Fleet Management and Blockades

[MasteredRed]

So while thinking for a little while and just getting back from a trip, I started to think of some idea's for fleets and how they could be managed. After a while, I came up with a couple of concepts that could possibly be used.

 

Fleets:

 

Why we need them:

 

To be honest, why wouldn't we need them. Fleets are a intricate system of ships that all server a purpose. Usually, it is to fight wars, trade large quantities safely or just provide a refuge for a time being. My question is this. Why shouldn't we take careful consideration into them. Fleets provide rich emersion and amazing gameplay into the game. For battles, they provide a number of strategic planning and preparation, but can make everything so much more enjoyable and lasting.

 

Example: You are wanting to go and stop a area of a planet from trading with any other people, so you set up a blockade(I'll get to that later). While in the blockade, you encounter resistance. What do you do? You could manage your fleets and align them into a combat position. After that, you begin your cruisers firing and start to take out. Wait, one of your ships is taking critical fire! Do you pull back and stop the blockade or do you calculate what that ship has. Does it play a strategic role? What resources does it have? If it were to fall, how much longer could we hold out for?

 

Obviously, this is a serious situation, but this is only because you have a fleet that you need to take care of. So, obviously there will be fleets no matter what, but then, why am I discussing this topic?

 

It has to do with how fleets are managed. If you can't manage a fleet, you can't survive for long. Simple as that! So, we need to think in terms of how one Admiral would manage a fleet. First, he would have to collect a list of the ships. Next, he would access the ships and create a number of formations and strategies that the fleet could assemble into. After that, he would need to access what the situation was and how the fleet would fit in. After that, it would be a repeating process that would take up large amounts of time. Now, he would have to be in contact with each Captain individually to be able to do this. He could, as an alternative, have a number of networks that report this information to him, but that would be ineffective much of the time when in a real battle and with a very large fleet. How do we get around this then?

 

The answer is a fleet management system! Not just any though. A fleet management system can be both at the same time, a blessing and a curse. If one were to have this, it would make it easier to manage fleets and control large amounts of entities at the same time. If that is the case, this would make it easier, right? Yes, but it might also make it imbalanced, impractical or just too easy. If you were to give this system to the players, it might make it easy to manage a fleet. That's not going to fly(no pun intended). One of the aspects of managing a fleet is the difficulty of it. That is one of the things that can give an Admiral an advantage in large ship to ship combat, is their knowledge and ability to access the situation.

 

What is the solution? As I talked about in my article on my faction's website here, when managing a fleet, you must be aware of the situation at all times, but not overly focused on one element. So, my perposal meets along these lines:

 

1. You must be able to send orders to your fleet.

2. You have list of captains that report to you and update your information.

3. You must have a list of ships and their statistics(some statistics. Depends on what they are)

 

So then, with all of these things I have listed, what option is there? I purpose a screen or tab that shows a chat log with every captain, a list of ships and their basic status and a way to send a message to every fleet at the same time. Now, this isn't anything fancy and still requires a lot of work, but that's what's good about it. Being a Admiral requires exponential skill and concentration. If someone can't achieve this, they shouldn't be an Admiral in the first place! That's why I want to make the task of doing this slightly difficult and to a point where information has to be compiled and made sense by the Admiral or a list of people by him instead of read out to him similar to a story book, where it is too simple and easy to digest.

 

That's my proposal, but I'm open to listening to other options.

 

Blockades:

 

To be honest, this is me more playing around with a concept than actually developing a mechanic. The idea of blockades isn't anything new, but it does raise some interesting questions about fleets that I think need answers or just general discussion.

 

Fleets are assemblies of ships that are managed by an individual or a group of individuals to carry out a specific purpose. So it makes complete logical sense that one of these would happen to be the prevention of trade and support upon a system or region. If you were to stop support on a region, a break in the blockade would be required for people to manage to provide support and relief to those on the blockaded area. In that case, a blockade is a very powerful thing. Where would it be useful as well?

 

Well, in the case of war, a blockade would be useful when looking to suffocate an area of vital and important resources in order to stop activity there. When that happens, the weapons, economy and other such systems become weaker, allowing invading forces to take it out easier. In some instances, it may cause the blockaded area to give up and surrender because the need to stop it is bad enough, not to mention the constant tension. 

 

Now, in DU, a blockade would be taken place with a fleet. Once a fleet surrounded an area, they would stop trade, military and other such forces from getting to that area, Due to that the area has a possibility of getting weaker and crumbling. As well, if an attack was made, it wouldn't be possible to provide support unless the blockade was breached, making that a high priority. So, taking it out is a serious matter in most cases.

 

 

That to me, is the power of fleets. Again, this is my idea and I'd love to see what all of you have to say. Thank you!

[TrihXeen]

These are all good things to think about, and there will be time in game to set things up before we get these large fleets, IMO. Check out these dev blogs:

 

This one on rights and duties distribution: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/05/21/rights-duties-management-system/#more-458

 

This one on Building an Organization: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/03/20/organizations-build-your-corporation-faction-nation-or-empire/#more-437

 

And, this one one on multiplayer ship crews: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/01/30/multiplayer-ship-crew/#more-391

 

Basically, the Captains would need to be able to make decisions to some degree. While extreme situations would require them reporting to their Admiral. The easiest way I see getting around the communication issue is for people to be in something like TeamSpeak or the like!

 

With the coding available in game, I feel that one ship could have information being streamed to a console that the Admiral could access. Allowing him to check on ships without having to wait on comms.

 

-TrihXeen

[Silvligh]

In terms of Order broadcasting, I think a modified version of TrihXeen's idea could work.

