[Discussion] Solving the monohull problem - Endless Space

[Discussion] Solving the monohull problem

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Miskin

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Miskin

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13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 1:24:40 PM

What do you think about this way:

Curisers get +2%dmg bonus each of weapon modul mounted.

Battleship get +2%resist bonus after each defense modul.

Dread get these two bonus combined.

Top of this, +cargo tonage modul scaling with CP size.

1cp +50, +100

2cp +125,+250

4cp +250,+500

This things easly decompansate all fleet bonus, when you can reach with pure monohull fleet. But, for healing things (aka living hull), number will provide some bonuses again.

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MNOne

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MNOne

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13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 10:56:45 AM

The issue seems to me to be tied to a more general problem of the realities of combat steamrollering any strategic considerations about warfare (by which I mean what to build, obviously). In essence we have a handful of strategies coming forward, with limited combinations - 'go beam', 'avoid missiles except in context x', 'go glass cannon', 'go tank' - and all discussions of strategy and tactics come down to tedious comparisons of the effectiveness of these competing molds.

Combat was clearly envisaged as having a strategic element: 'I have these designs, using these hulls, in what combination would they best work?' Regrettably that is missing.

Glaringly, there is no mid-late game role for a cruiser, at least not that I've seen. Once I have the battleship (or my enemy does) there's no real reason to keep updating the design. There's the increased space for invasion mods, but even then there is no combat role for it any more.

It looks like it was intended to fill a fleet support role but it just can't, since the reduced tonnage power mods (the main fleet support mod) take up doesn't make up for the defences and weapons it could take. It seems to me that a battleship could take an identical loadout and still have space for more defence/offence mods. Plus the relative tonnage bonuses between it and the battleship mean it just tends to be the first ship in my fleets to die if it actually takes any of the mods for which it has tonnage reduction.

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Igncom1

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Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

Craver

13 years ago

Jul 15, 2012, 11:35:19 PM

Its almost frightening how well this fits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_tactics_in_the_Age_of_Sail#Tactical_stagnation_in_the_mid-18th_century

And with cruisers/battleships being more effective now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad

AND WITH ME SUGGESTING BIGGER AND BETTER WEAPONS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad#Development_of_naval_guns

....Then arming dreadnaughts with them....i guess its good we are getting fighters....but then will we need A-bombs?

D: whats happening!

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Igncom1

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Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

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13 years ago

Jul 15, 2012, 11:23:37 PM

Thank you.

That's a very interesting dilemma.

If i were to propose a solution, it would be to have medium and large weapons that cannot be fitted to destroyers and corvettes easily (or at all), allowing larger ships to much more easly deal with smaller ones.

But that may present the problem with making larger ships superior, so all in all this is a complex dilemma.

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nosavynada

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nosavynada

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13 years ago

Jul 15, 2012, 10:59:19 PM

The scenario is this.

5 CP fleets ( the CP do not matter it is a comparison of equal CP command fleets)

relatively equal weapon techs

Side A has 2 Cruisers (CA) and 1 Destroyer (DD) For reference the DD is the first researchable hull and is largest 1CP hull

Side B has 5 DD

The contention is that the number of hulls over all produces better throw weight due to "focus fire" in other words the game generally has each ship target only a single other ship each firing round. So the side with the most hulls can use the extra hulls to overwhelm the defenses of one or more of the smaller fleet.

Firing round 1 Side A (takes out 3 DD) Side B depending on weapons and defenses etc could take out all 3 hulls of side A) With side B having 2 ships remaining for second round of fire (unless missiles - only 1 of those per phase.) Missiles will often continue on and hit despite the launcher being destroyed. So the weapons themselves balance out to an extent.

The particular weakness in this scenario seems to be missiles where a single defense module takes out a single missle - no matter the quality of that Flak. So a flak module 3 levels higher will still only take out 1 missile just do it better.

The two operatives in this scenario is first and foremost "focus fire" and secondarily missiles.

That being said - I personally am no longer as sure it is a given. I think that it is a definite advantage that your fleet build and ship design must take into account but that with careful planning it can be done. I am not sure it can be done without some affinity points or research being put into hull space but it can be done.

