Agreed with most of the other points made towards the beginning of the thread. Adding my voice that it's not fun because of how much it homogenizes these different races. Owning and using them is not fun, yet it is optimal and highly encouraged for every race to use them.

I think my answer to "How Do I Defend My Systems From Obliterator Shots?" demonstrates the problem with obliterators.

A system shield and a citadel each give 50% protection from obliterator shots, to a single system. When both are on a particular sytem, they give 100% protection.

However, each obliterator shot disables a shield. Multiple obliterator shots on a given system will destory or damage that system, and there is no way to defend against this. Additionally, it is not feasible to build a citadel on every system in a medium or large empire. Meaning an enemy can target systems with no shields, or only a planetary shield, and there is no way to defend against this.

The only sure way to defend against obliterator shots is to destroy the obliterator itself. With their long range, obliterators will typically be within a enemy territory, requiring you to go to war with that empire to defend against obliterator shots.

In other words, the only way to defend against obliterators is to go to war.

Well designed game mechanics and feature additions should increase the depth of a game and the number of ways to play. The current design of obliterators actually decreases the depth of ES2 and reduce the number of viable play styles to 1: endless war.

Behemoths don't feel like a natural extension of other game systems, they feel like a random uber-ship just kinda... dropped into the game at T2 on the tech tree. Makes some degree of sense for the Hissho, but for everyone else the ease with which they're acquired and the impact they have feels out of place.

A lot of the cool things Behemoths do (Interact with Special Systems/uncolonized worlds, manage your own systems, etc.) feel like things that should be spread out over the game more, instead of all placed in the big bad Behemoth basket. This is compounded by the impact an early Behemoth, especially an early military Behemoth, can have on the game. You guys wanted to show off how cool Behemoths are, so you pushed them into the super-early game, but still made them incredibly powerful and capable of doing loads of things that would be otherwise impossible.

I feel like, ultimately, Behemoths wound up carving themselves such a huge niche they've undermined the foundations in a few areas. There's clearly a place in the game for massive end-game ships, and a place in the game for utility ships in the early-mid game. I'm just flummoxed as to why those two roles are being filled by the exact same thing.

Spot on.

My "crazy idea" to fix obliterators

1. Replace cooldown with a charge time
2. Everyone can see the location of an obliterator while it is charging, and its target
3. Everyone can enter the territory of an empire with a charging obliterator and attack a charging obliterator without war status

The goal of these changes is to provide counterplay for obliterators, by providing a window of opportunity to stop the obliterator before it fires (charge time), and provide the means (seeing its location, entering territory, and attacking) and motiviation (seeing its target) to stop the obliterator. With these changes, an empire must defend its obliterator if it wants to successfully destory systems.

I think it's funny that so much of what makes behemoths powerful outside of military use is that they're doing the things that civilian ships should~ (theoretically) be able to do. Why not make research platforms orbiting certain anomalies? Perhaps orbiting uncolonized planets for mining or research or vacation purposes? Right now I believe an issue behemoths are runing into is that they are trying to do too many things. It homogenizes all of the races by being the optimal tool for any type of play style, and that's unfortunate.

I think that if you toss the economic parts into civilian ships, you can focus on balancing the 3 types of military vessel. Perhaps the civilian ships could have an influence upkeep on top of a  dust upkeep? That would make them have an interesting natural limit. Plus there would be something that isn't directly the system for pirates and aggressors to mess with. Right now you can't quite "pillage" any improvements you can only fully invade or just blockade. This would add a third sort of middle ground for aggressors, give a place to dump influence (that has a dust restriction to keep it from being totally nuts) and would give you the design space to focus purely on what the goals of the three military behemoths are and how you want them accomplish those goals.

While I'm not certain about how you would want to develop those three matchups, I do believe you'd make it a heck of a lot easier on yourself if you implement a separate system of civilian ships. Without having to worry about using Behemoths for civilian purposes, you can really go all out on the flagship vs defender vs WMD of the three military types. I think that all three types of ship have problems with homogenizing race playstyles, the juggernaut is much less egregious than the obliterator and is thus ignored in these discussions. Which is fine for now. The other two are much more important to balance than the inoffensive but bland juggernaut.

