Assumptions:
- Targetting rules:
- anti-ship weapons (direct weapons, bombers, torpedoes) aims first ships.
- anti-drone weapons (interceptors, flak cannons, missiles) aims first drones. - Drone weapons ignore shields.
- Speed and range discarded for tactics.
- Carrier-only stealth ships are targettable after round 1 (same as with direct weapons).
General degrees of tactic freedom that we can have already with current tech tree and ship parts:
- Hull size (many small or few big) vs shot damage (small or big):
- small hull fleets gets advantage against big weapons fleets.
- big hull fleets gets advantage against small weapons fleets. - Type of weapon (direct or drone) vs type of defense (shield or flak / interceptors):
- shield gets advantage against direct weapons fleets and disadvante against drone weapons fleets.
- anti-drone defense gets advantage against drone weapons fleet and disadvantage against direct weapons fleets. - Stealth vs no stealth. Stealth, when winning the tech race, means -1 round of enemy damage (a sort of first strike).
- Stealth gets advantage against lower detection empires and disadvantage against greater detection empires. Usless at late game but could be fixed.
We could add some more minor degrees without requiring C++ tinkering, just using current FOCS mechanics:
- Torpedoes vs bombers. Well, this could require some C++ work, to make the torpedo die on hit.
- Torpedoes attacks only once per combat (launch round 1, hit on round 2 if not destroyed) and deals way more damage than bombers (>3xbomber). Best weapon against huge hulls, worst against small hulls. - Number of shots per round (many shots with less damage vs few shoots with more damage).
Currently this only differentiates flaks (anti-drone) from direct weapons (anti-ship), and the targetting systems overrides this. So...
- Direct weapons with multiple shots and low damage get advantage against small hull fleets and disadvantage against big hulls, compared to direct weapons with single shot and high damage.
- A very low damage with very high shoot rate could be an all-round direct weapon with same role than fighters, i.e. no targetting priorities. - Advanced combat targetting. Parts or leaders that allow to aim first certain ships. Possibilities:
- Ships with more direct damage (kill first beam weapon)
- Ships with more anti-drone weaponry (kill first flak cannons).
- Ships with less or more structure (kill first big vs kill first small).
Sure there are others.
I'm not sure if this brings in more degrees of freedom in fleet composition or actually the opposite (cause it may become a must-have, at least late game).