Corebound
Battles in rows
Fleet Commander has no home base: your fleet is your realm. That makes battles the heart of the game, so they are the first thing we build, before the galaxy map and before the server. The question for this first prototype is simple: is a battle fun to plan and fun to watch?
The idea
Battles fight themselves. You decide before the first shot:
- Positions on a small grid: front, flank, back.
- Pilots: who flies which ship.
- Doctrine: focus the largest target, intercept fighters, advance, or retreat at 50 % losses.
- Two abilities you trigger yourself, such as an EMP that strips a row of its shields.
Why rows
We considered free movement, ships flying around the screen. On a phone it is hard to read, and it makes every decision fuzzy. Rows make positioning a real choice:
- The front is hit first and shields the back.
- The flank can reach the enemy's back row, but fighters intercept it.
- The back is safe until the enemy front breaks. That is where bombers and support ships live.
What it means for strategy
Five classes counter each other like rock, paper, scissors: fighters hunt bombers, bombers crack capital ships, capital ships crush fighters. A counter deals one and a half times the damage. The interesting question is never "who is stronger?" but "who is in front of whom?".
And because the defender wins when time runs out, an attacker has to bring enough force to finish the job. Stalling never pays.
Next
The battle prototype with three ship classes, then simulations: thousands of fights per pairing, so that the numbers in the guide are tested rather than guessed.