Patch 1.71 Balance Concern

[Hippocrates]

Hiya Folks,

Actually, the problem I see arises from the line in 1.69 which states:

"29. Fixed - Units can only be launched once per turn."

When I first saw that, I thought to myself, "Hey neat! No more staging fighters in a system through multiple colonies to get around the movement point limit." However, the novelty of the change quickly wore off when it became apparent that this applied in battle and to carriers as well. Even worse, in single player it would carry over to the computer players' turns; if I attacked a target on my turn any AI ships counterattacking would face carriers which couldn't launch their broods. Carriers which can't launch have no option but to run away, and become nothing more than mobile targets.

Then....things got even worse. The AI isn't always known for making coordinated attacks, and carriers by default launch their fighters automatically in combat. This becomes a serious problem......

Let’s say I enter a system with a fleet which contains carriers. The AI has several freighters and individual ships between me and my target. If I engage any of these targets along the way, I can't launch my fighters for the main fight. I *could* detach the carrier, fight the small fry, and then *reattach* the carrier to the fleet, but that gets annoying after a while. Worse, you can't do that in multiplayer.

Likewise, the AI attacked a planet of mine defended by a strong fighter garrison in two waves. The first wave had only two ships and was easily dispatched. The second wave had thirty ships....and my fighters wouldn't launch since they'd already been used in the fight a few moments ago.

The way I see it, this leads to a serious potential for abuse in multiplayer. Does your enemy have a strong fighter garrison or a fleet with several carriers? Send a drone ahead of your fleet, get him to launch his fighters, and then your fleet follows up against fighters which won't launch.

The way I see it, carriers and fighters in general are now severely less useful. Ideally, the “units can only be launched once” rule would apply only on the strategy map and not in combat. Failing that, does anyone know if this is a variable which can be edited? I tried looking around in the unit files, but didn't manage to find anything.

Thanks!