It sounds interesting and I really like the new desgin screen.

Looks pretty good. I like the idea of having module slots rather than weight. I'm not entirely sure about the ship hull things, with roles restricting modules and such, but I am confident that this will be implemented well.

Frogsquadron wrote:


Ship Layout

Each ship is split into 9 sections, 8 outer and 1 core. Each section will have its own health and is individually targeted. The destruction of a ship occurs when the ship's core section is destroyed.

Each section will have a number of ‘Slots’ attached to it. When the sections take damage, the modules attached to those slots take damage as well. This means that sections and modules can be damaged and destroyed individually.



Defense and support modules generally have ship-wide effects, while weapon modules individually have all the parameters related to targeting, firing and damage. The slots can be limited to certain types of module categories or can be completely open. The restriction of slots will vary from ship to ship, having more or less flexible ships.

There will be 'multiplier slots' on larger ships, that function as quick-fill slots. With 1 click, these will duplicate the module in terms of both visuals and gameplay, their purpose being to streamline ship designing by reducing the number of clicks required. Ships will vary from ~3 slots to ~20 depending on size and unlocked technologies.



There is a distinct difference between top and side modules. For example the arc of fire of weapons on the top will be higher than the arc of fire on the side. Also modules on the side will only be chosen on one side and will then automatically be duplicated to the other side. This is to avoid weird edge case designs and to streamline the interface.

Is there a way to organize an attack to cope with a ship being partially destroyed? For example, if all my port weapons are destroyed (because the ship got pounded on the port side), is there anything I can do to try and make that ship try to navigate such that it can bring it's top and starboard weapons to bear instead? Will that happen automatically?

Modules

Modules are split into 3 large categories: defense, weapon and support. Defense and weapon modules are fairly straightforward in their effect on the ship.

• Weapon: Laser (laser is a balanced medium-range weapon moderately absorbed by shields)
• Weapon: Beam (beam is a long-range weapon with significant damage absorbed by shields)
• Weapon: Missiles (missiles are high damage weapon balanced at most ranges and almost completely unaffected by shields)
• Weapon: Kinetic (kinetic are high damage short-range weapons, mostly unaffected by shields. This weapon can fire at missiles as well)
• Defense: Hull Plating (hull plating adds health to the entire ship and primarily deals with kinetic and missile weapons)
• Defense: Shield (shields add a bubble around the ship that will absorb damage before hitting the hull. This is highly effective against beam and laser weapons)
  
  

The list above shows the idea behind basic weapon and defense module types, whereby strategic resources and alternative versions from quests and research will give some additional flavor.



Support modules will have widely varying effects and will be considered as utility slots. These can affect the battle such as increasing the effect of defenses, adding additional rewards to battles or containing fighter/bomber bays.

They can also affect Galaxy parameters such as movement speed between galaxy nodes, curiosity exploration speed and such. This includes the modules that are used to invade systems.

I LOVE the new interplay of linetic weapons and missiles! Love, love love! This is much more interesting and mixes stuff up compared to how it worked in ES1, and in particular it can give an edge to short range weapons that have to withstand a missile barrage before they can really shine in a fight. The defense changes are also welcome.



I'm less in love with the names "beams" and "lasers" being two different things, because they sound like two versions of the same thing. I don't have a better name for them, but I hope the UI will have very distinct icons and such for them to make it clear that they're distinct types entirely, rather than lasers being a type of beam.

Well if got enough and it sounds good.

I like the image of the design screen. this is some in the middle of EL and ES1, gives the clear aspect of EL UI to ES1.

Also like the idea of limitig some slots to some module types, supposing it won't be too much restrictive.

All taht filters looks good and seems make very easy to found the items you want. Still this was the only aspect I found a bit uncomfortable with in EL unit design, when you've got lots of items in an small square. I hope you make it feel easier.



Some questions:

- Can you tell us your new ideas about support modules in ES2? In ES1 i found more valuable putting weapons and defences (in general way, which doesn't means I never used support modules).

