Alright, here's something I have not seen on the forums anywhere. Will it be possible, as a major faction leader late game, to command multiple fleets? Sure, it's all well and good to parade my Great White Battle-Fleet back and forth across the planet or two I own, but to have a reasonable amount of control over a whole sector the player's assets cannot be confined to one area. I know that when I play Sins of a Solar Empire (against AI's, I know my weaknesses) my strategy involves dozen of task forces to occupy the enemy at all points along with larger fleets to assault heavily fortified systems.

Now, since this game is not a pure RTS, I am aware that there are limits on your influence on and information about events far away from your physical self (unless we are assuming that space travel is just carried out by robotic consciences (not my favorite idea)). Because of this, fleets apart from the flagship fleet that you head personally would spend a lot of time making their own decisions with long-term orders from you.

I'm not exactly certain how this would be implemented, but multiple fleets is something I see as necessary to manage large empires.

Considering how much effort Josh in putting into writing AI. I would be highly surprised if he omitted the ability for you to have AI controlled fleets.

AdmiralAckbar42 wrote:Alright, here's something I have not seen on the forums anywhere. Will it be possible, as a major faction leader late game, to command multiple fleets?

I'm guessing it's not been asked (if it hasn't) because everyone is assuming "Yes". And hopefully well before late game.

AdmiralAckbar42 wrote:I'm not exactly certain how this would be implemented, but multiple fleets is something I see as necessary to manage large empires.

Welcome to the forums!

While this game is not a PURE RTS, it has enough elements of one so that you shouldn't have to worry about gameplay. It's a very well disguised RTS if anything.

Well, turn it the other way around.
Why should we NOT be able to command fleets when we already able to control single ships?
(Because where is the conceptual difference between "fleet" and "group of ships" (besides logistics fubar)?)

Too true. Can't see why this wouldn't be a feasible addition to the base game play. If not, I'm sure it would eventually make its way to LT.

Neat idea though, completely overlooked it myself.

Oh this has been assumed from the beginning Yes of course, own as much as you like, divide and manage it however you like

Welcome to a few new faces as well

Ok. Multiple fleets are there, but how about multiple factions? Could you own multiple factions?

JoshParnell wrote:Welcome to a few new faces as well

Thank you kindly!

Glad to hear multiple fleets are in store. A further question for the sake of argument is, will there be fleet divisions so you can have specialised wings to order around at different intervals? Or how are you envisioning fleets to play out in the field of battle?

Hyperion wrote:Ok. Multiple fleets are there, but how about multiple factions? Could you own multiple factions?

I have wondered about that myself.

One thing that's changed since I asked that question is that Josh has introduced the notion of "tags" to LT:

Josh Parnell wrote:For this reason, I'm moving to a 'tag-based' mechanism for generalizing resources. It's really just the same thing that we already had - resources can derive from other resources - except that it allows multiple relationships. For some reason, though, it seems to make more sense in my head when I think about these generalized things as 'tags' rather than 'parents.'

Although he's talking here about tags for resources, we know that Josh is a fan of getting multiple uses out of individual subsystems.

Why shouldn't the tag functionality also apply between characters and factions? Assuming it doesn't already, I mean.

Presumably faction-tagging would inherit the "allows multiple relationships" functionality that resources now have. Once you have that, all you then need is the "direct-superior/direct-subordinate" relationship for defining hierarchical relationships within a faction, and Bob's your uncle. (Note that this also gives you the command structure for managing multiple fleets, so I'm not entirely off-topic here... entirely.)

Yep, now I want to own multiple factions and pit them against each other for sport while I eat popcorn and accumulate space-ferrets.

This has been another episode of "Fatmop's entirely reasonable requests that, should they fail to materialize, will result in massive lawsuits against the dedicated programmers of an otherwise beautiful game."

fatmop wrote:Yep, now I want to own multiple factions and pit them against each other for sport while I eat popcorn and accumulate space-ferrets.

This has been another episode of "Fatmop's entirely reasonable requests that, should they fail to materialize, will result in massive lawsuits against the dedicated programmers of an otherwise beautiful game."

I've already covered this.

Er, no, not really what I meant. I meant that I want to be able to literally own two separate factions and tell them to go to war with each other, let the best faction win. Much higher on the atrocity scale than gladiatorial combat, methinks.

fatmop wrote:Er, no, not really what I meant. I meant that I want to be able to literally own two separate factions and tell them to go to war with each other, let the best faction win. Much higher on the atrocity scale than gladiatorial combat, methinks.

It's similar to gladiatorial combat but on a larger scale. Making people fight against each other as a sport for the enjoyment of others.

Less than a sportsy enjoyment but more like palpatine setting up the clone wars to rise to absolute power