I was thinking. Non combat focused game is nice, but combat foused is not bad either... But the thing I find a bit annoying and overused is the "everything in the end boils down to how many ships you can construct per turn". That, along with moving thousands of units on the map each turn, is my greatest complain about combat.

But the thing I find a bit annoying and overused is the "everything in the end boils down to how many ships you can construct per turn". That, along with moving thousands of units on the map each turn, is my greatest complain about combat.

• Restrict the number of units in each fight, effectively capping the useful industrial capacity of the player if the number of battles per turn remains limited.
  
• Make ship quality more important than ship quantity in combat rules (apart from limiting fleet sizes, you can exaggerate rock-paper-scissors patterns or offer super-effective but specialized weapons and armor choices), so that the player needs to build the right ships and bring them to the right battlefield.
  
• Balance fleet maintenance costs to allow players to build fleets and shrink them with the losses of military campaigns, but strangle them into eventual bankruptcy if they keep too many ships around; players would only build just enough ships for their needs.
  
• Restrict fleet movement, more or less explicitly, to make any ship built far from the front line relatively useless.

Hmm, after reading the posts above I discovered more personal greviances :D Oh well, making ones hate list is just as good as making the love list in terms of deciding features :)

Restrict fleet movement, more or less explicitly, to make any ship built far from the front line relatively useless.

Well, I really dislike that one. I mean, in all these games you just move around reinforcements all the time. Produce, send, wait. Maybe it's just me and you love that part of strategy games? Or maybe you find it a "necessary evil"?

For example, ranged sniper mecha hidden behind asteroids armed with devices which prevents the radar from identifying them.

It's tactic level, not strategic level. I have nothing against this kind of mechanic in general, it can be very fun, but... In this game I'm the emperor of a galactic empire. A powerful person who rule the stars. Why should I command where some lone sniper hides and at whom he shoots at? I could give commands to whole star flotillas, not to mere units! It's below my dignity and importance. I'm the emperor you know :D

I think I would go for a higher abstraction level when it comes to fleets and combat (like appointing an admiral, give him a task force and an order to go and conquer that part of the galaxy :D).

Now the things I liked:

Maybe the amount of ships one can build depends on the population. The higher the population, the more active ships one can afford to have.

Balance fleet maintenance costs to allow players to build fleets and shrink them with the losses of military campaigns, but strangle them into eventual bankruptcy if they keep too many ships around; players would only build just enough ships for their needs.

Yeah, I think there should be some natural limit on the fleet size. Like, you don't build more ships, but maintain a fleet of more or less the same size most of the time and care about switching outdated ships with new ones (upgrade less by quantity and more by quality).

Why no one thinks of a new K240 / Fragile Allegiance ?

I think it is still a great concept with open possibilities.

Why no one thinks of a new K240 / Fragile Allegiance ?

I think it is still a great concept with open possibilities.

I have played only the old K240. What fun (and compatible with space empire theme) was in the Fragile Alliance?

About fleet

I wonder how useful a real life model would be here...

For example how the german fleet construction in XIX century looked like (by admiral Tirpitz).

First, he took several small vessels (that pretended to be big ships of the line) and made various tests. He concluded the optimal group is an escadre made of 8 warships. So he made a plan of building 1 flagship, 2 escadres of 8 ships each and 2 reserve ships (19 ships). Then, when the support for building fleet among population and the parliament increased he went for 2 flaships, 4 escadres of 8 ships each and 4 reserve ships (quite interesting is the reserve ships part). There was also "ship replacement speed". At first a ship was supposed to serve for 25 years then be scrapped (yep, no destroyed in combat, no upgraded, just removed as useless junk even if it never fought in a ny battle and was not damaged at all), then they got scared by British fleet and decide to go foe 20 years in service (so the ships would be more modern) and therefore the production plans were increased (even though the total number of ships was not increased).

It's quite interesting... In real life they build ships as a discardable thing with a short expiration date (just like eggs :D), even the biggest warships. Also the whole (or almost whole) fleet is always no older than around 25 years. So, it's not like you build a ship in the first turn and then use it over and over again until it got ancient and then you send it to a suicide recon mission (maintenance/upkeep maybe?) I wonder if something like that could be used...