I think it would be a lot more interesting - and acceptable to players - if the weather was generated AFTER both players press ready. There could be a nice (and easily implemented) transition effect as the opening weather transforms into the battle weather.
My rationale is that I think a lot of people quit and rehost when they roll up a night map. This might occur 2 or 3 times in a row, and is inconvenient because your opponent doesn't know what is going on. You can go with it, but generally both you and your opponent have a specific fleet selection in mind. Once players accept they can't control the weather, they will start to plan for it, turning a negative into a plus.
PS: Some twinkling stars would make help make night more visually attractive.
33. Kickoff Countdown
It seems to me that the player who presses "Ready" second gets a slight advantage as they know the game has started while the other guy is still staring at the ceiling and gets a rude shock as the screen erupts in explosions and fumbles the first few orders due to the automatic grouping issues etc. OK, ok, maybe its just me - but anyway, it might be nice if you initiated a short countdown 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. ACTION STATIONS once the second player pressed ready. This system works well in other games.
34. Starting orders
It might be nice if players could issue movement orders to their fleet before the game commences (I am sure you have already considered this). The current system favours buildings, which is counter-intuitive, as mobile units by definition have the advantage of attacking at their leisure.
35. AI vs AI
I am sure others have suggested AI vs AI multiplayer combat mode.
36. Ship Status
I think the endgame ship status descriptions could be improved, though I am admittedly not sure how, as I am a bit hazy on the current terminology, and the criteria applied, seems to change from game to game, still, here are some vague ideas:
immobile - ship cannot move
disabled - ship cannot fire
crippled - ship cannot move or fire
abandoned - crippled plus no crew
wrecked - like crippled or abandoned, but refers to a ship fragment
fled - (see #48)
37. Victory Criteria
The victory criteria work most of the time, but I have seen situations where the battle stalls because neither side can actually bring their weapons to bear on each other, or when the side which is seemingly more devastated is declared the winner. Two ideas which might reduce the frequency of "inexplicable" outcomes:
(i) If neither side shoots or moves for 30 seconds, enforce a draw.
(ii) To achieve victory, you must have at least one unit capable of moving and firing.
38. Raindrop Relativity
The raindrop graphics freeze in space when you scroll the map down during a battle. You know that of course.
Those damn pesky boarders - Discussion
(i) I think boarders are the biggest single problem with the game. Dollar for dollar, boarding troops are by far the best weapon system.
(ii) Basically, defence against boarders is a lot less effective than the defence against ramming or shooting. This is because:
It is nearly always possible to bring more boarders to the point of contact than the enemy has defenders.
It is usually quite easy to actually board.
They work far more quickly to disable an enemy ship than other weapons systems. This is a biggie - indeed I have seen boarders board and capture the flaming wreckage of an enemy ship as it collapsed through their own ship. That's pretty impressive!
And even if they fail, they usually knock out so many crew that the target is virtually worthless anyway.
(iii) The other problem is that they are the #1 cause of lag/churning.
(iv) The other problem is that they are pretty easy to use, and consequently, pretty boring. Boring is a sin.
(v) I would go so far as to say, I think a ship designed for mass boarding will defeat a "general purpose" ship two or three times its value. Now, I'm not saying it will happen 100% of the time (more like 90%). [Insert counter-argument, disagreement by guy who only wins using boarders (see what I did there...), more argument, counter-examples of certain designs and tactics that sometimes work against them, blah, blah]
39. Some ways to make boarders less effective and/or more interesting:
I favour a combination of:
(i) Making attacking troops weaker.
(ii) Slowing down the rate they takeover ships.
(iii) Reducing the rate of boarding (it can't be easy to time that jump). For example, instead of having all (or half, or whatever the proportion currently is) the marines prepping and jumping at once, make it that every time you press the board button 1 marine per supply door, 2 per large door, preps for boarding. So it would take multiple boarding efforts to get the whole force across. As a corollary, slow down boarding combat a bit to allow the initial boarders to survive until reinforcements.
other approaches include:
(iv) Making troop rooms more expensive. Those boarders certainly deserve the extra pay. I honestly think you could double their cost and they would still be worth it. Still, this would affect existing designs and wouldn't make them more interesting to use.
(v) Making troop rooms significantly heavier. This would have a nice (but probably insignificant) side effect of making the attacking ship slower and thus easier to evade. Hard to rationalise though.
