In one regard that seems even more important for multiplayer games (vs humans aware of that loophole) than those against your AI, which currently seems not focused on it......the current doctrines are a step backward compared to the situation before -- sadly in a way that defies common sense
Before:We only had the "fixed doctrines" assigned to the fewer existing ship types and all of those had the "unclassified/support" types last in their target lists - or at least way behind...Result: It was easy to defend for example a colony ship -- just put anything with decent damage and survivability to accompany it and you were set
Now:You can have special ship types to attack unclassified/support types first, even to the point of being sort-of kamikaze, i.e. ignoring anything else....there seems no sufficiently working counter to that as long as you don't add some sort of "protect ..." rules into the mix that overrule the "normal" target order - in order to protect what you want protected!I.e. you have to know the enemy doctrines and class-mix in order to design a working doctrine for protection - that is absurd! It is just common sense that any escort ships are there to protect those colony ships, for example, instead of working down a priority list depending on size or type before considering to just fire on whatever targets the very valuable undefended thing they are here for!So - to me it seems the easiest solution is to add some sort of "protector of xyz" (in my book, unclassified/support would be sufficient to have as only entry there) into the doctrine's list?!
So far, I think the issue lies with the ship class. The default transport uses the cargo class. This class is mostly defined by it's cost. A stripped down cargo class ship costs the same as a fighter, but it has no inherent abilities, no doctrine, and it is generally very vulnerable to enemy fire.
It's not something I'd pack full of marines and send to the front lines.
Instead try using a cruiser instead. AFAIK this also changes the ships designation. Cruisers tend to be pretty safe in the targeting metric, at least as far as I can tell so far. I'm still in the infant stages of ship design and combat.
So, some ideas.
I like to kite out my transport cruisers with support modules, some missiles to help take out small/medium ships, and a comfortable amount of defenses, espesially anti-missile (they tend to be cheap too). But a safer design may be to "return fire only" with anti-fighter weapons instead. This would give even more room for defenses/support stuff, and the transport would be able to dispatch smaller faster things that break through the lines on its own. In theory, by setting it to return fire only, it will always be focusing targets that are set to target it first, and it won't push up into combat range. The cost for this is it also won't contribute to the fight unless it needs to.
Now, theorycrafting a response to your opponents strategy...
In some older space games, like Stars!, there used to be a strat that involved building lots of chaff as a defense. I mentioned freighters being really cheap, right?
If the enemy wants to set their doctrine to target unclassified support. Great. Throw some cheap defenses onto an empty cargo ship and watch their ships get annihilated trying to kill these decoys instead of your valuable ships. Ships do not take opportunity attacks on their way to the main target either. They will fly all the way to your back line while taking heavy fire just to target ships that have no strategic value.
The enemy's decision to cheese your transports can itself be cheesed right back.
I appreciate you bringing this feedback to discussion, Im reading through both of your points here, and hope others will also place their 2 cents in, because i believe this to be a valuable topic
Maybe the simplest solution would be to give troop transports automatic defenses, such as basic shields, armor, and chaff. It could also have a complement of AI drones to protect against fighters, and some beam weapons. It wouldn't last in a fight against larger foes, but could withstand assault by smallfry. My thinking is that these defenses would be inherent in the transport designation, which could be an entirely new class, and could only be used for troops.
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