Large Ships and Roles

This ser is a marvelous idea. +1

Bam, I have yet to get into a fight where the AI is on par in Tech with me. I have read that a HUGE hull filled only With weapons and NO defenses is the way to go. That just does not make sense (to me). I like the 'armored' battleship idea and tend to make my ships like that. 

Personally what I would like to see is a return to a need for defenses. Most here say all defenses do is 'add hit-points'. which is true. I like the hit-point idea but I also like  how defenses kinda worked in GCII. In that game If you had 10  in point defense and got hit by a mass driver it would reduce the mass driver by a tenth, (not sure exactly). 

I like long battles. It would be nice to have Capitals sit in back and slug it out long range while interceptors and assault fighters go and attack carriers or support ships. Defenses really need a slight rework. I think late tier defenses should have a unique feature to them that makes them worth working towards, maybe a 3 to 1 reduction or a hidden modifier to completely disregard said attack, (although make the chance low).

In all cases, I like the current system and would like to work towards a need for 'mixed' fleets. That  can be coded so that Tiny, small and medium more towards the enemy while Large and Huge 'hang back' and stand off at range. The current system will allow this you just have to know how to designate the ship. 

A Huge Ship with 500 missiles, extra range, extra rate of fire, and cluster munitions, 40 in each defense 'designated' as Escort or Guardian will sit in back.

A Capital is essentially the same as Assault, the difference is what targets they pick. Assaults go for softer targets in back while capitals 'leisurely stroll up and unleash on all that get near....

Our system is flexible enough that in an expansion we can probably get a 'ship behavior' drop down. This would also give the ship additional behavior with drop down options like Close in and attack at point blank, Stand off at range and fire. These are just ideas. I am NOT a programmer but the beauty of this game is the fact it is 64 bit and we can update/upgrade it (at a later date) with more features. 

One possibility is to add free tactical speed to the fighters and escorts that would make them very hard to hit (they must be made harder to hit).

I get tired of nerfing things. The Weapons in general and kinetic in particular, are already under powered imo. I am in full agreement that the fighters and escorts should be able to take out an occasional capital ship, with powerful missiles and beams that can overcome their HP with numerical superiority and survivability against capital ship weapons. Carriers could perhaps do with fewer HP by giving the a special hull with fewer HP but certainly more than a cargo hull carrier (which are already a stock ship in the game btw).

With the limit of 2 per module, early carriers are almost becoming useless, and certainly boring as hell, until you have the tech to use assault fighters and can add 3-4 modules to a huge hull. Then you have carriers with 8+ doom ray fighters that regenerate. That is too much.

Someone else proposed that carriers be given like 10 attack drones per module with maybe disrupter fire power that does not escalate. This would give the delightful swarming effect that was present in the early betas without making them game breakers like they were back then. I like that idea and Brad responded to the post that he thought it was a great idea as well, not that he is going to rush out and put it in tomorrow. I would add a support ship (AWAC) to the carrier complement to help overcome missile and beam defense.

Anyway, to make capital ships vulnerable to fighters, it needs to be a numerical thing unless they want to start throwing in a dice roll. Two fighters do not a carrier make. I would like for it to be lots of tiny fighters that will chip away at the big HP and take out the capital ship if it is not protected by escorts

Interesting!

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That no-defense gun-loaded ships are a viable tactic suggests to me that there is an opportunity for more interesting play. either using the existing builds to target them or to modify things, perhaps not so much, to make things more interesting.

One idea is targetability, if you will.  It's a lot easier for a submarine to hit battleship or carrier in RL than to hit a destroyer.   Submarines, on the other hand, in WW2 were in big trouble against aircraft.

I don't really have any specific recommendations, I just think it's an area that could be thought through.

The galciv ship design system has always been more about customizing looks as opposed to smart equipping of the ship.  In the end, more, better weapons is always the way to go.  Countering a specific ship design with the right type of defense works great, but in practice it is too expensive to do since you need to "just in time" upgrade your ships.

(or have guessed right to begin with...or have 2X-3X as many ships as them with a fleet using each type of defense....in which case just build more weapons and win through numbers anyway....)

I think the best suggestions are going to be slightly harder to balance but that's what you have to do.

1.) Exactly what Franco said.  You want small ships to be better, make them harder to hit.  GC3 has some interesting thruster mechanics...use them.  If small ships get a serious evasion bonus then they become useful on that quality.  Second, use this as an opportunity to differentiate weapon types.  Maybe kinetics should be best for anti-fighter roles due to their reload rate?  Lastly, let us build more than 1 ship per turn.  Even though I can micro my planets to each make ships this is undoing all the work we did to specialize.  No specialized production planet will only be making 1 per turn...they will all overkill.

2.) Redo the defense mechanic.  Make defenses reduce damage from a weapon type by a certain amount.  Either flat reduction (with a minimum damage per shot limit) or a scaling percentage with an overall cap to max reduction%.  Then make the auto repair systems such that you could attempt to create a large ship that heals itself enough in combat where it can shrug off a certain DPS level.  This DPS level would be highly affected by armor..obviously.  You now need to balance the numbers so that its not trivial to be invincible, but the point here is that the defense needs to not just be more effective HP.  As is, defenses absorb some damage (of only one type) then fail.  That's the same as HP...so why not just build more HP....this is why defenses are typically ignored.

