Sotnik, it's total (of all players) number of techs unlocked in military quadrant of the tech screen.

Sotnik, since you suspect it may be a translation issue, may I ask what language you play in?

I like the idea of them, they just need some crucial changes to be fun additions rather then awkward at best, and frustrating at worst

• Move all their techs up like two tiers so they're actually end game, but give Hissho earlier access to the techs.
• Make them less tanky (aka much fewer 'more HP for behemoth' techs) and give them less firepower. If I can overpower every single huge fleet an empire has with one fleet of my own, and then throw 4 of that same fleet comp (with advantageous tactics) against a behemoth to kill it, somethings wrong.
• More counter play with the destruction stuff, less range, more costs, longer cooldowns.
• Make them slower. They're Behemoths.
• If you make them more on par with  (but still better than) the 'CP to military power' ratio that other ship types have, you should also allow all behemoths to join fleets.
• Make them much more expensive and reduce the amount of them you can have.
• More module slots, but less multipliers for those slots.

A crazy idea for them that would make nerfing them less critical, and make the gameplay/lore mesh better? 

Make them persistent like the Arks. You find them around the Galaxy, they take large amount of resources and industry diverted from a system via civ ships to salvage it (or whatever other way you can make it so it takes multiple turns to recover them). If you destroy it, you can rebuild it in the same way it was intially salvaged (and it retains the other civs upgrades). Of course when you control it, you can upgrade it. But treat it more like a hero ship where you upgrade it directly, instead of a design. If its specialized and is destroyed, it reverts to unspecialized. F For the technologies, just integrate the behemoth technologys in with others where it makes sense, with a few of them being specifically just for behemoths like it is now, and make researching them unlockable when you first salvage a behemoth.

Those changes would make it feel more like a valuable and powerful Endless Relic and less like a giant ship you can swing around like a club, and fit better with the themes and lore of the setting. It would need less nerfing because now you can take someone elses Behemoth, much in the way you can assault and steal a huge system, making it far more rewarding and engaging to challenge and destroy one. As it stands you now can throw three fleets at one and get nothing out of it, and they can just replace it no problem.

I get alerts that a faction observed an obliterator being fired but I can't learn about the obliterator shot ... through the diplomacy actions / options / alliances.


If your in an alliance and they see an enemy or opponent at cold war fire an obliterator at my systems I'd appreciate it as a diplomatic option. It doesn't have to be automatic. But it should be included in the game for balance...

Also. I'm curious if you have a defensive citadel and an orbital shield / system shield are you granted 100% immunity?

I also feel like maybe the co-operative agreement with the Riftborn and maybe the Unfallen could be buffed to include the resistence or reduce the damage an obliterator shot does. "Rapid regrowth..." or something. Basically like, in the mid to late game there are better targets than the alliance of the unfallen and riftborn.

What about nerfing the Behemoths substantially and make it available to Hissho only? 

oddest nitpick: 

I dislike that behemoths are in any way connected to the science tree. I almost feel like everything about them should be attained in a seperate system. The tech tree feels, in a way, bloated.

I think if, instead, each faction was able to jst somehow "get" their own general behemoth that they could then specialize and re-specialize though some effort, that would be best.

Unusual idea: No respawns, you lose your behemoth, that's it.

What if there were simply faction specific modules for behemoths?

Hi.

I didn't realize there was a whole discussion on the topic.
I just disliked the Behemoths, so I made the Hissho only Behemoths mod, which is a makeshift solution.

There I summed up my issues with them as them being
" a generic super unit, that looks like it was modelled with lego bricks, dwarfs every existing unit and changes the gameplay and atmosphere for every single faction in the game".

Originally I would have removed them all-together, but they are too tied-in to the Hissho lore.


Reading this thread however gave me another idea for a mod-able solution to the behemoth problem...
It goes as follows:

1. Remove Behemoths from all factions, quests and tech trees.

2. Create new deposit/curiosity "Behemoth Wreckage"  that is spawned n times | where n is the galaxy size (tiny = 1).

When this deposit is found, the player must colonize the star system and construct a costly "Excavation Site", which upon completion will spawn the Behemoth and disable the deposit

3. Place some new "Ancient endless star map" curiosities that reveal the position of the Behemoth Wreckage system to the player. 1 or 2 maps per wreck.
 This could be in the form of a quest event.

4. Place Behemoth upgrades into droplist items for ruins curiosities. (or make a special curiosity category)

5. Reduce the military, science and regular Behemoth to one hull design, which only appears while you have a functioning Behemoth.

6. Remove from the tech tree everything except the Obliterator and Battleship tech, which only appears while you have a functioning Behemoth.

7. Make destroyed Behemoths appear as salvagable hulls, like the motherships, so that any faction that kills one, can claim it for themselves...
or destroy it once and for all.

