So I just reread the op. He basically didn't want smaller ships (destroyers) dominating the game. As the math clearly shows, this won't happen. The bonuses mess it up a bit, but battleships or maybe even dreadnaughts should be the most powerful in the game, due to the "equal power favours larger" rule, filling out fleets with smaller destroyers.



Targeting could really mess it up tho depending on how it works. If a single ship can target multiple, then dreadnaughts will probably be completely useless, with battleships/destroyers being the favoured ships.

gopher65 wrote:
So, similar to Civilization 4 combat?

Don't know, it has been a long time since I last played Civilization IV.

Yeah, I like that idea too. I think ship specialization is the way to go for bigger ships. Things like +fleet offense/defense, +number of cards per turn (max 1 module per fleet, to stop abuse), +admiral XP (3*XP per fight maybe?), advanced repair modules, etc.



Note that these modules wouldn't have to necessarily be heavy, just class restricted. If they were simply too heavy for small ships to carry, that would end up gimping either the weapons load-out or armour values of bigger ships in comparison to small ships (1 100 tonne module means a lot less weapons, so it would have to give a HUGE bonus to be worth it).

how about super modules too big for small ships that are (for example) small ship offense & defense/ invasion/ big ship offense & defense? These modules could be the equivalent of the upgrades done during ww2...from single .50 cal to 4x20mm bofors. (on a larger scale) Or giving the big ships big guns....1 shot kils a dd if it hits. These would be restricted to classes...like 5 in cannon on dd vs 8-10 on cruisers vs 12-18 on battleships and 21 on dreads....

Stargem wrote:
When a certain level of HP is lost for a group of ships, a member of that group is destroyed. For example, a destroyer group that loses one member at 75% HP would have their performance cut by 25%.

So, similar to Civilization 4 combat?

I have a suggestion on how to balance out smaller ships against larger ones: As a smaller class of ship takes damage, it loses performance, while larger ships have to take more damage before losing their fighting ability. The way I rationalize this is that smaller classes actually represent a group of ships, and as they fight on, they lose members of their group, reducing their total firepower. Larger ships, like Battleships, consist of smaller groups, so they lose their power more slowly compared to lesser-cp vessels. Dreadnoughts don't lose power, as they are a single ship, so they have to be utterly destroyed in order to be negated. When a certain level of HP is lost for a group of ships, a member of that group is destroyed. For example, a destroyer group that loses one member at 75% HP would have their performance cut by 25%. This makes glass cannons less effective, since taking damage reduces the amount of firepower they can dole out.



This could also help lend a visual aspect to battles, in that if two fleets faced each other down with small and large vessels respectively, one of them could have dozens of ships, while the other could have three or five, but still be quite powerful. For example, 88 Destroyers vs 4 Dreadnoughts, assuming both fleets had 22 CP worth of their respective ship types.

5 Ships - Corvettes - 1 CP, loses 20% performance for each ship that is destroyed, for every 20% HP that is lost. Repairs won't restore lost ships.

4 Ships - Destroyers - 2 CP, loses 25% performance for each ship that is destroyed, for every 25% HP that is lost. Repairs won't restore lost ships.

3 Ships - Cruisers - 3 CP, loses 33% performance for each ship that is destroyed, for every 33% HP that is lost. Repairs won't restore lost ships.

2 Ships - Battleships - 4 CP, loses 50% performance for each ship that is destroyed, for every 50% HP that is lost. Repairs won't restore lost ships.

1 Ship - Dreadnought - 5 CP.

@FinalStrigon I have no problem with that if the Devs used that perspective for the entire game. Unfortunately they don't as we see missiles travel slightly slower than beam and kinetics being the fastest. So as such the perspective favors more in depth battles with many elements including the possibility of fighters in the far or near future. (Depending on the Mod community)

FinalStrigon wrote:
For example, I love the way space combat worked in The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell/John Hemry. He took into account the sheer vastness of space, and the speed ships would have to travel to get anywhere. Almost every engagement happened at speeds where ships were in contact and firing each other in a span of time much too fast for the human mind to keep up. You could pick your targets before you met, and try and out maneuver the other fleet to get better positioning...You didn't even fire at the enemy ships, as much as you were firing at where they would be once their speed and the weapon's speed were taken into account. But at those speeds, fighters would be useless, as humans simply wouldn't have the reaction time to do anything.

