Choosing fleet layout AFTER knowing who you're fighting!

[AveFerrum]

Hey everyone,

Something that surprised me when playing BFGAII is that one goes into match making with the fleet one wishes to fight with already selected.

This is a shame, because if people could choose their fleet layout after knowing what race they are fighting, there would be tons more things to consider when constructing a fleet. I also feel that the differences between the many ships would be a lot more pronounced.

For example, when I am fighting a slow fleet as the Drukhari, I do not need the speed of LCs and may opt for taking heavier ships. However, when I am fighting a fast fleet, I may need fast ships myself to keep distance.
Another example would be the kind of weapons one would bring to the fight. Against high-armour fleets, lances would be preferred. Against low-armour fleets, macro weapons.

Not only would this allow for a much wider selection of fleets to be played, it would also give races who have very difficult match ups an opportunity to field fleets which are specialized to deal with this situation.

Currently, specializing a fleet against a certain race may gimp you when fighting other races, so really the optimal fleet is a "happy medium", a "jack-of-all-trades".

I think there should be an option, perhaps a seperate game-mode, where one selects their race, finds an opponent and only then selects what fleet and which upgrades they wish to use. This would add numerous layers of depth and variety to fleet layouts and encourage people to experiment with all the tools at their disposal.

Please share your thoughts!

[AveFerrum]

Bump for great justice!

[Black Raven]

I imagine the main reason is to speed up matchmaking etc, and so you dont end up waiting 30 mins for opponent to build thier fleet.

Tho this could be avoided if they allowed presets.

Ie you can build multiple fleet configs, and pick one before fight starts.

[Ydyp]

I put forth this same point in a reply to another topic before. So I do agree this would be great to have and could solve some problems that show up. Though this method sure will be more profitable by fleets that have more then one trick to pull like Imperium or chaos but drawback for factions with not a lot of ship selection like Necron or Nids. As Nids only one trick is decrew and could be easily countered with the right fleet.

Originally posted by Black Raven:

I imagine the main reason is to speed up matchmaking etc, and so you dont end up waiting 30 mins for opponent to build thier fleet.

Tho this could be avoided if they allowed presets.

Ie you can build multiple fleet configs, and pick one before fight starts.

They should still give us the option to save presets for our factions instead of only the prebuild ones.

And there are different solutions for the concerns of the time thatpeople could be taking. Like giving only 5 minutes to select the ships. This should be plenty of time, espeicaly if you wen build our own presets and look up ship info beforehand.

[Kalil]

Originally posted by Ydyp:

Like giving only 5 minutes to select the ships. This should be plenty of time, espeicaly if you wen build our own presets and look up ship info beforehand.

How about 30 seconds, pick only from your presets.

[Frozen Solid]

[/quote]
They should still give us the option to save presets for our factions instead of only the prebuild ones.

[/quote]

You can make and save customs fleets now.

[Avlaen]

No, it means you could easily build a hard counter list to what your fighting.

This way it means you have to factor what you put into your list as it could come up against any enemy.

[Tal'Raziid]

This would be a horrible addition to MP. Literally just encouraging people to pick whatever would cheese or spam win against the current foe

[AveFerrum]

Fair points, but you would be able to choose a setup to counter this aswell. Your opponent can make use of it, but so can YOU. It means you can and possibly have to get creative with your fleets. Up against a slow enemy? Take lots of torps. Up against a fast enemy? Take slowing skills, etc. It would open up tons more possibilities.

Right now, there are lots of great skills and upgrades which you will never see because they are too situational.

And as has been suggested, let players pick from their custom fleet layouts. Shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to see which faction they are up against and which of their fleets is best suited.

[ChaosKhan]

Some factions are limited, one trick ponies (like Tyras and Tau), so it would put them at a inherent disadvatange and building balanced fleets which can cope with every threat, would become redundant. Therefore, I am against this idea.

[Galactic Origins]

this idea would be cheating
the other player draws blindly, so fair is fair

[Cizjut]

YES I was thinking the exact same thing, and would love that a dev actually FIXED this. I say FIX because it would be pretty simple (maybe).

The first one was like this too. You picked a faction and launched the matchmaking, THEN you made your draft picks. There are no draft picks of individual ships in this one, but you should pick your fleet loadouts until you see the enemy faction.
OF course, you already built your custom fleets to choose from the menu, you're not taking much time anyways.

The way it works right now is that I cannot or should not try specialized tactics against other races, but to have jacks of all trades fleets because you don't know what you're up against. A heavy armored fleet will not work the same against fast Drukhari, for example, but I already chose the fleet beforehand, so i'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to painstakingly turn and give chase these.

It's strange that they deliberately changed this, or it was a BIG overlook.

[Cizjut]

Originally posted by Canoness Avlaen:

No, it means you could easily build a hard counter list to what your fighting.

This way it means you have to factor what you put into your list as it could come up against any enemy.

On the flipside, you end up doing the same "safe jack of all trades" cookie cutter fleets to easily adapt to, let's say, 8 out of 11 factions.

[AveFerrum]

Originally posted by ChaosKhan:

Some factions are limited, one trick ponies (like Tyras and Tau), so it would put them at a inherent disadvatange and building balanced fleets which can cope with every threat, would become redundant. Therefore, I am against this idea.

The one-trick pony fleets are one of the reasons this needs to be implemented. Some races can only be effectively engaged by specialized fleets, but currently you cannot specialize so you're always at a disadvantage against them.

If it turns out these races truly become gimped in such a situation, which I doubt, the next step would be to balance these races out so they get more options.

[Tal'Raziid]

That is literally just the 'we made everything else so easy to wreck these other ones by implementing an advantage for them, that now we have to boost these other factions artificially, and then inevitably gotta boost the others again' cycle
The faction balance is asymmetrical

[AveFerrum]

Originally posted by Tal'Raziid:

That is literally just the 'we made everything else so easy to wreck these other ones by implementing an advantage for them, that now we have to boost these other factions artificially, and then inevitably gotta boost the others again' cycle
The faction balance is asymmetrical

I disagree. Being able to field more than one cookie cutter fleet should be the norm.

The fact that your fleet needs to be able to tackle all other races means a lot of ships will never see use in multiplayer, simply because they are specialized.

In addition, balance is and always will be a process. Allowing players to adapt to the sort of fight they are expecting is ultimatey positive for the balance, as long as all races are given some sort of options to deal with each other.