I am sure I have not covered specific nuances or variations of some personal tactics and not the min/max scenario of Hissho, extra space, extra hit points and cheaper weapons for the DD side but in general that is what I believe the scenario to be.

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Igncom1

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Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

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13 years ago

Jul 15, 2012, 7:07:06 PM

I will admit to not seeing this as much of a problem, so can some one fully say the major details for the problem?

What ship is the one you only use, why is that, what makes it superior specifically.

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nosavynada

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nosavynada

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 15, 2012, 7:04:31 PM

Still doing some evaluation of my own but I feel there is some truth on both sides now. I recently had a balanced defence DN with repair module take on back to back 7 destroyer fleets - 7 in a row and 2 with the destroyers also having heros playing special cards and it survived all of them. Repair saved its bacon. They had missles and beams as armament and the DN had evenly built defenses. After the 2 heroes it was able to gradually get back to full health.

It by the way was armed with advanced kinetics.

While this and one other example are not conclusive it is a case that it can be done. So then other factors will come to bear such as card selection and techs I now think.

PS - for my own part, being a destroyer fleets rule guy - it was a bit like discovery of the Higgs Boson.

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Stalker0

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Stalker0

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13 years ago

Jul 14, 2012, 5:51:26 AM

Igncom1 wrote:
A cruiser can easily outlast 2 glass cannon destroyers.

But 4 fare poorer against 8, and 8 fare poorer against 16.

The key is that as the numbers get larger, more damage is wasted on killing destroyers, while the focus fire effects allow destroyers to kill defended cruisers.

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Solf

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Solf

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 14, 2012, 5:14:44 AM

I disagree with the card idea due to forced auto battles. I don't think the problem is monohull design, it is not about how effective are destroyers, it is about how ineffective are dreadnoughts. There is no point in building DN because there are more efficient alternatives production wise and combat wise.

One thing that might help solve this problem is buffing the DN, make it more usefull. IE: DN exclusive modules, it could be made so heavy that only DN class can equip this module, or just make it DN exclusive. Like a railgun, which needs the entire length of the DN for maximum output. There are flaws though, being single target is one, it could be a cluster warhead though.

Or maybe make happiness take into account system loss and more importantly ships lost. This is logical, we are losing the war/people, our happiness should take a dive. But then I'd think this would be quite hard to implement due to balancing and all the factors it'll touch.

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Evil4Zerggin

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Evil4Zerggin

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13 years ago

Jul 14, 2012, 12:10:19 AM

How are targets chosen? It seems to be random at best, and as evenly distributed as possible at worst. In fact, since all the weapons on a ship shoot at the same target, it would be more correct to say that the destroyers are the ones suffering from focus-fire. If four destroyers fight a dreadnought, the dreadnought is 4 CP of defenses taking 4 CP of fire, while a single 1 CP destroyer will take the entire 4 CP of fire from the dreadnought.

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Igncom1

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Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

Craver

13 years ago

Jul 13, 2012, 11:43:29 PM

Stalker0 wrote:
I'll disagree here. While its true that 1vs1, defense is stronger than offense, that doesn't work with larger fleets.

If you go larger ships with defense, then I will often field 50-200% more ships in my fleet using destroyers. My destroyers can focus fire...and while the defenses of a ship can negate the attacks of 1 or 2 ships it can only take the focus fire for so long before it is destroyed.

A cruiser can easily outlast 2 glass cannon destroyers.

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Stalker0

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Stalker0

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13 years ago

Jul 13, 2012, 11:28:06 PM

Fishman wrote:
Disagree. Since a beam defense is stronger than a beam, I can shut down your entire offense with beam defenses while still having weapons to fire back with.

I'll disagree here. While its true that 1vs1, defense is stronger than offense, that doesn't work with larger fleets.

If you go larger ships with defense, then I will often field 50-200% more ships in my fleet using destroyers. My destroyers can focus fire...and while the defenses of a ship can negate the attacks of 1 or 2 ships it can only take the focus fire for so long before it is destroyed.

