Posted on Igncom1's other thread



I understand where your coming from, however I would go further as I had an idea I wanted to post on the mono hull thread concerning maintenance costs.



Basically each ship has a maintenance cost. However there is a discount applied if in a properly formed fleet. We would need to change and expand the CP arrangement. I won't touch your costs, it can be set to anything but maintenance should be a flat percent versus the cost of the ship. Don't scale it. 5% is a good rate.



Corvettes and Destroyers would still be 1CP.

Cruisers would be 2CP

Battleships 3CP

Dreadnaughts 4CP



The CP cost of ship also is its discount rate but multiplied by 2. It only applies to ships smaller than itself. How this works:



DN (4CP) can support 8CP of ships in a fleet, but not another DN. A BB (3CP) can support six ships other than another BB or DN.



Call it a squadron. There can be more than one squadron per fleet. Arrangement is automatic. They offer a 33% discount to the maintenance cost for this squadron



So while you could field 22CP of destroyers, it costs you the same as 22 solo destroyers. You could mix some Cruisers in there but each cruiser only supports two destroyers. So a fleet of 7 cruiser squadrons (1CR+2DD) would most likely be cheaper than all but the most ridiculously cheap destroyers.

Really?



I vote no on these overly explained suggestions as i really don't see the problem in the current engine other then fleet expenses not being high enough and the AI being silly.

Shivetya wrote:


Anyway, this is all moot if we accept the fact that fleets with flagships are even viable in a space setting. Even today in our world the Navies are slowly changing to specialized ships that are not necessarily large. Super Carriers and oddity that I think will be gone in our lifetimes, they are just too easy of a target.



So , why do we want to avoid mono hull? So that fleets appear a certain way? Whats a balanced fleet? One large hull and a certain number of smaller hulls?

Simply put, polyhull is more interesting. It lets you change around different compositions, create a variety of different fleets that all have benefits.



And to your point about the modern navy. While I agree with it, we never know what the future might bring. For example, the railgun concept might bring big ships back into play. A perfected railgun could in theory hit a target half way across the planet, for a pittance of the cost of a current cruise missile. But if large ships are required to carry them, that might put them back on the market.



And since this is a SF game, we really shouldn't let current realism interfere with what's fun.

working with my suggestions and even those of others...



If we keep the discount model. Each successive hull gets the bonuses of the previous hull unless otherwise listed.



1- Corvettes get a discount on support modules related to scouting and colonizing

1- Destroyers get a 20% discount to weapons

2- Cruisers get a 20% discount to weapons and support modules other than colonizing and armors

3- Battleships get the cruiser discounts plus 20% to defensive modules

4 -Dreadnaughts get all that battleships get plus 20% to armor modules and get the space module for free (so their effective base tonnage is higher)



Even this might not be enough to push people away from DD spam... or it lend itself DN fleets (granted you only get 5... but damn they are nasty)



But how do we put a reasonable limit on larger hulls? four options

1) Consume special resources

2) By number of systems at colony status or higher. Conquered systems require 10 to 20 turns to be acclimated.

3) Dust only

4) Support is reflected in FIDS, worse it cost more to keep them in the field.



Explaining option 1. Assign a special metal to each hull size greater than Destroyer. The problem with this approach, why would you need the metals after its built?



Explaining option 2. Could be based on colony status or worlds of certain size. Pretty much an oddity from other strategy games



Explaining option 3. Simply double the cost of each size for maintenance. So if a CT is 1, a DD is 2, CR is 4, BB is 8, and a DN is 16... along those lines. Guess money can buy you love.



Explain option 4. More complex than option 3 but could be used to soak resources from F, I, and D. Not too complex for a computer but maybe too much for quick glace from players.





Yet we need a means to force a fleet composition that is aligned with what? WW2 or modern American Super Carrier fleets?





------------



Anyway, this is all moot if we accept the fact that fleets with flagships are even viable in a space setting. Even today in our world the Navies are slowly changing to specialized ships that are not necessarily large. Super Carriers and oddity that I think will be gone in our lifetimes, they are just too easy of a target. Just like they obsoleted battleships they themselves are obsoleted by missile weaponry. We just haven't had to acknowledge that because the guys who can field those weapons have more to gain from trade than war. When this tech becomes more prevalent carriers will either have to stand off so far as to reduce their effectiveness or be mothballed.



So , why do we want to avoid mono hull? So that fleets appear a certain way? Whats a balanced fleet? One large hull and a certain number of smaller hulls?

