Specifically, how the combat phases work, how weapons and defenses work, and how you think they could be improved.



Assuming combat is still in more or less the same form, how would you like to see it changed?

I think you should have the option to decide which ships get attacked first, or are more likely to get hit first; a sort of fleet layout system.

Something I tried doing was making two or three ships with minimal armour and a large number of missiles, while the rest of my fleet contained ships loaded up with defence. Unfortunatly for me, my two missile ships jumped in on the side closest to the hostile fleet and dropped like flies.

So yeah. A fleet layout system, or some way to control agro would be good.



Maybe also some way for ships to prioritise certain targets? An example is if there is one ship armed to the teeth with weapons, while the rest of the fleet are colony ships. Your fleet is defending from this threat, but while engaging the enemy fleet it decides to take its time taking out the colony ships while the damage-dealer destroys them.



The combat its self is very nice as it is, and I would personally be fine with how it is if it's shipped like that (DUR HUR PUN), but there is room for it to become a bit more strategic.

You mean something close to what Gratuitious Space Battles is doing? Could be interesting. I just hope they don't copy the damage mechanics of GSB, because that thing sucks lead doorknobs.

Well GSB got one thing very right about combat: there's little incentive to go with smaller ships when you have something bigger available. Even if we say Endless Space isn't meant to be "realistic" (in a sci-fi sense) the ships fight in an age-of-sail battle line, and in the battle line bigger was better—frigates, what we call cruisers today, weren't big enough to hold their own in the battle line.

it'd be nice if smaller ships were more mobile and in general would get hit less compared to bigger ships. or were smart enough to not fly in front of big ships and catch all their fire -_-

as it stands, I don't have a problem with bigger ships obsoleting smaller ones as I like fleets with bigger ships anyway. it'd be nicer though if a fleet of smaller ships were faster on the starmap for example for strategic use, or for hunting pirates. pirating other players trade would be even more fun but probably hard to implement well.

vaendryl wrote:
were smart enough to not fly in front of big ships and catch all their fire ... it'd be nicer though if a fleet of smaller ships were faster on the starmap for example for strategic use, or for hunting pirates. pirating other players trade would be even more fun but probably hard to implement well.

Ah but that is really what small ships are for (generally), to be used as pickett ships. They are smaller, faster and more maneuverable and should harass the enemy ships to allow the big guns to close. The graphics don't show this and the battle mechanics don't seem to completely account for it. My views of the space battles always show the ships clustered together where as the picketts would put more distance between them and the big guys they are protecting. However, I generally find that my destroyers are usually the first to go but not always. That's ok, there should always be chance in battle.



I do agree with the latter part. This is more along the lines of what modern day ocean going Cutters, Frigates and some Destroyers do when they are not being pickett ships. Occasionally you will see a Cruiser/Light Cruiser as well. Problem is the bigger ships are wasting howitzers on fly's (so to speak) when they are patrolling for pirates. They are usually there for their C3 and Helo's. Really the same could be said for most modern ships above a Cutter. However those pirates are not packing the equivalent of Harpoon's, Exocet's, 3-5in guns, and etc like the pirates in Endless do. lol



The reality is with any economy you just can't afford a large amount of large ships. So the large ships become very important assests in modern warfare. This is what I think Endless is not capturing quite right because they are way too easily to overrun and canbe replaced with simple expediture of funds (if you have them).



The current structure dictates if you add them to your fleet you cannot put the necessary secondary ships in your fleet to protect BB's and DBB's (and maybe CV's later). Fleet make up seems to be lacking so your are back to how many guns can I put into a battle with the least amount of cost. No point in doing much else (defense etc) as it it is incredibly difficult to keep those big guys alive AND useful after battle. Then there is production time and cost considerations. Your opponent can keep throwing fresh fleets of minnows (so to speak) at you leaving you with a lot of half damaged ships. Eventually you loose them all in one blow if you don't withdraw them. If the attack power of the larger ships could be more evenly divided against targets it would like counter the current spam strategy and you would see nothing but Dreads.



However there is also no population cost for these ships which is what the real toll in any war is. At some point Ships need to be tied to population somehow so they actually have value rather than as disposable peices. The cost of loosing both money and population might throw against the all Dread theory and more realistically model the needs for powerful small ships that use less population. But this is all Sci-fi and who is to say all the ships are not just drones with AI's and we can always make more...

vaendryl wrote:
it'd be nicer though if a fleet of smaller ships were faster on the starmap for example for strategic use, or for hunting pirates. pirating other players trade would be even more fun but probably hard to implement well.