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Fishman

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Fishman

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13 years ago

Jul 13, 2012, 7:58:53 PM

Disagree. Since a beam defense is stronger than a beam, I can shut down your entire offense with beam defenses while still having weapons to fire back with. Result: Your fleet gets annihilated, my fleet laughs at you invulnerably. Your destroyers spend the entire battle flinging spitwads at tanks. Your fleet is annihilated. My fleet costs slightly more, but I haven't lost it, while your fleet is now navhaz. Since fleet sizes are CP-limited, you can't bring more firepower to bear on me to counter unless you stop doing that, so your fleets continue to get turned into navhaz while I am invulnerable.

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ruonim

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ruonim

Path Finder

13 years ago

Jul 13, 2012, 2:12:54 PM

Current late game is:

22 destroyes with top beams

Guy that can produce more wins. ( First battle turn they kill each other if u do 2 vs 12 it becomes 0 vs 10)

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nosavynada

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nosavynada

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13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 7:18:58 PM

Well leaving aside the mis-communication issue - I think all the ideas have merit so far. Just for the Designers to take those and or their own for addressing it. Perhaps a poll if needed once they have figured out best ways for implementation.

By the way even with the back and forth, I appreciate the putting forth of ideas and working to a better game.

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Draco18s

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Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 2:03:29 PM

Arwyn wrote:
Actually, the common usage has been "single hull style" fleets, namely destroyers.

The tech only adds a bonus to xp, so thats really not applicable to the use of single ship type fleets.

My point was, with your thread title, I thought this whole issue WAS about the tech.

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Theuglytruth

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Theuglytruth

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13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 4:44:45 AM

put in new tech that uses stratagy cards to affect the combat. example.... you research X tech it gives cruisers/all cp2 hulls benefits vs cp1 hulls.

this idea can be applied to all cp hull types... more example you research X tech that gives all cp3 hull types bonuses vs smaller hulltypes

now the smaller ships should get a card to help them also vs larger ships , the only reason i suggest this idea is that it stays within the card stratagy aspect of the game which i really like. please dont jump on me for the card example im about to give. its just an example

offense

+20% all weapon damage vs smaller cp ship {block +10%}

-10% all weapon damage vs equal or larger cp ships [block-10%]

it could alternatively read

defense

-20% all enemy weapons damage from smaller cp ship [block+10%]

+10% damage all enemy weapons from equal to or larger cp ships [block+10%]

put the above card somewhere appropiate in the tech tree.

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fourteenfour

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fourteenfour

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 10:26:50 AM

After many convoluted solutions to this problem; waves hand as one of those guilt parties; my new suggestion is simply to increase the CP cost for each ship of a certain hull type.

Change CPs to 1/1/2/3/4 (Corvette/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship/Dreadnaught) then reverse it for maximum in a fleet before the cost is increased 50% 4/4/3/2/1 so the first 4 corvettes/destroyers are normal cost, the next are two points (round up), you can have three cruisers before the next one cost you three points, and the seventh would be 5 points. You can have two battleships before the third is three points and the fifth is five points. One dreadnaught, the second costs you six points and the third cost you nine.

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Arwyn

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Arwyn

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13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 4:40:58 AM

Actually, the common usage has been "single hull style" fleets, namely destroyers.

The tech only adds a bonus to xp, so thats really not applicable to the use of single ship type fleets.

The discussion was around what can be done to cure the "nothing but destroyers" fleet approach to winning, thats what I read into the intent of the original poster. I think he has a good idea, since right now, there isnt a good reason to build larger ship types.

While the larger ships are much more survivable, they still suffer vs. a min/maxed destroyer fleet, as you pointed out with your comment about destroyer + Barrier + beams +flak = win.

So, there are still some reasonable concerns that the destroyer fleet is still, unreasonably, king of the hill, making CP2 and larger ships a waste of build points.

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Draco18s

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Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 4:10:16 AM

nosavynada wrote:
I thought Destroyers were still mono hull since it is largest 1CP hull

I thought Mono Hull referred to the technology: mono-hull construction.

