Retrofit path woes in new betas

[StormingKiwi]

I did understand the context, but it will still create confusion in discussing your ideas to propose a name for something that already means something else in the game. I'm trying to make sure we're communicating clearly.
Yes, all true, nevertheless it is currently Role right now and that's how Elliot wants to define it.

The “Please reword your idea to fit our preferences” seems obstinate to me.

We are communicating clearly. You understood that “Class” was the part of a ship associated with “Ship Type”, and that “Role” was the part of a ship associated with how that ship behaves and how that ship is managed by the automation etc. So, what exactly is the misunderstanding?

If you’re wedded to the word “Role”, I suggest rewriting the Galactopedia, the manual and some technologies. There is no such concept as role within the Galactopedia (see entries for Ship Types and Ship and Base Types) and the word is used inconsistently within the manual/technologies. (e.g., the cruiser is the first “multi-role” starship. If the cruiser is of role: cruiser, how can it also be of role: destroyer?)

Semantics aside, the idea and suggestion is to create a layer in the hierarchy that separates the stuff not necessarily an integral part of the ship-type from the ship-type, and then lift out that stuff and put it into the new layer. I don’t care if you do it the other way, and instead, create the “Ship-Type” level in the hierarchy. But the suggestion is to divide the whole into its parts.

There are three separate parts to this discussion, that are quite messily intertwined.
Allow players to influence fleet ship management automation results.
Allow players to influence ship mission assignment automation results.
Allow players to influence ship design automation results.

Class -> Hull -> Role -> Design
Alternatively, Class -> Role -> Hull -> Design.

How about we say Role -> Specialization -> Hull -> Design -> Specialization for the purposes of this discussion? I think the things you are discussing involve both additional guidance/specialization at the Role level and also at the Design level.

The conversation about semantics seems like a: red-herring.

Yes, an extra level could be sensible. My preference would be to set policies for defaults for the high-level stuff (currently associated with “Role” and “Tactics and Settings”, with no option to fine-tune “Specialisation”) in Empire Policies, and then make lower-level changes specific to each design, so I suggest:
Ship Type + Role + Hull + Specialisation + Tactics & Settings = Design.
E.g., the Protector design is a Destroyer, Defender Role, Fleet Destroyer Hull, Specialisation 1, <Tactics and Settings>.
With role defining fleet inclusion and mission preference (as it currently does).
And specialisation defining the preferred component types and the outputs to focus on. (I’ll get to this down below).

Personally, I think that “Specialisation” should be above Hull in the hierarchy. Possibly even above Ship-Type.
I would like different designs of the same ship type to perform different roles and have different specialisations. That’s why I am suggesting splitting ship type and role into two, distinct, concepts. It could be useful to have three concepts, particularly when role and specialisation layers are distinct and not overlapping.

I don’t particularly care if you call it:
Quarbonus + Brevion + kizerain + gioppler + eccenblim = soludenius.

However, I would suggest picking words that are intuitively meaningful to the player base without them having to consult the manual, galactopedia, patch notes, etc. These might not always agree with the game or each other, and something like this could end up being written:

Role now refers only to the general type of ship (i.e. Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser).

How about we say Role -> Specialization -> Hull -> Design -> Specialization

Absolutely not.

No repeats of one word in multiple places if it means different things. Does this jog your memory as to why?

Changes in the 1.0.4.8 update (May 31st, 2022):
Fleet Engagement Range vs. Engagement Range
There is now Fleet Engagement Range (re-named) at the fleet level and Engagement Range at the ship level.
When a ship is in a fleet, the Fleet Engagement Range will override the ship's Engagement Range. The ship will only use its own Engagement Range when it is not in a Fleet.
The Fleet Engagement Range determines at a strategic level what missions/targets the fleet is in range of taking on. Previously, there was a gap at the system level where fleet and ship engagement ranges could conflict or override each other, which would result in the most restrictive of the two being used. That has been resolved. Now, if there is a target in the system and there is a fleet in the system with Fleet Engagement Range that would allow attacking within that system, the fleet will go attack that target as a fleet even if the individual ship settings would not allow individual ships to respond.