(vi) Increasing the command cost for boarding troops, thus making ship less responsive, and thus requiring more skill to actually deliver the boarders to the target. Works for me, but would affect existing designs.
(vii) Adding a rule that you cannot fire at a ship you have boarded (nice, but doesn't help in 1 vs 1 battles)
40. Buildings
Buildings have an advantage because:
i) obviously they don't need to buy lift or propulsion, which is expensive, maybe 30% total cost
ii) you can place them sufficiently far back that ships lose the mobility advantage conferred by propulsion
iii) big ones can be placed so far back they don't need to worry about their rear armament, a further saving
Admittedly, buildings have some vulnerabilities which partially cancel out these advantages, especially if you know your opponent is fielding them (which is kind of illogical, as buildings can't move, you should always know when you are about to fight them).
Its not a gamekiller, but, still, applying some of the following remedies would improve the game:
(i) Improve the accuracy of shots aimed against buildings by 10%. Hey presto, problem solved! And there's a reasonable argument that it would be easier to hit a stationary building than a mobile, moving, bobbing airship or landship in any case.
(ii) Give the host the ability to specify whether buildings can be used usable as per #7.
(iii) Include an assault mode as per #8.
(iv) It would be better if you could not deploy in the rear quadrant of your side of the battlefield, as this would make it possible to fly around buildings, forcing designers to devote resources to their rear.
(v) Implement a pre-battle check. The game checks whether one side has no buildings, and the other side does. If this is the case, the mobile side is given the option to abort the battle "Only fortifications ahead, Captain, should we proceed or call of the attack?".
37 leaves out dedicated boarding ships/fleets, making them worthless without any support. That should not be allowed as dedicated boarding is a perfectly valid strategy that will be penalized under suggestion 37.
All your suggestions to make boarding better won't actually do any good and just make it not fun (no offense) since those suggestions miss the cause of why boarding is no fun in the first place.
Wait, let me explain!
From my hours experience the root problem with boarding is not that it is overpowered because of how it is somehow flawed, but rather that it has an almost non existent counter system in place.
What does that mean? Basically it means boarding is perfect as is, we just need a partner anti boarding system that is there for a valid countermeasure. Think of the problem as if we have handguns in a game with no body armour, obviously handguns in this scenario are overpowered through no fault of their own, and breaking all the handguns to try and fix that just makes a big mess and nobody is happy.
A good anti boarding system in this case would be something like dedicated anti boarding weapons that shoot at boarders while they are climbing onto ships. If you give those weapons a healthy reload time then you can usually stop boarders but not 100% of the time, which makes boarding defending/attacking much nicer for all involved.
I think it would be a lot more interesting - and acceptable to players - if the weather was generated AFTER both players press ready. There could be a nice (and easily implemented) transition effect as the opening weather transforms into the battle weather.
My rationale is that I think a lot of people quit and rehost when they roll up a night map. This might occur 2 or 3 times in a row, and is inconvenient because your opponent doesn't know what is going on. You can go with it, but generally both you and your opponent have a specific fleet selection in mind. Once players accept they can't control the weather, they will start to plan for it, turning a negative into a plus.
PS: Some twinkling stars would make help make night more visually attractive.
Good point
33. Kickoff Countdown
It seems to me that the player who presses "Ready" second gets a slight advantage as they know the game has started while the other guy is still staring at the ceiling and gets a rude shock as the screen erupts in explosions and fumbles the first few orders due to the automatic grouping issues etc. OK, ok, maybe its just me - but anyway, it might be nice if you initiated a short countdown 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. ACTION STATIONS once the second player pressed ready. This system works well in other games.
Also a good point
34. Starting orders
It might be nice if players could issue movement orders to their fleet before the game commences (I am sure you have already considered this). The current system favours buildings, which is counter-intuitive, as mobile units by definition have the advantage of attacking at their leisure.
Yeah, I might add this
35. AI vs AI
I am sure others have suggested AI vs AI multiplayer combat mode.
So both sides just put down their ships and the AI takes control, so you can kind of see how good your designs are independent of your input? That's en interesting idea.
36. Ship Status
I think the endgame ship status descriptions could be improved, though I am admittedly not sure how, as I am a bit hazy on the current terminology, and the criteria applied, seems to change from game to game, still, here are some vague ideas:
immobile - ship cannot move
disabled - ship cannot fire
crippled - ship cannot move or fire
abandoned - crippled plus no crew
wrecked - like crippled or abandoned, but refers to a ship fragment
fled - (see #48)
Hmm, that's pretty much how it works now.
