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Fleet Lifecycle

This page explores what happens to a fleet across its lifetime — from arrival at a destination, through merging with other fleets, to disbanding.

It does not describe final game behavior. It captures the current direction and unresolved design choices.

Goal

The goal is a lifecycle model that:

  • gives players clear, predictable control over what happens to their fleets after orders complete
  • avoids silently discarding player assets or creating unmanageable accumulations of idle fleets
  • handles edge cases — stranded fleets, over-limit merges, disbanded specialists — in a principled way
  • fits naturally with the persistent fleet identity model described in Fleet Identity

On Arrival

When a fleet reaches its destination, a decision must be made: does it cease to exist automatically, or does it enter a new state?

Auto-disband on arrival

The fleet is dissolved when its order completes. Ships return to the local pool at the destination. Specialists are unassigned and return to the empire's specialist roster.

This is clean and removes the need to manage an ever-growing list of idle fleets. It aligns with the transient fleet model.

Tension: If fleets have persistent identity — names, history, attached specialists — auto-disbanding destroys that investment silently. A player who dispatches Fleet Vanguard on a long journey does not necessarily want it to dissolve on arrival.

Anchor on arrival

The fleet completes its order and enters an anchored state at the destination. It remains as a persistent entity, occupying its fleet slot, until the player issues a new order or explicitly disbands it.

An anchored fleet can act as a garrison, be re-ordered to a new destination, or be merged with other fleets at the same location.

Tension: If many fleets anchor at the same location over time, the player ends up managing a large number of idle named entities.

Current direction

Anchor on arrival, with the player choosing what happens next. This preserves fleet identity and specialist assignments, and gives players the choice rather than making it automatic.

The player should be able to pre-configure the arrival behavior when issuing the order, for convenience: - anchor at destination (default) - disband on arrival (ships and specialists return to local pool) - return to origin after completing the order

Disbanding

When a player explicitly disbands a fleet:

  • Ships in the fleet are returned to the local ship pool at the fleet's current location
  • Specialists assigned to the fleet are unassigned and returned to the empire's specialist roster
  • The fleet slot is freed

Disbanding should only be available when the fleet is not in motion. A fleet in transit cannot be disbanded; it must complete or be recalled first.

Open questions

  • Can a fleet be recalled mid-transit — ordered to reverse course and return to its last departure point?
  • Is there a cost or penalty to disbanding a fleet (e.g. losing some morale or condition state)?
  • Should disbanding a fleet with specialists require explicit confirmation, to avoid accidentally losing valuable assignments?

Merging Fleets

Merging allows two or more fleets co-located at the same system to be combined into a single fleet.

Merging is useful when: - a player wants to consolidate scattered forces before an attack - a fleet arrives at a location where another fleet is already anchored - ships are transferred from one fleet to another

Constraints on merging

Merging should only be possible when both fleets are at the same location and neither is currently in transit.

If the merged result would exceed the fleet size cap, the merge should be rejected — the player must raise the cap first, or split the ships differently.

Mid-route merging (two fleets joining while in motion) introduces significant complexity and is probably not worth supporting early.

Open questions

  • Can two fleets merge if they are at the same system but at different stellar objects within it, or must they be at exactly the same stellar object?
  • When fleets merge, which fleet's identity is kept — the larger one, the older one, or is it player-selectable?
  • What happens to specialists from both fleets on merge? Can a merged fleet hold specialists from both, or does the slot limit apply?
  • Should there be a partial merge — transferring some ships from one fleet to another — or is it always a full merge of two fleets?

Open Questions

  • Should fleet condition (e.g. damage sustained, long-distance fatigue) be tracked as persistent state on arrival? If so, does an anchored fleet recover over time, or does it require explicit repair?
  • Should there be a concept of a fleet being "lost" — destroyed entirely in combat — and if so, what happens to its specialist assignments?
  • Can a fleet be split into two fleets while anchored? This is the inverse of merging and may be desirable for routing different portions of a force to different destinations.