Manual Fleets and Military Attack Policies

It's important to note that a Manual fleet will not automatically respond outside of its own system. DW2 assumes that a Manual fleet is fully under manual orders for anything out of system. If you would like a fleet to automatically respond outside of its own system, it needs to be set to one of the Automatic fleet roles (for example, Attack or Defend) and its Fleet Engagement Range must allow it.
Also, if you have your Military Attacks Policy in the Military section of your policies set to Manual, then no fleets of any kind will respond or attack outside their own systems without being manually ordered to do so.
In order to have fleets fully responding outside their systems, you need to have:

1. Fleet Engagement Ranges set to allow it
2. Each Fleet needs to be set to one of the Automatic roles
3. The Military Attacks policy cannot be set to Manual

By default, all these things are true, but if you have changed these settings please be aware of their intended interactions and results.

Fleet Attack Stance

This was no longer performing any necessary function given the other settings and their capabilities. It was however adding confusion for players, so it was removed.

Fleet Retreat Strategy

There was an issue preventing this working as intended, which should now be resolved. It should also be noted that this has a different function than the Retreat When setting at the ship level. It was therefore renamed to Fleet Retreat Strategy to avoid confusion.
Fleet Retreat Strategy affects when the entire fleet will consider changing orders to escape a location based on overall strength comparison at that location. Individual ships will still follow their Retreat When setting in terms of responding to damage caused to that ship.
Note that Manual fleets will not at this time retreat as a fleet unless ordered to do so by the player. This is working as intended, as we generally lean towards manual meaning that the player has full control and gets to decide when the fleet retreats. All automated fleets will respect the Fleet Retreat Strategy.

Position within Fleet

We realized that the previous UI terminology used "Role" in two different instances. Role now refers only to the general type of ship (i.e. Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser).
The position of a ship in a fleet within the fleet formation is now more intuitively called "Position within Fleet" in the ship's tactical settings. The previous "Attack" has been renamed to "Core" to make it more clear that this position is in the center of the fleet, whereas "Close Escort" is the inner ring and "Picket" is the outer ring of the formation. In most cases, we recommend placing your point defense-oriented ships in the Picket or Close Escort positions and keeping your most valuable Capital ships and long-range standoff ships in the Core.

My suggestion is to enable meaningful specialisation of ships while allowing the automation to cope with the changes without bogging down the player with excessive manual play.

I think that's a good goal. We went in the direction of more guided automation with DW2 vs. DW1 and I expect we'll keep heading that way as time allows.

In some respects, I think DW1 has better-guided automation – e.g., you can define research and design priorities from the policy screen.

Independent ships outside of fleets will generally limit themselves to a smaller subset of missions, so keeping a particular ship design out of your fleet templates is a way to effectively achieve that as of the recent betas.
In terms of Fleet involvement, you have a few levers under your control. The first is the Fleet Position setting for the design. The choice of whether to have a design be Core, Close Escort or Picket will very much change how it acts in a fleet. The second are its own tactical settings and what you've chosen to set in terms of fleet tactics or ship tactics.

I have tried to do what I want to do in 1103. This is not possible.

I don’t want independent ships outside of fleets to be bogged down escorting freighters (I rarely lose freighters) when they could instead be escorting construction ships, mining ships or colony ships (my mining ships and colony ships do sometimes get driven off by mobile pirates. Do they have an escort? No – because some ships are performing escort missions I think are low-value, but other players might not).

When I say, “Fleet Involvement”, I mean Fleet Inclusion/Exclusion, not fleet position and tactics.