37. Victory Criteria
The victory criteria work most of the time, but I have seen situations where the battle stalls because neither side can actually bring their weapons to bear on each other, or when the side which is seemingly more devastated is declared the winner. Two ideas which might reduce the frequency of "inexplicable" outcomes:
(i) If neither side shoots or moves for 30 seconds, enforce a draw.
(ii) To achieve victory, you must have at least one unit capable of moving and firing.
That's also how it works now. If nothing interesting happens for a while, the game will eventually draw.
38. Raindrop Relativity
The raindrop graphics freeze in space when you scroll the map down during a battle. You know that of course.
They actually don't, they just go at the same speed as the scroll speed. :P But I agree it looks weird.
Those damn pesky boarders - Discussion
(i) I think boarders are the biggest single problem with the game. Dollar for dollar, boarding troops are by far the best weapon system.
(ii) Basically, defence against boarders is a lot less effective than the defence against ramming or shooting. This is because:
It is nearly always possible to bring more boarders to the point of contact than the enemy has defenders.
It is usually quite easy to actually board.
They work far more quickly to disable an enemy ship than other weapons systems. This is a biggie - indeed I have seen boarders board and capture the flaming wreckage of an enemy ship as it collapsed through their own ship. That's pretty impressive!
And even if they fail, they usually knock out so many crew that the target is virtually worthless anyway.
(iii) The other problem is that they are the #1 cause of lag/churning.
(iv) The other problem is that they are pretty easy to use, and consequently, pretty boring. Boring is a sin.
(v) I would go so far as to say, I think a ship designed for mass boarding will defeat a "general purpose" ship two or three times its value. Now, I'm not saying it will happen 100% of the time (more like 90%). [HTML_REMOVED]
39. Some ways to make boarders less effective and/or more interesting:
I favour a combination of:
(i) Making attacking troops weaker.
(ii) Slowing down the rate they takeover ships.
(iii) Reducing the rate of boarding (it can't be easy to time that jump). For example, instead of having all (or half, or whatever the proportion currently is) the marines prepping and jumping at once, make it that every time you press the board button 1 marine per supply door, 2 per large door, preps for boarding. So it would take multiple boarding efforts to get the whole force across. As a corollary, slow down boarding combat a bit to allow the initial boarders to survive until reinforcements.
other approaches include:
(iv) Making troop rooms more expensive. Those boarders certainly deserve the extra pay. I honestly think you could double their cost and they would still be worth it. Still, this would affect existing designs and wouldn't make them more interesting to use.
(v) Making troop rooms significantly heavier. This would have a nice (but probably insignificant) side effect of making the attacking ship slower and thus easier to evade. Hard to rationalise though.
(vi) Increasing the command cost for boarding troops, thus making ship less responsive, and thus requiring more skill to actually deliver the boarders to the target. Works for me, but would affect existing designs.
(vii) Adding a rule that you cannot fire at a ship you have boarded (nice, but doesn't help in 1 vs 1 battles)
Yeah, boarding is too good right now. The big question is how to make it fun, rather than just nerfing it until it's no longer an effective strategy. I'm not sure how to do that yet. Slowing down combat and allowing defenders to defend more proactively are probably good ideas. And as Firebird11 points out, when we fiinallly get the ability for modules to shoot at troops, the tactical balance might shift again as well.
40. Buildings
Buildings have an advantage because:
i) obviously they don't need to buy lift or propulsion, which is expensive, maybe 30% total cost
ii) you can place them sufficiently far back that ships lose the mobility advantage conferred by propulsion
iii) big ones can be placed so far back they don't need to worry about their rear armament, a further saving
Admittedly, buildings have some vulnerabilities which partially cancel out these advantages, especially if you know your opponent is fielding them (which is kind of illogical, as buildings can't move, you should always know when you are about to fight them).
Its not a gamekiller, but, still, applying some of the following remedies would improve the game:
(i) Improve the accuracy of shots aimed against buildings by 10%. Hey presto, problem solved! And there's a reasonable argument that it would be easier to hit a stationary building than a mobile, moving, bobbing airship or landship in any case.
(ii) Give the host the ability to specify whether buildings can be used usable as per #7.