Perhaps you haven't played the game that much yet A fleet of small ships designed for speed will always be much faster than a fleet of large ships designed for speed. This is a similar effect to 'small ships make better repair boats'. Many modifiers function per instance creating a distinction between small and large ships.





People here seem to mostly be talking about an unrealistic amount of change. Adding formations or even targeting represents a dramatic overhaul of the current system.



What differences would people be interested in assuming those were not changed?

Ketobor wrote:
Perhaps you haven't played the game that much yet A fleet of small ships designed for speed will always be much faster than a fleet of large ships designed for speed. This is a similar effect to 'small ships make better repair boats'. Many modifiers function per instance creating a distinction between small and large ships.

But unless I miss my mark you need to note that this is only because you can fit more small ships into the fleet, and the engine support modules you're talking about actually make the whole fleet faster when you stack more into them. This is very odd, because usually we associate having more people in our force with a reduced speed, not an increased one.

Ketobor wrote:
People here seem to mostly be talking about an unrealistic amount of change. Adding formations or even targeting represents a dramatic overhaul of the current system.



What differences would people be interested in assuming those were not changed?

Small ships should be more efficient from a power per industry point perspective, but should be far outclassed by bigger ships in the power per cp department.

GC13 wrote:
Small ships should be more efficient from a power per industry point perspective, but should be far outclassed by bigger ships in the power per cp department.

I totally agree with this sentiment. I'm really hoping some of the balancing in beta goes in this direction.

I would like to see the second phase more then once every ten fights or so. Also, I would like to see the Melee phase more then once per game.



So, some balancing could be nice?

Alright, do you guys think something like this would work then to solve your problems? It is my personal belief that larger ships scale better as defensive bonuses become more functional. I am rather interested in the ways you think this system would not do enough to solve current problems.







1: Defenses become much stronger than their relative weapon.

Deflection currently scales from: 0.625-2 deflection per pound.

Compare to: 0.75-2.1 Projectiles per pound of kinetics

Change to: 1-3 deflection per pound



Flak Currently scales oddly, maintaining approximately equal to its weight deflection.

Perhaps each flak system can destroy one missile of equal to or less than its rating each volley. I really cannot say. Flak currently is equivalently rated to a missile 5 tech levels above it, so I will skip this area. That said, approximately double current flak defensive ability.



Absorption currently scales from: 1.77-12.5 per pound

Compare to: 2.22-10.5 per pound of beams.

Change to: 2.6-18 per pound.



2: Defenses are made imperfect.

Deflected projectiles dealt 0-15% of their damage.

This means it would take 333-44 pounds of Kinetics to kill 1 CP of fully armored opponent in a combat(less because of close range).



Defended Missiles dealt 0-20% of their damage.

This means it would take 183-36 pounds of Missiles to kill 1 CP of fully flaked opponent in a combat(3 times that in a phase).



Shielded Beams would deal 0-10% of their damage.

This means it would take 280-60 pounds of Beams to kill 1 CP of fully shielded opponent in a combat.



This means that stacking defenses becomes more valuable, because of your ability to do it. Beating opponents defenses is still valuable because you are now doing 10-20x more damage, but isn't a binary win/lose threshold for damage. This also provides more total depth to combat because of the interactions with hero stats and powers.





3: Health becomes more valuable because defenses aren't end all be all. Heavier ships naturally become more viable.

Wouldn't dealing damage to defenses that beat your weapon actually make big ships weaker rather than stronger? If all that's needed for battleships to reign over destroyers is for proper defense stacking then that's an issue with the community and not with the game. I still dislike the defense system because it encourages one of three final outcomes: a system where two human enemies tacitly agree to either stick to a regime where both sides stick with weapons that their enemy has defenses against, a system where nobody uses defenses, or a system where everybody uses even mixes of all weapons and defenses. I don't see what the current weapon and defense system adds to the game, but I see how it hurts the game by promising more options than are viable at the moment.



If big ships needed another buff I'd recommend giving them an increase in health or something. Right now they have as many health per cp as smaller ships, which are more efficient in production and just as efficient in tonnage. The only saving grace big ships have right now is needing a smaller percentage of their tonnage to reach any particular amount of defenses, and defenses do not work well in the game right now.