I agree with IceGremlin’s summary of recommendations (and glad you like the citadel “subsidiary” idea). I also agree that the current unlocking system is a problem, because as sheredynplayer notes, we waste a lot of tech picks on skippable junk whose only value is contributing to the behemoth count. Chinpanze’s idea of an “Altar of Auriga” style minigame would be a very cool solution to that, but frankly I’d be happy with just tying behemoth count to tech stage unlocks, specialized hull techs, or a combination of both.

I like many ideas here and just wanted to chime in to say I believe obliterators are a bit too powerfull and a different cap for each type would be really neet to diversify the sort of behemoths you encounter.

Man wish i could give a constructive critisizm on Behemoth, but i find that dlc to expensive for what it offers :P
Hope for some huge discount someday. But after reading comments, i think dlc is 50/50 :D
50 good it has hissho who looks fun and 50 bad it has behemoth who forces to play around it.

I like the idea of behemoths being incredibly powerful and being able to specialize them, however the one thing I'm not a fan of is building Behemoths.

I think the over abundance of them that so many have a problem with is simply from the fact that they can be built.

What would be cool is if Behemoths had to be found and were spawned according to each player on the map, so that every player would get at least one they could access without other races interfering too easily.

This would help to improve the wonder and allure of behemoths as players get a sight of them before they can build them, and the quest about them will amplify that.

Hissho would be the only faction that gets two because Hissho.exe

Then you can specialize your behemoth into whatever, taking a fair bit of resources and time for any specialization. To Respec a behemoth would also require additional resources and time in order to first go back and then the normal of going down another specialization.

The only issue with this idea is losing the Behemoth, but I have a possibility for how to fix that too:

When a behemoth dies it's simply disabled. It still belongs to the original player and they have to send a fleet consisting of anything to repair it, similar to Vodyani arks. The repairing however won't cost as much as the original specialization costs so as to not discourage use of the Juggernaut or military behemoths

I might be a bit late to this thread, and haven´t read half of this thread, but i´d like to give my oppinion on this anyways.

For one i feel that the powerlevel of unspecialized verions is overall ok, but the multipliers (on the hull type techs) come in a bit early. The specialized versions might come a bit later in the game alltogether.

What i find a real pity is that there are only military application specilizations, no commercial or scientific upgrade.

Hmmm...random thought:  what if juggernaughts' ion wave could shtut down an obliterator in flight?  It could have a radius from the system it's parked in and if the oblit shot comes close enough the ion wave can knock it out like a fleet.  It would give juggernaughts tremendous obliterator hunting power and allow us to turn the situation into a rock-paper-scissors, where oblits beat shields(after a shot or two) juggs beat oblits and shields beat juggs in some meaningful way.

Maybe that's the problem?  It's RPS but one of the options counters the wrong direction so we just need to flip that somehow?

Just make them a lot more expensive. 

My 2C's.

I agree with the points about Obliterators. They could do with a nerf one way or another. I like Hera's suggestion that they always cost some strategics to fire, but I also think they should cost Orch/Quad to build in the first place. I also think they should be a final tier tech, as they near enough make system crackers obsolete.  

I don't use Behemoths a whole lot, maybe the occasional science or economic behemoth if I really want to bump up a system/science path, but they feel pretty balanced other than the Obliterators.

One thing I would like to see is an improvement to the terraformation modules. I tried a terraforming strategy with Behemoths a while back, and it was severely underwhelming. For the most part, it was just quicker to do the terraforms in system.  

One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post, something that would help immensely with my Economic Behemoth play. Include the benefits you could get from exploiting special nodes in the tooltip. I constantly find myself going back and forth the tech tree description and the map to make sure I'm sending the Behemoth to the right node to mine the strategics I want. Since I play on maps that have barely any resources on them, that is my number one method for getting minerals.

I know, my short-term memory is crap, I should just remember. But if it is a simple fix, I'd like some more comprehensive tooltips for the special nodes now that they've become more useful.

I like the potential of Behemoths but the implementation is...off.

