Hull Size and Combat Balance

from GalCiv4 Forums

Someone on the forums made a comment a while ago about large swarms of tiny hulls being OP. I remember that being a problem in GC3. Between the different defense mechanic in GC4 and the hit point buffs that larger hulls received a while ago, I'm hoping that this won't be a problem in GC4. Still, as long as defense remains weak relative to offense, I think large swarms of tiny hulls are going to be exploitable.

On the hand, supposing that this issue did get fixed, you would simply have another problem: bigger ships would be inherently better, and so one would have no reason to build smaller ships. This leads to a situation where the game is basically a technology race, with very few tactical or strategic choices that can make a difference. Right now, with all forms of weapons being equalized, the last thing we need is fewer choices about fleet composition.

I had an idea that would help keep smaller hull sizes relevant throughout the game without letting them completely overrun everything. My idea would place all hull sizes on a spectrum of "maneuverability" and "resiliency," with tiny hulls being the most maneuverable and massive hulls being the most resilient. Weapons would also have their own spectrum of "tracking" and "penetration," with the weapons attached to tiny hulls having the best tracking and weapons attached to massive hulls being the most penetrating by default.* Better tracking would counter maneuverability and better penetration would counter resiliency. I imagine that for a battle between a fleet of small hulls and a fleet of medium hulls, the impact of these factors would be pretty negligible. For a battle between a fleet of tiny hulls and a fleet of massive hulls, both sides would have their effective damage reduced drastically, perhaps by as much as 99%. So the massive hulls would get at most a scratch, while the fleet of tiny hulls might lose some ships if the massive hulls are lucky enough to get a hit.

With this system, both small and large hull sizes are important. If you don't have big ships, you can't take out their big threats. On the hand, if you don't have enough small ships, the enemies can harass your freighters and asteroid bases while taking on minimal risk.

One interesting side-effect of this would be that to keep your transports (for instance) safe, you would protection from both kinds of threats. If you only have a big escort, enemy interceptors could "slip in" and destroy your transport. If you only have small ships escorting the transport, you can't prevent a big assault ship from barreling in and taking the transport out.

Not only would such a system make fleet composition more important and combat more interesting to watch, it would also reflect what space combat looks like in movies like Star Wars, where small ships fight primarily small ships and big ships fight primarily big ships. (The Death Star does not count as a space ship, so don't even bring it up!) I think this sort of "realism" makes the game more fun.

*Another idea would be to have specialized weapons like "armor-piercing missiles" and "fast-tracking missiles." These could either be distinct modules or specialized weapons technology (like in GC3). If it's the first option, you could build big ships that specialize in taking down little ships and little ships that specialize in damaging big ships. Or, if it's the second option, you could choose to give all your missiles better penetration, for instance.

galactic civilizations iv
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Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Some interesting ideas here.  One question though.  What would incentivize you to be the first to build big ships then?  ie what would be the advantage of committing to the research, then the industry to churn out bigger ships, when the smaller ships you can already build are better at fighting the existing smaller ships really?

Or are you envisioning that you'd need ships with more "penetration" to push down starbases?

Additionally, for the fleets of little guys vs bigger ships.  I haven't gotten very far into a game with the revised combat system.  Do defenses still work per round, or per attack?  Originally I think they only worked per round (ie 10 little ships all firing counted as 1 single large attack for the purposes of blocking).  One solution is to simply make defenses completely refresh "per attack" instead.  This favors bigger ships because they can put more guns into the same attack, and similarly favors defense against multiple attacks per round.  Although with the 1-100% RNG getting hit with a bunch of little attacks is still very viable.  The "defense per attack" was something that I was thinking about when I was working out an appropriate battle-curve for RNG rolls, and my system makes the assumption that this is how defense works ...

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the combat system post release, there are a lot of moving parts that all interact in very nuanced ways.

One off-the-cuff truism to think about though.  Big ships can have small guns as well as big guns, but the opposite isn't true - small ships cannot have big guns.

Nice writeup, karma for taking the time,

-tid242

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

These are great ideas, that I think are best seen today in the Homeworld series, where a "rock paper scissors" effect can be seen between Strike-Craft VS Corvettes/Frigates VS Larger Vessels.

In any system, essentially the smaller vessels need to be able to challenge the supremacy of larger ones, whilst larger ones need justification to exist, and a series of "escorts" for those larger vessels allow them to dominate the fleet of smaller vessels.