I was going to point this series out as well until I saw you had done so. I also think that the methods of combat portrayed in this series are far more accurate than anything else I've seen. Most space-born novels and games seem to forget that space is absolutely vast. Even traveling across a solar system at near light-speed takes hours or days. And when you're going that fast (think 10s of thousands of kilometers per second), there's no way any human could manually control maneuvering or weapons.



Honestly having a balanced fleet seems pretty optimal in this game. I can use my dread to carry all my utility pieces (repair, engines, scouting, powers, invasion, etc), and have decent armor and weaponry still. This then allows me to specialize my other ships: usually I make battleships defense oriented, cruisers attack oriented, and destroyers are basically glass-cannons. Using a mixed fleet like this I have killed 100s of enemy ships that roughly on par tech-wise using just a single 22/22 CP fleet. Usually I lose all or most of my destroyers (5-7 / 22 CP fleet) after having cycled through 15 stacks of 22 CP fleets or so, but all my big ships survive.

There is no excuse for the current state of ships, battleships and dreadnaughts are higher tier units they should be more efficient in terms of cost, not overwelming so but you should be encouraged to build them. the best solution is to make heavy ships better for direct toe to toe combat and smaller ships better for attacking distant systems (I.E faster fleet movement).

liq3 wrote:
So I just reread the op. He basically didn't want smaller ships (destroyers) dominating the game. As the math clearly shows, this won't happen. The bonuses mess it up a bit, but battleships or maybe even dreadnaughts should be the most powerful in the game, due to the "equal power favours larger" rule, filling out fleets with smaller destroyers.



Targeting could really mess it up tho depending on how it works. If a single ship can target multiple, then dreadnaughts will probably be completely useless, with battleships/destroyers being the favoured ships.

Exactly. There is a problem right now with smaller ships doing this, what with the "Glass Cannon" Destroyer builds. I don't know if this has been fixed in patches or not yet, but as far as I'm aware, it's still possible and highly exploitable. Right now swarm of max CP fleets of Destroyers can go toe-to-toe with, and win, against balanced fleets, even Dreadnoughts.



Um, I'm not sure what you mean about Dreads becoming useless, however. If any ship would be able to target multiple ships I would say the Dread should be able to, since it (should) be the strongest ship n the game, with the most guns and armor, etc. If a fleet of four Dreads could target multiple ships, I don't think the swarms of smaller glass cannons would be able to beat them. They'd have to re-spec and balance things out again to stand a chance.

People comparing "real life actual" ships with ES ships instead of using EVE ships makes me laugh.

liq3 wrote:
2 vs 20 won't make a difference. They 20 would then have to do 1dmg and 10hp each to be of equal power to the 2. His example is not balanced power wise. The battleships had far less overall hp than the destroyers. About half to be precise.



If you don't believe me, test it. Do a multiplayer game, have one player field 4 destroyers with 5 beams and 5 shields (of same tech level), and another player field 2 cruisers with 10 beams and 10 shields. Don't use cards. Assuming the cruisers don't split their fire 4-ways, they will win. And don't do just one test. Save the game right before the fight and do multiple.

His whole example is based around the two fleets being equal in terms of fire power, no yes, it was balanced. And that was exactly his point, the Battleships have less health overall. That is why, when outnumbered, battleships would lose. In your math, you scale the health as well, but we don't know that one shot from a Battleships will take out a Destroyer (I doubt it, in fact). In that kind of scenario, though, yes, the Battleship wins.



And I'm not sure the point of testing this in game. Although, when you plug it into the game, factors change. The OP's example deals with real world situations. We don't know how things will change in the future with space combat, and the "power law" he brings up may not apply with a video game, where, you know, real world physics and what not don't apply.

FinalStrigon wrote:
You changed his numbers. His initial fight was 2 Battleships on 20 Destroyers. You halved the number of Destroyers, giving the advantage to the Battleships.

2 vs 20 won't make a difference. They 20 would then have to do 1dmg and 10hp each to be of equal power to the 2. His example is not balanced power wise. The battleships had far less overall hp than the destroyers. About half to be precise.