- You said that the lateral slots are symmetrical. In the second picture there are 9 slots, are all of them symmetric or some are upper or lower, and the other side is unseen? Just curious about it.

- A sword and a shield on the module over the thruster? Yea! You can really fire your thrusters over another player ships? lol I like it!!



Remaining question, but I doubt you can answer: those ships on the first image doesn't look like sophon or cravers. are they from a new faction or another faction from ES1? Just art to look beautiful? Any clue about them?

You're just trying to compliment us for no reason, there's no way you had time to read the entirety of this document already!

Literally every one of these changes sound like a massive improvement over the first game. Bravo!

So sorry no, this isn't a sneaky faction reveal.

Ouch! Still the art is very good I like you're keeping your essence!

- A sword and a shield on the module over the thruster? Yea! You can really fire your thrusters over another player ships? I like it!!

3. Again, this is a mock-up - it does not realise any existing gameplay at all!

Ouch! It would be very fan, may be even more than ramming other ships! Anyway looks good.



Thanks for your very quick answers.

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.

Romeo wrote:
Relative to CP usage being the operative word there, which makes sense. If I can build four smaller ships they should be squishier than one big guy. This is coming from someone who builds Dreadnaughts exclusively: The system makes total sense. =)

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?

Slashman wrote:
While I appreciate that an effort is being made to have smaller ships remain relevant, I am not sold on the implementation. You said they soak up more damage. I think they should, instead, be specialized to have anti-missile or anti beam/laser capabilities that aren't available on larger ships. So that just like the aegis ships of modern fleets, they would shoot down incoming missiles or similar to the shield projector ships of Homeworld 2, they would project a shield bubble around the floatilla.



Failing that, then I think that fleets should be setup so that one/two large ships act as flagships while other slots are filled with smaller ships. Star Ruler 2 uses a system like this and I think it works really well. A single, large flagship with smaller ships filling other roles such as bombers, gunships, interceptors etc.



I just doesn't feel right that a small ship literally soaks up more damage than a gargantuan cap ship.

Relative to CP usage being the operative word there, which makes sense. If I can build four smaller ships they should be squishier than one big guy. This is coming from someone who builds Dreadnaughts exclusively: The system makes total sense. =)

While I appreciate that an effort is being made to have smaller ships remain relevant, I am not sold on the implementation. You said they soak up more damage. I think they should, instead, be specialized to have anti-missile or anti beam/laser capabilities that aren't available on larger ships. So that just like the aegis ships of modern fleets, they would shoot down incoming missiles or similar to the shield projector ships of Homeworld 2, they would project a shield bubble around the floatilla.



Failing that, then I think that fleets should be setup so that one/two large ships act as flagships while other slots are filled with smaller ships. Star Ruler 2 uses a system like this and I think it works really well. A single, large flagship with smaller ships filling other roles such as bombers, gunships, interceptors etc.



I just doesn't feel right that a small ship literally soaks up more damage than a gargantuan cap ship.

My big question, is if ships models will have a Racing Stripe, paneling or wainscoting thats the color that your faction is, it was always one of my grips from ES1 is if your watching the Manual combat and your playing against the same faction as yourself

Very nice, loving the detail you guys are putting into this game, Can't wait to pick it up

if you guys bring back the harmony on the military research tree at the very end they could get something that turns destroyed dreadnaught class ships into fighters. they are living crystal thingys. you break a rock you get smaller pieces. maybe call the module fragmented consciousness. as for effects for it the ship model swaps for the alt ship model instantly when its destroyed and its made of smaller puzzle pieces that move away from one another with some explosions then organize into a squadron that then is swapped for its squadron models so each could be destroyed and they look different than the normal fighters so irregular shapes .



since they are fighters they dont last to the next fight because they are not part of the load out of a ship. fighters or bombers in ES1 that the parent ship dies dont survive the fight so its not super op and they dont get heroes

I belive that each weapon, or at least the more advanced ones on tech tree, should have some kind of special ability when you use them. As Eji1700 mentions in MoO weapons had special skills like the Ion Cannons damaging shields and burning internal systems and as far as i remember Mass Drivers used to ignore shields or Plasma Cannons damaging the shields all around the ship. ES2 could use something like that and i believe that something like this would be good cause it can make a weapon, even if its old, usefull even in late games.

