| Description | What if there were slots for fleets which the player could fill based on his choices? As a fleet gained experience, it would gain access to more slots. These slots could be used to acquire augments.
Let's consider this with an example: detection. It wouldn't present an interesting choice to have every fleet automatically gain detection. If they didn't initially have it but earned it after reaching a certain level, that might be satisfying, but if it's something which is inevitably gained, then that's not interesting at the end of the day either. If every fleet gets detection, it makes support fleets (with their sentry frigate) less useful, and it also makes AI stealth ships less interesting and relevant since fleets are no longer vulnerable. So what if detection was one of these augments, where a detector ship (probably a sentry frigate) is added to the fleet? Then it's a tempting choice, but when there are other tempting choices competing for the slot, you'll be likely to diversify rather than give every fleet detection.
These slots could go in a variety of directions which might help tailor the fleet better to particular roles or round out its weaknesses. Augments might have a universal cost, or maybe the cost would vary. Maybe all augments are available as long as the fleet has the points to spend on them, or maybe certain augments aren't available until the fleet has reached a certain level.
I only had this idea recently so it's not well refined, but I wanted to throw it out there in case the basic idea was appealing to anyone. I think it would promote interesting choices and provide a way for the player to influence a fleet while retaining their procedural generation aspect. In fact I think it would complement their procedural generation, since rather than there being an optimal set of augments, it would be relative to the composition of ship types for the fleet. |
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