8. Remove Hissho starting Behemoth. But give them some form of advantage in locating the wrecks.
Maybe their main quest line gets a mission that leads them to either a wreck or a map leading to a wreck.

TimmehZa, it sounds good, everything except point 8 - in my personal opinion, Hissho should start with a Behemoth, it's in their lore now.

HappyHead wrote:

I've thought it over a bit... and while I LOVE the idea of faction specific modules, I think what i really want to see is an integration of the behemoth system into another system of the game because It feels just tacked on and not truly incorporated into the game as a whole.

Which led me to this idea.

Integrate Behemoths into Politics

Piggybacking off of the "only one behemoth" notion, each faction only gets one max (can be rebuilt if destroyed).

• Hisso get 2 max
• the behemoth quest should be extended in complexity a bit, at the end of it everyone is able to build behemoths immediately, no need to research.
• The leading political party determines the function of a given faction's behemoth, and the integration of that party determines the multipliers applied.
  • every election, the leading party determines the use of the behemoth, immediately changing out it's abilities and function at the election's conclusion.
  • The hisso can freely modify the modules on their 2nd behemoth, but cannot specialize that behemoth.
  • In other words, players can no longer modify their behemoths, the political parties auto modify them (for free) after every election
    • Militarists: The Behemoth is instantly modified into a Battleship, getting stronger and unlocking abilities and modules based on entrenchment
    • Scientists: Behemoth gains the Research capacities
    • Industrialists: Behemoth gains the Mining capacities
    • Ecologists: Behemoth gains the Planet Improvement capacities
    • Pacifists: Behemoths are instantly sent to an owned system of the faction's choosing and become a Citadel (improvements are autobuilt based on entrenchment and auto demolished if the citadel becomes a behemoth again)
    • Religious: Behemoths gain the Government Support capacities.
    • Anarchy: allows the player to modify the behemoth however they wish (using whater has been "unlocked" by the political parties)
• For balance purposes, the behemoth health upgrades should be distributed to every political party such that a faction with all parties on entrenched levels will have behemoths that have more health than that of factions lead by dictators who just kept everything with the militarists the whole game.
  • this also balances the governments, as democracy will obviously gain health quicker, but has little control over the election's outcome, while dictators can choose every election, but can only gain one health upgrade per election. The other governements fall in between in a balanced fashion
• This has the added benefit of raising the stakes of political elections, thereby making manipulation through spying more interesting.
• Obviously, if destroyed, the behemoth's must be rebuilt just like normal. Their production cost should correlate to their health value.

What about Oblitorators? I'm glad you asked

Make the Oblitorator a map feature, not a unit.

• There is a single, neutral, immobile and indestructable Oblitorator located on the Academy system, which is now guaranteed to have a SMALL number of colonizable planets on it.
  • Any faction that is owner of the academy's system controls the Oblitorator (it can't move, but it CAN fire missiles)
  • There are NO free missile shots. All missiles must be bought, and the Oblitorator needs to be repaired (high industry system improvement) after every shot.
  • Missle targets are highlited visually to all players (just so there's no confusion about where it's headed)
  • Missles are now a 0cp, high health "ship" that auto-moves towards its assigned destination at the START of every turn.
    • factions can assign fleets to auto-travel alongside the missle, as guards
    • missles are stopped by guarding fleets, and resume moving the next turn.
    • missle health, armor, shielding, and speed can all be enhanced... for a price.
    • missiles are either top or bottom priority targets in combat at the attacker's choice.
    • If a missile is destroyed in combat, the victor is awarded a portion of the materials that were used to make the missile
• Since the academy usually spawns in the middle of most maps, near and far locations have pros and cons. Far starting systems are unlikely to get the academy, but also are difficult targets for missles to get to, since the missle has to survive the journey to get to them.
• This also would add/enhance an interesting "king of the hill" dynamic to ES2.

FROM HERE, adding faction specific modules to behemoths/citadels would be a nice plus for flavor, but isn't 100% necessary.

and, of course, behemoths should be able to join a fleet if there are enough CP's

What do you think?

+1

Koranis wrote:

TimmehZa, it sounds good, everything except point 8 - in my personal opinion, Hissho should start with a Behemoth, it's in their lore now.

How about adding a Behemoth Wreckage to the Hissho home world?

They should still be the first to awaken Behemoths, I agree.

I just think the event of them discovering the Behemoths doesn't have to take place before the game starts, but can be integrated into their early main quests.

The idea of tying behemoth function to political party is an intriguing one.  I've also been somewhat fond of the idea that behemoth hulls could be a locatable resource that can change hands when defeated.

Reworks aside, I STILL say we didn't need three unspecialized hulls.  It kind of runs contrary to the definition of "unspecialized," to say nothing of crowding the initial ship design menu...

or tie them to factions. pacifist faction gets citadel with bufs, military faction gets military behemoth etc.