Flagships

[Cyrien]

Here is an idea for its importance.

Fleets may be formed without a flagship but and use tactics and recieve no penalty etc...
BUT
only flagships carry fleet exp. A fleet without a flagship has 0 exp always. As soon as a flagship joins it gain exp equal to the flagships fleet exp. This represents the fact that it is the flagships commander giving the orders to the fleet and establishing a fleet exp bonus.

This gives good cause to knock out that flagship if it has a high fleet exp.

A limited number I would agree on. I would say base it on the number of ships available. Make it a setting that can be changed when creating a game like the max number of ships to be built etc. Thus different players could have it range across different spectrums. 1 flagship to 1 ship or 1 flagship to 0 ships or 1 flagship to 100 ship or even have it disable for those that dislike em.

Just some ideas.

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Keep the maintenance cost high on the flagships and people won't build so many. as well as (If it can be arranged) have it so only 1 flagship works in a fleet. Either thay can't be joined in a fleet or the bonus is reversed (Two flag admirals that have big Egos!) or only the biggest modifier applies.

That way it does you no good to have every ship a flagship....

RhineStone Cowboy

[mac5732]

The more I read the Posts, I think maybe we should incorporate 2 different type ships. 1st, we already basically designate which ship moves 1st in tactical, what if we make this the Flagship of each fleet? Give the experience or whatever bonus automatically when you designate the ship with the number 1. All fleets have a flagship so I don't see limiting these. It would not pertain to single ships. The problem would be in strategic battles but if you designate which ship moves lst as currently done, this would automatically make it the flagship or be able to assign a number which correlates to its movement. example, flagship designated #5, would move 5th and be flagship. I hope I make sense here, 2nd, the CC ship would effect, increases or decreases in different fighting abilites of the fleet and would be limited to a specific number to be built overall. This way a flagship would increase/decrease moral, experience etc, the CC would affect increases/decreases in fighting abilities. In order to accomodate these or similiar ideas, we must keep simple with the least amount of hard code changes as possible.

just some ideas mac

[Quikngruvn]

I love this idea of fleet experience being tied to a flagship. That could be an option at game startup, and possibly set values for number of ships per flaship and maximum number of flagships there as well.

A couple of questions, though. What minimum number of ships would be necessary to build a flaghip? (Could I make the first ship I build a flagship, or what I actually need to mass a fleet first?) Also, if the number of available flagships is tied to total number of ships (i.e. 0-49 ships = 0 flagships, 50-99 = 1 flagship, etc.), would non-warships be included in this total?

I can see pros and cons to each question, so I leave these to the powers of consensus.

Quikngruvn

------------------
Stay alert. Trust no one. Keep your laser handy.
--from the RPG Paranoia, now my PBW mantra

[chewy027]

to keep it simplistic i'd say count all ships for the determinant. So say every 50 you can build another flagship of course the number would be changeable. I like the idea of having the fleet experience tied to the flagship as well. Gives more importance to them. I also agree only 1 flagship per fleet should have an effect. If you put two in a fleet only one's exp gets counted. So it would be a waste of exp to have two in a fleet. And if we would ever get morale implemented into exp it should boost morale as well. Mac i see what you mean about all fleets having a designated flagship already but they really only pertain to movement and formations. One of the suggestions was that without a flagship there could be no tactics used, ie formations. This combined with the exp a flagship would give would make them very valuable. So i think that the flagship would take the place of what is in existence now.

[Beck]

Making flagships very expensive to built and to maintain coupled with only one being effective in a fleet should be enough without tying it to some artificial milepost that allows you to built one. 50 ships, what kind of ships? I can build empty escorts with no engines to keep costs down and make them easy and fast to build to get around the ship limit. And what happens if as a result of a battle you drop below the threshhold of 50, do you lose the flagship? The point is, if they are expensive, you could never afford to let them alone, they would always have to have escorts which further drives up the costs of maintaining a fleet having one. And you could never just build them for a rainy day like you do fighter/troops/satellites. The cost should serve as an adequate limiting factor. Additionally, flagships should be so full of command components, etc. granting the fleet whatever bonuses it receives to leave little room for weapons, meaning it needs and should have a lot of friends to do the fighting and even a fleet of flagships shouldn't be near as good as a single flagship and same number of the best attack ships. Further the happiness/experience/morale of the race should be seriously affected by the loss of one as this represent the pride and joy of your armed force, the best of the best so to speak and its loss would reasonant throughout your empire.

[mac5732]

I don't know if assigning a number of ships needed before being able to build flagship would work. Questions from other Posts here bring up valid questions, as to what happens when you fall below that number etc. Also what would we do with the training facilities if we base experience or attach experience to flagships and still make them important in the game? Maybe base it on fleets. If you have say 5 fleets, you would be able to build up to 5 flagships, as your fleets increase, this would allow you to build up to that number but no more. Then you would have choice of either building them or not depending on the cost and what you could afford. once built, they remain in the game and count towards whatever number is assigned even if you fall below the number of fleets. The training facilities could still train up to whatever limit is set, but with a flagship present it would give an experiece bonus above (pick a number) above what it currently has. Therefore, you could train your fleet but would pick up the additional bonus only with a flagship present...I hope I explained this right....

just some ideas mac