Another idea might lie in the XP model. Technically if larger ships can get a lot of XP through battle then that allows for larger ships to become better than smaller ones. Right now though it doesn't seem to be as if you get much XP through battle. At least not your fleet, your hero gets a ton!

From another thread:





Solving the MonoHull (aka Destroyer Only) Combat Model - Some Ideas



The Problem: As is discussed commonly on the boards, there is an issue right now where the dominant form of combat is around destroyers. Pound for Pound, weapon only destroyers are outperforming other fleet types (both heavy hulls and mixed fleets). This is leading to a very stagnant combat model.



The goal is to create new designs that encourage other hull use, without simply trading one hull for another. In other words, we don't necessarily want a fleet filled with nothing but dreadnoughts either. Ideally, something approaching a naval flotilla is ideal, wherein a large ship (battleship, air craft carrier) is often escorted by lighter vessels (destroyers and cruisers).



Solutions: With that in mind, we are going to look at a series of proposals to encourage mixed fleet use.



Shared Defense Model: The problem with defense as it stands is its a very selfish way to build a ship. A high defense ship in a fleet might be very safe, but it doesn't help kill the other fleet, and doesn't help the other ships around it from getting annihilated.



The change here is that a large ship's defenses can extend to protect smaller ships. We could see this as large flak batteries covering the fleet, extending shields around other ships, or simply physical blocking shots to cover for the smaller ships. The change would look like this:



CP 2 Ships: 50% defense applied to all CP 1 ships in the fleet.

CP 3 Ships: 50% defense applied to all CP 2 ships in the fleet, 75% defense applied to all CP 1 ships in the fleet.



The numbers would have to be tested and tweaked of course. But the idea here is that a large ship provides a cornerstone for the fleet, and its defense protections protect itself and the fleet, ultimately making the fleet stronger by its presence. But designed this way, it encourages mixed fleet use.



Cost Re-balancing Model:

This was an idea I saw on the boards and believe it is worth reiterating here.



The idea is this:

1) Larger ships are more efficient in combat per CP.

2) Smaller ships are more efficient in combat per Industry (and perhaps maintenance as well).



So if I want the best possible fleet, I would use large ships, but the cost is very prohibitive. However, such a fleet used tactically would defeat any lesser fleet. On the other hand, I can generate smaller fleets much more quickly, and can also cover more territory with more fleets available to me.



I think its a good idea, but ultimately I think the question is could the balance be made such that it would still encourage different ship use? If the CP saving is too good, then as industry ramps up in an empire fleets will move to larger ships. Or if the industry savings are too good, then players will ram cheap fleets against the more expensive large fleets and still consider it a superior style of warfare.



So I don't know if this solution alone is enough to fix the problem, but it seems a good place to begin.



Positional Differences:

Right now, fleet battles take place in one of three areas:

1) Home Influence

2) Enemy Influence

3) No influence.



We could make it that different ship types perform better in different areas. For example, it would make sense that a swarm of ships would fare better in your own territory as they rely on external communications equipment for much of their coordination. However, in enemy territory, jamming and the like might make such coordination more difficult, and a fleet of fewer ships with their own internal systems would perform better. A player might then switch his fleet compositions as he moves from defense to offense and vice versa.



Such a system might look like this:



1) CP 1: -15% offense and defense in enemy influence.

2) CP 2: -5% offense and defense in enemy influence.

3) CP 3: No penalty.



Special Resource Module:



Endless space already uses a strategic resource model, and could be pushed further to help fleet balancing.



In this system, larger ships are strictly superior to smaller ones. However, building them actually lowers your strategic resource pool (until the ship is scraped or destroyed). This means that building those big ships might cost you some bonuses or even a monopoly.



So players would want to build big ships, but often couldn't because they didn't have the resources or don't want to break their monopolies. So bigger ships would be scarce, and small ships would be built to fill in the fleet and protect these key investments. If anyone is familiar with Civilization V, this is similar to the model used there.





Special Module Adjustment:



Another idea is for bigger ships to provide fleet bonuses in terms of modules. The fleet bonuses themselves would probably apply best to a group of small ships, thereby encouraging the flotilla model. In order for big ships to be the ones carrying the modules around (instead of just a bunch of small ships) we would need to take steps:



1) Small Ships can't use certain modules. Some modules just require too much space and power for a CP 1 ship to use.

2) Big ships get great bonuses on modules. They already do now, but the bonus might be increased to make it even better.

3) Big ships can hold more modules. Right now, many modules are one copy per ship. Perhaps a CP 2 ship could hold 2 copies, and a CP 3 - 3 copies. Or more, if that is what balancing requires.