It doesn't get automatically assigned to be a picket ship if you have set the design to have it be a Close Escort or Core ship. You already have control of this at the Design level. You should be able to have a Frigate that is set to Picket and a Frigate that is set to Core and the fleet should respect that. If you are doing this and it's not working, please share a save file so we can figure out what's causing that.

Are you telling me I have not seen what I have seen?

I think automated Fleet Position Reassignment is overriding Tactics and Settings. In general, this should happen. E.g., in a fleet of 5 destroyers, 1 destroyer will end up with 4 close escorts.
However, in this specific example, my disruptor frigate should not be a picket ship, but the automation is following the rules it has been given, with the inherent ship roles attached to ship types (Frigates = Pickets).

Remember the goal? Sure, I could change “Allow position reassignment” from “Ships reassign positions as needed” to “ships retain current positions within fleets”.

Personally, I perceive managing the positions of every ship in every fleet with that ship in it as being excessive manual play.

E.g. 2:
I have four frigate designs:

1. Defenders: these sacrifice fuel for more firepower.
2. Brawlers: these have enough fuel to carry out fleet missions but sacrifice some firepower. Close-in weapons.
3. Rangers: these have enough fuel to carry out fleet missions but sacrifice some firepower. Stand-off weapons.
4. Guardians: these have enough fuel to carry out fleet missions but sacrifice some firepower. PD weapons.

1. I want my defenders to be on local guard and patrol missions. I do not want defenders to cripple my offensive fleets by replacing the brawlers/rangers.
2. I want my brawlers/rangers to be on distant raid missions or in fleets.
3. I want my guardians to be in fleets. I do not want them to attempt to solo-raid a station they are woefully unequipped to handle.

Make sure your fleet templates specify certain designs and exclude the Defenders and don't allow fleets to be filled in with alternate designs. Then the Defenders will only be independent ships not in a fleet and will do as you would like.
Your Defense fleets can include your Guardians.

Well, that’s the subtlety, and why I said:

2) Fleet involvement (you might want your fleets to substitute or trim roles while disallowing a particular design from ever operating as part of a fleet)

Ship Type + Role + Specialisation + Hull + <snip> = Design.
Frigate + Defender + Short-Range + Basic Frigate = Defender
Destroyer + Defender + Short-Range + Basic Destroyer = protector.
A protector can be downgraded to fulfil the role of a Defender, and likewise, a Defender can be upgraded to fulfil the role of a protector.

A role: Defender can be independent or in a defensive fleet (just not offensive fleets).

Then consider the guardian: those ships should never be independently carrying out patrol or guard missions. They should always be in fleets or held in reserve to reinforce a fleet.
The guardian could be included in an Attack/Raid fleet along with Rangers and Brawlers (e.g., 1 Guardian per two Rangers or Brawlers). But they should not be substituted for Rangers and Brawlers, should they?

Your Raid and Attack fleets can include your Brawlers and Rangers.

Sure, and they do. But if I allow Role Up/Downgrade for my defensive fleets, the Brawlers/Rangers can end up in them.

So, if I have an excess of independent Brawlers/Rangers, more than those required by the attack fleet’s template, the ones added to defensive fleets by the automated fleet-ship management would not be available to reinforce my offensive fleets.

Personally, I perceive the functions carried out by automated fleet-ship management as being excessive manual play.

Re point 3: In 1.1.0.0, a fleet of troop transports, each equipped with two PD weapons, will be assigned to attack a mining station while a) colonies they had the ability and range to invade were also listed as attack targets and b) more appropriate raid and attack fleets were nearby and available.

This is a perfect of example of where we'd need a save file that reproduces it to figure out what's going on. DW2 has so many possible settings and complexities that it's quite easy for a particular player to find issues which we don't see because we are playing in a different way. With that said, by default Invasion fleets are quite reluctant to take on those kinds of missions, so we'd need to see the save to figure out why they are so aggressive in your case.

