It's time for continuation :) Here is the first topic: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/658767-how-to-avoid-stacks-of-doom-in-4x/

This time some restrictions, to focus the discussion:

- you can't limit number of ships the player puts in the battle (player is allowed to move them all to the same planet to fight)

- you can't touch strategic level (so no "it's too expensive to maintain a huge fleet" or "you have to defend other planets" etc), you can only change the way battle works

You can impose various combat mechanics and control levels (manual tactical combat, automatic combat, etc whatever you desire).

A quick idea to start the discussion: If total tonnage of all ships you brough to the battle exceeds 500 tonns during the first combat turn your ships can't move or fire (they are too disorganized) and after that there is 50% chance a ship will be unable to act that turn. Next quick mechanic every 100 tonns you get 5% chance (up to 30%) for "friendly fire" (a ship will target a friendly ship that combat turn). Automatic combat recommended.

kk I'm sort of unclear as to what you're looking for here. Here's what I'm getting:

A common/effective tactic in space games is to clump all your ships into one ginormous fleet that destroys everything. You're trying to find ways of disincentivising this behaviour, and you're asking for ideas/ what do we think of your proposed ideas?

I'm asking for ideas. I just posted one idea to give some example, nothing more.

Ive always thought the way this was handled is by adding area-of-effect weapons, which obviously grow in effectiveness the more units are clumped together.

Nuke a single ship, meh, nuke a giant swarm of intermingled fleets, win.

Also if theres visibility make large blobs show on map easier, otherwise those AoE weapons wont be of much use.

Classic reasons :

Hard to control a large group :

- old ships tactic - following in line because it was simple (for when the battle gets confusing)

- communications problems dont allow direct control in middle of battle (Jutland they had radios but were jammed and used relayed flag/light signals which got muddled )

- integrated tactics with certain ship types staying sub-grouped with ships they are meant to protect/scout/screen for

- misinformation and unclear orders can have parts of a fleet acting counter-productively/out of position, sub-commanders with different tendencies

They get in each others way for shooting/maneuvering :

- they have to be spaced and gun ranges then have only a fraction of the enemy ships in range of the enemy at any one time

- broadside limitations - only limited frontage

- line leaves space for ships to fall out of line and not impede others

Environment interference :

- storms(blocking visibility), debris, shallow spots

A variant of area of effect weapons: severe explosions when ships are destroyed, imposing large safety distances (which the player could ignore to intensify attacks).

In an abstract combat system, just make fleet attack strength proportional to the cubic root of the ship count or similar formulas, to make stacks of not-quite-doom less useful than splitting forces to fight multiple battles fronts.