Hey Folks ,
With help from @dysp and @xjhdexter we have a new combat function that is nearly ready to be turned on in next games starting next week some time.
The most exciting thing about the new rules, is that it allows players to keep ownership of careers when they land at the stars of Formal Allies.
Currently combat is fought between all players at a star as if they were all enemies. (Which is why we had to hand ally ships over to star owner). In the new combat function, all ships will be divided into two teams. The attackers and the defenders.
The defenders will be any player in a formal alliance with the star owner. The attackers are everybody else.
All players on a team fight with the same weapon tech, the highest of their team. The defender then receive the +1 defenders bonus.
If the attacker wins, the player with the most ships on the attacking team captures the star.
However, if there were players at war with each other in the attacking team, a second subsequent combat will take place in the following tick.
Note: I not 100% sure, but I suspect it may be possible to fly away from this second combat before it occurs. - Needs testing
There are still some interface issues to work out, and I may not have it completely ironed out before this goes live next week. For example, I’m not 100% sure how the map should look when there are two players at a star, right now just the stars owner gets the colour ring.
I’m also not sure whether to not a star or career should be able to transfer ships to and from another player’s carrier. My first instinct is to block all transfers, because thats easy, but allowing all transfers easy too. Do you guys have a preference.
I suspect fleet orders right now also fail to work if the star is not yours, but we might want to allow you do drop but not collect, or perhaps you should be free to collect as well. You are after all Formal Allies.