Forcing engagements

[DarthVicious]

There are two obvious strategies for forcing engagements, however, they are both wasteful.

PINCER ATTACK
Attack with two fleets. The target fleet will evade or engage the first fleet but cannot evade the second if it arrives with the 'recovery phase' where the fleet cannot react. The problem with this is you need to either sacrifice a cheap ship to be destroyed, or send in enough of a fleet to force the target to evade, so a second fleet can intercept. Either way, you are wasting precious MC (or resources)

TIGHT ENGAGEMENT
Attack with a fleet that is obviously 'weaker' (lower combat score), and hope your designs counter the enemy and will win the day. This can be done by not equipping missiles for e.g., as missiles will massively inflate your fleet combat score. This however leads to very tight engagements, and is sometimes difficult to get the balance right where your fleet is good enough, but not so much that the enemy will evade.

I am not sure what is a good alternative though. Any fleet in space will see you coming, and can launch for a distant target and so avoid the engagement. The only way the engagement cannot be avoided is if the pursuing fleet has more dV to spend, which means the aliens will always be able to evade since for most of the game they have a massive dV advantage.

ALTERNATE SUGGESTION 1: Higher Orbit:
Fleets launching an intercept form a higher orbit should always be able to intercept. They have the 'high ground' so to speak. Not sure that this would necessarily apply depending on orbital distances and relative velocities, but its a simplistic solution, easy to understand.

ALTERNATE SUGGESTION 2: Acceleration Profile.
Intercepts launched from with a range determined by your fleet acceleration versus the target fleet acceleration, should always intercept. i.e., the sprinter can catch the marathon runner in the short term, but given a sufficient head start the marathon runner will always win.

ALTERNATE SUGGESTION 3: Initial Velocity Vector.
Added to Suggestion 2, you could also take into account the initial velocity vectors of the two fleets. So a fleet with a higher initial velocity in the direction of the target will have an advantage and can force an intercept if within positive intercept range. This is not a scenario that plays out often in the game, as intercepts are usually launched from stable orbits or docking stations, not mid-transfer. Suggestion 1 might be the simplest.


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ENGAGEMENT TYPES

The next part of the discussion is whether it is possible to shape the type of engagement which occurs. At the moment engagements always start with the two fleets having a relatively slow closing velocity towards each other. Which makes perfect sense. In space the only velocity vector that matters is that relative to the opposing fleet. However, I think there is still room for adding other conditions to the engagement.

SUGGESTION 1 - Matched Velocities
The two fleets start with a slow velocity relative to each other. This is the standard engagement we see in the game currently. Nothing new here.

SUGGESTION 2 - High Speed Pass
One of the fleets has a very high velocity relative to the other. Overcoming it may be difficult or impossible, and the combat window will be tiny. The relative velocities may render targeting with missiles and kinetics very difficult.

SUGGESTION 3 - Tangential Velocities
Similar to suggestion 2, but the relative velocity of the two fleets may be at some angle, i.e., they are on different headings, although the combat window might be of intermediate length. However ships will be required to burn a lot of fuel to match velocities (change course) if they want to extend the engagement.

SUGGESTION 4 - The Ambush
No. Not a typical ambush. Probably impossible in open space, and hiding behind moons may not apply in this game. However, when you identify a fleet approaching a target in a transfer orbit, you should be able to park a fleet at the destination, and force an intercept when the fleet arrives. Simplest way of seeing it, on arrival in orbit, the fleet has a 'recovery window' where they cannot issue new orders (bombardment, attack, move, evade), just like they have in other circumstances. So if you park your intercept fleet at their arrival point, they should have no option but to accept the engagement.


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Of course, determining positive conditions for an intercept is easy, but determining AI behavior in different engagement scenarios may not be trivial.

[johnnylump]

We deliberately left out high-speed passes and have no plans to add them. We think they're suicidal and players wouldn't enjoy a screen that says "all your ships are destroyed" with no recourse.