While testing several ship designs to figure out the intricacies of ship combat I noticed that Horatio ships do not currently deal (or take, in case that's what the trait meant) 10% increased damage as indicated by the trait Price of Perfection II. For instance, a tier 1 kinetic weapon does 50 damage (42 * 1.2 for full manpower = 50.4) per hit against unshielded, unarmored targets instead of 55.44 as expected. I tried many different weapons and this was still the case. This was tested on version 1.4.3 preview.

While on the topic of ships and combat:

I don't know if this is a bug or if it is by design, but the Offensive Military Power of weapon modules seem to take the size of the ship and mount into account twice. In other words, a weapon on a medium hull grants 4 times the military power as the same weapon on a small hull, the same weapon on a large hull (or heavy mount of a medium hull) grants 16 times the military power as the small hull, and the same weapon on a heavy mount of a large hull grants 64 times the military power as the small hull. DPS is multiplied properly (2x, 4x and 8x).

This can be a little misleading. If you see an enemy ship with a gorillion offensive military power, it can be that the ship only deals about 1/8 of the DPS you would expect from seeing such a large number.

Bumping.

After 6 months I can confirm Price of Perfection still does not increase damage dealt.

No, he is correct. I double-checked, and Price of Perfection is supposed to give a damage boost, 10% in case of Price of Perfection 2. I checked the game, simulation, and files, and I think there's a wrong path that prevents the effect from applying.

1.5.8 still actual

As of the latest verstion of 1.5.11 it is still the case that the trait Price of Perfection does not increase damage done by weapons by 5% / 10%.

It is somewhat simple to test. Using --enablemoddingtools start a game between Horatio and any other Faction that does not have damage increasing traits. Using the god cursor and changing control to the AI Faction to manipulate production and exploration, initiate a battle between a two ships with no plating nor shields and a single tier 1 kinetic weapon. The result is that both ships will deal the same damage to each other: 50.4 (damage of 50 pops up each time a ship is hit, although the ship's health goes down by 51 every other hit or so, thus reflecting that 50.4 damage is being done).

I have a guess at what may be going wrong, but as I am not a developer I could just be barking up the wrong tree. I took a look at the file SimulationDescriptors[FactionTrait].xml and compared how, for instance, Deadly Weapons is being applied to how Price of Perfection is applied. Deadly Weapons modifies "ClassEmpire/ClassGarrison/ClassShip/ClassSection/ClassModule,ClassModuleWeapon" while Price of Perfection modifies "ClassEmpire/ClassGarrison/ClassShip".

Could it be that Price of Perfection attempts to increase the damage of a ship directly, which by default would have a damage statistic of 0, before the weapon modules are applied to it?

Kuma did fix this bug within his mod: Enhanced Space 2 - Community bug fix and balance mod

In case you don't like the cool gameplay improvements coming along with Kumas mod (still work in progress), you can download my mod (Kuma allowed me to extract his bug fixes for vanilla game) here: BugFix v1.0

May the force be with you!

Bump! Back to the front you go!

Come on devs, I know Humankind is all the rage but while I can accept that for even game-breaking imbalances in design like the Academy Fleets, I can't quite accept that a core faction has their one supposedly balancing design element broken due to bugs that we players have to patch up. You could at least remove the +damage mention from the tooltip if you have no intention of fixing the trait.

Carighan wrote:

Bump! Back to the front you go!

Come on devs, I know Humankind is all the rage but while I can accept that for even game-breaking imbalances in design like the Academy Fleets, I can't quite accept that a core faction has their one supposedly balancing design element broken due to bugs that we players have to patch up. You could at least remove the +damage mention from the tooltip if you have no intention of fixing the trait.

They said multiple times that a patch will come out at some point but due to quarantine and everyone being focused on making Humankind a better game, it has to wait. And I don't think a small, +10% damage increase is such a significant balancing element, compared to Academy Fleets being broken which you apparently accept as fine.

That's more based on the fact that it can be toggled off. Academy fleets are bad design, this is a bug. And I'd rather get the bugs fixed first, otherwise they say they want to do something about the Academy and end up turning them even more into ES2's version of Ghandi due to underlying engine bugs that also cause things such as this bug.

Bugfixes should usually come first if they're user facing.