3.) The other option to address the above...albeit this one is not nearly as good or fun...is to tweak logistics.  Lower the maximum cap and then make smaller ships less and larger ships more.  If your fleet can only have 2 large ships then keeping them alive suddenly matters because being able to win a given fleet vs fleet battle is almost a step function.   Total fleets is not nearly as important as fleet vs fleet "individual performance" because winners typically win individual battles hard (0 sum...you either win or you are wiped out 100%) and can steamroll with a lower supply of reinforcements after each battle.

For a while armor was helping a bit against beams and missiles in addition to guns. But now it is straight-up beams/shields, point def/missiles, and armor/guns.

Notwithstanding some of the points and realities raised above (eg defensive v offensive capabilities) there are some tactical aspects that I'm still exploring. 

It's evident that the AI is learning as, in current game, where I initially had beam ships (medium & large) that were slicing up opponents nicely , the next generation of enemy ships had offensive missiles and defensive shields which allowed them to get in a couple of 'free' hits, so where ships with similar HP were battling it out the enemy were able to take first blood as I didn't have point defenses.  Have managed to overcome this by adding escort ships with point defences which get targeted first whilst the beam(ers) get their shots in.  Also something to be said for the good old 'all rounder'.

In a previous game I had some large fleets of small or medium well-armed ships that could successfully take on 1-3 huge/large ship fleets quite successfully as they got more shots in more often (didn't work so well with tiny!).  One issue with this tactic in the current game (in 1.02) is the range of a specific weapon on a small hull, tending to be outranged by the larger ship weapons so small ships are massacred before they can get in range.

Might be able to vary this by using various support ships with modules that improve fleet shields, weapon intensities, targeting etc.  Indeed these support ships, or even adding support modules to a seriously armed/defended huge hulk that provides a solid core for a fleet has been quite useful as well.

Fighter from Carriers can also provide a good initial distraction whilst the larger ships target their opposite numbers (of course the AI tends to do the same and having ships from both sides focus on fighters first to exclusion of anything else is a bit disappointing at this stage - would like more control of the tactical battle, not necessarily of individual ships but by being able to give some form of orders or priority of targets - ship classes does this to some extent but unless you have several classes available for each battle this is ineffective - DLP ).  Big issue with early carriers is their speed so have had to mod with engines to match other ships available at this stage of the game.

Quoting Franco, reply 3

One possibility is to add free tactical speed to the fighters and escorts that would make them very hard to hit (they must be made harder to hit).

I get tired of nerfing things. The Weapons in general and kinetic in particular, are already under powered imo. I am in full agreement that the fighters and escorts should be able to take out an occasional capital ship, with powerful missiles and beams that can overcome their HP with numerical superiority and survivability against capital ship weapons. Carriers could perhaps do with fewer HP by giving the a special hull with fewer HP but certainly more than a cargo hull carrier (which are already a stock ship in the game btw).

With the limit of 2 per module, early carriers are almost becoming useless, and certainly boring as hell, until you have the tech to use assault fighters and can add 3-4 modules to a huge hull. Then you have carriers with 8+ doom ray fighters that regenerate. That is too much.

Someone else proposed that carriers be given like 10 attack drones per module with maybe disrupter fire power that does not escalate. This would give the delightful swarming effect that was present in the early betas without making them game breakers like they were back then. I like that idea and Brad responded to the post that he thought it was a great idea as well, not that he is going to rush out and put it in tomorrow. I would add a support ship (AWAC) to the carrier complement to help overcome missile and beam defense.

Anyway, to make capital ships vulnerable to fighters, it needs to be a numerical thing unless they want to start throwing in a dice roll. Two fighters do not a carrier make. I would like for it to be lots of tiny fighters that will chip away at the big HP and take out the capital ship if it is not protected by escorts

End of Franco's quote

Ok, I like carriers and swarms of fighters too, but lets be careful here. If we look at some numbers...

assuming fleet logistics (late game) of 60,

huge hull sizes of 750 (not unreasonable with hull cap techs and Hyperion shrinker)

and carrier modules taking up 50 space (cant remember base value, but its around there),

and giving carrier modules 10 - 15 drones each as was suggested elsewhere...

We end up with a fleet able to field between 900 and 1350 drones! multiply that by 2 if the enemy fleet has the same thing! I don't know about you, but my computer would die if it was asked to render all this. It doesnt matter if from a ship design balance perspective this would be a bad idea, someone WILL try to do this if carriers are given 10-15 drones each lol. If something like this were done, limits would have to be put on how many modules can be mounted.

As for giving smaller ships a reason for existing, how about giving larger ships an accuracy penalty for shooting at smaller ships? This would make capitals want to shoot at other capitals, and create a need to have smaller escort/guardian ships fend off smaller, more nimble assault or interceptor attackers. Accuracy stats are already in the game for each weapon class, all it would need is a modifier table to be applied in the combat engine. (and make them flat modifiers so you dont end up with silly 0% chance to hit stuff, give it a min and max value) This would add some value to picking accuracy specs or designing a medium size ship with very accurate lasers in an escort/guardian role ect.