My ideas on how to fix:

1. Remove Obliterators and Jugg node clear.

2. Remove subclasses I.E. Economic

3. Behemoths can be put under the direct control of a Hero and can join fleets.  CP unchanged

4. Behemoth C3 center changed to unique improvement.  +1 behemoth and +5% upkeep on behemoths per system level.

5. Mobile Drydocks (replacing the Oblits)
 -Placing ships in the hangar passively repairs them.  
 -hangar size determined by command limits (fleet size)
 -low number of weapon slots
 -large number of defense slots
 -medium number of specialty slots
 -can equip strike craft (tech research)
 -when attatched to a fleet drydocks will provide per round repairs via drones that can be shot down by strike craft and flak. (tech research)
 -when attatched to a fleet ships have a chance to not be destroyed and will retreat from battle and be placed in the Drydock hangar at end of battle with 1 hp remaining and all manpower removed. (tech research)
 -can equip coordinator modules

6. Juggernaut
 -Gains stats based on fleet command limits. (tech research)
 -low number of specialty slots
 -medium number of defense slots
 -large number of weapon slots
 -can equip strike craft
 -ignores interdiction (tech research)
 -Three per Empire
 -X-large weapon slot(s) (tech research)
 -Consumes 2 Behemoths to construct.

7. Citadels
 -No longer merges with system and is now similar to Arks.
 -Adds one population slot to each planet in the system while anchored.
 -Takes multiple turns to anchor and unanchor.
 -low number of weapon slots
 -large numbers of specialty and defense slots
 -can equip strike craft
 -Cannot be placed in fleets
 -Two per empire
 -consumes 3 behemoths to construct.

I might ve alone with this, but I personally like behemoths the way they are.

I've got no objections to Behemoths, per se.  I absolutely dislike superweapons, though.  Keep all of it but lose the Obliterator and the Juggernaught's "I Win" button.  What's the point of a giant ship that kills everything in sight with one shot?  It's size and impressiveness are counteracted by the fact that it doesn't actually need to fight, just press the button.  It's dull, the greatest sin.

And when half the tech tree is now Behemoth-related, then Behemoths ARE the game.  I no longer need to design effective ships within my resource constraints, or stress over whether I have enough destroyers guarding that chokepoint.  I just need to bulild more behemoths.

I do rather like the Hissho, though, and so, if nothing else, it might be nice if a checkbox was created to simply lose the behemoths and keep the rest of the DLC.  Or just the Sperweapons--that would be better.

If players are desperate to have something to do with late game dust hordes, add in a slot machine game or something.

I play elimination games only and vs AI.  It's not that challenging, but I do enjoy it.  I can live with this expansion, but I have it turned off at present.

Whoever had the idea of switching the Obliterator and Battleship abilities and wanted to switch them and remove the shots fired. 

The shot I don't mind as long as ONCE per turn with resource count cost in play, I'm okay with that.  The problem I have is the double shot, it does take a tremendous amount of resources, but its not those that bother me.

I like everything about behemoths EXCEPT the insta ship kill button on the battleships if you chose to dev them that way.  You almost never see a full fleet in most games and that one gives you the ability to instantly kill a full fleet.  This for me I don't like as a feature is Ion Wave.

Being able to nuke somebodies fleet on a whim of a cost free cooldown is not cool. 

Also its a bit too easy to remove mineing probes, it would be fun if they had some staying power instead of killable by that patroling pirateship you got spawned off a curiosity.

There I participates, <3

I would agree with the thoughts that as it currently stands, Behemoths are too numerous and play too big of a role. 

To me, they almost devalue other ships... for instance, why bother with a planet cracker when you can just build the Obliterator and nuke enemy systems. Furthermore, the sheer amount of techs dedicated to them means that the normal ships feel overshadowed. 

In an ideal world, an Altar of Auriga style mechanic for them sounds like a perfect to me, and that removes the problem of them crowding the tech tree and overshadowing other ships. Realistically, I would be content if they were pushed back a bit into the game so there was a bit more time for normal ships to be used without them, and the amounts were drastically cut. Honestlly, I would rather a hard cap of 3 Behemoths for each race with each type being slightly more powerful so they felt more like late game super weapons rather than the current 'spam' where you just keep building them. Furthemore, if we are meant to be discovering them, it does feel a bit out of place that we can build so many... Perhaps, a behemoth hull strategic resource to limit them may also be a good idea.

Daynen wrote:

I like that behemoths are an idea and that they created things like uncolonized resource mining, fleet-killer battleships and star destroying doomsday weapons.  Cool stuff--on paper.  Unfortunately, as has been expressed by a few, this is probably the first piece of work by Ampliteam that's been dubbed a general failure.  I appreciate you looking into that for solutions; while the wheels turn slowly, it says a lot that you're willing to look at the problem objectively.  Thank you.

The first problem with behemoth implementation is that we have three "general" hulls and three specializations.  Why?  Aren't the three regular hulls rather "specialized" already by definition?  It kind of elicits a frown from those trying to understand the mechanic the first time.  Add on the fact that the "military" hull actually has different module slots and the whole thing is just dumbfounding.  I said it in beta and I'll say it again:  we only need ONE regular behemoth hull.

