Crusade Combat Module Analysis

from GalCiv3 Forums

I've been using spreadsheets to determine which weapon systems i should use for quite some time. Every new patch my script cracks open the xml and grabs me the numbers so that i can see if combat has been tweaked again. Prior to crusade if you asked me what weapon tree is best i would say it depends on your economy and the nature of the war. I bought crusades over the weekend (loving it), but now that i've updated my spreadsheets i noticed some dramatic changes. Mass drivers are great, and missiles are terrible! in addition to the math the numbers themselves have left me with several questions. but first I'll go over the results. as a caveat its worth mentioning that range of weapon is not factored into my analysis. in my experience missiles and beams get one shot off before mass drivers are in range so i do not believe range is a significant factor in battle outcome.
►mass drivers have great damage per construction point, while missile have terrible ratios (beam in the middle)
►the award for damage per mass point trades hands several times as technology advances
►when comparing the mass of the weapon to the mass of the appropriate defense system mass drivers excel compare to the other weapon types. same when comparing mass. this means that mass drivers will eat through defenses significantly faster than their counterparts
►the prototype antimatter missiles and durantium driver are actually worse than the weapons they are unlocked beside, both in terms of bang for buck and in terms of damage density

As for my questions, food for thought/conversation
1) Why does militarization unlock 3 weapons but weapon systems only unlock one?
2) why are the resource-less weapons not unlocked at the same time? (lasers is one tech before railgun or stinger)
3) why doesn't the elerium cost for lasers ever go up? (and for that matter why do missiles use so much antimatter)

The most important question though is why are the weapons even different? Its really a question of intention. When i choose what weapons and armor I'm putting on a ship part of what i do is i inspect several of my prospective enemy's ships and choose what best works against their current tech. i would propose that weapons of equivalent tech level should have identical damage, cost, mass, maintenance, accuracy, damage, and rate of fire, so that your choice is one of pure counter-strategy instead of all this economics. the other possibility is that the dev's assumed that everyone would try to put a bit of everything on each ship and so the differences are for flavor only. I would challange that idea however, galciv has always been a game where you can minmax super hard if you put in the time and pay attention, why muddle strategy with economics? thoughts?

25,911 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I do not agree with everything, but see also that weapons seem somewhat unfinished.

What we should have:

- Resource cost should go up per tech level in a consistent way.

- Weapons without resource cost should be weaker overall than weapons with resource cost of the same tech level.

Apart from that I disagree that every weapon of the same tech evel should have identical stats and just a different damage type. That would be bland. Actually it's one of the points I love not so much about GalCiv that there are just three damage types and no special weapons with unique effects.

What I also miss is Brad's promise that in Crusade every weapon on a ship fires individually. As much as I look for it I couldn't see that effect anywhere in the game. That alone would be a huge step forward for our tactical choices.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Just how terrible are missiles?

I would argue that to be balanced, they need to be mathematically worse than the other weapons, because they get the first strike (highest range). And that first strike can significantly deplete an enemies fleet before they start firing if you have enough firepower

Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting lyssailcor, reply 1

I do not agree with everything, but see also that weapons seem somewhat unfinished.

What we should have:

- Resource cost should go up per tech level in a consistent way.

- Weapons without resource cost should be weaker overall than weapons with resource cost of the same tech level.

Apart from that I disagree that every weapon of the same tech evel should have identical stats and just a different damage type. That would be bland. Actually it's one of the points I love not so much about GalCiv that there are just three damage types and no special weapons with unique effects.

What I also miss is Brad's promise that in Crusade every weapon on a ship fires individually. As much as I look for it I couldn't see that effect anywhere in the game. That alone would be a huge step forward for our tactical choices.
End of lyssailcor's quote


So you advocate for more variety then? like perhaps missiles are better against large ships and not as good against small ones, energy weapons are less effective inside nebulae, mass drivers can temporarily stun a ships crew, that sort of thing?

also im not sure i understand what you mean about every ship firing individually, you mean visually or mathematically? mathematically would have an interesting effect because the damage you do to defenses per salvo would change from a linear random distribution to a binomial distribution.

 

Quoting adamb1011, reply 2

Just how terrible are missiles?

I would argue that to be balanced, they need to be mathematically worse than the other weapons, because they get the first strike (highest range). And that first strike can significantly deplete an enemies fleet before they start firing if you have enough firepower
End of adamb1011's quote


bang for buck they are three times worse than beams and guns on average, and that's only the cost in credits. chaff on the other-hand is the most cost effective armor in game (not by nearly as much) with further diminishes missile's B4B. If you are interested in seeing my numbers i can try to clean the sheet up and bit and post it to google drive.

I've tried  the missile firing squad before and it wasn't as great as you would hope, although the numbers are quite different now, i suppose it warrants a retry. as i mentioned before they only got one shot off before they got shot back at, and the way targets are prioritized all your like-classed ships attack the same target, and overkill is wasted damage so they were susceptible to swarming too.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Defenses are screwed anyways at the moment.

