Specific uses for hulls is a good thing, and I think it's good design to make sure that each race has different fleet compositions to make sure they fill various needs.  Giving every hull every option, or even every race every option at every era, is going to lead to extremely boring fleet design and gameplay.

Hobbesian wrote:

Eji1700 wrote:

atejas wrote:

Hobbesian wrote:

I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game,

You sound as if you already foresee small hulls becoming obsolete in the late game. I hope the devs manage to fix that this time around. In EL the minor faction units fulfilled a variety of roles, and I'd prefer if they did the same with this game.

There is 0 current evidence this will be the case.  In fact right now i'm worried that hulls outside of the era 1 1cp ones will be mostly useless.

Eji's analysis falls into the fatal trap of thinking that numbers alone are the whole story. It's a rookie mistake that a lot of people make when they see three 1 CP ships and compare them to a single 3 CP ship and see broadly the same power, armour and HP stats.

Eji, what you've failed to compensate for is "Combat effectiveness" of the fleet over the duration of a fight. Over the same fight, the 3 x 1 CP ships will likely suffer a loss of 1-2 ships, as those ships are wiped out, the fleet DPS output reduces by 33% and 66% respectively, sending small spam fleets only works if you're sending orders of magnitude more than your opponent (swarm tactics) and can simply overwhelm them in sheer numbers. The reason the 3CP ship is more valuable is that it's able to pump out the full firepower that it's capable of right down to 1HP, whereas your 3x1CP ships will not.

This becomes more pronounced as you scale up the battle situation, 18 small ships will get *munched* by 6 equivalently provisioned ships because those six ships will work their way through the smaller ships faster than the smaller ships will be able to batter down those bigger, heftier HP walls, they'll be losing more of their fleet DPS faster than the albeit bigger step losses, but bigger "HP soaks" of the 3CP ships.

(The only way the reverse is possible is if *BOTH* fleets go for single target, which is highly unlikely, on account of the fact such a situation would result in a lot of "wasted" DPS from the larger hulls, whereas the smaller ones could simply volley, switch targets, repeat, if the larger ships multitarget, it's a massacre of the smaller ships)

You may want to go back and do some more advanced studies on this topic.

---

Edit : If people want to get *really* theorycrafty about battle simulations and models of predictive damage, here's a fun little experiment -

Unit A does 100 damage per second, has 1000 HP. Unit B does 300 damage per second, has 3000 HP. There's 3 of A shooting at one of B. Who wins? B

Why? Okay, so, here's a second by second model of what's going on :

Second one : A1 : 700HP , A2 : 1000 HP, A3 : 1000HP , B : 2700 HP

Second two : A1 : 400HP, A2 : 1000 HP, A3 : 1000HP, B : 2400 HP

Second three : A1 : 100 HP, A2 : 1000 HP, A3 : 1000HP{, B: 2100 HP

Second four : A1 : Dead (200HP overkill and wasted), A2 : 1000 HP, A3: 1000HP, B : 1800 HP

At this point, we're down to two guns shooting at B now, B's time to live jumps from six to nine seconds.

Second five : A2 : 700HP, A3: 1000 HP, B : 1600 HP

Second six : A2 : 400HP, A3 : 1000 HP, B : 1400 HP

Second seven : A2 : 100HP, A3:1000 HP, B: 1200 HP

Second eight : A2 : Dead (200 HP wasted in Overkill again) , A3: 1000 HP, B: 1000 HP

And at this point... A is screwed. B has three times the firepower, and despite them being on equal HP, B will have a time to live of ten seconds, A's time to live hasn't changed throughout, it's still four seconds.

Now granted, B is going to look like a sieve after this exchange, but the point stands, equal numbers on paper are NOT equal numbers in a fight. If there's combat degradation to factor for, then the higher CP ships are entirely useless since through sheer attrition smaller ships can likely whittle down the offensive power of the larger ships and even if they can't match the initial firepower, it may not matter if they can cause a ship to "bleed out" enough offense. I'm pretty confident Amplitude are not trying to render medium and large hulls entirely ineffective, so realistically the intent is that bigger hulls in equivalent roles follow the model as above, they retain enough of their firepower to be able to wipe out their targets of equivalent CP before the minnows nibble them to death.