Well here's my feedback bomb:



SHIP SIZE MANAGEMENT



There is this this thing in ES1 that smaller ships becomes worthless in late game, the player usually banks on larger ships.



Modules should be optimal when interacting with other modules of the same size, but have penalties when interacting with other size. Examples:



MODULE SIZE



(especially weapons) A destroyer-class weapon should be optimal against other destroyers. Assume there is a corvette, which is -1 size compared to destroyer. Destroyer-size weapons can do very high damage to corvettes, but their accuracy is poop-class.

A frigate may bank up corvette-class weapons. It can bank up twice as many weapons of corvette size, because they are smaller. It will be a great anti-corvette counter, but will be weak against other frigates.

A corvette will have an easy time hitting a frigate, but it will hit like a wet noodle. Hitting a destroyer will make even less of a difference.

A corvette may equip a destroyer-class weapon, but it will have maneuverability issues, heat issues (more on this later) and the weapon will take a lot of space. It will be easy target for other corvettes.

Larger ships generally have little issues using smaller sizes of equipment. Smaller ships can use at most +1 size class equipment. One faction may have less penalties in mingling different sizes of equipment.





SMALL VS. BIG RELATION



ES1 has a small number of ship slots in the fleet. IMO the number is far too small. 4-to-1 relation in ship size does not cut it.

The price difference should be greater - small ships should be cheaper and mass-produceable.

Fleets should be able to have more ships of smaller size. the relations between the smallest class and the largest one should be much greater.



I propose a maximum of 64 slots per fleet, give or take a few depending on race/military policies



SHIP SIZE CLASSES

FIGHTERS - not computed on fleet composition. They are deployed from Carrier modules.

CORVETTE - Smallest ship size, costs 1 slot

FRIGATE - costs 2 slots

DESTROYER - costs 4 slots

CRUISER - costs 8 slots

BATTLESHIP - costs 16 slots, can have only 1 per fleet.





As larger ship sizes come into play, so should ship salvaging.



SALVAGING



Smaller ships should be salvageable, which means a part of them would 'ressurrect' after a battle. A larger ship is usually a better investment than a fleet of small ships, because it can soak up a lot of damage and then be repaired. Smaller ships are destroyed much more easily.

To make smaller ships useful until endgame, salvaging mechanics should allow part of them to be ressurected after a battle without having to rebuild the whole fleet in a planet. Salvaging should become more efficient as the game progresses.





THE HEAT META



Vaccuum is the perfect insulator. Ships are bombarded with energy from stars, plus generate heat internally. All this waste energy must be managed somehow.



During battles especially ships are pressured into doing all they can to survive. Managing heat should be an overarching goal of ship building and combat management.



A ship could be brimming to the core with guns,but without enough energy, it wouldn't be able to shoot them all.

Without a good cooling system, it would overheat after combat phase 1 and become a sistting duck.



An overheating ship will have its system temporarily fail, but may even start taking damage if it is not dealt with. This mechanic should be exploitable with weapons.



EDIT: ALSO, hotter ships show up brighter in surveillance systems, making targeting easier. Keeping a ship cool is key to reduce incoming damage.



There should be coolant modules and heat recyclers to transform heat into useable energy.



MODULES



Every ship would have basic versions of these two systems, but installing additional ones will make it perform better.



GENERATOR: Every ship should have an energy generator which generates heat, but also energy for ship systems. The ship may have more than one for extra firepower.

COOLER: Every ship should have a way to cool down or otherwise manage excess heat. May prevent ship lockdown even if it overheats depending on model. Good cooling systems also reduce the ship's signature, making it harder to target. Synergizes with cloaking devices.

