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I saw one player call a 'transport fleet' a 'transport convoy' and that got me thinking: would it be more consistent to used that terminology for the civilian convoys? We've always used transport fleet, trade fleet, colony fleet to describe these, but saying transport convoy, trade convoy, colony convoy would make it clear that these are convoy units.

Any strong preference on the subject?

My thoughts on Civilian Fleet vs Convoy naming are to make the civilian units be convoys and military uses fleets.

Thus a Transport Convoy would be a civilian unit, where as a Transport Fleet would be 2-4 Military Transports, which have a different function.

The civilian units would then be Colony Convoy, Transport Convoy and (if used) Merchant Convoy.

The civilian units would then be Colony Convoy, Transport Convoy and (if used) Merchant Convoy.

Make that Trade Convoy.

I knew Merchant didn't sound right, but I couldn't think of the right term right then.

I think either, but Convoy does indicate more a collection of ships that require protection.

Another question on convoys: would it be better to have a single convoy and just assign them to the different actions, or is having the distinct convoy types still preferable?

The advantage is that we could have a single unit to worry about, and then standardize cargo handling so that a convoy can carry 10 size of units, where flights, minefields, and ground forces have a size equal to their construction cost and Census have a size of 10.

A point against collapsing them into a single convoy type is that it would force a rebalance of commerce income (unless convoys just cost 20 EP, at which point it's fine). It also reverts to an earlier 2E model where multiple ground forces can be carried by a single convoy. I made that 1 per convoy just to be consistent with 1E. However, if the cost of ground forces increase to about 4/6/8 for light/medium/heavy then that would be less of a problem. You'd still only get about 1 ground force per convoy, or 2 if you Tetris the light/mediums correctly.

I like the single convoy type method. It keeps everything simple and you can re-task cargo movers instead of having all these specialized units you have to make sure you have on hand.
So if you need supply convoys for an offensive you can convert a convoy that just dropped a colony or move a trade convoy and they would fill the need.
Of course converting a trade convoy into a cargo convoy would only be done if you couldn't simply instabuild a convoy. Either because there are no instabuilds or there are limits on it.

I'd argue that both options are valid, depending on the source material. If you've got modular freighters where a ship can stick on a habitation pod for colonists/passengers and do the weekly interstellar ferry from Sol to Proxima, then switch out the pods for mining ore or fine silks from Orion III, then go for a standard Civilian Convoy. If, however, there are distinct freighters/liners/mining ships/tankers/hydroponics ships etc., then splitting the convoys into Colony Convoys, Trade Convoys and Transport Convoys makes more sense...