(iii) Include an assault mode as per #8.
(iv) It would be better if you could not deploy in the rear quadrant of your side of the battlefield, as this would make it possible to fly around buildings, forcing designers to devote resources to their rear.
(v) Implement a pre-battle check. The game checks whether one side has no buildings, and the other side does. If this is the case, the mobile side is given the option to abort the battle "Only fortifications ahead, Captain, should we proceed or call of the attack?".
Yeah, I think doing (ii) and (iv) is the solution here. :)
Commander
Improving Multiplayer Experience
32. Night & Weather
I think it would be a lot more interesting - and acceptable to players - if the weather was generated AFTER both players press ready. There could be a nice (and easily implemented) transition effect as the opening weather transforms into the battle weather.
My rationale is that I think a lot of people quit and rehost when they roll up a night map. This might occur 2 or 3 times in a row, and is inconvenient because your opponent doesn't know what is going on. You can go with it, but generally both you and your opponent have a specific fleet selection in mind. Once players accept they can't control the weather, they will start to plan for it, turning a negative into a plus.
PS: Some twinkling stars would make help make night more visually attractive.
33. Kickoff Countdown
It seems to me that the player who presses "Ready" second gets a slight advantage as they know the game has started while the other guy is still staring at the ceiling and gets a rude shock as the screen erupts in explosions and fumbles the first few orders due to the automatic grouping issues etc. OK, ok, maybe its just me - but anyway, it might be nice if you initiated a short countdown 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. ACTION STATIONS once the second player pressed ready. This system works well in other games.
34. Starting orders
It might be nice if players could issue movement orders to their fleet before the game commences (I am sure you have already considered this). The current system favours buildings, which is counter-intuitive, as mobile units by definition have the advantage of attacking at their leisure.
35. AI vs AI
I am sure others have suggested AI vs AI multiplayer combat mode.
36. Ship Status
I think the endgame ship status descriptions could be improved, though I am admittedly not sure how, as I am a bit hazy on the current terminology, and the criteria applied, seems to change from game to game, still, here are some vague ideas:
37. Victory Criteria
The victory criteria work most of the time, but I have seen situations where the battle stalls because neither side can actually bring their weapons to bear on each other, or when the side which is seemingly more devastated is declared the winner. Two ideas which might reduce the frequency of "inexplicable" outcomes:
(i) If neither side shoots or moves for 30 seconds, enforce a draw.
(ii) To achieve victory, you must have at least one unit capable of moving and firing.
38. Raindrop Relativity
The raindrop graphics freeze in space when you scroll the map down during a battle. You know that of course.
Those damn pesky boarders - Discussion
(i) I think boarders are the biggest single problem with the game. Dollar for dollar, boarding troops are by far the best weapon system.
(ii) Basically, defence against boarders is a lot less effective than the defence against ramming or shooting. This is because:
(iii) The other problem is that they are the #1 cause of lag/churning.
(iv) The other problem is that they are pretty easy to use, and consequently, pretty boring. Boring is a sin.
(v) I would go so far as to say, I think a ship designed for mass boarding will defeat a "general purpose" ship two or three times its value. Now, I'm not saying it will happen 100% of the time (more like 90%). [Insert counter-argument, disagreement by guy who only wins using boarders (see what I did there...), more argument, counter-examples of certain designs and tactics that sometimes work against them, blah, blah]
39. Some ways to make boarders less effective and/or more interesting:
I favour a combination of:
(i) Making attacking troops weaker.
(ii) Slowing down the rate they takeover ships.
(iii) Reducing the rate of boarding (it can't be easy to time that jump). For example, instead of having all (or half, or whatever the proportion currently is) the marines prepping and jumping at once, make it that every time you press the board button 1 marine per supply door, 2 per large door, preps for boarding. So it would take multiple boarding efforts to get the whole force across. As a corollary, slow down boarding combat a bit to allow the initial boarders to survive until reinforcements.
other approaches include:
(iv) Making troop rooms more expensive. Those boarders certainly deserve the extra pay. I honestly think you could double their cost and they would still be worth it. Still, this would affect existing designs and wouldn't make them more interesting to use.
(v) Making troop rooms significantly heavier. This would have a nice (but probably insignificant) side effect of making the attacking ship slower and thus easier to evade. Hard to rationalise though.
