PaulB wrote:Is that what command limits are for? I think the idea of a Battleship fleet is appealing, as a Great War concept, and could be dissuaded by long build times and disproportionately higher maintenance costs. Though don't know if it works well in practice.
That's the main reason for them. It gives an extra incentive to build frigates and destroyers to fill in where more expensive ships can't in a squadron organization. The build times were only an optional rule in 1E, and were more of a band aid to fix the "insta-build economic monster" scenario where you could just churn out replacement battleships without even thinking about it.
If there was another prominent game mechanism that removed the need for that and still made light combatants useful, then I could see a single squadron task force model working out. Off the cuff, I think if these "escorts" were responsible for improving formations, then that might do the trick. I think the trade off would have to be that any ship that was performing escort duties would either take a hit to their combat factors, or even reduce their AS/AF to zero so they couldn't fire at all.
There are different ways of deciding how much "escort" ability a ship would generate, but to provide any meaningful simplification to the rules it would have to be something straightforward that didn't require a lot of extra math. I ran into that problem in early 2E combat builds where you were paying points to boost formations in a very awkward manner that worked, but slowed down the game a lot.
So taking a step back, let's say each task force had a flagship, and the number of ships that the task force could field was equal to 6 + Flagship CR. That would provide a decent floor, while keeping the number of ships to a reasonable number. A CA (CR 6) could command a task force of 12 ships.
Okay, now the question becomes what kinds of interactions we'd have to see to balance out the combat on a 12 vs 12 fleet battle? Why pick a BB over a FF when assembling the task force?
The first answer would be as a damage sink if, again, you were forced to spend leftover points to cripple or destroy the weakest unit in a task force. This alone would make all BB fleets a horrible idea, but it also leads to a logical gap of why a single FF can destroy a BB in a 1-on-1 fight. You could assume that this is akin to torpedo boats or destroyers and without a screen the BB is not able to properly defend itself. That argument can be made, but players would be rather unhappy about that.
The next idea is the formation bonus boost mentioned previously. You'd have to restrict the Escort ability to smaller units and make it an innate quality for that to work, however. Then you'd be adding the smaller ships in to give the larger ones formation bonuses. The easiest way to approach this would be a set ratio of 1:1 or 1:2. If the escorts couldn't participate in combat or otherwise took a penalty then it would become a conscious decision to sacrifice firepower in return for protecting a friendly ship against enemy attack.
An even wilder idea, which I did mess with during 2E, is to remove AF and replace it with PD (Point Defense), and have that end up being an "attack" roll used each turn to determine the effectiveness of your formations. You'd have to boil it down to a simpler formation boost because originally I think I was having PD give DV bonuses that you had to apportion out, and that was frustratingly slow to take care of at the start of each combat round to say the least.
Another consequence of a single squadron task force is that the pre-scenario scout use would become a continuing facet of combat. The include/exclude rules would become MUCH more active at that point, as you could then use your Scouts to directly manipulate enemy task force composition. The Escort concept could be combined here, with anything of DD or smaller providing something like 1/2 scout function. That would give us a single mechanism (the scout rules) for handling includes/excludes, formation modification, etc. that could be used each round.
One failing of the single squadron task force model is that in larger battles you would never have the impression that a major fleet action was occurring. Each combat round could see a wildly different composition as a player swapped forces in and out. The carriers might be here this round, but then be spirited away next round after their fighters are all destroyed. Scout use would then be the only way to force these units to remain in the battle, unless the enemy fleet simply has nothing left in the reserves. This could make for some interesting tactical decisions, however, and would make it easier for a player to protect crippled ships and let more of their units survive a battle.
The only reason I'm really toying with all of this is because, based on the confusion with scenario resolution that we've had recently, if we do end up having to revise that element of the combat rules, that would be the perfect time to address any other outstanding quibbles, and if a single squadron task force does appeal to more players then it is something that we may want to take a serious look at. I'm not sold on the idea beyond it being an optional rule, but throwing ideas around to see what sticks can't hurt.