Fleet Limits
This page explores how many fleets an empire can operate simultaneously and how many ships a single fleet can contain.
It does not describe final game behavior. It captures the current direction and unresolved design choices.
Goal
The goal is a limit model that:
- creates meaningful strategic constraints without feeling arbitrary
- produces different pressure on different player archetypes (traders vs. military players)
- gives players a clear growth path to expand their capabilities
- scales with empire size in a way that feels earned
Two Distinct Caps
Fleet limits come in two distinct forms that operate independently and apply at different scales.
Fleet count cap
The fleet count cap limits how many fleets an empire can have active simultaneously.
This is the binding constraint for trading empires. Running diverse trade across a large galaxy requires many fleets operating in parallel — one per route, per shipment, per contract. A trading empire that hits its fleet count cap cannot open new routes without closing or consolidating existing ones.
Researching a higher fleet count limit is a natural advancement for empires that want to grow their logistical footprint.
Fleet size cap
The fleet size cap limits how many ships a single fleet can contain.
This is the binding constraint for military empires. A military player who wants to overwhelm a target with concentrated force needs large fleets. If fleet size is uncapped, a wealthy military empire simply builds one enormous fleet and wins by brute force, removing the need for strategic coordination.
A fleet size cap forces military players to either: - invest in research to raise the cap, or - split their forces and coordinate multiple fleets (see Fleet Combat Coordination)
Interaction Between the Two Caps
The two caps create different pressures but can compound:
| Empire type | Binding constraint | Growth path |
|---|---|---|
| Trading empire | Fleet count | Research higher count limits |
| Military empire | Fleet size | Research higher size limits or coordinate multiple fleets |
| Mixed / large empire | Both | Separate research tracks for each |
A small empire has fewer fleets and smaller fleets. A large empire has more fleets and can concentrate more ships in each. Both dimensions grow through investment, which means both caps remain meaningful throughout the game rather than being rendered irrelevant early.
Research Tracks
The current direction is separate research tracks for each cap. Raising the fleet count limit and raising the fleet size limit require distinct investments, so an empire cannot simply research its way to unlimited everything — choices must be made about which direction to prioritise.
Open questions
- Are the research tracks linear (each step adds a fixed number of slots/ships) or tiered (each tier unlocks a step-change increase)?
- Should fleet count and fleet size limits be influenced by factors other than research — for example, the number of shipyards an empire controls, or the size of its economy?
- Should there be a hard ceiling even after all research is complete, or can limits grow indefinitely with sufficient research investment?
- Should the limits apply empire-wide or per-region? A per-region cap would create finer-grained strategic constraints.
Tension: Fleet Count vs. Fleet Size for Military Play
If the fleet size cap is set too low, military players are forced into constant fleet coordination whether they find it interesting or not. If it is set too high, the incentive to coordinate disappears.
The right calibration is probably: the base fleet size cap is large enough to feel capable for early-game military play, but the most powerful military strategies at scale require either raising the cap through research or coordinating multiple fleets through the combat coordination system.
See Fleet Combat Coordination for the full discussion of how multiple fleets attacking together might work.
Open Questions
- What are the base limits at game start, before any research?
- Should limits be visible to other players? Knowing an enemy has hit their fleet count cap is strategically valuable intelligence.
- Can fleet limits be temporarily exceeded in an emergency — for example, by straining logistics at a cost — or is the cap always hard?
- How do fleet limits interact with fleet merging? If two fleets merge and the result exceeds the size cap, is the merge rejected, or does it create an oversized fleet in a grace period?