Romeo wrote:
That is set up the way it is, according to the GDD. As for advantages, I would say its massive tonnage is its advantage. Sure, four small ships may have similar slot count, but by the time you add up engines, reactors, shields and whatever else, there's very little left for weapons or extra armour. The Dreadnaught having an engine, reactor, shields and whatever else is still going to have a crazy amount of spaces left.

Slashman wrote:
Wait. You say 4 smaller ships should be or shouldn't be squishier than a large one? If the system works like say, a large ship has 1000 hit points and a small ship has 300 so that those 4 small ships collectively have 1200 HP I could maybe understand, but what is going to be the advantage of the large ship if there are no exclusive modules?

In the same way, and it was kinda even more bothersome, we couldn't use industry to speed up repairs ;) That meant a big industrial system could pop up ships and ships and ships... but never really do something for them afterwards. The huge dust usage could be only the price of convenience, whereas using industry this ways would reward more planning. 

uriak wrote:

Not sure if that has been asked, but something that irked me in ES1 was the need for dust when retrofitting. I can understand it from an UI viewpoint, but I really would appreciate retrofitting being manageable like another projetct in the building queue, to make use of the industry output. If there are some restriction on the system requirements before building a unit, keep applying them. 

Interesting idea. Never thought of it. I guess retrofitting was one Dust dump for mid-end game. But you should be able to retrofit during a build que, I mean you are able to build a new ship with new designs from scratch. Guess this is a balancing issue. CIV 5 didn't do this as well, which is more perplexing : Oh I could buyout the new guns for my swordsmen but I can't just buy them?

Not sure if that has been asked, but something that irked me in ES1 was the need for dust when retrofitting. I can understand it from an UI viewpoint, but I really would appreciate retrofitting being manageable like another projetct in the building queue, to make use of the industry output. If there are some restriction on the system requirements before building a unit, keep applying them. 

Eji1700 wrote:

Looking at  the footage, first off the ships look beautiful.

However i'm worried how much depth there actually is.  I'm still seeing basically classic ES  ship building (3 types of damage, 3 ranges, 3 types of defense).

Now granted it's early alpha, but will we have things like fighters/bombers, and systems that do stuff other than interact with HP (misdirect, change outcome of battleplans, slow enemy ships down, disable weapons or systems, cause friendly fire, whatever)?

First, there is no longer a rock paper scissors system based off of what has been said by the devs. You have hull health, armor, and shields. Armor and shields mitigate damage to a certain extent, and are somewhat more effective at standing up to certain types of weapons, but will no longer eliminate them outright. There are no longer Flak modules, instead Flak and Kinetics have been combined into a single subsystem. It has also already been stated that there will be different types of weapons that each have different variations (missile, emp missile, etc.). Fighters and bombers wise we just don't know how many variations there will be yet. However it has been stated that they will do better against larger ship classes. We can also assume that, like in Endless Space 1, fighters and bombers will have at least 3 variations. A model good for space battles, a model good for invasions, and a mpdel that is a balance of battle and invasion.

Eji1700 wrote:

Lets say "all long range" not longer works, but then it just becomes 3 long, 3 medium, 3 short.  There's still no strategy there beyond "have more damage of X type than they have defense of X type" and that was sorta the problem with 1.  You won because you were ahead in tech, not because you did anything clever or interesting on the build or combat screen.

Now formations pre battle and environments will help, but I'd still like to feel that if i'm playing a combat race that there's actually something to the combat besides tech (in which case I should just play a tech race).

That is true of pretty much every 4X game, as much as we all love to joke about the spearman defeating the tank in CivIV. 4X games are about empire-wide strategy, not individual combat tactics, so scientific progress and industrial might understandably have a massive impact.

But they did say in the GDD and a few other places that the plan is indeed to have positioning matter and have (support) modules with interesting effects.

@ Wji1700 I read somewhere that there will be advanced weapon types. As an example it was stated that advanced missle could also have new and different effects, like an EMP missle or something like that.

If you look at the new video footage you can see some weapon discription. For example the glassteel weapon and titanium weapons have different effects applied to them. The glassteel (I think it's glassteel, correct me if I am wrong) for example gives the laser cannon the effect that 10% of the damage applied to that section of the ship is also applied to the shields. So I guess we will see a lot of such effects with better and higher tiered tech.

Just a quick question here. Will we be seeing a return of the old faction-specific ship bonuses system? BEcause I really liked the idea of each faction's ships getting bonuses like extra defenses or a bonus to shipbuilding speeds while in system. It was fun to play around with.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
I think that smaller ships should have less HP and be "destroyed" (rendered inoperative) more easily than larger ships.

However, from a gameplay perspective, I think it would be richer if they still had a place in late gameplay.

That's why I think ships should have a salvage mechanic, where the smaller the ship is, the greater the chance that it may ressurrect at the end of battle - i.e. its carcass is returned to an operating state.

Looking at  the footage, first off the ships look beautiful.

However i'm worried how much depth there actually is.  I'm still seeing basically classic ES  ship building (3 types of damage, 3 ranges, 3 types of defense).

Now granted it's early alpha, but will we have things like fighters/bombers, and systems that do stuff other than interact with HP (misdirect, change outcome of battleplans, slow enemy ships down, disable weapons or systems, cause friendly fire, whatever)?

You will have both options :)

As a non-hard core gamer, I would love a great auto build and auto battle button:)  I like playing an easy game after work.  The empire 4x is what I love.  i am put off if there is not an auto build and battle option:)  The new master of orion only auto builds the ship once and doesn't upgrade.  I just don't have time to pick laser 3 1/2 with hour of free time at night.

Hazardous13 wrote:
I have a few questions. Will the planet based ship defenses still be in the game? And if so, will they have rendered effects on screen, say, in planet view if an enemy fleet is orbiting your planet? Or if an enemy fleet is attacking your fleet orbiting your planet and the support fire will come up and play a role in the battle? Interested to know if these are planned. Thanks for your time!