Isn t the beauty of behemoths that they can do so much, but you have to decide what you do with a finite number of them? I know that it can be annoying to sacrifice an economic behemoth for a military or obligerator, but for me this is a strategic decision that makes behemoths so interesting.

So the issue is that it's not a strategic decision really. Citadels are not good enough at protecting to sacrifice the behemoth slot. Juggernauts are fine, but you're giving up an Oblit for it. Economics are fine but you're giving up an Oblit. You can ~choose~ to not only make Oblits, but it's suboptimal because Oblits do more for you than every other kind. If you want to get a science victory, you can get it faster by using a science behemoth but you could also just cripple your competition and make it so that they can't beat you to it. If you want to conquer someone, you can blow up their best production system(s) and grind out their military because you will out produce them. If you want a wonder victory, you can get the resource gen mod for your behemoth and orbit a node, but you're going for a wonder victory and that's gonna be pretty slow in comparison to the others. If you want an expansion victory you blow up your enemies and rebuild and colonize the system that they used to own. You don't even need to be at war to do that.

Like uh, the decisions to make are kinda like the Tanks vs Infantry vs Plane dynamic. You could make a balanced comp, there are decisions, but in practice you should only use Tanks for the majority of the game because the AI won't reach planes until much later and the pirates will only ever be infantry only. It's an area where there are technically decisions to be made, but a lot of them are strictly less efficient. Behemoths are the same way. Use economic until you research oblit, then only oblits until your opponents are all so crippled they can't make their own oblits and cripple you. It's an arms race that invalidates the other options because there's currently no counter play.

I would rather Citadel, Jugger and Oblit were more situational but of similar power level, and that's easier to achieve if you remove the idea that they're going to be economic. Right now you have to balance their civilian utility versus the utility of destroying an opponent's system. And unless you get rid of the core of that idea (which I don't really want them to do) there's just no way you'll generate the amount of fids economically that will equal the amount of fids you're denying by destroying a system. And if you destroy two systems, or three, it compounds really hard.

As for the balance between Oblit's, Citadels and Juggers. Everything else in this game is rock paper scissors, why not here? I think the problems with Citadel vs Oblit have been fairly fleshed out, so why not make it so that Jugger beats Oblit beats Citadel beats Jugger? Shift Citadel so that it deals %health instead of flat damge to orbiting fleets, perhaps have it apply fleet-wide buffs to ally fleets in orbit. If it blocks free movement within the Zone of Influence around itself, every race but unfallen would be able to functionally build "walls" and hardpoints in which to intercept and block enemy forces (unless the enemy has a good angle around them).

These help stop the marauding fleets deploying with Juggernaut support. I think that Juggers would be good as forward bases that can dock ala Arks in order to give your fleets a spot to retrofit and heal. Perhaps if they have a vaulter-esque portal they can even retrieve reinforcements from home system or allow the whole fleet to retreat to home system (except the jugger itself). Changing them from armada superiority to offensive utility would help limit the homogenizing effect of them on optimal fleet composition, as well as open up more tactical variety. Sure, it's using a Vaulter only mechanic, but I think that it's so much more limited (only other portal is on home planet. No techs that give bonuses to portals. Maybe even add a cooldown) that it keeps the Vaulters unique while giving everyone else a cool and flexible tool to play with. I would want the Jugger to take a few turns to safely dock and undock, so that it isn't just a 0 cd portal tool, but that sort of forward base could be very cool. Especially the idea that you want to backstab it while the fleet is away.

Then you get to Oblit. Maybe slow the speed of the projectile and force it to travel on normal lanes? If that happens, the Oblit player will want to secure all of the systems that the projectile will pass through, and if it reaches the target (potentially alongside a double tap) the counterplay isn't that you needed to make the hard point harder, it's that you needed to manuever around your enemy's fleet and blow up the package while it was enroute. In conjunction with this, lock Oblits into the system they fire from until their CD is up (or halfway up, at least). Add to the rework a galaxywide vision over the package once any player (not the user) has seen it (because System Destroying Explosives would be galaxy wide news) and you introduce much better counterplay while keeping the utility of a sneaky way to cripple allies (so long as you haven't shared vision) or kick off a war.
I would like this change because it upends the current dynamic of use without removing the current utility. Post change, the counterplay to Oblits would be having good map vision and a flexible armada. The Oblit player is forced into making decisions about Oblit placement and the escort of the package, while the opponent is forced to sally out and intercept (or at the very least kill the helpless Oblit in revenge once it's fired).

