Grouping Ships.

Have you ever noticed how the game groups ships by spreading them out across the map, but humans (generally) group all their ships in a small cluster? Is this a problem, no… but it doesn’t seem as strategic, or fun in my oppinion.

Here is an idea though, what if there was a weapon with a large amount of splash damage, or a weapon that could hit multiple targets like a beam or something along those lines? You could balance this weapon by making it slow, and not extremely powerful, but still make it kick the crap out of people who always group their ships together. This would a lot more strategy to the game, make placement of ships important, and force you to have a variety of combat styles. No more bowl through the middle with plasma cannons strategy.

Feedback is welcome.

I agree, I think GSB sorely needs some sort of area effect weapon. Something balanced so it’s only more efficient than a normal weapon if at least, say, 3 ships are within it’s AOE.

I’ve beaten too many fleets by making cheap cruisers that are very lopsided on offensive power over defense… And so densely packed that they deliver that firepower so absurdly fast that the opposition can’t get a shot off. It’d be nice if there was some sort of siege weapon that could disrupt this sort of formation…

On that note: doesn’t even have to be a superpowered massivedeathkill weapon. It could just be an area-of-effect ECM blast. Or a weapon that strongly nudges ships away from the impact point (thus scattering that careful formation.) Or a shield disruptor. Whatever :slight_smile:

An alternative to AOE, in case the game engine can’t handle the concept (although I’d imagine it could, the blast from ships exploding works fine)… A chain lightning style weapon, that will bounce from ship to ship (dealing reduced damage on each bounce, perhaps by distance traveled.)

You said it more elegantly than I could, this is exactly what I was looking for. A weapon that is bad for less than 3 but effective past that point. Grouping would still have it’s advantages, at times. But fleet setup as seen in the scenarios would be more logical, and more importantly tactical! Yeah!!!

Has anyone tried stacking cruisers on top of each other? (It can happen; sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t) If one gets destroyed, no matter what weapon it is, all the other get destroyed. I think it’s because of the shockwaves and the space hulk crashing into the hull. Cliff confirmed this somewhere, although i forget where.

The only current area of effect damage is from frigate and cruiser detonations. It’s not crippling, but it’s pretty noticeable. I’ve witnessed quite a few chain-reaction deaths with uber-stacked ships.
The possibilities of future area-of-effect damage weapons remains open. There are just many things that need to be done right now, not least a demo and actually finishing the game ready for it’s initial release.