I also intend to reduce the number of combat rounds to about 30 or 40.
This will hopefully make blockade-storming a viable strategy.
The idea being that even though bases are very inexpensive to maintain (1/4 the cost of a ship independent of relative size at medium tech), you won't be able to simply stack them up on warppoints and make the place impenetrable.
You will, of course be able to deal a significant amount of damage to an incoming fleet, but because of the huge armor everywhere, neither side will even come close to annihilating the other.
There will almost certainly be a very large number of survivors. If your targetting strategies are poor, you'll probably have a large number of undamaged enemy ships as well.
If you hurt most of them a little bit, they'll have to stick together and move slowly, instead of just abandoning the few crippled or destroyed ships and pressing on with a slightly smaller perfect-condition fleet.
Destroying a large fleet with another should involve a running battle with plenty of crippled ships falling by the wayside as you go
.
That's my theory, anyways
I hope to be testing it a few weeks from now.
[ March 24, 2004, 00:31: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]