Conclusion:



So in conclusion we have a number of different ideas here, and many more on the boards. I think the key with many of these is that they do not require completely new systems. I know some have argued for brand new battle systems or positional combat, etc. I feel those people are going to be disappointed, we are simply too far into the game to start making those radical changes. But these types of changes are pretty easy to implement, and can be very effective in solving the issue.



I think it is very interesting

Just found this thread. I had proposed some ideas to fix the problem here if anyone is interested: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12153-solving-the-monohull-aka-destroyer-only-combat-model-several-ways

Maybe weapons should only be permitted to fire in their own zones? because you just wast a lot of kinetic ammo in long range-why bother simulating it, give the game a reason to actually progress into medium and short ranges?

Thomas.Trainor wrote:
It isn't a good answer at all, the chief part of the issue has nothing to do with tonnage equality and everything to do with large ships wasting all of their CP on single ships when they fire. What you are proposing would make larger ships even worse because all the extra tonnage would be a complete waste when it already has the tonnage to destroy destroyers.

I think that at a certain point you know you don't need any more guns on a ship... as you say they only shoot one ship at a time but i'm just saying that if i had enough space to make my ginormous ship a defensive power house and be able to take the heat from 4 destroyers until the melee phase and blow up one each round, then yeah it'd still be a draw but i'd feel a hell of a lot better about my dreadnought. Instead right now he just gets destroyed first phase.



I understand what you are saying about the CP being wasted and i'm not trying to solve that, i'm just putting out an idea to try and make the heavier ships more relevant in a fashion. The only thing that later game ships have on 1 CP ships is that they might actually survive a fight, and if you take that to a level that matters then hopefully it will create a change in the gameplay.

ES has the inverse of most space strategy games: Most space strategy games have biggest pwns anything not-the-biggest. It certainly seems silly that you research advanced technology that is less proficient than older tech, but I don't necessarily want to see the situation reversed to rehash the tired old cliche of "only the biggest win."



Given the simplistic "hit, deflect/absorb/missile-intercept, or miss" combat phases/rounds, I think the solution could work around this. Adjust chance-to-hit a target based on the target's size and engine speed: the smaller it is, the harder to hit; the faster it is, the harder to hit as well. I think there is an opportunity here to make missiles more useful: make missiles immune to at least the size, since they are self-propelled and should be self-tracking (but maybe still make faster engines equate to better chances at missile evasion).



On the other end, the larger a ship is, the more punishment it should be able to take; perhaps increasingly larger ships get corresponding basic armor increases that are able to absorb more punishment (before HP is reduced from a hit). The actual numbers could be balanced and tweaked to make it as zero-sum as possible (that is, equal CPs of fleets of small ships versus identical-total-CP fleet of large ships should have an as-close-as-possible 50/50 chance of either side being victorious, assuming identical weapons/defense/etc. technology and combat tactic cards). The more adept player who has the right technology to counter the opposing fleet, and plays a stronger set of combat cards would then win.

NewHorizon wrote:
I don't think the solution needs to be very complicated, just increase the space on later game ships so they could match equal CP of destroyers in combat. like one dreadnought should be able to go toe to toe with 4 destroyers, but in practice it just gets blown to hell, at least in my experience.



This answer is good because now you don't have to make later game ships to win, and you don't have to spam 1 CP ships to win, you have a choice based on what you like and what your situation is.

It isn't a good answer at all, the chief part of the issue has nothing to do with tonnage equality and everything to do with large ships wasting all of their CP on single ships when they fire. What you are proposing would make larger ships even worse because all the extra tonnage would be a complete waste when it already has the tonnage to destroy destroyers.

I don't think the solution needs to be very complicated, just increase the space on later game ships so they could match equal CP of destroyers in combat. like one dreadnought should be able to go toe to toe with 4 destroyers, but in practice it just gets blown to hell, at least in my experience.



This answer is good because now you don't have to make later game ships to win, and you don't have to spam 1 CP ships to win, you have a choice based on what you like and what your situation is.

Shivetya wrote:
Here is another angle.



Currently Corvettes/Destroyers are 1cp, Cruisers/Battleships are 2cp, and a Dreadnaught is 4cp.



Allow the CP cost of a larger hull to cover the costs of half its command points in smaller vessels.



Example, twenty point fleet.

20 Destroyers

-or-

5 Dreadjaughts (which add ten extra cps for smaller ships) and 10 Destroyers

-or-

5 Dreadnaughts (+10) 5 Cruisers (+5) and 5 Destroyers.

-or-

10 Cruisers provide 10 extra points for +10 Destroyers

etc/etc.



