Topic: Fleet Poll

[GDA-S'Cipio]

Additional PF leader rules:  

In PvP, solo PF Leaders MUST deploy their PFs at the start of the battle.  The PFs CANNOT be recalled during the course of the battle as the PF leaders are not supposed to be able to repair the PFs in combat nor are they actual tenders.  

Damn!  That's word for word my PFL rules on Squadron Commander, and I know you didn't lift it from me because I haven't posted it anywhere.

I find it truly frightening that not only do we come up with the same idea, but we use the exact same words.

<S'Cipio wonders idly if he posts as FPF-DieHard during his "blackout" periods.  Where is Lon Chaney Jr? >

-S'Cipio

[el-Karnak]

Its pretty good, I'm just picking at it here...

So no 3 ship fleets?

The closer it is to true SFB CnC the easier it will be for me to remember. Probably more natural for others too.
(As I see it a F-DWC and F-DW is not legal but a F-DWC and 2 x F-DW would be...)

Closer to SFB, yes.   But as much of a hardcore SFBer I am I have to accept the limitations of the SFC game engine.

Yes, I am saying no to 3-ship fleets.  Two-ship fleets are a lot easier to control and won't force people to fly fleets to be competitive.  

The big deterrent to fleets on the dyna is the waiving of the disengagement rule.  You can separate most naval actions into 2 categories:

1)   Standard PvP.  For these, the disengagement rule would get waived as stated above when one side has too many ships in their fleets.  To simulate a real PvP fleet battle with disengagement rule in force, we just do the standard co-op thing.

2)  Stationary Target assaults.  For these, multi-player fleets are very useful to speed up the mission completion times. As for disengagement rule waivers: you usually need a covering PvP force to clear out  the hex anyway.

So, if you want fleets, NP.  Just remember disengagement rule won't apply in many cases in order to prevent the solo players from getting swarmed upon.  Of course, if the solo player can beat the multi-ship equipped opponent anyway then they are banned from the hex, in addition to losing lotsa PP.

I would be against any dyna that allowed fleets without disengagement rule waivers for their usage on the enemy.

[Gook]

I have no quarell witht he PF CnC. (are we having flotillas without PFTs?)

So far as other ships are concerned, I think what I suggested in another thread is simpler.

All fleets must be Commanded by a Command vessel

Command vessel (defined as Command in title (of the ship), any Carrier/PFT, any BCH, DN,BB) only one per fleet.

any one or two ships of same or smaller hull type.

So this means you cannot have multiple Carriers, BCHs, DNs etc as they are command vessels, You can have 2 Escorts and most CVs had two (SFB lore wise). You can have line, or "specialty" as second or third ships. So a D7C, with D5D and D5E is legal, but a D7C and D5C is not. No multiple PFTs or CV/As or CCZs.

It's less restrictive also.

[Rod ONeal]

The really fun thing that you could have with "solo" PFL's is PF vs. PF battles. This is about as close as dogfighting as SFC could allow.

IIRC (it's been a couple of years since I tried doing it like this), if you double list the PFs in the shiplist you can make them show up in fleet control. If you want to have sole PFLs this might be worth experimenting with more.

eg: First list the PF as a hull type other than a ftr, an FF for example. Then list it again lower in the shiplist, but still in the same race, as a FTR. When you open fleet control the PFs will show there. They also still respond to ftr commands. This gives you much more flexible control over them.

[FPF-DieHard]

The big deterrent to fleets on the dyna is the waiving of the disengagement rule.  You can separate most naval actions into 2 categories:

1)   Standard PvP.  For these, the disengagement rule would get waived as stated above when one side has too many ships in their fleets.  To simulate a real PvP fleet battle with disengagnement rule in force, we just do the standard co-op thing.

2)  Stationary Target assaults.  For these, multi-player fleets are very useful to speed up the mission completion times. As for disengagnement rule waivers: you usually need a covering PvP force to clear out  the hex anyway.

So, if you want fleets, NP.  Just remember disengagement rule won't apply in many cases in order to prevent the solo players from getting swarmed upon.

Yes, the disengament rule needs to be altered with multiple ships but I'm not quite sure as to what would be the best way to handle it . . .