This did not reproduce when I tried to do it, and I probably won’t have the time to work for Matrix Games/Codeforce for free until next weekend. Even then, I am unlikely to have the inclination to perform uncompensated work. For this, I make no apology.

Edit:
An exploration ship is a prime example of the deficiency.
Class: Explorer
Hull: Small Exploration Ship.
Role: Surveyor
Design: Includes resource scanners and survey modules.
Class: Explorer
Hull: Small Exploration Ship.
Role: Discoverer
Design: Designed for speed.
Class: Explorer
Hull: Small Exploration Ship.
Role: Observer
Design: Scanners, stealth and jammers.
End Edit.

You should be able to design and build these different designs of exploration ships and then use the higher resolution automation settings such as Auto-Scout or Auto-Spy to get them to fulfill their intended specializations.

Every Surveyor will have the same auto setting.
Every Discoverer will have the same auto-scout setting.
Every Observer will have the same auto-spy setting.
It is gratuitous for me to set these automation settings manually. I consider setting these automation settings per design as being excessive manual play.

Ship components and guiding the automation:
Restricting the automation from having available "advanced techs" of undesired research paths is not a realistic suggestion.
This requires:

• manually managing espionage
• no repairs of derelict ships
• no retiring advanced ships
• no research to unlock techs whose progression is blocked by a tech in an undesired research path.

Then consider there are multiple options for a particular component at the highest tech level (e.g. quantum vs fission vs fusion reactors) and valid reasons a player would want that component on ships of one design and not others.

I'm not sure I follow you here on this point as far as the issue or the desired goal.
Regards,

- Erik

Allow me to provide some further explanation.

As stated, the desired goal is:
To enable meaningful specialisation of ships while allowing the automation to cope with the changes without bogging down the player with excessive manual play.
And the suggestions are for improvements in future game versions.

Restricting the automation from having available "advanced techs" of undesired research paths is not a realistic suggestion, because it requires:

• manually managing espionage.
• no repairs of derelict ships
• no retiring advanced ships
• no research to unlock techs whose progression is blocked by a tech in an undesired research path.
• no automated research.

Problem: Automated ship design puts undesired components on designs.
Suggestion: Artificially restrict the automation from having available undesired components to put on designs by eliminating "advanced techs" of undesired research paths.

This suggestion is not a viable option with that goal as a guiding principle.

The empire can procure undesired techs in multiple ways, so to prevent it from obtaining them, those systems either need manual monitoring or management.

Manual management of espionage demands more player action than manually managing ship designs.

The empire can procure undesired techs through repairing derelict ships and retiring advanced ships. Therefore, to prevent that from occurring, doing either of those needs to be avoided. However, that is a significant self-inflicted disadvantage.

Multiple paths: e.g., to get to Hyperfusion Reactors requires researching both preceding parallel paths. The Latest Component of Highest tech level will the one you researched last. So, if you research Quantum reactors first, then when you research Fusion reactors, every ship design will be upgraded to have Fusion reactors instead of Quantum.
Some designs require less energy for more efficiency. Others require the opposite. It’s valid for one empire to have some ship designs with one design requirement, and other ship designs with the other.

If Random paths are enabled, perhaps the quantum reactor ends in a dead-end, and the route to get to Hyperfusion reactors requires you to research fusion reactors. These will be added to your designs when you research them because they are the highest tech and latest researched technology, even if they are not the best choice for some designs.

I split the off-topic discussion about heavy escorts into its own thread.

[AKicebear]

StormingKiwi - it seems like your argument could benefit from brevity.

My takeaway is that more granularity is desired in
a) the automatic updates for specific designs, ie what types of component to prioritize
b) the mission assignment types per specific design, beyond the current engagement settings provided

Those both sound like good things. I think maybe more useful to post specifically (separately) on those points in something like a "minimum viable mechanic change". Your posts focusing on heavy escorts, for example, are more impactful due to their focus.