THRUSTERS: can be all-around, travel-focused or combat focused. Combat thrusters give increased maneuverability (evasion, offense) in combat. Traveling thrusters increase max speed and travel distance per turn. A ship can have more than 1 thruster installed.

CLOAKING: Several systems used to reduce the ship's signature, making it 'invisible' for probes/sensors. It does not mean literally making the ship transparent, but given the vast distances of space, trying to spot a ship by visual contact is a tough call.

REPAIR: works for HP regain during combat as well as more effective salvaging of smaller ships after the battle.

SENSORS: increase ship detection range.

COLONY: may carry population in the ship, to colonize/create outposts.





DEFENSE



SHIELDS: shields increase pressure on the generator, and the energy absorbed by incoming attacks also builds up.

ABLATIVE ARMOR: Ablative armor sheds off layers as it is hit. It is most effective against kinetic weapons. All armor increases ship weight.

REFLECTIVE ARMOR: surface is made reflective like a shiny mirror, to bounce off as much energy from energy attacks it can. All armor increases ship weight.

PDS (point defense system): smart auto-targeting turrets optimized to shoot down incoming projectiles. Most effective against missiles, average effectiveness against kinetic. Zero effectiveness against energy weapons.

CHAFF & FLARES: Used to confuse missiles so they miss their mark. The cloud of small reflective shards is also moderately effective to dampen energy weapons passing through, as the beams lose coherence by reflecting in the small particles.



WEAPONS



KINETIC - run-of-the-mill projectiles, relatively slow projection speed, fast fire rate. Average heat generation. heavy.

MISSILES - smart projectiles, average speed, self-correcting trajectory. Low heat generation. heavy.

RAIL GUN - very fast travel, slow firing, hard hitting, long range projectile weapon. High heat generation. heavy. May have incendiary variant.

LASERS - an 'instant' burst of light, almost instant travel speed, high heat generation. light (low mass)

BEAM - very long range beam, high heat generation. Light.

GLAIVE - short range sustained beam energy weapon - think of it as a 'space melee weapon', like swingin a sword (or glaive, duh). Visually it would be a long-lasting beam cutting through fuselage as opposed to the pew-pew-pew of lasers and the occasional 'zoink' flash of the beams. Can hit several ship sections at once. Very high heat generation. Light. Causes heat on enemy ship as well.

PLASMA - moderate travel speed, jack-of-all-trades weapon. It can have its effectiveness diminished by a small amount by every defense mechanism, but not completely countered by any of them. It also causes the enemy ship to heat up fast.

GRAVITY BOMB: Has mixed uses between offense and defense. Reduces enemy maneuverability - generally reducing evasion effectiveness - plus increases kinetic accuracy when targeting the enemy. Also can help escaping. Does not require hitting the target to work!

EMP - Can temporarily reduce effectiveness or disable ship systems or even an entire ship. May damage specific parts such as sensors, maybe cloacking devices too.

CARRIER - bays to deploy Fighter-class ships. Fighters are not FTLtravel worthy and need a carrier ship to sustain themselves.





A player would be able to deploy several strategies in gameplay. This is not a coded in-game mechanic, it's merely how the player manages his ship composition.



Can't see me, can't hit me - A player focusing on cloaking and cooling can be very hard to target, bypass enemy fleets on exploration, and generally be a nuisance to attack. For maximum effectiveness this kind of player would handicap itself in terms of raw firepower. Vulnerable to EMP, Gravity weapons.

Power Overload - A player focusing on weapon systems - raw firepower - would face overheating risks but could steamroll other players. High heat signatures equal easy targets, making them closer to being glass cannons. Vulnerable to overheating.

Trilobyte - A defense-focused player will be a grind to kill. Hard to bank up defenses against every weapon though. Will hit like a wet noodle, have low dodge, because most module slots will be crammed with defenses.



Just 3 examples of valid gameplay strategies. As illustrated, no single strategy should be uncounterable.

Forgive me if this has been answered/asked:



Will weapons vary by function?



