how to beat the destroyer swarm? (through game design)

answer:

1: increase the cruser's strength at planetary invasion significantly and weaken all other ships in invasion (make having a few in an attacking fleet nessisary to achieve success in a reasonable amount of time, perhaps nessisary for colony invasion but not outpost)



2: increase battleship hp considerably, decrease speed (like half of all other ships), increase price/time to build. a battle ship should be a considerable investment and dedicated battleship fleets should be very rare until late game.



3: dreadnaughts should ether be able to repair fleets in enymy space, increase speed of fleet, increase speed of invasion, give broad combat buffs, dreds should have most hp by a healthy margin (not much more than battleship), and should cost stupid amounts of money



what would these changes do?

answer: destroyers would in general rule combat through out the game but would need crusers to effectively attack anything other than outposts. diffusing destroyer spam in aggressive players.



battleships would counter destroyers in most fleet actions but would be slow in attack (move speed) and costly enough that they would likely be used in fleets with cheaper destroyers and then principly in defence/important seiges



dreadnoughts would not be as strong in combat as battleships, but would buff fleets. they would cost alot and so you would be encouraged to place them with your best fleets (highest xp ships) or in key battles that could decide the war.



that is my fix.



destroyer spam remains a strategy through out the game, but doesn't absolutely garentee victory.

rock paper scissors combat mechanics are maintained and proper weapons will still wipe out an unprepared fleet.

adds some more strategic planning to ship tech. timing battle ships to counter opponents b-ships. timing cruisers to attack enemy home-worlds etc.

all ship types get a role to play at all tech levels and in all playstyles

zdesert wrote:
how to beat the destroyer swarm? (through game design)

answer:

1: increase the cruser's strength at planetary invasion significantly and weaken all other ships in invasion (make having a few in an attacking fleet nessisary to achieve success in a reasonable amount of time, perhaps nessisary for colony invasion but not outpost)



2: increase battleship hp considerably, decrease speed (like half of all other ships), increase price/time to build. a battle ship should be a considerable investment and dedicated battleship fleets should be very rare until late game.



3: dreadnaughts should ether be able to repair fleets in enymy space, increase speed of fleet, increase speed of invasion, give broad combat buffs, dreds should have most hp by a healthy margin (not much more than battleship), and should cost stupid amounts of money



what would these changes do?

answer: destroyers would in general rule combat through out the game but would need crusers to effectively attack anything other than outposts. diffusing destroyer spam in aggressive players.



battleships would counter destroyers in most fleet actions but would be slow in attack (move speed) and costly enough that they would likely be used in fleets with cheaper destroyers and then principly in defence/important seiges



dreadnoughts would not be as strong in combat as battleships, but would buff fleets. they would cost alot and so you would be encouraged to place them with your best fleets (highest xp ships) or in key battles that could decide the war.



that is my fix.



destroyer spam remains a strategy through out the game, but doesn't absolutely garentee victory.

rock paper scissors combat mechanics are maintained and proper weapons will still wipe out an unprepared fleet.

adds some more strategic planning to ship tech. timing battle ships to counter opponents b-ships. timing cruisers to attack enemy home-worlds etc.

all ship types get a role to play at all tech levels and in all playstyles

You are not approaching these ideas from the perspective of a optimizer / power gamer.



1. Making cruisers necessaries for invasion will just make people have separate groups of cruisers with all invasion weapons and continue to use DD spam for combat fleets.



2. Increase HP for battleships considerably wont do anything because the idea of large investment perminate fixtures in your fleet cannot work at all the way the game is set up. You would need to change more than ship stats to alter this, you would need to redesign the entire combat structure and turn sequence works. This is because if all other ships are wiped out by an opposing spam fleet with just the Battleship remaining it will be damaged and unable to attack again this turn but it can still be attacked. A second faster cheaper to produce spam fleet could attack it again on the same turn or the next turn before it could leave the system its in and destroy it while it is isolated because it couldn't target enough enemies to take them down when isolated by itself.



3. Dreadnought means something so you cant just go making it do things drastically unrelated to what its name implies. Dreadnoughts are large ships specifically intended to attack other large ships not groups of smaller ships, they do the opposite of group bluffs. Thats what it means, what you are describing is some kind of mobile repair base.

