Kind of disappointing...

from GalCiv3 Forums

So I recently got back into playing GalCiv 3 after taking a break for a few months. Started playing with version 2.71. There are a lot of nice changes and polish, so that's all good. However after playing for a while I discovered that the game still has one thing that is extremely broken, and it has been broken for literally over a year now. Since Crusade began, and it was carried over from the base game before Crusade.

Carriers.

Carriers do NOT do what the tech says they do. The first carrier tech says it gives you assault fighters. It does NOT. Or rather sometimes it might, most of the time is does not. Carriers give you different types of fighters that seem to be completely based on what types of techs you currently have researched. This is f***ing annoying to say the least, and makes the carrier tech pretty much useless. There is no way to plan your ship roles for fleets when you have no idea what kind of fighters are going to be spawning out of your carriers. Sometimes they might spawn as interceptors which can work ok, at least they go attack the enemy ships. Other times they spawn as guardians, and then it can completely f***ing wreck your fleet. Because all of your ships that were supposed to be following behind a wave of assault fighters are now at the front line being torn apart with no fighter support you were counting on to be there. While your now worthless "assault fighters" the carriers were supposed to be providing are sitting clear at the back doing absolutely nothing because they have actually been assigned a guardian role instead of assault role.

Guys seriously. It is pretty ridiculous that the carrier tech has been broken basically since the game began. When the tech description says it gives you assault fighters, then your carriers should ALWAYS spawn assault fighters. When you get the techs for guardian and interceptor fighters, those should ALWAYS spawn guardians and interceptors. When the ship role of your carrier fighters is always changing based on your current techs researched, it makes carriers as they work now a complete waste of time. A waste of tech research time, a waste of fleet building time. Sometimes a waste of hundreds of game turn time (hours and hours of play time) when you discover your primary conquest strategy you were building towards is now basically useless. And not because the AI has "outplayed" you, but because the devs put in a horribly inaccurate description of a terribly broken tech.

You folks at Stardock are pretty great and have made an awesome game that I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing. But it annoys me a lot that you have had this broken tech in the game since the beginning and still haven't fixed it.

 

TLDR: Carriers are broken, they don't provide the type of fighters that the tech claims. Please fix.

 

48,991 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Looking in the XML files everything looks in order. The Assault Carrier Module increase the Assault Fighters Cap, Assault Fighter Blueprint has the Assault ship role, etc.

Could you upload a save file so the devs can look over it?

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Rhonin_the_wizard, reply 1

Looking in the XML files everything looks in order. [...]
End of Rhonin_the_wizard's quote
I once tried altering the AI ship roles via the default ship types xml. It didn't work. The automatic ingame assignment overwrote the .xml code and the ship role was still determined by the Fortitude, Threat, Value-stats.

I could imagine something similar happening for example, when you have lvl 4 shields but only lvl 1 weapons, then the fortitude stat overwrites the threat stat and your assault/interceptor becomes an escort/guardian.

I don't have the game installed at the moment, so i won't verify this possibility.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I use carriers intensively, I sell, trade, and rush research with citizens to get them. I have never experienced this with several hundred hours of gameplay.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I experience it all the time with 1723 hours of game play.  And no that is not an exaggeration, according to steam I have logged 1723 hours of game time in Gal Civ 3....

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Oh wow your 2 hours more than me.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The latest opt in fields formidable carriers and the AI is going heck bent on them. These 'swarm' tactics are brutal and overwhelming - especially on higher levels. The carriers play big in tactical chicanery too - the AI will float one carrier or a smaller carrier task force by itself to draw out your fleets while fleets of over 50 and 60 are just out of sensor range, waiting to swoop in on your critical assets (or deliver a first class bushwacking) while you're drawn out doing your best Admiral Halsey chasing down the bait carriers.

Celebrated 1300 hours from 10 January 2017 to 10 January  2018

 

luceo non uro

 

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

 courtneyme109, do you experience the problem stated by the original poster? I watch my carrier battles and I have never seen it. My assault & interceptor fighter modules spawn as such. I dont use the guardian module, and dont have any ships in the back protecting my carriers. They are always out front laying waste to the enemy fleet. The only problem I have is the 64 ship limit in battle that limits the maximum number taking part. That's hit with three of my carriers though I usually have 5-10 in a fleet.

aerez4546 do you play vanilla or do you use mods?

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nope - to be fair tho' - I always deploy Carrier Battle Groups. Two or Three carriers maxed out with assault fighters, support ships with fleet offense/defense/speed/range boosters and tons of separately ship yard produced fighters. There's a lot going on even in slow mode on the battle viewer, yet they all seem to go heck bent at the enemy.

luceo non uro

 

 

 

 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I play the regular Crusade expansion, no mods, a few of the DLC's enabled. Just curious, are your weapon techs always researched ahead of defense techs? I am one of those people that usually has my defense techs at least equal to (or sometimes ahead of) my weapons techs.

 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting aerez4546, reply 9

Are your weapon techs always researched ahead of defense techs?

 
End of aerez4546's quote

No. Defense always seems ahead of weapon development for moi. Any one else forsake 2 weapon trees to focus only on one? I've been going all out exclusively with beam weapons and ignoring missiles and kinetic projectiles.  Beam weaponry uses less mass... I use all DLCs except mega events (terrified of giant Peace Keeping robots trashing hours of hard work) and the Mech build add on. 

 

luceo non uro

 

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Side note... the Paranoid trait is really useful against Peacekeepers... because the respawning fighters on your colonies attracts them, so they tend to "pool" around certain planets and colonies and this allows you to largely plan around them and build up.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting aerez4546, reply 9

Just curious, are your weapon techs always researched ahead of defense techs?
End of aerez4546's quote

 

Honestly, I couldn't tell you. I never use my research for either weapons or defense, I use my starbases to boost my ship stats. I trade for those techs until I am able to recruit citizens every turn or every other turn, then I rush research weapons before defense. So in any given game one may be farther than the other depending on my trading.

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

Only played up to incredible difficulty so far, so not sure if this works on godlike,  but i never worry about defense on ships. Go kinetic cause their mass is small. My ships have high moves 55+ (esp on huge hulls).. Kinetic range extension module. Kinetic damage increase modules and the rest is kinetic weapons. 

With logistics maxed out my fleets have over 1000 damage and that seems to do the trick for me.Never bothered with carriers. A blunt hammer is my approach ;)

Recent game i did everything random. End result was that there was no durantium in galaxy so could not max out production on planets. Had to stick with large hulls. Still did same approach. Still seemed to work.