards and/or academies.