ES1 has Lasers, Kinetics, Missiles, and fighters/bombers, and that's basically it. There's nothing really unique about them, just different damage types across the RPS game. Further as you upgrade them they're just higher DPS versions of the previous. I see now that we have more depth to the RPS game though which is good (shields vs armor).



MOO/Star Drive/Etc I think handle this much better. For example, beams:



Tier 1: Lasers

Tier 2: Fusion

Tier 3: Ion



Fusion were flat out better than lasers, but in MOO you weapons would upgrade as you got farther down the tech tree, so while you'd have higher DPS fusion beams, being new tech they'd be larger than your lasers which would have gotten smaller, and they'd also have more potential modifications (enveloping/rapid fire/etc).



Ion's were the next beam, but they do heavy damage to shields and knock out systems rather than damage the hull. So in 3 tech levels i've got some very flexible and much smaller lasers, some mildly upgradable fusions which do more DPS, and my brand new ions which serve a totally separate role. Missiles did this as well.



That is not even going into cool systems like tractor beams, plasma web, transporters, stasis fields, and a whole slew of other stuff that allowed some really cool strategies (none of which mattered because mirv'd missiles basically outdid everything, but that's a balance problem).



There was some of this in EL with the different types of resource giving a different bonus (HP/defense vs Initiative), but it didn't really scale (You just got better versions of the same Def vs Initiative choice rather than something deeper, although it was a little better with armor).





In short are there plans for anything beyond kinetic vs missile vs beam vs shield vs armor?

Time for a new GDD! This time on Ship Designs to round out the information provided in the Battle GDD.

Enjoy!



Before we start, something to keep in mind that caused some confusion on the VIP end:

Clarification on Terminology

There was some confusion regarding the terminology. To that end I recommend reading the Battle GDD and referencing the terms from there.

Specifically there was a question about the terminology 'Play selection', which is the 'NFL style Play' referenced in the Battle GDD.



Rationale

Ship design is one of the major parts involved in the planning that goes into winning battles – along with plays and choosing the battle arena through the nodes of the galaxy. Ships of course also tie into exploration, curiosities and scouting, which modules will also fit with.

Ship design has the purpose of allowing customization of the ship, including which weapons, defenses and other modules and where they are placed. Even though this customization is a large part of defining who will win or lose any given battle, the ship design is not supposed to be a time-consuming part of the game. The goal is to have a streamlined very open process that allows for players to quickly do ship design without having to balance a lot of numbers, but push the weight on the choices of module types within preset slots.

The goal for Ship Design is to define the primary parameters for battles (See Battle GDD for related information):

• Which weapons will I use? This will define under which distances the ship performs the best.
• Which defenses will I use? The effect of defenses act as soft counters to weapon types.
  
  

Then the Play selection which primarily acts as a basis of distance which means it interacts with weapon types (and Play counters to create interplay).

The chosen arena primarily affects the effectiveness of certain weapon and defense types (Arena is tied to ‘galaxy node’, which then creates interplay in galaxy movement).

Overall this is supposed to provide layered depths of strategy for battles.



For example, you could imagine a ship that focuses on say beam weapons, which are great at long range, combined with a lot of defensive shields. Then in the Galaxy movement, the goal would be to fight in nodes that did not significantly disadvantage your ship designs shields and/or beam weapons and hopefully even disadvantage the opponents ship designs. During the play selection, it now becomes a trade-off of deciding to pick the optimal fit with your ship designs' optimal range, that is, a Play that gives bonuses to long-range battles, which would be easier to counter for the opponent or picking a play that would potentially counter the opponent's optimal fit.

Each of these steps carry weight at different time intervals. The ship design is a long-term decision that will require dust for retrofitting to change. The arena is something that is picked or forced within the context of the battle and how valuable each node is to each player. Finally the Play is the last second decision that carries some swinging power in the battle due to the Play Counter system.







Ship

The ships will as in our previous game use the system of ‘unit designs’ that you use to build unit instances, along with retrofitting to keep them up to date. The ship designs will have a name and cost in industry and strategic resources.

