2024-05-09 Fleets, Starforce, C4 Doors, Shield Types

[Haxus]

Previously all shield modules protected against all forms of damage equally.

[Norway174]

Starforce
The addition of fleets introduced a nomenclature problem. Previously all government owned spacecraft were called fleet ships. Privately owned vessels are called company ships.

I struggle with this one. I almost went with Navy but that is just too nautical. Space Force? Not a chance. Space Fleet? Space Navy? Ho hum. Star Fleet? :/

Searching did not turn up any existing trademark on the term Starforce. There was a video game called Star Force, two words, but I figure that's no more of a problem than saying star fleet, instead of starfleet™. If anybody knows of a conflict please tell me and I will consider changing it.

I did in fact change the term Star Fleet Academy to Starforce Academy.

There is now a Starforce comm channel and a Fleet comm channel. The Starforce channel talks to all ships in your empire that are not fleet vessels under a flagship. In other words, only the flagships and ships not in fleets will answer on the Starforce channel. Of course, only ships with an officer will answer hails.

The Fleet channel communicates with other ships in the same fleet.

What if, when we name our Empire, there was another name box to name our military force?
That way, we could name it whatever we wanted?

Starforce isn't necessarily a bad name per say. It does the job. But it is a little cheesy. :P

I think an option to name it ourselves could only be a good thing?

[Deantwo]

Starforce

What if, when we name our Empire, there was another name box to name our military force?
That way, we could name it whatever we wanted?

Starforce isn't necessarily a bad name per say. It does the job. But it is a little cheesy. :P

I think an option to name it ourselves could only be a good thing?

Could also just call it "Ships".

If it seems confusing with the difference between "company verse fleet" ships, I would say that "company" ships aren't really used anymore. Maybe disabling the "company"/"private ship" features for now, until some day when non-emperor gameplay makes more sense to have it.

But having some more flavor texts like that for our empires would be pretty cool. Such as naming the government, and the military forces.

[Norway174]

Starforce

What if, when we name our Empire, there was another name box to name our military force?
That way, we could name it whatever we wanted?

Starforce isn't necessarily a bad name per say. It does the job. But it is a little cheesy. :P

I think an option to name it ourselves could only be a good thing?

Could also just call it "Ships".

If it seems confusing with the difference between "company verse fleet" ships, I would say that "company" ships aren't really used anymore. Maybe disabling the "company"/"private ship" features for now, until some day when non-emperor gameplay makes more sense to implement.

But having some more flavor texts like that for our empires would be pretty cool. Such as naming the government, and the military forces.

I mentioned this on the Discord already. But I'll put it to text here, for Haxus' sake.

I think it would make sense if we had 3 types of ships. Instead of just the 2 we have now.

* Military
* Civilian
* Personal

Military and Civilian are made and owned by your Empire. With Civilian following the Empire name. And the Military following the Military name, with the above suggestion.
Personal would be what is currently called "Company" ships.


Optionally, maybe more restrictions regarding armaments could be imposed on the Civilian ships. And give them a slight buff or advantage to speed, cargo hold, and/or harvesters.
Meanwhile, Military ships are able to be better armed, and be able to take more of a beating.

And maybe Pirates will prioritise attacking Military vessels, before trying to plunder Civilian vessels?

So one purpose for Fleets could be used to provide Military Escorts for your Civilian ships.

But that's just an idea.
Either way, I think "Company" ships would be better to be called "Personal" ships. Would overall make more sense for a new player, I think.

[Deantwo]

If it seems confusing with the difference between "company verse fleet" ships, I would say that "company" ships aren't really used anymore. Maybe disabling the "company"/"private ship" features for now, until some day when non-emperor gameplay makes more sense to have it.

I think it would make sense if we had 3 types of ships. Instead of just the 2 we have now.

* Military
* Civilian
* Personal

Military and Civilian are made and owned by your Empire. With Civilian following the Empire name. And the Military following the Military name, with the above suggestion.
Personal would be what is currently called "Company" ships.

