Flags and Fleets

[Ravana]

You've mentioned in a previous post Zaimat, that it will be dangerous to draw all of your forces into one large fleet due to the size of Horizon's area of gameplay.

This has prompted me think of some additional questions for you.

Presumably, we will have limiting factors on ship number/fleet size such as economics or "control points" à la MoO2. Would you be able to explain this to us a little more?

Also, will there be a limit on the number of fleets we will be able to raise?

In addition, all things being equal, will there be a limit to the number of ships in a fleet? Will it be something like the "control limit" of SFB?

[Ravana]

Don't you worry Sobriquet, you're in good company!

Sounds a lot like SFB and F&E. The premise is 'Original Star Trek'; SFB fights are normally "fleets" up to ten ships, whilst F&E covers the General War. The General War lasted for 18 years, with massive fleets fighting and the result? The political boundaries ended up near enough where they were from the start. Now that's strategic space combat!

I'm looking forward to this, as it really makes combat a fraught experience an empire shouldn't enter into lightly.

[Sobriquet]

[The Griffos]

Cool - sounds just what I've been looking for. I've always wanted a game where individual ships were much more imortant than they usually are. (Think WWII naval situation where losing the Bismark & Tirpitz were savage blows to the Germans). I'd love to see a similar situation in this game if it comes off where it is really hard to destroy major ships but more likely that you could severly damage them & put them in repair yards for a length of time.
Good luck & keep up the good work.

[Zaimat]

[Ravana]

[The Griffos]

I really like the sound of only having a smaller number of ships in the majority of combats. One of the things I generally dislike about games is when in the latter stages it's just a matter of building more & more ships to decide who wins.
Zaimat - if we are going to have smaller qty's of ships in combat does this mean we will have to work on sharpening our tactics in battle more than the majority of games where it tends to be more ships = more wins?

[Zaimat]

[Ravana]

[Zaimat]

Sobriquet is right in that the main limiting factor will be economic and I'll add diplomatic.

Ship costs will be very high, both in building and maintaining. While you can maintain a 'large' fleet you will not want to for a very long time (unless you plan to make war or expect war) as it will drain your resources considerably and hurt your economy for many turns.

And diplomatically you will make other races nervous if they suspect you are ramping up the production of heavy cruisers or increasing your military spending...

There are no hard coded limits on # of ships in taskforce or # of taskforces in the game itself (other than available ram of course but it's not really memory demanding). In testing we will see about setting artificial limits if we deem it necessary, from an interface and gameplay consideration. For example you can only see the first 10 ships at first glance, their condition etc on the galaxy screen when you select a taskforce. Other considerations are the number of ships on screen in tactical view, 10 ships is a lot of ships on your screen and they all move together.
Now imagine a 3way war with 30 ships (if 1 taskforce on each side and each having 10 ships). That's a long fight, spanning many turns. While you will have the option to auto-combat we don't want it to become too long that you'd rather auto it than play it. Of course a player can bring several taskforces even if we do put a limit but as you can see I want to try to get away from that so battles involve at most a dozen ships on each side except when it's a due or die situation where you have all your fleet protecting homeworld about to fall.[edited]
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Horizon - Lead Designer

[Sobriquet]

[Sobriquet]