new Combined Arms-enhancing Command: "Get In and Get Out"

Cliffski has expressed his desire to see strategy in this game involve ships of many different types supporting each other to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. This ideal can be contrasted with situation in GSB1, which broke down into long-ranged fleets (kill the enemy before they get into range and kill you), rush fleets (get up close with the enemy and kill them before all your ships die), and anti-rush fleets (hit the rush fleet with lots of DPS right before it comes into range, weakening it enough to win at close range).

Most of these fleets involved ships that shared a common specialty: long range weapons for LR fleets, medium range for anti-rush, and short range + lots of engines for rush fleets. These fleets could not afford to mix in ships of other specialties - a group of long-ranged ships in a rush fleet could provide little value, since the orders system offered no way for them to pick off anti-rush ships while the rush fleet waited to engage. Mixing rush ships into an anti-rush fleet would likewise be hampered by the inability to give them a cue to attack when the opposing fleet consists mostly of exposed long-ranged ships.

It would be great if the orders system provided a way to instruct ships to avoid certain types of weapons in certain concentrations, or engage when the concentrations of a nearby weapon or ship type exceed a certain value. For instance, you might give an order to avoid positions where there are 30+ Cruiser Pulse Lasers within 1200 meters, with a priority of 24% or to attack when there are 20 cruisers within 1400 meters of the ship with a priority of 31%.

Imagine how many more tactics would become available because of this new command’s possibilities. A group of rush ships could wait until the number of cruiser lasers in the opposing fleet drops below 25, then attack enemy missile cruisers until the number of Fast Missile Launchers drops below 10, then pull back to defend their own fleet before enemy ships take too great a toll on their numbers. Honestly, I can only dream of what players could come up with using a system like this. Would anyone else like to see it?

It would definitely end the current problem of potentially useful fast frigates just running up and getting backhanded by the enemy fleet right at the start of battle. Count me in.

Very useful suggestion, Tohron. Seconded, with enthusiasm!

This would require some grouping of weapons into categories (beam lasers, pulse lasers, plasma, missile, PD (including scramblers), anti-fighter (tractor and limpet), probably), because giving separate orders for every weapon the enemy fleet could carry would become very absurd (there’s, I think, 60 or so weapons in the game?).

If that could be done, this would be great though!

Would also be very useful to have escort-destroying ships, (with anti-fighter and anti-destroyer weapons) then send in the torpedos or heavy beams when the Dreadnought’s escorts are gone.

It’s obvious that such a measure would be a necessary part of the suggested order; it would be totally impracticable without that. Still, solely for the sake of completeness, I’m glad you mentioned it.

Off-topic to this new-combat-order thread; please put that into a new topic.

Off-topic to this new-combat-order thread; please put that into a new topic.
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No no, this kind of order would be required for that to work. If I just put all my ships together in a fleet the torpedo gunships wouldn’t know when to attack, and would get torn to shreds by the dreadnought’s escorts immediately. Using an order that makes the torpedo gunships wait until the antifighter weapons were mostly destroyed, it actually becomes a tactic. The escort-destroying ships would just be cruisers or frigates, that’s already in the game.

You should have been much more explicit that you were not advocating what sounded like a separate topic entirely; one involving some new kind of ship-design variant which is dedicated to killing of destroyers and/or fighters. It was a vagueness on your part at the start of your post, but that made all of the difference.

Remember, we only know what you typed. Be careful what you type. That is the best method for avoiding perception of being off of the thread’s subject.

Kindly continue, please.