I tried to look up information on this topic, both in game files and the wiki, but was coming up short.
I noticed that difficulty modes effect a feature known as enemy fleets. On easy, no enemy fleets are ever present, while on hard, the chance for an enemy fleet to appear can be 30% or as high as 50% depending on the zone challenge level (I believe).
For example, on Easy Difficulty, every Vanguard level zone will always have 2 enemy ships present. Two randomly rolled ships from either tier 8 or tier 9.
: ../^/0/ThreatLevels/4
{
TiersToSpawn = [8, 9]
8s and 9s are defined as
// 8
{
MinBountyBaseValue = 825001
MaxBountyBasevalue = 1200000
}
// 9
{
MinBountyBaseValue = 1200001
MaxBountyBasevalue = 2500000
}
In other words, this is why you will never see the Terror(4.8M bounty) or the Valor(2.7M bounty) as enemy ships in Bounty mode. They exceed the 2.5M maximum a tier 9 ship is defined as.
But on Hard Difficulty, not every Vanguard level zone will always have 2 enemy ships.
: ..//0/ThreatLevels/4
{
TiersToSpawn = [9, 9]
FleetChance = .5
MaxShipsInFleet = 4
Sometimes you will only get 2 tier 9 ships, but there is a 50% chance (.5) one of those ships will instead become a fleet. A fleet, from what I have observed, is when a tier 9 ship's cost is broken up into 2-4 separate ships, thus creating a fleet. This is why on Easy, every Vanguard system only ever has 2 enemy ships, but on Hard, you sometimes see 2 or many more enemy ships present, but will notice that not every single enemy is a tier 9.
Did I understanding all of that correctly, if not please correct me.
Basic understanding aside, my questions:
Where is 'fleet' defined? I can't find it anywhere in the game text config files. The configuration that tells the game how to break down that tier 9 ship into several smaller ships that add up to the bounty value range of a tier 9 ship.
Is it possible to configure fleets to work together? Right now when that T9 is broken up into a fleet, the fleet doesn't act like a fleet at all. They are just scattered elements that move and act independently. I would like to set a fleet to a formation, or perhaps make it so that when one ship of a 'fleet' entity is engaged, all ships of that 'fleet' entity move to attack whatever is attacking an element of that fleet.
Because the problem I noticed is that Hard Difficulty Vanguard is actually somewhat easier than Easy Difficulty Vanguard. In Easy Vanguard, you will always fight an T8 or a T9 ship. There are no easy pickings. But on Hard Difficulty Vanguard, you can sometimes find a scattered fleet of ships smaller than T9, and engage them one at a time and actually have an easier time in the zone.
I just picked the most extreme end game as examples, but I think this will be good for the early and midgame too. A proper enemy fleet that works with some kind of coordination can be a very interesting adversary and would probably require a different line of thinking in ship construction. Less missile alpha strike and full frontal firepower based ships, and more well rounded craft that can handle threats from more than one direction.
As it is right now, the fleet mechanic seems to be making the harder difficulty less difficult than the easy difficulty.
Any help or information or pointing me in the right direction is appreciated!