Arrgh ! I can just imagine what playing Gigantic/Abundant (my favorite setting) with this rule would mean Not to mention the fact that the AI at higher levels get range bonuses, and can get that +1 range technology almost instantly (at least it seems like it).
Having fighting ships with lower range, and particularly combat transports (those 5 billion people REALLY need short supply lines) makes sense, but colony ship it seems to me must keep decent ranges...

I will definitely go with the concept of admirals (we're talking *SHIPS*--generals command *ARMIES*) rather than logistics points as limiting factor on fleets. No bonuses possible--thus no issues of what happens when a bonus is lost. Perhaps a building: Naval Academy. If a planet has such a building then there is a "ship" type buildable: Admiral.
Any fleet must contain exactly one admiral. The admiral's rating determines how many ships may be in the fleet with him. The admiral's rating only improves from combat or from spending time in orbit of a planet with a Naval Academy.
The logic behind this is that without proper orders, ships simply can't operate effectively together. The danger of friendly fire mistakes outweighs the firepower increase and therefore it's not done.
So long as any ship of the fleet survives the admiral survives.
This does bear a fair amount of resemblance to the Civ III army. Unlike what the other poster said, they are *VERY* useful. He simply put the wrong units in his armies.

I do like the concept of ships at home being cheaper than ships in the field. I would do it a different way, though:

Ships have a basic maintainence cost, which should be somewhat reduced from current values. In addition, ships cost money to move. The amount is small but it's there. Combat and repair also have their own costs. In addition, there is a rather severe multiplier to the cost based on distance--the cost of delivering the logistics to the ship. Starbases themselves have no effect on this, but you can add logistics modules to them that negate most of the penalty for the sector they are in. It's a tech tree, at the start of the game you have no such ability, by the end it's perhaps 90%.
All current range caps are removed--any ship can cross the galaxy if it wants to. Instead, different ship types have different multipliers on their range costs. Things like sensor drones and survey ships, the multiplier is x1--range is irrelevant. For things like the defender and battleaxe it might be x3 per sector.
Gift ships/found ships are a special case. They may be given orders to head to the nearest friendly planet, during this time they are at x1 multiplier. This benefit is lost if they are given any other order, at that point they pay normal upkeep.

Nice idea for admiral ships.

Yes, I've seen the idea of admiral ships before except they were called "Command Ships".

i've just had a thought, and please feel free to flame:

i've had a tendency to play fast and hard, so that the game is won about 25% into it (via frigate/battleship rush) and then, of course, it gets a bit tedious doing the "I'll let you live, while I try and crank out all the techs/wonders etc". Obviously, Frogboy is tweaking a faster tech run so that the game isn't always over by Dreadnought BUT....

I played a game the other day, and pushed hard for the crank, and found, to my surprise that the AI's could recover, and that the end game can be pretty interesting, based as it is on very important trade relationships that your empire needs to survive, and the AI's ability to gather a force that can defend their planets.

so it's merely the middle that can be problematic.

My logistic suggestion, which is quite simple and possibly stupid, is to delay Transport technology to say Battleship Level (and make it as 'expensive' as earlier), and delay Combat Transport to say Avatar Level. This means that after the initial planet rush, invasions are impossible until later tech level, giving all civ's a head start, and making the logistic of planetary invasion expensive and more difficult

or is this just dumb?

:notsure:

Evil Steve, that doesn't solve problems. It's probably just your playing style. Back when I used ships in Galciv (now I play peaceful), I wouldn't get much out of frigates on bigger maps, though they were useful on slmall maps, and never found battleships very useful, preferring dreadnoughts anytime. I sometimes needed Overlords too.
Nothing prevents you from modding the transports prerequired techs, but beware that there will be no point whatsoever to build ships before transports are available. So your not having a fleet before Battleships will mean less maintenance and a better economy, thus you'll be better than the ai who will still build a fleet.

i knew i was being dumb - i just got excited by the prospect that wars in the early stages involved resources and trade, with an evolvement into planetary invasion being a logistics nightmare - i mean transporting 1 billion soldiers across space shouldn't be cheaper than building a constructor or a battleship should it?

peaceful means, eh? mmm. maybe i should stop being so evil...

Long Post!

Having read the various opinions I think Most of us agree that we want to be able to have different methods for improving the effectiveness of fleets and limit fleet size depending on various abilities.

Also we need to have logistal and tactical factors which get incorporated somehow to make feature rich combat without too much micromanagement (grouping / ungrouping etc. So....

Fleet size /effectiveness: The admiral idea is a good one, I think a 'prowess' factor is also required from both a mix of specific training as well as experience + a civs own history. Eg an admiral with limited training and no experience could have an intitial fleet ability which is actually Lower than the ships have individually but will improve quickly with successful battles.

The game should also take into account Number of previous historic Winning tactics (Number of battles we have won since start of game).This way new admirals would then have a good starting foreknowledge of effective startegies and get a fleet bonus as a result. This could even be expanded to how effective our society is against different races. Also this would mean that if you have been at peace for the 1st half of the game your admirals have no experience bonus and few historical strategies to follow.
* Also, Espionage spending on a race should also be a factor to Combat success. (Eg In real life - code breaking, intelligence, enemy weaknesses, position etc...so no espionage spending ever = -10 ship/fleet bonus, basic spending 0 bonus, advanced spending +10 etc).


Different tactics: Galciv should have ships with strengths and weaknesses for fleet and ship choice. Currently it is basically Attack and hit points+def. EG. Ship type 1 has projectile type weapons and shields/armor which are good at projectile defense but weak for others. Ship type 2 has other weapon/defense options when designed based on what you have researched. In this way you need to carefully construct the fleet and make research coices. You could have a balanced fleet or a fleet which is very effective at one type of tactic but weak at/against others.
I also think that GC is currently biased towards producing ever larger attack ships for all races. A peaceful society should be able to research different defense techs with its practical outcomes which make it difficult to attack/invade but they would then have difficulty attacking Eg. Get a large Planetary attack + planetery defense bonus for orbiting ships.


As far as logistics are concerned I am not sure what would work best, but distance from any base or planet should definetly have a large effect. However, Logistics should imho NOT impact limit on fleet size - How can it??...I could group 100 Yaughts together in a bay easily but try and get them to cross the Atlantic together, thats another story! So in GC logistics would have an effect on basic range,repair,effectiveness and cost. Eg. Good logistical abilities and close bases mean large fleets fully repair fast . Poor abilities mean they repair slowly and only to say 50% hit points - lack of parts, supply chain issues.... Reversing Polarity on the warp coil just canny fix it Captain! I doon't have the POWERR!! .

Anyone fallen asleep yet!

If you build ships, yes. You could provide alternatives by:
1)Providing strong defense ships (can't move, but extra strong).
2)Providing an alternate tech branch that gives +Weapons/+Shields bonuses so that if you research it instead of new ships techs, your small ships become really powerful. Note that invading a planet may allow you to build avatars, but it will only let you get one +10Weapon/Shield tech, so avatars would be double edged weapons.
Both are moddable right now.

Great post, user-friendly. Some really good ideas there. I agree with you 100%.

That's a great idea, but I would add that it not be just any planet you have taken. It should need to have its own orbiting space station with repair facilities and logistical support base (build all in planet queue) in order to provide logistical support. Starbases should also require upgrades to provide support.

How true! I remember back after Hurrican Andrew when I was living in Homestead, FL, they sent in the National Guard to patrol. Great idea. Only problem was they didn't give them any ammo and the gangs backed them down every time until some dunderhead up in Washington got his act together.