[Jubala]

I agree with Sinapsus, that's annoying. I also understand rdouglass's concerns that pre-placing of units would give us humans even more advantage over the AI and to some extent I agree. That the placement area would be limited to where you came from and larger for defenders then attackers I took for granted. Especially in warp point assaults. I also agree stacking of ships makes sense. But for that to really work we would need some sort of subfleet/task force/whatever you wanna call it feature that let's us divide ships in fleets by tasks but still move it around like a fleet. The point being that stacked ships should be counted as a task group and move and fire simultaneously. Which invites the addition of commmand data link from certain Starfire books discussed in other threads quite nicely.

And the advantage us humans have over the AI in tactical right now could be lessened by changing the way tactical combat works by diving the turns in 2 phases and making them simultaneous. All sides gives movement and firing orders at the same time but nothing happens until all sides hits end turn at which times all orders are executed at once. All ships move and fire and all damage dealt is stored until all orders are executed and then applied. That way nobody fires first and therefor wins because he/she/it manages to kill/cripple some of the enemies ships before they can fire. This system will of course raise questions about when to fire and initiative. Disregard initiative for now as it's not in the game at the moment. But when to fire is important. As soon as you are in range or wait until up close and personal? I don't think such a system will be as easy to implenent as I imply here, but if done well it well be better than what we have now imo.