Disengagement Rule: (work in progress)

If you disengage from a battle with a live enemy player, you cannot take missions in that hex for 20 game turns (100 minutes).

If your ship is destroyed by a live enemy player, you cannot take missions in that hex for 10 game turns (50 minuites).  

There are no exemptions (except for below) for the above two rules.  If you're stuck with a 1v3 or are forced to fly your FF against a BCH ... then the other side simply played their moves better.

If you are in a hex that is surrounded by enemy hexes then you cannot disengage. Stay and fight to the death.

If flying more than one ship, you cannot disengage until one of your ships is destroyed or captured by the enemy.  Self-Destructing a vessel counts as that ship being destroyed for these purposes.

Solo Vanilla Ships (up to the NCA class) and PF Leaders are exempt from disengagement if destroyed in combat.   These ships are a dime a dozen and are easily replaceable.  

[Lepton]

I voted no until a CnC is finalized that corresponds to that poll option.  A CnC that might end up limiting nothing is not a CnC.  We see people in disagreement on the nature of a CnC already here.  Three ship frigate or destroyer fleets is just asking for someone to abuse the system with some cheesy set up.  I vote for two types of servers: Wild Wild West (i.e. anything goes), serious servers with a restrictive OoB and CnC, yet still tending toward one ship servers in general.   

I don't mind an occasional fleet server, but I feel such a set-up benefits nutters more than the current one ship system.  Whose going to be able to afford a carrier/escort combo?  Not I.  Who will be able to take on such a combo in a single ship?  No one.  Individuals in single ships will be forced to hunt this guy together, thereby turning one player effectively into two by tying up two players.  This kind of stuff just makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, so to speak.  The casual player has no chance on a fleeting server.

If people want to fleet, why not mulltiple player fleeting?  Fleet control of AI is imperfect-to-broken and only droners benefit from its use with the fire and forget nature of their primary weapon.  Half the time people are running in pairs anyway.  Why not start the idea of a fleet and fleet control upon a more firm basis, that of live players, as AI fleet control is essentially a broken system.  Player-based fleeting and CnC would encourage people to actually fly line ships and escorts in proper fleet-like combos as wings to command ships.  To me that is a much preferable system to AI fleeting.  If we are going to end up imposing fleeting restrictions and require people to know those rules to pilot AI fleets that are useless and expensive for most, then why not just switch to a human pilot based system?

I'm not sure why people would want to spend the pp to maintain a AI fleet that is hard-to-impossible to control and have the vulnerability of stupid AI manuevers getting your ships picked off when people could fleet with other people in a sensible, controlled, and realistic manner that we are attempting to create for a broken AI fleet control system.

[Bonk]

Three ship frigate or destroyer fleets is just asking for someone to abuse the system with some cheesy set up.

SFB CnC, problem solved. Unless you can name a fleet that follows SFB CnC that would concern you.
As I see it, frigate and destroyer leaders without the required escorts is cheese of the smelliest kind.

Disengagement Rule: (work in progress)

See this thread for a similar reasonable (less complicated?) idea:
http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163344818.0.html

[762_XC]

My main objections to fleets:

1) It benefits different races unequally. Some races work better with fleet control than others, therefore it is inherently unbalancing.
2) Fleet control is bugged, and sucks even when it does work.
3) The AI gets your ships killed and ends up costing lots of $$$, making fleet rules benefitting nutters over casual players.

[Lepton]

We are in agreement.  Now this is a reasonable attitude from someone that is not considered a pariah like myself.  Well said.

[Lepton]

Three ship frigate or destroyer fleets is just asking for someone to abuse the system with some cheesy set up.

SFB CnC, problem solved. Unless you can name a fleet that follows SFB CnC that would concern you.
As I see it, frigate and destroyer leaders without the required escorts is cheese of the smelliest kind.

Disengagement Rule: (work in progress)

See this thread for a similar reasonable (less complicated?) idea:
http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163344818.0.html

The cheese is revealed not in the constituents of the fleet, but in their effect on gameplay.  There are certainly legal combos that are just going to make it easier for folks to abuse the already ineffectual AI.  The cheese is also evident in gameplay when fire and forget weapon races reap the benefits while others suffer from a "target rich" environment without the control to bring offensive and defensive assets to bear.

