Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

What if EMP, Cloacking, Stealing, Armour were not ships devices but tactics ?
Providing you have researched the new "Tactics and Strategies" branch and built the right amount of military academies, you could select on the mission page the way your fleet will fight.
The tactic you choose will affect your ships initiative, armour, damage with + or -
1. Cloacking : trying to hide your numbers by specific fleets formations putting the pods at the front... making your ships more vulnerable however. Initiative +, Armour -, Damage =

2. EMP : special manoeuvers enabling you to approach the enemy fleets at dead angles from their weapons with the penalty of your own weapons being much less effective.
Initiative +, Armour =, Damage -

3. Stealing : inflitrate enemy fleet formations and board ships to steal them (crews have to abandon their own ships though that's why you lose ships when stealing).
Initiative -, Damage =, Armour +

4. Armour : learn strong defensive tactics that maximize the effectiveness of your ships armour
Initiative =, Damage -, Armour +

The goal ? each ship (and race) can be either emp, cloack, steal or armour at will. Hopefully opening more tactic options and bringing more fun o the game.
Not sure if it would be more fun to have the capacity to order a change of tactics after launch (with some kind of penalty...).
Military academies would determine the value of ships you can command with these tactics.
Each race may start with a tactic already learnt... or not.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Excellent idea you have there mate.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Radical change you suggest there. I´ll give it some more thoughts the next days when I find more time (am about to go to bed right now), but one thing I wonder about is if it wouldn´t turn the game pretty much into a gamble when it comes to fighting: how to determine the targets fleet tactics? I´m just against overly random events in a tactical game - they tend to be pretty frustrating for the players.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Option:
Tactics are set on fleet slots (and base) and need 4 ticks to change.
You can use a scan to see the fleet tactics.
OFC the target can change it's tactic until eta 4 meaning you will have to scan at least twice to be sure: end of eta4, end of eta1.

With that option I suggest the attack fleet can change it's orders too, up to eta4.
Yes there is a "paper - scissors" aspect, is that bad or 'realistic' ?
That will benefit the active players who can play and change tactics / scans closer to the tick. It gives them an edge over the casual players who set their fleets in prelaunch and just come online before landing to check the alliance scans.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

So it'd turn into a sort of 12 hour rock, scissor, paper game?
Since if Race A choses tactic B, you as Race B should select tactic A.
I'd much rather open for ships to just have ability to do chosen types of damage first.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

worth exploring the idea for future betas

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Didnt we have something like this back in the day , you could set fleet orders to concentrate on ships or roids or a combo of both , i dont think it lasted more than a cpl of rounds though

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Far too radical for PATeam to implement.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Maybe you're on about PAX where every ship capped roids which allowed for hilarious fakes. Also you could set it to war and shit I dont remember exactly, but it only lasted 1 round iirc.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

In round 10 you could set fleet priorities: Asteroids, Ships, Structures.

It was a pretty awful idea in practice and was removed r11.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Personally I like the idea of making people choose between capping roids and killing structures, preferably using a sliding scale.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Some sort of pod/sk hybrid ship then?

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Not necessarily. You could simply say that if you want to destroy 10% of your target's structures, you won't cap anything. Destroy 5% and you cap half of maxcap, etc.

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Sounds like a pod/SK hybrid with a priority setting: roid/bomb/roid&bomb

Re: Crazy idea from a bored player...
 

Could be interesting.