I had a solo survival game wherein I was supposed to travel a ridiculously long distance without jump drives. In this solo survival game, I had a fleet of, I think, 4 or 5 ships. Even though they weren't heavily armed individually, as a group, they were very effective against any pirate ships that attacked.
How did I have a fleet in a solo game? Easy. I was in control of the one ship, and all the others used relative dampers to follow.
All ships had to be operating with ion thrusters. Hydrogen just isn't feasible in this manner. Relative dampers go kind of like having a ship travel by autopilot. All thrusters just seem to keep pulsing, as automatic controls just never have been stable.
Oh boy. I have enough to do with one decent ship. Even with modular encounters mod. Can't imagine how to manage a fleet. That would be better with a big server and dedicated factions with many players. Not there yet. 😑
The ideal setup is to have a big processing and welding base with a miner with donated drills from all the members and ofc a load of railgun gdrive ships there is simply no fleet that can fight a equivalent amount of gun bricks.
The real problem with having other players: Everybody wants to be in charge. No one wants to be a crewmember. You build a big ship with a lot of crew stations and everyone wants to be the Captain.
I play mostly survival solo with a lot of NPC mods, the way I design a solo fleet is: a main carrier with the main production, power, O2H2 generation safe zone and jumping capability (kinda of a mobile base) but very low firepower at most a few turrets to keep small drones away. After that, I have escort/parasite ships they are attached to the main ship and are specialized toolship miner and fighter they can be either small grids or large grids If it's large grids they are attached using a merge block so I can use all the jumpdrive if they have one normally the script PAM is on the miner so it free me up while it's mining, A toolship for building and salvaging wrecks and a pair of fighters to go and attack NPC (one as a backup) I know it's inefficient in term of PCU (normally everything is between 30k-50k) but you never lose everything because of a single fight
Regarding question 2, the "Why would they do this?": For fun. Solely for fun. Some people like piloting strike craft, some really like their big chonkers and or bricks and some just want to fly something into combat. Thus I think you should focus your fleet less around your ships and their roles but rather around your players. Find fleet compositions where everyone likes flying in said fleet because that also means everyone is more willing to act together, thus increasing both combat effectiveness and communicative effectiveness of the fleet.
Though this is true I think the conversation here is too much about "Battle fleets" and not enough about the concept of a single player survival fleet. Having drone ships to create a protective perimeter around your ships and using slower production and cargo/fuel ships that follow the lead ship to free up maneuverability and firepower in a single battleship is actually a super smart way to play single player once automatons comes out. The video I would love to see from you Luca is how to divide up the PCU cap between each type of ship. What to spend PCU on and where within a single player survival fleet. I love my "do everything" ships, I have one that is less than 5k PCU is it better to just have 4 of these? or more intelligent to have a traditional fleet layout Carriers fighters battleships etc?
PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU PCU
I think fleets are for bigger servers with factions. Or as part of some story.
Fleets like that for better with themed servers.
Communication systems
I'm curious how the update will change this
I had a solo survival game wherein I was supposed to travel a ridiculously long distance without jump drives. In this solo survival game, I had a fleet of, I think, 4 or 5 ships. Even though they weren't heavily armed individually, as a group, they were very effective against any pirate ships that attacked.
How did I have a fleet in a solo game? Easy. I was in control of the one ship, and all the others used relative dampers to follow.
All ships had to be operating with ion thrusters. Hydrogen just isn't feasible in this manner. Relative dampers go kind of like having a ship travel by autopilot. All thrusters just seem to keep pulsing, as automatic controls just never have been stable.
Manpower will be less of a worry when automatons comes out, but will still be ever important at the end of the day
Oh boy. I have enough to do with one decent ship. Even with modular encounters mod. Can't imagine how to manage a fleet. That would be better with a big server and dedicated factions with many players. Not there yet. 😑
The ideal setup is to have a big processing and welding base with a miner with donated drills from all the members and ofc a load of railgun gdrive ships there is simply no fleet that can fight a equivalent amount of gun bricks.
The real problem with having other players: Everybody wants to be in charge. No one wants to be a crewmember. You build a big ship with a lot of crew stations and everyone wants to be the Captain.
I play mostly survival solo with a lot of NPC mods, the way I design a solo fleet is: a main carrier with the main production, power, O2H2 generation safe zone and jumping capability (kinda of a mobile base) but very low firepower at most a few turrets to keep small drones away.
After that, I have escort/parasite ships they are attached to the main ship and are specialized toolship miner and fighter they can be either small grids or large grids
If it's large grids they are attached using a merge block so I can use all the jumpdrive if they have one
normally the script PAM is on the miner so it free me up while it's mining, A toolship for building and salvaging wrecks and a pair of fighters to go and attack NPC (one as a backup)
I know it's inefficient in term of PCU (normally everything is between 30k-50k) but you never lose everything because of a single fight
Indo?
Regarding question 2, the "Why would they do this?": For fun. Solely for fun. Some people like piloting strike craft, some really like their big chonkers and or bricks and some just want to fly something into combat. Thus I think you should focus your fleet less around your ships and their roles but rather around your players. Find fleet compositions where everyone likes flying in said fleet because that also means everyone is more willing to act together, thus increasing both combat effectiveness and communicative effectiveness of the fleet.
Though this is true I think the conversation here is too much about "Battle fleets" and not enough about the concept of a single player survival fleet. Having drone ships to create a protective perimeter around your ships and using slower production and cargo/fuel ships that follow the lead ship to free up maneuverability and firepower in a single battleship is actually a super smart way to play single player once automatons comes out. The video I would love to see from you Luca is how to divide up the PCU cap between each type of ship. What to spend PCU on and where within a single player survival fleet. I love my "do everything" ships, I have one that is less than 5k PCU is it better to just have 4 of these? or more intelligent to have a traditional fleet layout Carriers fighters battleships etc?
Hey thanks for the small spotlight! 🤩