The justification for large vessels is pretty easy to establish. 1) Strategic movement and range capability. 2) Assistance in planetary assault via bombardment or troops/etc. 3) Capacity/range to deal with fortifications.

So what I would suggest:

1) Small ships are ideal for defense and can overwhelm large vessels. But lack the strategic capability to launch effective/enduring offense.

2) Fleets of only large vessels will be inefficient against small ships as detailed in 1.

3) To mitigate this and allow for efficient victory, large vessels must either:
-----A) Use space specifically on anti-small ship weapons (Generally the worst option)

-----B) Limit their strategic range and movement by having smaller vessels in tow (very un-ideal)

-----C) Limit their strategic range and movement somewhat by having specialized medium class vessels (good choice)

-----D) Deploy a proportion of their fleet in Carriers which have enough fighters to tip the scale in favor of the large vessel fleet (best choice/late game)



The key to all this is the movement and engines, small vessels need to be very inefficient (or incapable) of moving very quickly, either from sector to sector or even within a sector. 

After that, it's just a matter of having differing bonuses or penalties of hull size A vs B and so forth. Personally I also like tweaking everything based on the "terrain" of the battle. Giving a further edge to smaller craft when fighting "in orbit" and less of an edge vs larger craft when fighting in open space.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting tid242, reply 1

Some interesting ideas here.  One question though.  What would incentivize you to be the first to build big ships then?  ie what would be the advantage of committing to the research, then the industry to churn out bigger ships, when the smaller ships you can already build are better at fighting the existing smaller ships really?

Or are you envisioning that you'd need ships with more "penetration" to push down starbases?

End of tid242's quote

There would be just as much incentive to build bigger ships as currently exists. You get far more hit points, and so are more likely to survive the battle. Because you only go up one step at a time (from tiny to small, from small to medium, etc.), and because the impact of maneuverability/resilience is negligible between ships that are one size apart, it will be advantageous be one level ahead of your opponent, just like it is now.

Actually, it's not true that the smaller ships would be better at fighting other small ships. They would be better at doing damage to them. They would also be taking more damage. The way it works is small ships apply more damage to small ships and big ships apply more damage to big ships.

I conceive of the damage avoided by small ships being expressed in terms of evasion and missed shots. I conceive of the damage avoided by large ships as being expressed in terms of damage reduction or resistance. Mathematically it would come out to an even playing field on average.

For most battles, all this would really mean is that they would take a bit longer. For some battles, that would mean the turn limit is reached, and the battle ends. This possibly lets one side escape.

I don't remember what the turn limit is, but let's say it is 50. (If this system were adopted, the turn limit would probably have to be changed anyway.) Let's say you have a fleet of tiny hulls versus a fleet of massive hulls. Let's say the massive hull fleet can only fit in 2 ships within the logistical limit. And let's say with the drastic difference in maneuverability, the massive hull ships miss 99% of their shots. With 50 shots (because there are 50 turns) that means that each massive hull ship has a 50% chance this battle to hit (and kill) a tiny hull ship this combat. Since there are two of them, that means that on average they will kill one little ship each time these fleets engage in combat. Since the tiny ships are doing drastically reduced damage and the big ships are healing every turn, the big ships seem to have a slight edge here.

To take another example, let's say you have one massive hull fighting one tiny hull. Following the numbers laid out in the previous example, there would be a 50% chance the tiny ship is destroyed, and a 50% chance that it manages to "get away." This seems to approximate what "should" happen. If this were "real life," the tiny hull would be warming up the hyper drive to get away, not recklessly trying to destroy the much larger ship. 

Of course, going after a whole fleet of tiny ships with your massive ships would just be silly. That's why you send your small and medium ships after them.

I wasn't really thinking about this combat system as it relates to starbases, but I suppose that thinking of starbases as another kind of massive hull is one possibility.