(vi) Increasing the command cost for boarding troops, thus making ship less responsive, and thus requiring more skill to actually deliver the boarders to the target. Works for me, but would affect existing designs.
(vii) Adding a rule that you cannot fire at a ship you have boarded (nice, but doesn't help in 1 vs 1 battles)
40. Buildings
Buildings have an advantage because:
i) obviously they don't need to buy lift or propulsion, which is expensive, maybe 30% total cost
ii) you can place them sufficiently far back that ships lose the mobility advantage conferred by propulsion
iii) big ones can be placed so far back they don't need to worry about their rear armament, a further saving
Admittedly, buildings have some vulnerabilities which partially cancel out these advantages, especially if you know your opponent is fielding them (which is kind of illogical, as buildings can't move, you should always know when you are about to fight them).
Its not a gamekiller, but, still, applying some of the following remedies would improve the game:
(i) Improve the accuracy of shots aimed against buildings by 10%. Hey presto, problem solved! And there's a reasonable argument that it would be easier to hit a stationary building than a mobile, moving, bobbing airship or landship in any case.
(ii) Give the host the ability to specify whether buildings can be used usable as per #7.
(iii) Include an assault mode as per #8.
(iv) It would be better if you could not deploy in the rear quadrant of your side of the battlefield, as this would make it possible to fly around buildings, forcing designers to devote resources to their rear.
(v) Implement a pre-battle check. The game checks whether one side has no buildings, and the other side does. If this is the case, the mobile side is given the option to abort the battle "Only fortifications ahead, Captain, should we proceed or call of the attack?".
Air Admiral
Yes, these are all good suggestions... The other ones too...
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
37 leaves out dedicated boarding ships/fleets, making them worthless without any support. That should not be allowed as dedicated boarding is a perfectly valid strategy that will be penalized under suggestion 37.
All your suggestions to make boarding better won't actually do any good and just make it not fun (no offense) since those suggestions miss the cause of why boarding is no fun in the first place.
Wait, let me explain!
From my hours experience the root problem with boarding is not that it is overpowered because of how it is somehow flawed, but rather that it has an almost non existent counter system in place.
What does that mean? Basically it means boarding is perfect as is, we just need a partner anti boarding system that is there for a valid countermeasure. Think of the problem as if we have handguns in a game with no body armour, obviously handguns in this scenario are overpowered through no fault of their own, and breaking all the handguns to try and fix that just makes a big mess and nobody is happy.
A good anti boarding system in this case would be something like dedicated anti boarding weapons that shoot at boarders while they are climbing onto ships. If you give those weapons a healthy reload time then you can usually stop boarders but not 100% of the time, which makes boarding defending/attacking much nicer for all involved.
Aerial Emperor
Improving Multiplayer Experience
32. Night & Weather
I think it would be a lot more interesting - and acceptable to players - if the weather was generated AFTER both players press ready. There could be a nice (and easily implemented) transition effect as the opening weather transforms into the battle weather.
My rationale is that I think a lot of people quit and rehost when they roll up a night map. This might occur 2 or 3 times in a row, and is inconvenient because your opponent doesn't know what is going on. You can go with it, but generally both you and your opponent have a specific fleet selection in mind. Once players accept they can't control the weather, they will start to plan for it, turning a negative into a plus.
PS: Some twinkling stars would make help make night more visually attractive.
Good point
33. Kickoff Countdown
It seems to me that the player who presses "Ready" second gets a slight advantage as they know the game has started while the other guy is still staring at the ceiling and gets a rude shock as the screen erupts in explosions and fumbles the first few orders due to the automatic grouping issues etc. OK, ok, maybe its just me - but anyway, it might be nice if you initiated a short countdown 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. ACTION STATIONS once the second player pressed ready. This system works well in other games.
Also a good point
34. Starting orders
It might be nice if players could issue movement orders to their fleet before the game commences (I am sure you have already considered this). The current system favours buildings, which is counter-intuitive, as mobile units by definition have the advantage of attacking at their leisure.
Yeah, I might add this
35. AI vs AI
I am sure others have suggested AI vs AI multiplayer combat mode.
So both sides just put down their ships and the AI takes control, so you can kind of see how good your designs are independent of your input? That's en interesting idea.
36. Ship Status
I think the endgame ship status descriptions could be improved, though I am admittedly not sure how, as I am a bit hazy on the current terminology, and the criteria applied, seems to change from game to game, still, here are some vague ideas:
Hmm, that's pretty much how it works now.