Optionally, maybe more restrictions regarding armaments could be imposed on the Civilian ships. And give them a slight buff or advantage to speed, cargo hold, and/or harvesters.
Meanwhile, Military ships are able to be better armed, and be able to take more of a beating.

Either way, I think "Company" ships would be better to be called "Personal" ships. Would overall make more sense for a new player, I think.

Private/personal ships were nice back in the day when you could be a non-emperor player in someone else's empire. But after "open empires" stopped being a thing and we became able to respawn empire owned ships, it just stopped mattering. In singleplayer as we have it now, there is no other emperor that can steal control of your ship. So currently it just seems like it will needlessly confuse new players a bit with no benefits.

As for the whole separation between civilian and military ships. We don't really have many civilian only uses for ships, we can easily use a military ship for cargo hauling or exploration. So it doesn't seem entirely needed at present, unless we really want more restrictions on spacecraft designing or have large areas of the gameplay completely overhauled.

For now, you can just name your ships yourself. I like giving my military ships the identifier "F.F.S." ("Foxtail Federal Starship"), but i could use a different identifier for my non-miliary ship or use none at all.

[Haxus]

I understand company ships aren’t particularly useful to players in the solo game.

They could play a useful role as a storyline element.

[Vectorus]

The fleet system seems very fun. I boarded some pirate ships, killed the crew, captured them and made them into a fleet with my original ship as the flag.

I discovered a small issue where sometimes the slave ships wouldn't follow small movements. Because they were then "not in position", the button on the helm to release their locking disappeared, while the helm itself remained inoperable. I could correct the fault by moving the flagship further (I think?) or, presumably, dismissing the ship. Not sure what was going on there.

I was wondering - could there be a button to enslave a fleet ship to its flagship anywhere within a certain radius of said flagship, as well as in pre-defined positions? That would allow you to set exactly the custom formation you need.

[Vectorus]

After testing a lot more, there seems to be an insoluble problem with fleets of more than two ships.

Ship A forms a fleet.
Ship B joins and is assigned a place. This works fine.
Ship C joins and, incorrectly, is assigned either the same position as the flagship, or the same position as ship B.
-Either Ship C cannot physically move into its place, in which case the fleet is now broken, or:
-Ship C somehow takes position and helm locks.
Ship A, the Flagship, now shows Ship C as locked, but not ship B.
Ship B itself, however, still considers itself locked, and cannot maneuver.
Ship A starts moving, and Ship C follows. Ship B remains immovable unless it leaves the fleet.
The fleet is now also broken.

In a third variety, all ships successfully take position, but during travel, one ship is no longer considered locked by the flagship, and falls away. It still considers itself locked and cannot move.

I have tried with various configurations of different ship types, and the problem seems persistent.

The problems can, I think, be divided into two issues:
- Flagship and slave ships can disagree about whether or not slave ship is position-locked, which is weird.
- Flagship can attempt to assign the same place (including its own place!) to two slave ships at once.

---

Temporary workaround, in case anyone is getting stuck:

-Choose a ship OTHER than the flagship you want, and use it to create the fleet.
-Add all the ships you want to the fleet.
-Hail on the fleet channel. Each ship will open a channel to you.
-Go to your desired flagship and "promote to flagship"
-Quickly request transports from each ship's in turn on each ship's private channel. This will take you to their transporter room, where you can instantly travel to the next ship.
-Do not return to the flagship until you have visited all the others.
-When you return to the flagship, all the other ships will now show up on the fleet screen as having recently checked in.
-If they have not yet taken up their positions, the flagship should be aware of all of them, and assign them separate places.
-Once the slave ships are in position and think they are locked, they will still not show as locked on the flagship's screen.
-So repeat the process of visiting each ship in turn, and return to the flagship last.
-All ships should now be updated to show as "locked" on the fleet screen.
-The fleet is now functional. Reward yourself with a cup of tea and a little lie-down!

N.B.: If you subsequently visit any other ships in the fleet, the other ships will disappear from the flagship's list, and you'll have to visit them all again, in sequence, before returning to the flagship, to get them back.