There could additionally be one decisive advantage of larger hulls that would make them essential. That is the concept of taking and giving ground (or I guess space). Currently, if a battle ends at the turn limit both sides remain in the hexes they fought from. Battles are fought between hexes and not on them. I think what should happen is the side with more hit point at the end of the fight should control the hex the fight took place on. Let's say the attacking force wins. "Winning" here just means they had more total hit points at the end of the fight, regardless of whatever casualties they incurred. The attacking force would then take over the hex previously occupied by the defending force, pushing the defending force back one tile. This would give fleets with more hit points (i.e., bigger ships) an advantage in taking over hexes and defending them. Big ships would therefore play a pivotal role in launching and repelling invasions. An invasion, like a battle, wouldn't occur between two hexes but solely on the hex occupied by the planet. So long as the fleet is not defeated or pushed off the hex, the transports can continue to invade the planet. (This is a change I would like to see regardless of everything else. Transports shouldn't be interrupted in their mission just because the fleet defending them is attacked.)

There are two kinds of warfare in GalCiv, and what the proposed system does is make them more distinct. Tiny hulls excel at inflicting economic damage, or screening against enemy "pirates." (Tiny hulls already innately have more moves per turn; I would not change that.) Massive hulls excel at defending or attacking key positions. Medium hulls are multi-purpose; they can reliably take part in both kinds of warfare without excelling in either. Carriers would have the advantages of both large and small ships, making them the best all-around, just like they are now.

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Yeah. Tiny hulls can be quite effective. Back when weapons had different ranges, missiles were king because they had the highest ranges and thus could kill before their opponents could fire back. This wasn't just an attack strategy, but also a defense strategy. If the enemy could not fire back, then you didn't need to worry about defenses and hit points. Tiny hulls were strategically fast and were a cheap way to add firepower to a fleet. Its no wonder that the devs did some nerfing.

The combat system seems to concentrate fire on one ship at a time with the excess attacks missing instead going to the next target. 50 attack against a 8 hp tiny ship is a waste. So tiny hulls can work like a sacrificial shield, drawing concentrated firepower and causing it to go to waste. The other ships don't get attacked, and the lost ship probably carried an insignificant part of the fleet's firepower. Maybe you had 20 or 30 ships that could do the same damage as the lost ship.

Anyways, a bug that might need to be nerfed is the Drath's reinforced hull policy. It adds 25 hit points to every ship. *Every ship*. That includes tiny hulls. The net effect is a boost to hit points over 400%. Its worse than the triple hit point ability that the Onyx had. A tiny hull owned by the Onyx would have 24 hit points (3 times the normal), but the Drath could push it to 33 hit points (over 4 times the normal). At that point, the Drath tiny stood a good chance of being able to survive a round against a fleet with 50 attack (the average damage being 25).

Reply #5 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I will highlight this thread for our designers to look at.

Reply #6 from GalCiv4 Forums Top
Quoting Arcean_Endgame, reply 3

I don't remember what the turn limit is, but let's say it is 50. (If this system were adopted, the turn limit would probably have to be changed anyway.) Let's say you have a fleet of tiny hulls versus a fleet of massive hulls. Let's say the massive hull fleet can only fit in 2 ships within the logistical limit. And let's say with the drastic difference in maneuverability, the massive hull ships miss 99% of their shots. With 50 shots (because there are 50 turns) that means that each massive hull ship has a 50% chance this battle to hit (and kill) a tiny hull ship this combat. Since there are two of them, that means that on average they will kill one little ship each time these fleets engage in combat. Since the tiny ships are doing drastically reduced damage and the big ships are healing every turn, the big ships seem to have a slight edge here.

To take another example, let's say you have one massive hull fighting one tiny hull. Following the numbers laid out in the previous example, there would be a 50% chance the tiny ship is destroyed, and a 50% chance that it manages to "get away." This seems to approximate what "should" happen. If this were "real life," the tiny hull would be warming up the hyper drive to get away, not recklessly trying to destroy the much larger ship. 

End of Arcean_Endgame's quote

I get that you are probably just trying to illustrate your point, but I think discussions that bandy about bad maths can run towards erroneous conclusions, so I must interject briefly.

50 shots with a 99% chance to miss do not create an overall 50% chance to land one shot, as independent probabilities do not interact additively. The chance to miss every shot multiplies each miss chance together (.99^50=.605), leading to about a 39.5% chance at least one shot hits. Having two ships doubles the number of shots (.99^100=.366), therefore roughly a 63.6% chance at least one of those shots hit something.

I assume the team has at least one math guy to crunch to numbers better for balancing purposes, but I just wanted a record in the thread (also it generated a fun little related exercise for me, hopefully I didn't muck it up).