If you don't believe me, test it. Do a multiplayer game, have one player field 4 destroyers with 5 beams and 5 shields (of same tech level), and another player field 2 cruisers with 10 beams and 10 shields. Don't use cards. Assuming the cruisers don't split their fire 4-ways, they will win. And don't do just one test. Save the game right before the fight and do multiple.

liq3 wrote:
Is this accurate?



Say 10 vs 2. 2 have 100hp and do 10 damage, 10 do 2 damage each and have 20hp.



So... Round 1 - 9 vs 2 (80hp).

R2 - 8 vs 2 (62hp).

R3 - 7 vs 2 (46hp).

R4 - 6 vs 2 (32hp).

R5 - 5 vs 2 (20hp).

R6 - 4 vs 2 (10hp).

R7 - 3 vs 2 (2hp).

R8 - 2 vs 1 (96hp).

R9 - 1 vs 1 (92hp).

R10 - 0 vs 1 (90hp).



So your thing was off to begin with. Overall equal power ships favour the larger ones.

You changed his numbers. His initial fight was 2 Battleships on 20 Destroyers. You halved the number of Destroyers, giving the advantage to the Battleships.



@DeathSage and everyone else mentioning Carriers/Fighters: There is one issue we, as a community, need resolved I think before talk of fighter and carriers can be continued. At what speed are these space battle taking place?



For example, I love the way space combat worked in The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell/John Hemry. He took into account the sheer vastness of space, and the speed ships would have to travel to get anywhere. Almost every engagement happened at speeds where ships were in contact and firing each other in a span of time much too fast for the human mind to keep up. You could pick your targets before you met, and try and out maneuver the other fleet to get better positioning...You didn't even fire at the enemy ships, as much as you were firing at where they would be once their speed and the weapon's speed were taken into account. But at those speeds, fighters would be useless, as humans simply wouldn't have the reaction time to do anything.



Or, it can be like in Star Wars, or Mass Effect, and so on, where battles in space obviously take place at much, much, much slower speeds. Personally, I don't like these kind of battles. Yes, they're flashy and cool, but...well, it's Hollywood. The system in Campbell's series seemed more realistic.



Until we know this, as in ES it can go either way right now as we have no way to tell, the issue can't be decided. I'll still, personally, be arguing against Carriers and Fighters, though.

gopher65 wrote:




2 battleships vs 20 smaller ships. Both fleets have equivalent firepower. The fleet of 20 ships was slightly cheaper to produce than the 2 battleships.



Ships remaining after 1st round of volleys: 2 battleships vs 18 smaller ships. Remaining fleet firepower ratio: 100% to 90%.

2nd round: 2 battleships vs 16 smaller ships. FP ratio: 100%/80%.

3rd round: 1 battleship vs 14 smaller ships. FP ratio: 50%/70%.

4th round: 1 battleship vs 13 smaller ships. FP ratio: 50%/65%.

5th round: 1 battleship vs 12 smaller ships. FP ratio: 50%/60%.

... skip a few rounds...

10th round: 0 battleship vs 7 smaller ships. FP ratio: 0%/35%.



This is reminiscent of what happened in real life battles, although this particular example didn't actually happen. It was hoped that the greater range of large ships would make up for both the power law and the fact that they were more expensive, but it didn't. Small, cheap ships (like cruisers, destroyers, and even frigates) ruled the day, in the end.

__________________________________________________________________________

Is this accurate?



Say 10 vs 2. 2 have 100hp and do 10 damage, 10 do 2 damage each and have 20hp.



So... Round 1 - 9 vs 2 (80hp).

R2 - 8 vs 2 (62hp).

R3 - 7 vs 2 (46hp).

R4 - 6 vs 2 (32hp).

R5 - 5 vs 2 (20hp).

R6 - 4 vs 2 (10hp).

R7 - 3 vs 2 (2hp).

R8 - 2 vs 1 (96hp).

R9 - 1 vs 1 (92hp).

R10 - 0 vs 1 (90hp).



So your thing was off to begin with. Overall equal power ships favour the larger ones.

