Historically (that is, in the history of Aurora development), the way to make NPRs more difficult to defeat has been to improve their AI and ship designs, not to add special mechanics to help the AI.
I think it is helpful to recall that Aurora is primarily a game about the strategic and operational level, not the tactical level. Yes, Aurora has tactical gameplay in the form of ship-to-ship combat. However, I would argue that this gameplay exists largely as a means to create and justify strategic decisions (e.g., doctrine, design choices, technology investments). Therefore, a change to tactical mechanics should only be made when it preserves or enhances the strategic decision-making.
In the present example, achieving a speed advantage against NPRs typically requires one of several things:
- The NPR is lower-tech, which is sometimes a fact of the game and sometimes a result of dedicated player investment in technology.
- Ship design decisions that prioritize speed and/or range. It’s worth emphasizing that these decisions should come with corresponding costs or trade-offs. For example, ships that dedicate more hull space to propulsion have less for armor or weapons, and ships that use higher engine power multipliers will have increased fuel consumption.
- Doctrinal decisions aiming to cultivate imbalances, e.g., carrier fleets with high-speed beam fighters.
Therefore, in my view is is counterproductive to add a mechanic that will limit the rewards players can achieve for making sound strategic decisions just because the NPRs are “too easy”. It would be better to make changes that adjust the strategic or operational balance so the decisions that trivialize NPR encounters have greater strategic costs. For example, if increasing the engine power modifier is too easy of a way to gain a speed advantage (I’m not saying it is, this is just a hypothetical illustration), then some mechanical change should be made to increase the cost of that decision, such as making such engines more expensive. That said, any decision like this would have knock-on effects (e.g., hurting the viability of fighter or missile doctrines)
Some additional points worth noting:
- If the NPRs are too easy to defeat, the best solution is to increase the game difficulty, either globally in the game settings or by reducing the capabilities of the player race (e.g., reducing race research rate). This will mean NPRs have more strategic advantages in general, forcing the player to invest more to overcome tactical disadvantages.
- A change limiting the efficacy of “kiting” tactics doesn’t really change the calculus that much. As in ancient warfare, most warfare in Aurora is centered around delivering the siege, and pitched battles are fought to achieve or impede that goal. If the NPR gains a better ability to run away from battle, the player will still win by simply flying on to the objective, where the NPR will have to engage or lose anyways.
- With the changes (to-date and ongoing) to NPRs, the AI has an increasing number of options to counter player superiority in speed, range, etc., and I expect these improvements to continue. However, weak NPRs are part of the game as well. Often, the challenge in fighting an NPR is not because they are difficult to fight in battle, but because the operational and logistical aspects of managing a large campaign over multiple star systems are challenging (both for players and for the empire itself to sustain). Steve’s most recent campaigns have been very good demonstrations of this.