Ships themselves have the following parameters:

• Origin Faction (anyone can use any ship through marketplace or quests)
• Size (relates to the command point cost as well as Flotilla restrictions in Plays)
• Role (restricts which modules are available to the ship)
• Bonus 1 & 2 (unique ship bonuses as in ES1)
• Description (lore description)
  
  

A lot of concerns on the forums have already been aimed at small ships becoming obsolete later in the game. There are two mitigating factors for this: First, some of the small ships will offer unique roles that are not available on larger ships to give unique modules and effects to these ships. Second, some of the Plays will have ship size restrictions that allow for smaller ships to receive better buff effects from Plays.



Ship Layout

Each ship is split into 9 sections, 8 outer and 1 core. Each section will have its own health and is individually targeted. The destruction of a ship occurs when the ship's core section is destroyed.

Each section will have a number of ‘Slots’ attached to it. When the sections take damage, the modules attached to those slots take damage as well. This means that sections and modules can be damaged and destroyed individually.



Defense and support modules generally have ship-wide effects, while weapon modules individually have all the parameters related to targeting, firing and damage. The slots can be limited to certain types of module categories or can be completely open. The restriction of slots will vary from ship to ship, having more or less flexible ships.

There will be 'multiplier slots' on larger ships, that function as quick-fill slots. With 1 click, these will duplicate the module in terms of both visuals and gameplay, their purpose being to streamline ship designing by reducing the number of clicks required. Ships will vary from ~3 slots to ~20 depending on size and unlocked technologies.



There is a distinct difference between top and side modules. For example the arc of fire of weapons on the top will be higher than the arc of fire on the side. Also modules on the side will only be chosen on one side and will then automatically be duplicated to the other side. This is to avoid weird edge case designs and to streamline the interface.







Modules

Modules are split into 3 large categories: defense, weapon and support. Defense and weapon modules are fairly straightforward in their effect on the ship.

• Weapon: Laser (laser is a balanced medium-range weapon moderately absorbed by shields)
• Weapon: Beam (beam is a long-range weapon with significant damage absorbed by shields)
• Weapon: Missiles (missiles are high damage weapon balanced at most ranges and almost completely unaffected by shields)
• Weapon: Kinetic (kinetic are high damage short-range weapons, mostly unaffected by shields. This weapon can fire at missiles as well)
• Defense: Hull Plating (hull plating adds health to the entire ship and primarily deals with kinetic and missile weapons)
• Defense: Shield (shields add a bubble around the ship that will absorb damage before hitting the hull. This is highly effective against beam and laser weapons)
  
  

The list above shows the idea behind basic weapon and defense module types, whereby strategic resources and alternative versions from quests and research will give some additional flavor.



Support modules will have widely varying effects and will be considered as utility slots. These can affect the battle such as increasing the effect of defenses, adding additional rewards to battles or containing fighter/bomber bays.

They can also affect Galaxy parameters such as movement speed between galaxy nodes, curiosity exploration speed and such. This includes the modules that are used to invade systems.



VIP Feedback

Overall, the VIPs appear to be decently happy with the overall direction.



Question regarding Ship Mass and Ramming

These are systems that are not currently planned for implementation!

Apologies for the heartbreak PANCZASU.



Ship Boarding

Ship boarding is not currently implemented, but is something that we want to do. I cannot promise anything, but it is not an unlikely addition.

I can easily do boarding on a 'system' level through XML of battle actions - it will primarily be up to production constraints. ^^



Questions of camera and battle director

We are currently planning on implementing a tactical, top-down overview of the battle. Also on the question of camera presets, we do have some plans related to the tactical view that may address that.

On the topic of the battle director, it is very different from ES1. In ES1 it was very static, in ES2 the battles are a lot more dynamic and engaging. The tactical view is meant to address the issue of 'tracking ships/flotillas' in the chaos.



Retrofit Comments

There are a lot of comments regarding retrofitting and how they want to address it. Specifically there are questions regarding 'saving designs' -- though that may not be practical due to how we unlock some modules.