Alrighty so it looks like Eve has been used up to the point of repeating ourselves (it will be 10 years old in 2013), so let's look back further than that. Let's go back to 1996 to a space sim/fighter game called Free Space 2 where you piloted fighters that ranged from bombers, to stealth recon, to interceptors, and the ever prominent fighter. I'm am greatly familiar with this classic game becuase I loved it and beat it almost... five times now. I think that this game would make a better comparison for:



A) Suggesting Carrier type ships, or modules for ships like the Battleship or Dreadnought.

B) The usefulness of Fighters/Bombers flown by humans.

C) The Broadside combat system.

D) Simply all around better comparison for this game than Eve.



For those of you not old enough to remember the diamond in the rough, Free Space 2 was about the human race branching out into space and meeting the challenges that faced them. The first game saw the human race attacked ruthlessly on all sides by both the Vasuvans, at first, and the Shivans. In the final moments of that game (then allied with the Vasuvans) you vanquish a Shivan Dreadnought that is heading to Earth, as it blows up it cuts off the connection between the current systems in the second game and Earth effectivily trapping that branch of humans in unknown space.



The second game comes back a decade and a half later with humans allied with the Vasuvans and pioneering their way through this new territory. You are dealing with splinter faction xenophobia and eventually the Shivan threat again. Since this thread isn't about describing games I'll stop the lesson here and get straight to the point of advocating for Fighter/Bomber squads.



In Free Space 2 you learn to fly all sorts of small ships, and eventually get to choose your roles in fights. This game proves the usefulness of bombers as you take down everything from frigates to a juggernoughts main guns as well as support systems. They may be inneffective against the larger ships, besides destroying weapons and taking out modules (that would be so cool if that could happen) taking a Dreadnought head on with a fleet if bombers with no backup is suicide in a can.



Interceptors in Free Space 2 were trained to take out bombers and incoming Anti-Ship missiles. This in itself is amazing as you could basically replace the flak defenses of ships to take out missiles. In essence you could have a fleet with no flak, but all interceptors if you so choose. Flak defense would also work two fold then as it is good vs both missiles and fighters, but fighters can dodge flak whereas bombs and missiles cannot.



The average fighters were great as well for the fact that they could multirole. They can be interceptors for other small ships, they could have payloads of missiles for helping out bombers, or they can hunt missiles and bombers and just generally dogfight with other fighters.



In essence fighters are extremely potent in fleet warfare for a great number of roles, so what if they are ineffective against the larger ships as a whole, they can still take down that ships weapons systems, destroy incoming missiles, and take on other fighters. Don't count them out cause they aren't big enough.



On a side note, I want lasors to be beam weapons, I want to punch holes through other ships with them.

gamingalife wrote:
I believe that the issue has been discussed under a different topic, namely give bigger ships the ability to multi target / shoot different targets during one round.

Battleships already do this, I've noticed.

Igncom1 wrote:
What about something more along the lines of modern attack drones? and have the pilots operate them from the mother-ship (I prefer using the term mother-ship instead of carriers in a science fiction setting, it just sounds more 'right').



But wouldn't most ships have weak point that you could attack with smaller craft? like the engines, sensor arrays, airlock hatches and turrets?

At the risk of going off topic...



True, you could, but human reaction time would be horrible in comparison to the speed and precision that an AI could give a missile. And while an AI could be put on a drone, that still runs into the issue of the size of the gun needed to do any damage. I still say you would be better off just turning it into one big warhead/missile.



And those spots wouldn't be anything you can't target with missiles, or direct the computer/AI to target. If a small fighter would do anything against a weak spot, why not just blast it with your bigger guns or shoot a missile barrage at it?



Anyway, fighters are carries in space have their own discussion thread. I'll stop talking about them here, now, especially since the OP acknowledged them already and directed he wanted his discussion based on the power law.

FinalStrigon wrote:


And this, finally. Fighters simply are too small to have the power to deal with larger ships, in my opinion. They are too small to have any weapon of significant size, meaning there has to be a lot of them to swarm in and whittle defenses down. That's a lot of cost in terms of building these advanced fighters, training pilots, engineers for the fighters, etc etc...You'd really be better off just turning it into one big missile. As much as I would love to see carries and fighters, they just don't work in space.