This Oblit rework would be capped off with the new Tracing mechanic coming with Penumbral Choir. Victims should be able to catch the Oblit user diplomatically through this mechanic, punishing the user more harshly if they weren't at war, if user is pacifist, if user is in alliance with victim, etc. There should definitely be consequences for using oblits, but I wouldn't mind ways to be able to get around those consequences or minimize them. We haven't fully seen the hacking implementation, but folding this sort of espionage system into the political drama of having been WMD'd would be totally cool. If they see your Oblit fire, or track down your spent Oblit, you should probably be caught red handed without the chance for espionage.

I think these changes would make each type unique with divergent gameplay options. Citadels can situationally wall out and funnel aggressors into your most fortified position. Juggernauts would give aggressive factions the option to wage wars quite far from their normal production facilities, as well as defend those systems better (while still not being nearly as good as Vaulter portals). Obliterators would be the most limited in use but the absolute best at what they do. If you want to cripple someone, or bust down their hardpoint, no other ship does it as well as the Obliterator does.
These changes would affect the races differently, and be situationally more or less beneficial (as opposed to "if you aren't at Behemoth cap you're being suboptimal")

Well I guess I cannot really discuss the topic obligerator, because I tend to play on low strategic ressources. In my games there are like 3 shots fired overall. So you re probably right about "normal" games.

Smitty2k1 wrote:

I don't have any issue with Behemoths. I only use the military ones though. Have never tried economic or scientific. 

Heh, I've never used the scientific one, and I rarely use the economic one (however, I have before and found it quite useful at acquiring strategic resources I deemed absolutely necessary and simply couldn't get any other way). 

What I like about behemoths?  The design, the concept, the fact that they're Endless vessels, their firepower that's 4x the power of a fully upgraded fleet.  I use them as patrol craft and desperate measure fleet breakers.    If everything is going well for me, my military behemoths are used to patrol the side of my empire that is quiet, freeing my fleets up to ferry armies to enemy systems.   Alternatively, I will use them as scout vessels or patrol vessels to act as a vanguard for my invasion fleet, while they ferry armies from my space to the enemy's, I will use the behemoth to take out any fleets attempting to approach the systems under invasion.   This, again, frees up troop-carrying fleets to be effective ferries.  I use citadels for lols, and I use juggernauts for the warm feeling it gives me to see a massive endless craft warp in with a carrier escort, hunters, coordinators, and a swarm of smaller vessels.  This feeling is priceless.

What I hate about behemoths?  I want to paint the damn things.   I get the feels for my color scheme, many of which clash with bright red.  I will pay dust and strategic resources to paint their hulls the color of that resource...

In general, I think more minor customization such as paint jobs or decals or minor hull customizations for aesthetic effect would go a long way to adding just that little something, that biit of pinache that would tie it all together in the 'awesomeness' factor.

That's my crazy idea.   Paint jobs.  Maybe let me stick purple orichalcix crystals sticking out the side of the hull just a few meters, letting me make it my own.  xD  Basically anything to dull that bright red.   I like the red, mind you, I just don't *love* the red.   I'm more of a blue-purple guy.

Hey guys,

I heard on the recent dev stream that we're going to be able to turn off obliterators, which will surely make a lot of people happy. 

Could you share some additional information about changes coming to Behemoths for us? The biggest criticism was always the fact that since economic Behemoths are so good with their 25% bonuses, everybody gets a ton of them. Stacking science Behemoths on special nodes is also very powerful. Overall this leads to all factions playing more or less the same, as everybody is forced into building as many Behemoths as possible. 

The identity and different playstyles of the factions are lost when the best strategy is to simply build Behemoths and everbody ends up doing the same. I think I suggested to nerf economic Behemoth for that reason and to lower the maximum amount greatly, only unlocking them at very late tech tiers. 

Also will the "juggernaut module" techs finally be adressed? We've had a lot of people point these out already, since even before the release of Supremacy from what I've been told yet the Craver and Riftborn ones still made it into the game. 