37. Victory Criteria
The victory criteria work most of the time, but I have seen situations where the battle stalls because neither side can actually bring their weapons to bear on each other, or when the side which is seemingly more devastated is declared the winner. Two ideas which might reduce the frequency of "inexplicable" outcomes:
(i) If neither side shoots or moves for 30 seconds, enforce a draw.
(ii) To achieve victory, you must have at least one unit capable of moving and firing.
That's also how it works now. If nothing interesting happens for a while, the game will eventually draw.
38. Raindrop Relativity
The raindrop graphics freeze in space when you scroll the map down during a battle. You know that of course.
They actually don't, they just go at the same speed as the scroll speed. :P But I agree it looks weird.
Those damn pesky boarders - Discussion
(i) I think boarders are the biggest single problem with the game. Dollar for dollar, boarding troops are by far the best weapon system.
(ii) Basically, defence against boarders is a lot less effective than the defence against ramming or shooting. This is because:
(iii) The other problem is that they are the #1 cause of lag/churning.
(iv) The other problem is that they are pretty easy to use, and consequently, pretty boring. Boring is a sin.
(v) I would go so far as to say, I think a ship designed for mass boarding will defeat a "general purpose" ship two or three times its value. Now, I'm not saying it will happen 100% of the time (more like 90%). [HTML_REMOVED]
39. Some ways to make boarders less effective and/or more interesting:
I favour a combination of:
(i) Making attacking troops weaker.
(ii) Slowing down the rate they takeover ships.
(iii) Reducing the rate of boarding (it can't be easy to time that jump). For example, instead of having all (or half, or whatever the proportion currently is) the marines prepping and jumping at once, make it that every time you press the board button 1 marine per supply door, 2 per large door, preps for boarding. So it would take multiple boarding efforts to get the whole force across. As a corollary, slow down boarding combat a bit to allow the initial boarders to survive until reinforcements.
other approaches include:
(iv) Making troop rooms more expensive. Those boarders certainly deserve the extra pay. I honestly think you could double their cost and they would still be worth it. Still, this would affect existing designs and wouldn't make them more interesting to use.
(v) Making troop rooms significantly heavier. This would have a nice (but probably insignificant) side effect of making the attacking ship slower and thus easier to evade. Hard to rationalise though.
(vi) Increasing the command cost for boarding troops, thus making ship less responsive, and thus requiring more skill to actually deliver the boarders to the target. Works for me, but would affect existing designs.
(vii) Adding a rule that you cannot fire at a ship you have boarded (nice, but doesn't help in 1 vs 1 battles)
Yeah, boarding is too good right now. The big question is how to make it fun, rather than just nerfing it until it's no longer an effective strategy. I'm not sure how to do that yet. Slowing down combat and allowing defenders to defend more proactively are probably good ideas. And as Firebird11 points out, when we fiinallly get the ability for modules to shoot at troops, the tactical balance might shift again as well.
40. Buildings
Buildings have an advantage because:
i) obviously they don't need to buy lift or propulsion, which is expensive, maybe 30% total cost ii) you can place them sufficiently far back that ships lose the mobility advantage conferred by propulsion iii) big ones can be placed so far back they don't need to worry about their rear armament, a further saving
Admittedly, buildings have some vulnerabilities which partially cancel out these advantages, especially if you know your opponent is fielding them (which is kind of illogical, as buildings can't move, you should always know when you are about to fight them).
Its not a gamekiller, but, still, applying some of the following remedies would improve the game:
(i) Improve the accuracy of shots aimed against buildings by 10%. Hey presto, problem solved! And there's a reasonable argument that it would be easier to hit a stationary building than a mobile, moving, bobbing airship or landship in any case.
(ii) Give the host the ability to specify whether buildings can be used usable as per #7.
(iii) Include an assault mode as per #8.
(iv) It would be better if you could not deploy in the rear quadrant of your side of the battlefield, as this would make it possible to fly around buildings, forcing designers to devote resources to their rear.
(v) Implement a pre-battle check. The game checks whether one side has no buildings, and the other side does. If this is the case, the mobile side is given the option to abort the battle "Only fortifications ahead, Captain, should we proceed or call of the attack?".
Yeah, I think doing (ii) and (iv) is the solution here. :)