Jamming provides effective HP regardless of enemy weapon type. With large hulls and huge hulls jamming is all you need. As for range... let's just hope SD doesn't combine jamming and combat speed into one component... oh wait... they did... Now max evasion (90 or 95% can't remember) is not even exclusive to some civs anymore. Add repair for even better results.

Is your spreadsheet taking into account attack speeds? I didn't go too deep into the numbers, but I seem to recall kinetics>beams>missiles in dps/mass by quite a margin.

Agreeing on the elerium costs for beams. It's odd. Not entirely impossible in terms of balance though to make different strategic costs for different weapon types. It's also an aspect of variety. Missiles used to be cheap but make ships weaker overall and thus together with first strike, they would favor a strategy of attrition, where losing the same amount of ships meant the player using missiles was winning economicly.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

@zuPloed - Jamming and Accuracy are both broken in my book and need a good look by the devs. Stacking stat, where all other stats have a base + modifier.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting adamb1011, reply 2

Just how terrible are missiles?

I would argue that to be balanced, they need to be mathematically worse than the other weapons, because they get the first strike (highest range). And that first strike can significantly deplete an enemies fleet before they start firing if you have enough firepower
End of adamb1011's quote

First strike seems to be a no go now, in battles i viewed today my front line ships started in kinetic weapon range...

 

Quoting zuPloed, reply 4

Is your spreadsheet taking into account attack speeds? I didn't go too deep into the numbers, but I seem to recall kinetics>beams>missiles in dps/mass by quite a margin.
End of zuPloed's quote

yes; accuracy too

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting DeathMaker9000, reply 3


Quoting lyssailcor,
reply 1

I do not agree with everything, but see also that weapons seem somewhat unfinished.

What we should have:

- Resource cost should go up per tech level in a consistent way.

- Weapons without resource cost should be weaker overall than weapons with resource cost of the same tech level.

Apart from that I disagree that every weapon of the same tech evel should have identical stats and just a different damage type. That would be bland. Actually it's one of the points I love not so much about GalCiv that there are just three damage types and no special weapons with unique effects.

What I also miss is Brad's promise that in Crusade every weapon on a ship fires individually. As much as I look for it I couldn't see that effect anywhere in the game. That alone would be a huge step forward for our tactical choices.



So you advocate for more variety then? like perhaps missiles are better against large ships and not as good against small ones, energy weapons are less effective inside nebulae, mass drivers can temporarily stun a ships crew, that sort of thing?

also im not sure i understand what you mean about every ship firing individually, you mean visually or mathematically? mathematically would have an interesting effect because the damage you do to defenses per salvo would change from a linear random distribution to a binomial distribution.

End of DeathMaker9000's quote

As for variety, I mean your examples, but also special weapons like ones that target only ship drives (normal drives and thrusters alike), kill the crew (ship is then effectively out of order and could perhaps be captured, works only against biological crews), have an area effect and the like.

Firing individually means just that. Right now if you have 5 mass drivers with 2 attack on your ship if would fire once with 10 kinetic attack on a single target. If it could instead fire all five weapons individually on different targets it would make a big tactical difference whether you put a bunch of small weapons on your ship to fight of small, weakly defended targets or only a few big weapons to target big ships with lot of defences.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 5

@zuPloed - Jamming and Accuracy are both broken in my book and need a good look by the devs. Stacking stat, where all other stats have a base + modifier.
End of Horemvore's quote

If only someone had told them so they could have known...

Oh wait...

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree with most of the things said.

One of my biggest issues with weapon types is the "needless diversity". One good example is attack speed.

To me, attack speed is a pointless mechanic in a strategic level game as this. At the end of the day, its about how much damage I do.

When I look at an enemy fleet I don't get to see their attack speed, I see their damage numbers. So that's the number that should be focused on.

 

If we want missiles to have better range than kinetics, ok....lower missile damage and give them the same attack speed.

If we want kinetics to burn through their defenses quicker than missiles, ok....lower the defense of armor so its weaker overall.

 

While I don't mind diversity, if the combat mechanics require a calculator to really understand how much damage your doing than something is wrong. That complexity is fine in tactical combat and RTS style combat games...but for high level strategic combat like in GalCiv 3 it distracts from the core decision making.

 

 

 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Stalker0, reply 9

If we want missiles to have better range than kinetics, ok....lower missile damage and give them the same attack speed.
End of Stalker0's quote
But there is a difference in the two...

High damage low attack speed means you get a good first strike, by which I mean the chance to take out enemy ships before they can deal damage, which high attack speed, low attack could not.

On the other hand you are succeptible to overkill-damage, which effectively means reduced dps against small targets.

Quoting Stalker0, reply 9

I see their damage numbers. So that's the number that should be focused on.
End of Stalker0's quote
But this could just as well be fixed by making this number not be attack damage, but attack damage times attack speed.