Active Abilities on ships

[TheVampire100]

Could we have active abilities on some of the more unique ships similiar to the ability of the Ark to use Warheads?
Maybe some Flagships/Golems have abilities, that you can use at dire times but either only a limited amount of times or only after a preparation time (or a combination of both).
I think this would make up for some strategic decions, when to launch a powerful attack to press on or better save it up for a better moment.

[qipoi]

I'm not really sure if this is a good idea given AI war's focus on macro over micro. Also, you tend to spit out a *Lot* of capital ships later on, keeping track of those actives would be quite hard and antithetical to the game's core design principles. Even on golems I think its better to simply build those abilities into its stats, or have them as passive aura's that are always active. There aren't many abilities i can think of that would be better off activated rather than being automatic or passively on all the time. I wouldn't want to feel obligated to go and baby sit my golem beyond giving it its marching orders, it would annoy me if I had to tab over and activate its abilities manually or it would perform sub-optimally.

That said, I'd love if the Champion Ships (assuming they even get added in 2) had many active abilities to use, unlike the AI war 1 varients which were quite boring. When controlling a single ship, is a great time to give the player many powrful abilities with long cooldown costs and slow mana regeneration. If you have played warcraft 3, you know that this basically makes every spell count and someitmes you want to not cast to conserve the energy for later.

My ideal Champion type gameplay would resemble something like a battlefleet gothic Armada ship's gameplay with some modifications, and more abilties since theres only one ship. Seomthign liek this: https://youtu.be/lGARShXaLSM?t=472. Cool, impactful, hard to aim or situational ablilities, with long 60 second cooldowns and a longer term mana bar to make ability conservation an actual thing. instead of always spamming the moment things go off cooldown. In addition, some solid, but not quite significant turrets to mop up stragglers in a system. Oh and also make an XP and equipment score that encourages teamwork, get rid of the shadow realm, to discourage players either warping off to play their own minigame or from running in after a planet has been effectively taken just to snipe that sweet 'liberation' XP. Basically the XP has to be based on some kind of team merit that interacts with the main campaign layer, not the somewhat disconnected shadow layer, such as each planet liberated by the human team gives a level up, or perhaps even better the Champion player gets metal and research from everyone else on their team's mining (as in a free 'bonus' and not siphoned from the other player) with which to buy more equipment and abilities and Champion Techs, as well as repair or respawn the Champion ship.

[qipoi]

Actually, on second thought, that may not be a bad idea, in some very specific cases. For example, instead of nukes just being free-roaming missiles that wipe out everything instantly in system upon activation or destruction, you might instead have a 'Nuke/Warhead Flagship/golem/wjatever', that has to sit in an adjacent system and slowly guide the missile (which itself is invincible but the ship itself is not) through via the 'ability' on a long cooldown and perhaps resource cost. You might have a warning and a certain amount of time to take out the ship or retreat before the nuke can activate (say, 2 minutes, or 60 seconds) This makes reacting to nukes warheads (at least to me) a lot fairer for both sides, instead of just having a shitload of ships wiped out instantly because you failed to notice the AIwar1 style nuke triggers on certain structures. Not to say that those were 'unfair' but this alternate nuke deployment style opens up a few possibilities for AI raid types. Perhaps this slower version isn't a true nuke due to its 2 minute timer and thus doesn't have the same consequences.

ALso regardless of whether the 'nuke/warhead flagship' ends up having a timer, having it bound to an ability and a ship makes it way less likely for the old 'free roaming defender accidental nukes' when you accidentally select one instead of another ship.

So yeah, your idea could work well with AI war's style, but I can only imagine very limited ways in which it could be deployed well without violating the core principle of 'as little micro as possible'.

[WolfWhiteFire]

ALso regardless of whether the 'nuke/warhead flagship' ends up having a timer, having it bound to an ability and a ship makes it way less likely for the old 'free roaming defender accidental nukes' when you accidentally select one instead of another ship.

There is an option to disable that from possibly happening in the AI War Classic settings. I still like the idea of the structures controlling the nukes and the champion abilities and XP system that you suggested.