Something tells me the ships will get quite a hefty balance pass as a direct result, since small ships are supposed to have specialist purposes and be of "limited" use once medium ships are in the fray, they're the mainstay of your fleets, with one or two "big" ships then assisting them. Small flak defense ships f.ex. make perfect sense as PD or having flank torpedo options, but swarm options? Only if a race has direct benefits to small ships.

Bingo. Yes, B will cost alot, and leave the system unable to produce anything else while being built. But once it's made? It'll outperform multiples of smaller craft.

If anything, having a bigger minor faction-specific hull will have a bigger visual impact in the battle and I'm all for having more pretty and diverse things to look at :)

atejas wrote:

Hobbesian wrote:

I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game,

You sound as if you already foresee small hulls becoming obsolete in the late game. I hope the devs manage to fix that this time around. In EL the minor faction units fulfilled a variety of roles, and I'd prefer if they did the same with this game.

There is 0 current evidence this will be the case.  In fact right now i'm worried that hulls outside of the era 1 1cp ones will be mostly useless.

Hobbesian wrote:

atejas wrote:

Hobbesian wrote:

I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game,

You sound as if you already foresee small hulls becoming obsolete in the late game. I hope the devs manage to fix that this time around. In EL the minor faction units fulfilled a variety of roles, and I'd prefer if they did the same with this game.

In EL they did that because units were "Flat", you could retool them with better armour and weaponry and that would keep them competitive. In ES2, ships are progressive, bigger hulls mean more modules, upgraded bigger hulls mean -lots- more module space than their peers. They cost more to put out but you get a lot more firepower (it's balanced by CP, but broadly speaking that ship is going to remain fully combat effective down to 1HP, whereas the three 1CP ships will by nature drop from 100% effectiveness down to 66% and 33% combat output as ships die). That's the nature of bigger hulls and force projection, once you have medium hulls, smaller hulls unless they have unique qualities that *force* you to take them will become obsolete. Large hulls probably won't obsolete medium hulls due to the sheer level of cost and CP pain that's involved in taking one.

That's why I would suggest minor races contribute medium hulls, it seems like the best place to put them once you factor in all the possibilities.

Agree with you fully here. Medium is the only position that makes sense. Small is borderline irrelevent by even early-mid, and large remains dominant from the moment it exists.

atejas wrote:

Hobbesian wrote:

I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game,

You sound as if you already foresee small hulls becoming obsolete in the late game. I hope the devs manage to fix that this time around. In EL the minor faction units fulfilled a variety of roles, and I'd prefer if they did the same with this game.

In EL they did that because units were "Flat", you could retool them with better armour and weaponry and that would keep them competitive. In ES2, ships are progressive, bigger hulls mean more modules, upgraded bigger hulls mean -lots- more module space than their peers. They cost more to put out but you get a lot more firepower (it's balanced by CP, but broadly speaking that ship is going to remain fully combat effective down to 1HP, whereas the three 1CP ships will by nature drop from 100% effectiveness down to 66% and 33% combat output as ships die). That's the nature of bigger hulls and force projection, once you have medium hulls, smaller hulls unless they have unique qualities that *force* you to take them will become obsolete. Large hulls probably won't obsolete medium hulls due to the sheer level of cost and CP pain that's involved in taking one.

That's why I would suggest minor races contribute medium hulls, it seems like the best place to put them once you factor in all the possibilities.

atejas wrote:

I think the hull upgrade techs already add more modules onto existing ships.

In general, though, I don't like your idea much. I would prefer to be able to choose between, for example, having one large, tanky short-range cruiser that provides cover for a group of small missile gunboats and having a wing of flak corvettes that are supported by a long-range cruiser.

It's a matter of taste. I have no problems with your ideas in strictly gameplay sense, but I think having some slots limitation for each faction gives game a good flavor. As an example I see Cravers more likely to get close and use kinetics, while Sophons use every range energy weapons.