The next problem is how many arbitrary rules surround the initial use of behemoths.

A: They can't merge with a fleet--command points be damned.  It's fine that they take up a whopping 10 CP, but once we have the CP, there's really no good reason to force us to split them off.  We have specialize them into juggernauts first.  This always felt unnecessarily clunky to me.

B: Citadels cease to be behemoths, yet still count against the behemoth support limit--while providing bonuses that aren't very well conveyed.

C: Obliterators, while expensive to use, are completely devastating, have no repercussions for their use beyond the resource cost and most importantly, are impossible to answer once fired.  Citadel shields must ALREADY be in place to be a halfway effective counter; otherwise that system is gone and there's ZERO you can do about it.  I mean you even had to give the Unfallen a FREE shield because of this.  That should've been a warning sign.

My first suggestion is what it was back in beta: we only need one unspecialized hull.  The point is that it's general purpose and NOT specialized.  Get rid of two of the hulls and make one actual general purpose behemoth.

Proposal two: Let regular behemoths merge with fleets.  Please just get rid of this awkward exception.  Make the bonuses from economics and scientifics an activated thing so they're forced to stop and split from a fleet to provide bonuses.  If you want to merge them and move them, they can't also sit and provide FIDSI, but this removes a weird arbitrary rule and simplifies gameplay a bit by allowing behemoths to just merge with fleets like every other ship.  Getting over 10 CP should be enough of an accomplishment that we're allowed to protect our behemoths by merging them without having to make them juggernauts first.

Idea three: Instead of a "Citadel" why not just make the planetary shield an actual specialized behemoth hull?  It might need its own art assets and all that, but this would allow you to pack up the shield and move it.  You'd still have behemoths, making an accurate count of your behemoth limit more intuitive.  You'd also be able to play some mind games with your shield locations and ship counts, allowing for not only more counterplay to obliterators, but better strategic counterplay in general.  the roving clans in EL could pack up entire CITIES, so why not a shield generating ship?

Thought four: Obliterators should either be unusuable without a declaration of war or should automatically cause it.  There are so many things you can do that piss off the galaxy AND your own empire automatically for the slightest offense, but detonating an entire star system is perfectly fine?  Even for the peace-loving unfallen and the economically minded Lumeris?  Come on now...the Empire got the entire galaxy rebelling against it before they blew up a single PLANET with the Death Star.  We're busting entire star systems and no one bats an eye.  There needs to be consequences for attempting to commit genocide from the other end of the galaxy.

Flash of inspiration five: Make empire-specific behemoth skins.  Create a cool little content add-on for a couple dollars or something.  Do good work on it and people would buy it, guaranteed.  Maybe throw in some behemoth-specific quests or something to sweeten the deal.

Overall, behemoths just didn't end up as cool as they sounded due to some awkward implementation.  If we can correct that, the vision of behemoths will become much more cohesive and their potential laid out more clearly.  THEN we can figure out what other cool stuff to do with them (possibly in future expansions? nudge nudge wink wink)

I wanted to quote Daynen first and foremost, because he accurately got to the core of the issue.

The Behemoth does not feel like it's integrated into the existing systems well.

I agree that a single hull and then specialization would make much more sense when playing.  If you're worried that's too much early flexibility, rebalance it accordingly.

Do something about obliterators.  They are cool and fun to use the first couple times... but actually annoying and not-fun the more you play.

A thought that occurred to me this morning is that Obliterators could be made rather less objectionable by simply making their projectiles follow normal pathing rules (warp lines and wormholes, and only free movement when required) and be attackable--essentially, they are effectively ships.  When attacked and destroyed (how hard this would be is up for discussion), they detonate with the same effects as they have now.

This provides a sacrificial defense option to protect systems forward of the core worlds.  The Obliterator can still be devastating, but the player has some sort of control over just how bad the hit is and where to take it.  It clears the double-tap problem, and would not seem to actually require any functions not already in the game.

The Obliterator becomes a strategic bombing problem--a B-52 rather than an ICBM.

The one thing that would convince me to try out Supremacy is if behemoths' models were redesigned to reflect the faction that owns them, or at the very least recolored. They're kind of an 

eyesore, hero ships are the same way but they're miniscule in comparison. I can't speak much for balance issues, but I've heard that the fleet ship and obliterator are notably game-breaking, and as a build-tall not-wide kind of guy I can see why the obliterator is concerning to people.