Still that leaves not much variety, you can end up with a large number of small ships and it might make fleets large...



So changing up the rate of gifted CPs so that the first gives its full CP rating back, the second half, the third one less than half etc..

So DNs would gift four, two, one, and zero. Cruisers would award one then zero



Making twenty point fleets

3DN -12F +5G

1CR -2F +1G



So 14 points spent of the 20 on larger hulls providing a gift of 6 extra points so your left with 12 points which is another 3 DNs or 6CRs or 12DDs



More effective and balanced looking than just 20DDs



If you extend out the types and change their bonuses



DN is 4cp, gifts 4+2+1

BB is 3cp, gifts 2+1

CR is 2cp, gifts 1

DD is 1cp

CT is 1cp

TN is 1cp

Interesting idea. Seeing mono hull fleets would definitely be a lot more seldom with that change.

I still see the problem of an optimal combination with this. There would be no real choice on how to compose your fleet or what to produce. There is that one optimal combination you want, no matter what.



But I could take it as a good alternative to allowing bigger ships to target more enemies at once.

Earlier there was the idea of adding the tradeoff between efficiency and effectivety in the sense of making bigger ships more expensive per ton, but giving them more tonnage per used CP. With the effect of making destroyers the economical choice and dreadnaughts the power choice. Every ship class inbetween would be one step inbetween extreme economic and extreme powerful.



A combination of the two might be possible.

Instead of better tonnage ratio for bigger ships they could add extra CP for smaller ones.

Would be a nice effect, but I still think the concept is more complicated to understand than the simple economic/power tradeoff.

But yes.... I like the idea anyway. It's a nice concept

All the numbers are are calculated once the round starts, it shouldn't be hard to tell the game to avoid overkill on a module by module basis, unless the game clumps all of the values into a single pool that is.

Well the problem with doing the calculation the AI would need premonition to know how much firepower to use on a single target, I say that because it cannot guarantee a 100% hit rate. In effect it would need to know its hit rate

I agree, the game should be able to calculate how meany weapon modules a ship will need to take it down, and then move the rest tot he next target.



You will still get overkill, as a 50 damage missile will still be fired at a 1hp ship, but it will prevent 15 of them being fired at one ship.



Traditionally big ships lose because small enough ships are able to carry enough firepower to take them down, However in the current ES balancing with the defensive mods, its looking like battleships might have the edge in cost effectiveness, with the bonus to defenses allowing the to equip more defenses then the destroyer can equip extra weapons.



because 20% of 100 is 20, but 20% of 200 is 40. so an extra 20 tonnage for defenses should theoretically allow battleships to kill destroyers of equal CP.

I believe a rework of defenses to promote larger ships in a fair and balanced context would dramatically improve ship diversity.



Small ships will always have a role in the current system - to apply the most fleet-wide bonuses per CP possible, using limited modules (1 per ship). I believe retaining this role is important and easily achievable.



If larger ships are balanced to retain superior combat implications - which can be achieved by relatively minor defense reworks - then the interplay of large and small ships in fleets becomes a mechanic through which they travel, repair, and more readily achieve combat bonuses for minimal cost.



In short, this is quite achievable with minimal changes.

Mainah wrote:
I'm not sure that even as things stand a fleet of glass destroyers is your best option for every situation. If you're fighting away from your production centers you might want some staying power in your fleets. Plus the specialized hulls can make for good role-specialized fleets, invasion fleets, fast-response, etc. Sure you're going to end up with the bulk of your fleet in smaller ships but there's nothing wrong with that I think.

Yep. The one asset the bigger hulls have is being able to survive fights to repair etc. afterwards, while destroyers are often lost investments. Combined with some "mothership"-like special abilities for the larger hulls, I think it's possible to achieve some variety in fleets, with small ships being cheap and replacable workhorses and bigger ships being the support backbone, that is the most likely to gather some XP as well.

I'm not sure that even as things stand a fleet of glass destroyers is your best option for every situation. If you're fighting away from your production centers you might want some staying power in your fleets. Plus the specialized hulls can make for good role-specialized fleets, invasion fleets, fast-response, etc. Sure you're going to end up with the bulk of your fleet in smaller ships but there's nothing wrong with that I think. Finally I did like the previously stated idea of giving damage bonuses to larger CP ships as they're simply able to mount larger weapons even if they're of the same "type".



(this is already in someway present as larger ships can more easily afford the 20% hp malus from the energy module that gives damage bonuses)

honestly I think the best goal which is at all practical is make "the best hull" still be there, but vary depending on the nature of your race more.