Will the Ion cannon from Juggernauts be removed or able to be toggled off as a research option? 1 Button to destroy any fleet is very boring to play with. 

Also this might be slightly off topic, but what about changes to combat? Will fleet accellerator stacking finally be adressed? It was always a huge problem to be able to have a 50+ speed fleet zip across the galaxy and invade capitals with little time to react. I fear this might get even worse if these fleets get access to cloaking aswell so you have even less options to react. 

What about the dilemma of boarding pods vs invasion fleets? After invading fleets will dump all of their manpower, so that all of them can be easily stolen by the enemy when he retroftis to boarding pods. 

one of the reasons that behemoths feel so intrusive on normal gameplay loops is that they're strictly more efficient at all roles than any other thing you can dump industry into. The amount of fids from econ behemoths is incredibly high, which forces convergent gameplay in which all factions attempt to be at max behemoths at all times. Then you chase behemoth slots and techs around until eventually you convert to oblits and sink your opponents.

Turning oblits off is a decent enough patch to hold for awhile, but the economic warping / homogenization is fairly significant still. That's why I suggested you split the economic roles of behemoths into various civilian ships. With more ships flying around there's more economic damage to be done by pirates and enemies, while helping to give an influence dump (if the civilian ships aren't under your influence, why would you profit?), and a chance for divergent gameplay due to the risk/reward being much more incremental and not one big basket. Currently you just can't afford to not commit for the whole behemoth and as many as possible. But maybe if you split the increments you might want to delay more econ ships by building military first? maybe you want to sneak an econ ship in while you're mobilizing just to grab an economic edge if it stalemates. More room for interesting gameplay decisions, as opposed to "you're not at behemoth cap make another"

I played the Hisho last night and it struck me how awkward the behamoths are  in the normal flow of the game. I loved the fact that my core systems were generating a ton of industry, which meant I was running out of things to actually build, but then I didn't really 'get' what the behamoths were actually doing for my empire.

I agree that a single platform that you then spec up would be great, though I can see why you have split them into different roles as otherwise you would be stuck with one type at a time due to the way the game handles ship modding and variants. I like the general idea behind them, but agree that there could be room for a more generalaised variant that could be a fourth option for players who wish to deploy a mixed version.

Another option could be to create more modules for behamoths that could be discovered through exploration/quests that add flavour, such as being able to equip a hero and fleet to a behamoth (thus overcoming the issue of not attaching escorts to it). This could help round out behamoths and make them really interesting.

Another idea could be to use them as a floating colony/colonies that could serve as a one system empire similar to the cultists in EL. Create an archology ship that is upgraded in the same way a planet is, possibly like Alpha is in Valerian - a floating city that is endlessly growing. You could even go as far as to say it a piece of Endless tech that was lost for eons and was rediscovered.

YertyL wrote:

As stated in this thread, I strongly believe the range of Obliterator shots should be restricted to their adjacent systems. 

Obliterators (to me) are frustrating because they effectively have no counter. Citadels and obliterators are supposedly equivalent specialisations, but investing into an obliterator gives you the ability to destroy any enemy system, from anywhere, while investing in a citadel gives you the ability to have any of your systems destroyed but one.

On a fundamental level a heavy investment into defensive measures only makes sense if you can predict where the enemy attack will land, which is broken by obliterators. Some ability to counter them conventionally, i.e. you don't get your home system nuked in a war you are easily winning, would also be established this way. 

It still baffles me a little how the balance could go so far into one direction with core crackers and so far into the other with obliterators. Core crackers currently are IMO basically useless, since their 5 round warmup means you can only destroy one planet after you have already won the war. Obliterators can nuke a whole system across the map even when you are losing. IMO the latter should be a slightly more powerful version of the former, with both having a 1 round warmup, but one having to be parked on the system to destroy one planet, while the other can destroy the whole system from an adjacent system.

For what's worth - I absolutely agree with this.

It was not clear to me what should be done to unlock Behemoths. # of techs in the top quadrant? Or # of militarist techs? Or # of techs somehow connected to military? Might be a translation issue, but anyway I finished the game before meeting the requirements.

That's the number of Behemoth techs (the hex ones). You can see your progress towards new one at your fleet screen management.