You're taking away choice from the player - Most/All of the things you want to add to specific ships are already possible with actual modules. (And yes - this aspect needs balancing)

Give Dreads the ability to shoot multiple targets during one round / volley. Hell give that to the Battleship class as well but with less targets.

gamingalife wrote:
Give Dreads the ability to shoot multiple targets during one round / volley. Hell give that to the Battleship class as well but with less targets.

That ability makes no sense on a dreadnought, like I already said historically the dreadnought designation refereed to battleships design to take out single large targets (other battleships / dreadnoughts). It goes against everything the class stands for. That ability makes more sense on battleships.

Every ship should be able to take on multiple targets. The bigger the ship, the more the targets. Targets should be prioritized by their ower:.

Unikraken wrote:
Every ship should be able to take on multiple targets. The bigger the ship, the more the targets. Targets should be prioritized by their ower:.

A nice change would be that every different weapon type on a ship targets independently, although they could still double (or triple) up on a given target. That target priority could be abused by certain fits. I'd rather see targeting either A) random, B) according to best possible survivability of friendly forces (so usually killing weak, high damage targets first), or C) a dropdown of behavioural preferences set by a dropdown in the fleet screen.



Regarding the destroyer swarm "problem", check out my strategy article (in sig), which started as an explanation of how destroyer swarms were optimal, and then mutated into a chain of reasoning that now points to viable counters from cruisers and dreadnoughts. Battleships work too. It's a long read, but keep in mind that the method of the guide is more important than the results of the analysis. The accuracy of the calculated values will improve as were come to greater understanding of how the combat system functions, and it's how were use such information that really counts.

I think the problem with over kill we are currently having is due to there being to management of a single ships modules, because even when targeting a ship with 1HP left, a ship will use all of its combat mods against it.



he game should really work out the minimum about of mods at their weakest (Using the mods worst possible amount of damage), needed to finish a ship, and then allocate the rest to the next target.

zdesert wrote:
increase the cruser's strength at planetary invasion significantly

This was already done recently, with a major buff to invasion modules. Since invasion modules take up less room in a cruiser, it makes sense to deploy cruisers as planetary invasion ships.

increase battleship hp considerably, decrease speed (like half of all other ships), increase price/time to build.

I agree that ships need a lot more hit points. But speed is a player design decision, a choice to either install engines or use that space for weapons. And increasing the cost of battleships will not make destroyers less appealing.

dreadnaughts should ether be able to repair fleets in enymy space, increase speed of fleet, increase speed of invasion, give broad combat buffs, dreds should have most hp by a healthy margin (not much more than battleship), and should cost stupid amounts of money

Again, aside from the hit point issue, the things in this list of features are ship design decisions made by the player. Install those components to get those results. Also again, increasing the cost of dreadnaughts will not make destroyers less appealing.

I have a question, Anglewyrm mentioned that I as a player can choose how many engines if any I can put into a Battleship. I have yet to find an 'Engine' module that I can add to my designs. I have researched increases to ship movement but have yet to find 'engine' modules on the design page. Are these actually in game?

Engines are support modules.

Unikraken wrote:
Every ship should be able to take on multiple targets. The bigger the ship, the more the targets. Targets should be prioritized by their ower:.

Igncom1 wrote:
I think the problem with over kill we are currently having is due to there being to management of a single ships modules, because even when targeting a ship with 1HP left, a ship will use all of its combat mods against it.



he game should really work out the minimum about of mods at their weakest (Using the mods worst possible amount of damage), needed to finish a ship, and then allocate the rest to the next target.

I agree with both of you. This is a no-brainer considering each weapon type on a ship will consist of several discrete modules.

I would contend that re-balancing defenses naturally improves larger ships. My defense change analysis post includes my own personally preferred solution.



I would also contend that Dreadnaughts need some unique trait to make them good besides sheer potential tonnage.



+Module number (Can carry 2 support modules of a given type)

or

+10% all Damage/Defenses

or

-10% Weight of ALL modules.



would be good examples of potential traits. I am especially fond of the first one.