One change that would make me like this system more would be if there were more options we could choose for a certain range. Going off your close-combat example, right now I wouldn't be able to choose anything besides kinetic and titanium kinetic (which is just a flat upgrade). Adding options like a scatter laser (mid-range 50%, short-range optimal, extra damage to shields, lower damage to armour), flechette cannons (same but extra damage to armour and less to shields), or EMP slugs (lower damage, less effective flak screen, reduces effectiveness of enemy weapons once engaged) would add some element of strategy.

EDIT: In addition, the unlock order should be different for different factions as well. Right now every faction unlocks the attacker first, then the protector, then the hunter, and so on. If we assume that Attackers favour short range combat and Hunters favour mid range combat, the first Vodyani combat ship should be their Hunter, and their larger hull should be their Attacker, and so on. I don't want to see every faction having small ships out front, large ships in mid, and huge ships out back.

That's a good one. I also want to see this. I suspect they have it in mind, but we won't see for now.

Hobbesian wrote:

I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game,

You sound as if you already foresee small hulls becoming obsolete in the late game. I hope the devs manage to fix that this time around. In EL the minor faction units fulfilled a variety of roles, and I'd prefer if they did the same with this game.

Hobbesian wrote:

I'd take one hull per minor faction along with "One weapon / defense / support module type" that can be era teched up accordingly (or if prayers are answered and a better solution for research is put in, then "That instead). If only because then it would open up proper options for filling in those gaps. I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game, and allow for lots of versatile options in the design phase.

I just realized... minor factions contributing special techs like in ES1 (special faction techs) would be pretty awesome if they decide to rework the tech system.

That could balance the different political focus of each minor faction as well and make them even more unique.

Time for the Tiger to write up another lengthy and hefty thread concerning ship battle, this time we're going to be looking at weaponry!

In Endless Space you had three specific weapon categories - Energy, Kinetics, Missiles and three specific Defense types - Armour, Shielding, Point Defense (Flak)

In order to defend reliably against mixed fleets you would create a set of ships with flak point defense that would cover the fleet against inbound missiles, and then provide them with enough energy and armour defense to "not die", whilst at the same time returning fire with whatever you felt was most suited to the job at hand (most of the time this was torpedoes until Disharmony, then it got shook up somewhat with the concept of LR Kinetics and so on).

Endless space 2 attempts to resolve the flak problem by rolling flak into weaponry, making Slug weapons pull double duty as flak. In effect now we have Long > Medium > Short > Long, with a secondary layer of Armour <> Kinetics and Energy <> Beamy doom.

PROBLEMS!

Not all races gain access to all weapon types until later eras (and we all know what a mess the tech tree is), this means that there will be "offensive holes" in what they can put out, there's going to be places where absolute superiority can be exerted by race A over race B. If for instance a race has zero missiles this means that you can load yourself up with a sniper loadout and fire with -absolute impunity- unless they've armed up with full slug ships (unlikely, in the case of sophons they're almost certainly going for beams).

Secondly, defences currently are -binary-. Slugs eat missiles. Kinetic armour soaks up slug and missile damage, shields eat energy damage (not full damage from beams). This means that you pretty much have to put -both- defenses on a ship or if you get hit by "the wrong type" it will wreck ships at speed. The hard counter model didn't work in ES1 (it's why they had to make flak fleet wide) and it's still a bugbear in ES2.

Weapons which use strategic resources, unlike in EL where they might have had specific qualities, here they're mostly just "One tier better", which is absolutely horrid. There's no inventiveness in the weapon or armour system at present. Even the support modules feel pretty vanilla, there's really little point in doing anything but "Equip your best baseline weapons and armour" and have at it.

SOLUTIONS!

The issue with the tech tree is well outside the scope of this post. There's a very lengthy discussion about the tech tree here which I would encourage people to read and comment on.

On the topic of defences, I would suggest that defences are moved from the current binary "hard" counter model to a "Soft" counter model, so armour does block a low level of energy weaponry, but isn't overly efficient, and shielding does the same for kinetics, that would at least offer ships a fighting chance against mismatched weapons types as opposed to the equivalent of being "backstabbed". I would also advance the suggestion that we need more -types- of defence, currently we have two types that move up through several tiers, and that's pretty woeful, where's the exotic technologies? where's the more interesting defensive arrangements? Where's the interesting choices?

