What is your favorite SE4 feature?

[Phoenix-D]

"A battleship could have support ships that stuck around and actually supported it! Not run off during the battle like they do today.."

Not sure why you'd want that except maybe for point-defense ships (which can be made to stay with the other ships). All my other support ships- cargo ships, tankers, repair ships, construction yards, etc- would probably be better off staying away from combat.

Phoenix-D

[tesco samoa]

cargo ships , tankers and colony ships should ram baby ram. Their only gonna die anyway.

[Phoenix-D]

Hmm. I sometimes include those ships in my fleets, so for me they need to go hide in the corner while the REAL fighters do the dirty work

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

I think he meant "support" as in escorts that would actually escort a Dreadnaught (or troop carrier) during combat, though you'd probably use light cruisers instead of escorts

[ 22 January 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[AJC]

If you could create Groups of ships so certain ships stay together in combat. Then just like you can with fighter Groups in the game now; place those ship Groups into fleets and assign a formation and strategy.

By support I meant - Groups of ships specifically designed to compliment each others abilities in combat and are more effective as a team if they stay in close proximity to each other.

[chewy027]

Well what if you could manually place ships in a formation instead of assigning a specific formation that has limitations. What I mean is as you add more ships to a fleet you can manually configure your own formation with no limit on the number of ships. Then you could still group support ships together without the confusion of overlap.

[mac5732]

If you break it down into 2 sections of formations, such as, and this is only an example,
Groups & Fleets,

1. 1st be able to assign a group together, such as
a CV with 2 escorting LC's, where ever the CV
goes the escorts move with-it automatically
as long as that formation is in effect.
Therefore, if it heads for the cornor, the
escorts go with it. This would be true for
both human and AI players

2. Ability to assign Groups within a fleet. You
would then have to assign each group within the
fleet a number. #1 would move 1st, then #2, etc
This way your Groups would move as a fleet and
comply with fleet formations unless changed,
but the Groups remain the same and perform
supporting fire etc for its group as well as
for the fleet overall.

A problem with not having pre-designed formations would be that the AI would not be able to adjust.
What I would suggest, is that you use the current formations/Strategies, add a few more, then for the AI player, assign counter formations/strategies, if this could be done.

Even in multi player games, the AI must be able to adjust. This is especially true in Strategic Combat. In Tactical, we can already use our own formations/stragies if we wish, which creates problems with the AI. The AI needs up-grades in its formations/stragies in both, especially in tactical.

These are my opinions only,

just some ideas mac