Yeah, the way I also understood it you will be able to select the hull and then the role for that hull rather than having roles pre-assigned. Which is looking pretty interesting definetly.

Phantomvector wrote:
So there will be 5 hulls per race? And what I want to do is limited by a predetermined role for each hull? So if a race's small ship class only contains Support/Defense for example, I'd never be able to create an offensively minded small ship, or carrier(but I'd figure that is more medium and above anyways.)?

Actually I believe the ship "roles" will be flexible when it comes to weapons, and will instead focus on what specialty modules (and yes maybe even a group of specialty weapons/defenses as well) that would be available to a ship of that class.

So there will be 5 hulls per race? And what I want to do is limited by a predetermined role for each hull? So if a race's small ship class only contains Support/Defense for example, I'd never be able to create an offensively minded small ship, or carrier(but I'd figure that is more medium and above anyways.)?

Frogsquadron wrote:


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'.

I feel that fleet creation needs a similar overhaul to what modules have received here, since in ES1 the CP system causes the same kind of balance issues for fleets as tonnage does for ships. The flotilla mechanic sounds like it could be trying to do this but from what information I have seen so far it may not be enough.



In any kind of game people will always look for the most optimal way of playing; whether its the best weapon, the quickest route or the most efficient build, and when it is found it tends to be used to the exclusion of all else. For example in the current game it's stacking LR kinetics on fleets of glass cannon corvettes, or fleets of full defence, self repairing dreadnoughts that can't be killed. Anything that is balanced in between will often not be able to deal with either extreme.



Trying to balance the game such that every type of ship is of exactly equal worth would be near impossible, and trying to nerf something that is overpowered just causes people to move to the next most overpowered thing.



However if fleets were to have ship 'slots' which restricted how many of a certain type of ship it could contain, it would allow for a certain level of structure which could be much more easily balanced around, while also giving that naval warfare feel.



If you were to apply such a method to ES1 for example, you would start the game with corvettes unlocked and four small ship slots. Unlocking destroyers would also give you another four small ship slots, unlocking cruisers and battleships would give two medium slots apiece, and unlocking dreadnoughts would give one large slot. At that point you would have a possible fleet of one large, four medium and eight small ships which is the ideal kind of balanced composition to start with. From there, further techs could give you either extra size specific slots; or 'open' slots that you could put any ship in, much like the new module slots (though these would need to be balanced such that an open slot could fit either four small, two medium or one large ship). All this would give you a good all round base fleet structure, while allowing you some room to customise your fleets towards a specific role.



This could be further expanded on to include slots for the ship roles that were mentioned in GDD 4 (Attacker, Defender, Support and Carrier). Such a system would allow you to give each faction a distinct flavour to their fleets, for instance Cravers could get a custom tech that gave them extra attacker ship slots; or Sophons getting more support ship slots. That way when you came up against a Craver fleet you would know that they are going to be packing more heat than the average fleet; and Sophons would have loads of extra tech in their fleets to spoil your plans.



As someone whose 4x gaming background is mainly Civilization, the fleet combat in this game was one of the most unique and interesting aspects about it (compared to say, EL which looks a lot more like a Civ clone). However upon finding out how broken it was it also became one of the most disappointing aspects. Even if a system such as I have suggested isn't used I hope that something is done to address fleet balance.

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.

Frogsquadron wrote:
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!

Sure did! The only things I ever skip are the VIP feedback sections, because after seven GDDs I hadn't really seen them contribute anything. =)

Metalynx wrote:
That is exactly to solve that issue, so that you can predict the performance of your ship from a single health bar So if the port side gets blown up, at the end of the battle that will translate to normalized damage to the entire ship. But in the individual battle it will mean that it would have stopped firing from the port side until the battle ended.

Awesome, thanks.

Tridus wrote:
My concern here is between battles, largely. If a ship gets blown up on the port side and is kinda stuck there in one fight, that makes sense, given that the enemy would want to keep themselves to the port side if they could so it could be hard to get out of that.



In another battle on the next turn, if the ship still has a blown up port side with no weapons and still flies that way, meaning it largely can't shoot? That would strike me as odd. Is the normalizing health at the end of a battle intended to correct this, such that the ship would start the next turn's battle with a damaged but once again functional port side?

Yes, this exact question was relayed by the VIPs as well:

Frogsquadron wrote:


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).

That is exactly to solve that issue, so that you can predict the performance of your ship from a single health bar So if the port side gets blown up, at the end of the battle that will translate to normalized damage to the entire ship. But in the individual battle it will mean that it would have stopped firing from the port side until the battle ended.