What about something more along the lines of modern attack drones? and have the pilots operate them from the mother-ship (I prefer using the term mother-ship instead of carriers in a science fiction setting, it just sounds more 'right').



But wouldn't most ships have weak point that you could attack with smaller craft? like the engines, sensor arrays, airlock hatches and turrets?

jungle_rhino wrote:
That is the crux of the issue and the validity of this statement varies over time. 'Big Gun' battleships were the pinnacle of a ship building arms race, and combined massive armour with massive guns. It certainly wasn't Destroyers which led to their downfall in WW2 - WW2 destroyers couldn't hope to threaten a Battleship and would get annihilated in return before ever reaching torpedo range. It was aircraft that could bypass the defenses of the Battleships and bomb the weakly protected decks that did the damage.



Post WW2 the lethality of weapons took a giant leap forward with guided missles etc. which basically turned Battleships into giant targets - but that is really more to do with the fact that the most effective method of defense is currently to not be detected - so a smaller size is a distinct advantage. There was also a major scaling back of military budgets and without major wars to fight large Battleships simply weren't needed to fulfil the peacekeeping roles that smaller, less expensive vessels can do.



What it would be like in the future of Endless Space is hard to say. My gut says that future space combat would be all about electronic warfare, target aquisition etc. and that offensive capabilities would far outstrip defensive capabilities. BUT there may well be some revolutionary type of defensive mechanism - whether energy shielding or materials technology breakthrough that enable larger, heavily 'armoured' vessels to withstand the attacks of smaller vessels - like the WW1 'Dreadnoughts', or early ironclads like HMS Warrior.



So I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here - the devs really have complete freedom to impose any system they want. But I think all of us would like to see a system where each ship class is reasonably balanced. With a mixture of roles and abilities that make mixed fleets the most appealing option from a gameplay perspective.

Ultimately, this is what I agree with. It's sci-fi, so the devs have a lot of room to adjust their world's lore/tech/etc to their liking. And, as others have pointed out, comparing the wet navies of today to futuristic space navies is basically an apples and oranges comparison. They're both so fundamentally different that debate on the issue is more or less pointless. But, to address some others:

Skurkanas wrote:
It is doubtful wether Destroyers CAN hurt BB's at all, seeing as their massive tonnage allows them to pack quite a bit of armor. Now we could argue that one would have to predict the weapon type used, but I think that's possible.

...

So if Battleships pack enough Antimissiles, add the +15% deflect module and stuff the rest of their hull with Lasers, Destroyer Fleets should pose little to no threat. Either they are destroyed before they can do damage at all, or their damage is mitigated. Especially if you "play your cards right" - they are mostly %-based, which offers much larger boni for much larger base stats (with BB's having the best by far)

Unfortunately, the "Glass Canon" Destroyer rush people have been talking about disprove this. Which ever weapon you decide to use, mass-produce Destroyers maxed out with that weapons, and you'll be able to overwhelm just about any defense.

liq3 wrote:
Also "space fighters" are extremely unrealistic. A single man fighter would be so small you might as well just take the man out, put more explosives in it and call it a missile.

And this, finally. Fighters simply are too small to have the power to deal with larger ships, in my opinion. They are too small to have any weapon of significant size, meaning there has to be a lot of them to swarm in and whittle defenses down. That's a lot of cost in terms of building these advanced fighters, training pilots, engineers for the fighters, etc etc...You'd really be better off just turning it into one big missile. As much as I would love to see carries and fighters, they just don't work in space.

gopher65 wrote:
That's part of the reason, yes. But if it was *just* about aircraft carriers, they wouldn't have been building AEGIS cruisers either. And if battleships were more efficient naval killers than cruisers, then we would have antiaircraft battleships today, instead of antiaircraft cruisers. Logic, it wins arguments every time.

Um, neither is an efficient "naval killer" when being used in a support role. The reason we ditched BB in favor of cruisers for support is that BB aren't cost effective platforms for AA duty. Same applies for ASW, although there the supporting role shifts to destroyers and frigates rather than cruisers.



The actual "naval killers" are carriers...and subs.



Gunnery as a weapon system for naval destruction has been displaced by missiles, torpedoes, and bombs, and left the big gun battleship without a role.