On the topic of weapons, the same problem exists, simple weapons with tiers, and the strategic mat versions don't offer real choice or width. I would propose that we need more -types- of weapon, and that strategic material versions offer *actual* variants that make you think "Cool!" or "Interesting", but not just a tier advancement from where you're at at the present moment, because that's not interesting, or fun. That's just something you might slap onto your ship the moment you can afford it. Where's the rapid fire plasma guns that offer a hybrid of kinetic short optimal range but with lots of energy DPS? Where's the swarm missile launchers that spread the damage around? Everything seems so... basic. Weapon ranges too, should be on a bell curve, along with their effectiveness, moving away from the binary system of "It works/doesn't work" to a much more gradual system where it may be more effective in Scenario A but less effective in Scenario B.

This feels like a missed opportunity here.

I'd take one hull per minor faction along with "One weapon / defense / support module type" that can be era teched up accordingly (or if prayers are answered and a better solution for research is put in, then "That instead). If only because then it would open up proper options for filling in those gaps. I'd suggest that Minor Factions contribute "medium" size hulls, which means their contributions remain very relevant at all stages of the game, and allow for lots of versatile options in the design phase.

The devs have said that designing ships is the most time-consuming part of development, so I don't think 2 hulls per minor is realistic. 1 ship + 1 module would be nice though.

The limitations on weapon modules do feel arbitrary. Endless Legend had them, but  in Endless Legend there was a pretty clear differentiation between melee/archer/mage units. There's no obvious logic behind, say, a small Vodyani ship being a flak corvette while their larger ships are beam/missile ships.

Endless Legend also had its equipment choices pretty logically constrained by role.By contrast, I'm not sure what role an Attacker ship is supposed to play compared to a Hunter ship. The Protector role makes sense, but the rest of them feel undifferentiated, and imposing arbitrary module restrictions on them is unintuitive and seems to railroad you into certain fleet builds.

I'll start by providing an example with one particular issue, which is that Sophons don't get to use missiles -at all- except on their top tier ship.

Now I've not had time to fully dissect the other races, but I've been studying Eji's videos which show that various ships do not come with all the weapons available, Voydani for instance don't get slugs in their era 2 (medium) ships, so you'll -need- to bring small ships for flak defence against missiles. These holes are not minor issues. Having no flak on era 2 is going to be a real pain in the ass for Voydani because it means they're going to be forced into building large flakker fleets.

Now this was fine in Endless Legend because Minor Races provided unique units that allowed you to "fill in the gaps", in this game Minor Races as yet do NOT contribute that benefit, they need to. Personally I would advise that Minor Races contribute two ship hulls (One small, one medium) AND a weapon type of some description. Make those minor races actually matter in terms of what they contribute. So as an example, netting the Hissho gets you a small and a medium Hissho hull and say access to Swarm Missile launchers (Medium optimal, but can work at long and short with reduced effectiveness).

In effect provide "Width" through the Minor Races and give them interesting designs and a real -game- benefit beyond their minor pop benefit. That would solve a lot of the major issues that the fleets have right now, and could open the gates for much more diverse fleets and more interesting tactics.

I agree completely on the need for more models.

As far as the hard counters go, I think that boosting the power of compatible battle plans would help soften the RPS system. Right now I can send one starting scout against two or three starting level combat ships (all armed with kinetics), and I can expect to win or inflict serious damage by picking sniper, despite only having 8 or 9% compatibility with it.

I really hope they spice up the strategic-resource weapons/armor.  I was thinking adding in an addional usable (but non-optimal) range would be a good start.

Oh, I guess I should have freshed for new threads before I replied to you in another one.

I think the hard counter problem is inherited from the EL weapon/unit system but fails because of the limited options in ES2.

EL had different weapon types for each unit class which resulted in much more variety compared to what we have in this game.

Everything offered lots of different bonuses especially the different strategic ones.

Since the the whole resource improved/normal weapon types are rather boring in this game I can only agree with your solutions.

A change in the weapon system would make it easier to improve the current tech system as well.