[StormingKiwi]

Re point 3: In 1.1.0.0, a fleet of troop transports, each equipped with two PD weapons, will be assigned to attack a mining station while a) colonies they had the ability and range to invade were also listed as attack targets and b) more appropriate raid and attack fleets were nearby and available.

This is a perfect of example of where we'd need a save file that reproduces it to figure out what's going on. DW2 has so many possible settings and complexities that it's quite easy for a particular player to find issues which we don't see because we are playing in a different way. With that said, by default Invasion fleets are quite reluctant to take on those kinds of missions, so we'd need to see the save to figure out why they are so aggressive in your case.

This did not reproduce when I tried to do it, and I probably won’t have the time to work for Matrix Games/Codeforce for free until next weekend. Even then, I am unlikely to have the inclination to perform uncompensated work. For this, I make no apology.

I remembered additional detail:
The invasion fleet had 8 Troop Transports, as previously described, 1 Fuel Tanker, and 1 light cruiser as a 'command ship'. The light cruiser had long-range sensors, fleet targeting, and fleet countermeasures on it. 3 Medium Epsilons, 2 Small Epsilons, 2 PDs.

While trying to reproduce, I did not include a cruiser in the fleet, so that could have been the deciding factor.

Problem 1: Any allocation of an invasion fleet to attack something other than an enemy colony when enemy colonies are marked as attack targets with queued missions. Stations are low-priority targets for invasion fleets.
Problem 2: A lack of ship cohesion when a fleet travels through hyperspace. Yes, the cruiser could have soloed the mining base, but it was still in deep space, halfway between its origin and its destination, while troop transports were engaging the mining station.
Problem 3: Allocating an invasion fleet to attack something other than an enemy colony when alternative attack/raid fleets are available. Invasion fleets are poor choices to attack stations when alternative options are available.

Problem 1 is the main one.

Re Problem 2:
I see the same thing with fuel tankers included in a fleet - they'll also arrive well ahead of the rest of the ships in the fleet (which are all much more well-suited to attack ships and bases than a fuel tanker). They'll have the same attack mission as the rest of the fleet (attack such and such), and they'll attempt to solo some target they have no business attacking before the combat ships are anywhere near on station.
Although my fuel tankers often do have PD, at least I could pull that off entirely if I so chose. With troop transports, I have no such option because they are military ships and military ships must have a weapon.

[StormingKiwi]

StormingKiwi - it seems like your argument could benefit from brevity.

My takeaway is that more granularity is desired in
a) the automatic updates for specific designs, ie what types of component to prioritize
b) the mission assignment types per specific design, beyond the current engagement settings provided

Those both sound like good things. I think maybe more useful to post specifically (separately) on those points in something like a "minimum viable mechanic change". Your posts focusing on heavy escorts, for example, are more impactful due to their focus.

I did want to split that post into a more focused approach.

Of course, it is an elaboration as part of a conversation occuring in response to a much more brief post earlier in this thread.

The phrase TL:DR is always revealing of the inclinations and qualities of those who say it.

There are three focuses.

• Allow players to influence fleet ship management automation results.
• Allow players to influence ship mission assignment automation results.
• Allow players to influence ship design automation results.

The way the conversation occurred, there was too much interrelationship between those three points for the effort to be worth it. Three new topics would have been a lot of effort and duplication of the posts and cross-over in any resulting conversations. Ultimately, Erik and I are having the discussion here in this thread.

Why does a player want one ship to be in a particular type of fleet, and not another type of ship or another type of fleet? Ship capability and suitability for missions are affected by components, and ship capability and suitability for fleets are affected by components.

Ship auto-upgrade could be separated out from the discussion, but not by much.

Role and Specialisation should not be at the design level of the hierarchy. It's inheritance - the player should not duplicate "tactics and settings" for every design for every ship type defined as a long-range (Fuel) attacker. Define long-range (fuel) attacker high in the hierarchy, and let it be inherited down.