If there were SFB-like control to accompany that SFB CnC, I'd be much more inclined to agree, but in this game platform, I don't think it is very tenable.

[FPF-DieHard]

If there were SFB-like control to accompany that SFB CnC, I'd be much more inclined to agree, but in this game platform, I don't think it is very tenable.

Yup

[Rod ONeal]

If there were SFB-like control to accompany that SFB CnC, I'd be much more inclined to agree, but in this game platform, I don't think it is very tenable.

This is a very good point. I say let's not scrap the idea because of it though. I think that it would add a lot to the gaming and is worth putting the time into to see if it could be made to work.

[FPF-DieHard]

This is a very good point. I say let's not scrap the idea because of it though. I think that it would add a lot to the gaming and is worth putting the time into to see if it could be made to work.

How?  By re-programing the AI so they have some concept of drone defense?  Short of that, i can't think of anything.

[Hexx]

NO FLEETS!

-Depending on the Races being played on the server.
 Any server that you've got opponents like the Kzin and Lyran, fleet controls will so heavily favour the Kzin
that it would become pointless to try and match up.
A server where you have better balanced races (say Klinks vs Fed) I don't think I'd have a problem with. Although Fed fighter superiority *might* tip the balance on this one it would still be reasonable. (I'd think)

[Lepton]

BINGO!!!

[Rod ONeal]

How?  By re-programing the AI so they have some concept of drone defense?  Short of that, i can't think of anything.

Do you really feel that a two ship squadron is that unbalanced in favor of the droners that there's no way to make it work? If the overall bpv is similar do 2 smaller ships have an advantage over 1 larger one? I don't think that 2 DW, for example, have an advantage over 1 BCH. I think that they'd be disadvantaged, actually.

[FPF-DieHard]

How?  By re-programing the AI so they have some concept of drone defense?  Short of that, i can't think of anything.

Do you really feel that a two ship squadron is that unbalanced in favor of the droners that there's no way to make it work? If the overall bpv is similar do 2 smaller ships have an advantage over 1 larger one? I don't think that 2 DW, for example, have an advantage over 1 BCH. I think that they'd be disadvantaged, actually.

Using MY CnC rules, no I do not.  If the second ship can be a droner, yes i do feel it is un-balanced.

[Mog]

What Hexx said.

[el-Karnak]

NO FLEETS!

-Depending on the Races being played on the server.
 Any server that you've got opponents like the Kzin and Lyran, fleet controls will so heavily favour the Kzin
that it would become pointless to try and match up.
A server where you have better balanced races (say Klinks vs Fed) I don't think I'd have a problem with. Although Fed fighter superiority *might* tip the balance on this one it would still be reasonable. (I'd think)

This is why I put in strict Disengagement Rule waivers that heavily favor the solo ship player. Basically, the solo player controls the agenda on when the disengagement rule kicks in, not the multi-ship player, because it only applies if, and only if, in the mission the winning side's smallest player fleet has  less than or equal number of ships per Human player as the losing side's smallest player fleet.

It won't be in the multi-ship player's best interest to actively seek out standard PvP because the solo player will out-hex flip them.  Player multi-ship fleets are meant for special situations like attacking/defending stationary targets.  The EEK patrol missions themselves take care of fleeted ships options. For those races that don't like fleeted ships there is a corresponding unfleeted patrol mission version for every fleeted patrol mission in the EEK mission pack.  You can even disable the fleet control options for the fleeted missions by leaving the fleeted AI orders as "Firing at any target".

[KAT Chuut-Ritt]

If you disengage from a battle with a live enemy player, you cannot take missions in that hex for 20 game turns (100 minutes).

If your ship is destroyed by a live enemy player, you cannot take missions in that hex for 10 game turns (50 minuites). 

Umm....... so are we doubling the disengement rule penalty here, or keeping it the same?  I've seen some suggestions of lessening it on a smaller map on other threads,

Just want a bit of clarification here.  you got 20 turns = 100 minutes and 10 turns = 50 minutes, I think you made a typo somewhere just wondering where.