And TrihXeen's idea could be literally this, but broadcasting different info, and on a timer.

 

With the coding available in game, I feel that one ship could have information being streamed to a console that the Admiral could access. Allowing him to check on ships without having to wait on comms.

This. This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the first post.

 

It would work exactly like a server, Admiral gets info in, Admiral sends orders out based on the info.

*Looks thoughtful*

[Darius Sanguna]

I would take this idea even a step further with visual information in form of a "strategic table" for the Admiral and HUDs for the Captains, that are updating their information in realtime or almost realtime depending on techlevel and counter measures from the enemy.

 

The strategic table should almost work like a strategie game, displaying the battle in 3D with various levels of information, such as health of ships, crew number, weapon status, engine capabilitys and so on. Simply all information gathered by all sensors of the fleet flow there together. Now to the commanding, the admiral should be able to place orders via the table, position to fly to or to hold, targets in various detail from just the bridge of the enemy ship to the whole thing, formation orders and so on. This orders are then send to the HUDs of the commanded ships, so that the captains know where to fly and where to shoot.

 

Yes i know a tool how i described here is very powerful, but there should be some limiting factors like the techlevel you have, for example you just researched the fleet managment the only infos you get are the position of your ships, their health, the enemys are just blinking red lights without exact position and the only orders you can give are "fly there" and "shoot there".

The next limiting factor should be enemy counter measures, like radio jamming and cyber warfare, so you could have the highest possible tech level but are the counter measures strong enough, your level of information is just so high as at the first tier of the tech or even lower. And even worse the enemy could hijack your signal and get his intel direct from your fleet.

The possibilities of cyber warfare, mentioned before as counter measure, aren't just counter measure it has also offensive use, from simply shutdown a subsystem to trigger the selfdestruct of enemy vehicle, of course its also limited by the before mentioned factors.

The possibilities are just endless.

[MasteredRed]

I would take this idea even a step further with visual information in form of a "strategic table" for the Admiral and HUDs for the Captains, that are updating their information in realtime or almost realtime depending on techlevel and counter measures from the enemy.

 

The strategic table should almost work like a strategie game, displaying the battle in 3D with various levels of information, such as health of ships, crew number, weapon status, engine capabilitys and so on. Simply all information gathered by all sensors of the fleet flow there together. Now to the commanding, the admiral should be able to place orders via the table, position to fly to or to hold, targets in various detail from just the bridge of the enemy ship to the whole thing, formation orders and so on. This orders are then send to the HUDs of the commanded ships, so that the captains know where to fly and where to shoot.

 

Yes i know a tool how i described here is very powerful, but there should be some limiting factors like the techlevel you have, for example you just researched the fleet managment the only infos you get are the position of your ships, their health, the enemys are just blinking red lights without exact position and the only orders you can give are "fly there" and "shoot there".

The next limiting factor should be enemy counter measures, like radio jamming and cyber warfare, so you could have the highest possible tech level but are the counter measures strong enough, your level of information is just so high as at the first tier of the tech or even lower. And even worse the enemy could hijack your signal and get his intel direct from your fleet.

The possibilities of cyber warfare, mentioned before as counter measure, aren't just counter measure it has also offensive use, from simply shutdown a subsystem to trigger the selfdestruct of enemy vehicle, of course its also limited by the before mentioned factors.

The possibilities are just endless.

Well thought. I feel that this is a good counter to my idea.

 

I had worries about how easy it may be to assess the situation and make calls, but this counters my idea and makes it more interesting. Let me give an example.

 

Let's say you were in battle as an Admiral with a large fleet vs fleet situation. You would need to be able to look at the situation and make calls. Now, let us say that the other fleet has advanced tech. Therefor, you need to get ideas to what they have and move accordingly so that you don't fall prey to their attacks. Too late. They have now moved a heavily armored ship portside and are firing upon your carrier, which holds all the small fighters. You get an idea to move the ship out of way or gather other ships around and take the heavily armored ship out, but that would leave areas open. Instead, you make a tactical decision to evacuate the ship by means of the fighters on board. It is a success and you move acordingly and take the enemy ship out.

 

I realize this is a basic approach and not all that interesting. However, if we take a look at the part where the enemy ship tricks you and moves into a firing position, we can come up with some ideas as to what they did. Let me get a list of them out.

 

*They could have jammed radars and moved their ship into position without you detecting it.

*They could have blown up radars and moved without you knowing it!

*They could have also been covered by multiple ships until getting there.

 

These are all situations that could be played here. I think this is a better approach to fleet management in my opinion and stresses the importance of setting everything up in a careful and strategic way. Perhaps that problem could have been avoided if you aligned your fleets in a better way.

 

 

 

Basically, the Captains would need to be able to make decisions to some degree. While extreme situations would require them reporting to their Admiral. The easiest way I see getting around the communication issue is for people to be in something like TeamSpeak or the like!

 

With the coding available in game, I feel that one ship could have information being streamed to a console that the Admiral could access. Allowing him to check on ships without having to wait on comms.

 

-TrihXeen

I viewed this portion of your comment as an extremely good part to highlight. I know Captain's should be able to make decisions the degrees and Admirals should be the lead commanders when making large scale decisions. That is something I know is needed if the jobs are even remotely manageable. However, that next part....

 

Coding. It is constantly on my mind but I'm not used to it being a part of games so heavily! I imagine your idea tops all of them here due to the simplicity yet flexibility of it. I imagine it will take a while for people to figure this out but once it does happen, it will probably be wide spread.

 

Well, this post has achieved it's goal. Get the topic discussed.