Right. Imo, the fact that you play the game as one ship, or as a fleet, is a major issue and I'd suggest against such disparate playstyles were it not The Plan.DWMagus wrote:I think this issue is more indicative of the entire game in general, not the system specifically. We're constantly seeing how we need a way to abstract pretty much ANYTHING from a single ship to multiple so that we don't land in micromanagement hell.CutterJohn wrote:Needs to be something more robust than that. You might have dozens of ships. Having to attend to them each individually would get tedious, especially considering combat losses means its not a 'set it and forget it' type of action.
It greatly complicates finding an appropriate complexity for the game. Mechanics I would suggest as suitable for a single ship are much different for a small number of ships, which are much different than for a large number of ships. If the individual ship interaction is too complex, large numbers of ships become a nightmare to handle. Balance it to support large numbers of ships, and flying around in one is far too simplistic.
Thus, ultimately, gameplay complexity is going to have to be a compromise that works best with neither too many, nor too few, ships, and a lot more work is going to need to be done to ensure large numbers of ships are manageable and flying solo still interesting.