Fleeting: Why Don't You Like It?

[RC 212]

Heres a good reason some people don't. Because when someone shows up with like fifty ships and ten or twelve different classes of ships and fails to link them it becomes very tedious to research every single spec of all the ships.

Plus the chaos in general!

I used to be at a board where a few people were excellent fleet writers and gave the battleplan. Everyone else commanded a single vessel or two and did the Ship vs Ship PVP combat, whereas the admiral did the background noise and the directing. If your admiral was a low activity type your were pretty much doomed to fail.

Another thing. In fleeting we rarely see dogfights yet there are a ton of dusty old pilot characters that never get RPed in peoples accounts.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

[member="Captain Larraq"]

But that very concept means you're only intending to let one person fleet, usually the same person, which perpetuates the problem rather than attempt something different or fix it. And I didn't say split one fleet. I said implement the fleet idea Val brought up before, and then have a maximum "fleet" number. You get a certain number of fleets. Preferably one per writer you get involved in the battle rather than just giving 1 writer 6 fleets to command against another person's 6 fleets. Such organization would be more realistic in my opinion, but so late as it is I'm not very capable to make the points of it intelligently.

 

[Vorhi Alestrani]

I've been reading this quite heavily, and you'vee got some great points.

[member="Ayden Cater"] hit on something in particular, though. Most of us are not really all that cognizant of how the fleet stuff works. It's probably not more arcane than the thousands of other weird thigns we do around here--Lord knows my Teras Kasi is some obscure, silly stuff.

But, there is one truly large difference between fleeting and force duels:


Force duels, and the relevant training, happens outside of invasions.



Yes, I made that larger on purpose. Sue me. However, this is a rather serious point. If a new player joins up with a faction with a new force user, it's not uncommon for the senior force users to train them, primarily by screwing around in threads. Some of our more altruistic members will even train writers OOCly by making non-canon threads to practice dueling, force-power wielding, and even mitilary combat in.


I've seen non-canon duels, casual duels, skirmish duels, personal duels, plot duels, and invasion duels.


I've only seen invasion fleeting.


Maybe fleeting isn't hugely popular because it only shows up when major factions are going to war. Maybe the reason we're all scared of fleeting isn't because fleeting is hard, but every time it pops up, it's some high-stakes full-on war.
Maybe we should go flight school before we feel ready for the grand theaters of war.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Vorhi Alestrani"]

I like this. I'd like to see people who are good at fleeting train people who are interested.

I think one reason ypou dont see fleet skirmishes is simply the fact that the rule set is uber restrictive in terms of what a person can have for ship length. How can you skirmish against OP as a minor faction if you have inferior ships and they just whip out the big boys?

What if you wanted to be a solo character with only a few ships? What then?

 

[Camellia Swift]

[member="Vorhi Alestrani"] [member="Colap Ticon"]

Actually the Republic is doing such. And I openly am available to teach anyone any time.

I do wish to break the notion fleeting only occurs during invasions. I run starfighting scenarios all the time. Defend the medical frigate extracting survivors from a pirate attack FROM PIRATES!!!! Or defend a convoy against mercenaries hired by lowlife scum who want the cargo. Both of which can happen groundside too if such ideas are desired.

To turn it into larger scale fleeting though the problem is as I've stated, the fleet sizes are too big during invasions to appeal to writers.

I've done small scale fleet exercises. Had a Republic Fleet vs Rendili's Defense Fleet with starfighters included for fun and it went reasonably well until Wraith squadron fell apart ooc. I've also done several ships versus NPC Pirates that were discovered operating nearby in asteroid fields which can be fun. Smallest I usually run is 2-5 ships per person, and largest has been 6-10. I find this leaves people fairly comfortable to attach ideas to the ships and optimize their own battle groups to themselves.

If anyone would like to join me in a future fleeting exercise or question me on my fleeting method I am open to PMs, and am available on skype: drail5108.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Camellia Swift"]

In an effort to rectify your pilot problem I joined the Rep as Silara Varis. See you there!

Note: I'll just watch and learn with her for now.