Similarly for component upgrading.


Edit: Here, long-range refers to fuel endurance, not stand-off/close-in.

[AKicebear]

The phrase TL:DR is always revealing of the inclinations and qualities of those who say it.

This seems unnecessarily passive aggressive. I was only trying to suggest an approach that may lead to the results you (and I, and many others) want in the game; perhaps using more effective argumentation. I'll leave you to it now.

[StormingKiwi]

The phrase TL:DR is always revealing of the inclinations and qualities of those who say it.

This seems unnecessarily passive aggressive. I was only trying to suggest an approach that may lead to the results you (and I, and many others) want in the game; perhaps using more effective argumentation. I'll leave you to it now.

It is rare that mentions of the time required to read are anything other than appeals to ridicule.

If you want to make the effort to "more effectively argue", be my guest. Especially if you care about the issue too.

Brevity is not the only quality of good communication. Clarity and relevance matter as well.

The fact remains that the first post was brief, but not clear enough.
The second post was longer, and seems to have cleared some misconceptions.
As for the third, time will tell.

Even the first Heavy Escort post is too detailed, and there should not have been a necessity for anything more than it. The subsequent posts are repeating the first.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Are you telling me I have not seen what I have seen?

I think automated Fleet Position Reassignment is overriding Tactics and Settings. In general, this should happen. E.g., in a fleet of 5 destroyers, 1 destroyer will end up with 4 close escorts.
However, in this specific example, my disruptor frigate should not be a picket ship, but the automation is following the rules it has been given, with the inherent ship roles attached to ship types (Frigates = Pickets).

Remember the goal? Sure, I could change “Allow position reassignment” from “Ships reassign positions as needed” to “ships retain current positions within fleets”.

Personally, I perceive managing the positions of every ship in every fleet with that ship in it as being excessive manual play.

I could answer why your ships are changing their position within fleets and overriding their individual tactics. This happens because you have allowed it and set it to automatic, change this to keep it to the ships setting and it will never override it.

If you set it to automatic the fleet AI will put some amount of ships in Core, some in Close Escort and some in Picket. It will first pick ships with the appropriate tactical setting, but if the fleet only have ships set to ""Core" then it will take some of them in positions they are not designed for, but you have allowed the AI to do this.

So, my advice, don't fight the game mechanic and assume it can read your mind. If you want ships to retain the position within the fleet then set the fleet to not reposition ships position.

If you can't bother to manage something as simple as this you should just accept that the AI will reassign your ships as it see fit. If you perhaps assign more appropriate ships to the fleet it will do a better job at it.

They "might" have a more developed fleet construction system in the future that let you set the ratio of Core, Close Escort and Picket you like the fleet to have under AI control, but currently there are no such settings for fleets. Then, I bet, someone will call even that too much micro and complain it is too cumbersome and want it done in some other way.

[maggiecow]

I did understand the context, but it will still create confusion in discussing your ideas to propose a name for something that already means something else in the game. I'm trying to make sure we're communicating clearly.
Yes, all true, nevertheless it is currently Role right now and that's how Elliot wants to define it.

The “Please reword your idea to fit our preferences” seems obstinate to me.

We are communicating clearly. You understood that “Class” was the part of a ship associated with “Ship Type”, and that “Role” was the part of a ship associated with how that ship behaves and how that ship is managed by the automation etc. So, what exactly is the misunderstanding?

If you’re wedded to the word “Role”, I suggest rewriting the Galactopedia, the manual and some technologies. There is no such concept as role within the Galactopedia (see entries for Ship Types and Ship and Base Types) and the word is used inconsistently within the manual/technologies. (e.g., the cruiser is the first “multi-role” starship. If the cruiser is of role: cruiser, how can it also be of role: destroyer?)

Lawyered!

FWIW I think the use of role instead of class, and hull instead of role is just formalizing a mistake by Elliot and trying to make it cannon in the face of common sense. It honestly feels like gaslighting at this stage.