However there are two specific things we are looking into more closely:

- Automatically prompting notifications to quickly upgrade designs to latest iterations of weapons/defenses. That is, going from laser01 to laser02 would automatically prompt the player with a notification that allows to 'auto retrofit'.

- Allowing to choose which design of the same hull/role to retrofit to.



Questions on Gameplay

Some questions relating to how repair and damage will work considering the ship is split into 9 sections and modules have individual health.

Basically we're using the 'Ship Health' (i.e. Core Section Health) to normalize all health at the end of the battle. If the core section has 70% health remaining at the end of the battle, all sections/modules will have their health set to 70% (think of it as cannibalizing healthy systems to repair).



There was also some question on the roles of ships according to size. The gist is that large ships of course have significantly more firepower and health than smaller ships, but relative to cost in production and command points - smaller ships will soak more damage than larger ones. This is based on the inspiration of naval warfare, where smaller ships protect larger ships such as carriers, while carriers have proportionally much more firepower.

The hope is that having smaller ships protect larger ships will balance out the use of all ship sizes throughout the game, instead of defaulting to the 'largest available ship'.



Comments on special modules -> basically the VIPs wants to have a lot of variety in special modules to give a lot of variation and choice throughout the game. The idea is to mostly use 'unique' support modules, where instead of adding version 01, 02, etc. we will add a new unique effect (that is not necessarily strictly better). Though we have to be careful with UI overload!



Module Suggestions

A lot of interesting suggestions from weird battle effects to galaxy effects, such as harvesting resources, laying mines and affecting diplomacy ^^

Needless to say that more suggestions are welcome!

I will point out regarding the suggestions in question that we do not wish to have -- too much -- micromanagement concerning putting fleets in specific places to trigger specific effects. So there is a limited number of effects we will have. In the battle we're a little more open, though our special effects artists are very busy, so no promises!





We hope you enjoyed reading about Ship Design !

I'm on board with pretty much everything in this GDD.

However, while I agree with averaging out health across sections after combat, I'm not confident that setting all modules to the health percentage of the core would be the way to do it. In an edge case, where the enemy blew through only one section and took your core down to 30% health, you'd have all your sections set to 30%, while the percentage of total health you have left is actually 73%. That is, of course, an edge case to illustrate a point, but depending on how likely focused damage is, the loss of health from cannibalizing other systems might need to be taken into account.

Of course, there's also the more likely edge case: You just barely failed to break through the hull, so the core is at 100% health, and the enemy ship is restored after battle.



All that said, this phrase "Basically we're using the 'Ship Health' (i.e. Core Section Health)" makes me wonder if the earlier statement about each section having its own health wasn't misleading, and in fact the "core health" is just the sum of the other sections.

A bit of clarification would be nice.

Frogsquadron wrote:
Pity, they usually do a good job of bringing up questions that would otherwise be asked in most cases by the community at large. I understand not everyone wants ES2 to have elements from Battlefleet Gothic, but for instance just looking at the question about boarding, I can tell you it's cropped up twice in different threads in the last week, so it's a good thing it was preemptively answered here.

Honestly? While I think boarding would be cool I think stationary defenses would be cooler. Things like defensive space stations that could be used to force a battlefield advantage, anti-orbital attrition from planetary weapons and orbital platforms, and maybe evn mobile shipyards that would allow players to make a sort of forward base of operations in regions they don't control would allow for some really intense gameplay. Now when it comes to things like this there are sure to be people who would scream about balance issues but they wouldn't be to difficult to address. The planetary defenses would do damage over time to ships in orbit on a per turn basis but it wouldn't be anywhere near the amount caused by actual battles. The mobile shipyards would generate an amount of industry per turn that could scale as the player upgraded and retrofitted it (maybe make it a module or something) and the stations would basically be like watchtowers you could invade like planets. They would provide an area of sight and stop ships from factions youve eother closed borders to or are at war with. Whatever is decided though, these are just some general ideas for the game. I'd still love it no matter what decision is made on the subject! Great job so far and keep up the fantastic work!