Also, while rewriting the Galactopedia, make it searchable and throw in hyperlinks between articles because it's the 21st Century and Hypercard was invented about a hundred years ago. RTFM has an added layer of complexity when it's as user-friendly as having to ask a man with white gloves on to turn the pages for you.

[StormingKiwi]

Are you telling me I have not seen what I have seen?

I think automated Fleet Position Reassignment is overriding Tactics and Settings. In general, this should happen. E.g., in a fleet of 5 destroyers, 1 destroyer will end up with 4 close escorts.
However, in this specific example, my disruptor frigate should not be a picket ship, but the automation is following the rules it has been given, with the inherent ship roles attached to ship types (Frigates = Pickets).

Remember the goal? Sure, I could change “Allow position reassignment” from “Ships reassign positions as needed” to “ships retain current positions within fleets”.

Personally, I perceive managing the positions of every ship in every fleet with that ship in it as being excessive manual play.

I could answer why your ships are changing their position within fleets and overriding their individual tactics. This happens because you have allowed it and set it to automatic, change this to keep it to the ships setting and it will never override it.

If you set it to automatic the fleet AI will put some amount of ships in Core, some in Close Escort and some in Picket. It will first pick ships with the appropriate tactical setting, but if the fleet only have ships set to ""Core" then it will take some of them in positions they are not designed for, but you have allowed the AI to do this.

So, my advice, don't fight the game mechanic and assume it can read your mind. If you want ships to retain the position within the fleet then set the fleet to not reposition ships position.

If you can't bother to manage something as simple as this you should just accept that the AI will reassign your ships as it see fit. If you perhaps assign more appropriate ships to the fleet it will do a better job at it.

They "might" have a more developed fleet construction system in the future that let you set the ratio of Core, Close Escort and Picket you like the fleet to have under AI control, but currently there are no such settings for fleets. Then, I bet, someone will call even that too much micro and complain it is too cumbersome and want it done in some other way.

Hey Jorgen,

Remember this post from earlier in this thread, where I made a feature request:

It would be helpful if the design hierarchy progressed down: Class>Hull>Role, rather than parsing text.

With custom ROLE templates that allowed the user to define:
1) The types of missions a ship of that role should do.
2) Fleet involvement (you might want your fleets to substitute or trim roles while disallowing a particular design from ever operating as part of a fleet)
3) The categories of components a design should include.
4) The weapon types (pulse, beam, ion, area, missile, kinetic, torpedo, point-defence) a design should include.
So as to guide the ship mission automation and design upgrades and creation.

By having multiple roles for one hull, you'd be able to define, e.g. Standoff Interdicting Colony Guarder, Close-In Boarding Escorts, independent defenders, fleet frigates, etc.

We are now talking about why that would be a useful investment of time and energy for Erik/Elliot.

The post you quoted is my response to a comment by Erik saying:

It doesn't get automatically assigned to be a picket ship if you have set the design to have it be a Close Escort or Core ship. You already have control of this at the Design level. You should be able to have a Frigate that is set to Picket and a Frigate that is set to Core and the fleet should respect that. If you are doing this and it's not working, please share a save file so we can figure out what's causing that.

His response says "No, this does not happen, I will need to figure out the cause".
My reply says: "Yes, it does happen, and the cause is fleet position reassignment overriding the design specification".

Ultimately, the suggestion is to improve the customisation of automation.
Now, you say that managing fleet positions manually is simple. I agree.
However, apart from not scaling well, it is tedious and uninteresting. It is well within the capabilities of automation to follow defined rules (as it currently does). The fault is there is no way to customise those rule definitions.

A cheap and mobile frigate is more appropriate than a more expensive and slower cruiser and above. The issue is that the game is designed for automation to do whatever it likes.

Yes, I do know how it works currently (as you have quoted), and that is why I have suggested how it could be improved in the future.