(I.e. be careful when choosing your terms!)

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nosavynada

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nosavynada

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13 years ago

Jul 12, 2012, 2:06:36 AM

I think I missed something here...I thought Destroyers were still mono hull since it is largest 1CP hull. I think it is better now but not solved when min/max on custom affinity. However as with many strategies there are different ways to win, and until someone loses against another strategy they are less likely to change their opinion. Also on the blocked mechanics - from the cards in the game I stuck me that the blocked is a bonus to the effect but I freely admit that aspect is still in doubt in my mind. Good discussion though.

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Draco18s

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Draco18s

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13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 7:32:21 PM

Theuglytruth wrote:
people seem to think monohull is solved, it aint, even on endless[thehardestsetting] i destroy every other culture, and its not due to my great 4x skills.

I destroy every other culture too, and it's not because of mono-hull.

The Defense Wall card + beams + small amount of flak on a destroyer = win.

I'd ditch the flak (and add more beams) if my card actually mattered against in-flight-missiles after I destroy all the opposing ships.

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Theuglytruth

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Theuglytruth

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13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 7:04:57 PM

wow, well Draco18s, you seemed to understand the concept of what i meant by the cards, but rather than give any pros or cons on the idea itself you decide to correct my example, and thats ok. we could spend a couple of weeks picking apart my bad examples,grammer, spelling... after this topic dissolves i will start a thread on that.

people seem to think monohull is solved, it aint, even on endless[thehardestsetting] i destroy every other culture, and its not due to my great 4x skills. its because of monohull and the "not quite right create your own race point system". with a piece of "some racial affinitys are just plain worthless" thrown in, but thats another topic.

all people really need to do on this topic is chime in on wheather they like the idea or not.

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Draco18s

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Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 5:22:02 PM

Theuglytruth wrote:
offense

+20% all weapon damage vs smaller cp ship {block +10%}

-10% all weapon damage vs equal or larger cp ships [block-10%]

it could alternatively read

defense

-20% all enemy weapons damage from smaller cp ship [block+10%]

+10% damage all enemy weapons from equal to or larger cp ships [block+10%]

You don't know how the "blocked" effects works, do you? You've got them backwards. The second card right now, if it countered the enemy card, would be WORSE then if it did not.

(-20% damage taken becomes -10% damage taken, and the +10% taken becomes +20%!)

Only the first line of the four would even be close to correct.

It should be:

Benefit (Block: Bonus Benefit)

Check out the Defense Wall card (the one with the fence). It reads:

+50 Armor per ship (Block: +100 armor)

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rickynumber24

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rickynumber24

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 4:16:22 PM

I agree with Ingcom1 that the glass cannon problem has pretty much been solved at this point, but I still think the idea behind the cards is pretty cool. I don't think it's any sort of priority, though. Actually, since there seem to be a dearth of Tactics cards, and this is very much a tactical consideration, I'd say either one should be a tactics card, not a defense or offense card.

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MODNosferatiel

Informer

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." Nerv Motto, Neon Genesis Evangelion

MODNosferatiel

Informer

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 2:48:56 PM

Edited the title.

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Igncom1

Craver

Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

Craver

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 5:11:05 AM

With the increase in strength of defenses, larger ships are easy to keep alive and with the costs associated to building them smaller ones are easy to build en mass.

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Arwyn

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Arwyn

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 5:05:04 AM

Could you elaborate? Since this still seems to be prevalent, what do you see has changed?

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Igncom1

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Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

Craver

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 5:03:40 AM

I dunno about you guys but i don't feel like its much of a problem anymore.

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Arwyn

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Arwyn

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 4:53:44 AM

I like the idea. You could also get there by changing the bonuses granted to hulls based on CP size.

For example, real ships in WW 2 mounted guns based on what the hull could handle. So while a destroyer mounted a 5" gun, a cruiser could mount the same number of guns, but they were 8". Battleships could mount the same number of 14" guns and so on. So while the tech was the same (guns, aka kinetic) the damage potential bigger as the size went up due to the larger caliber.

In game terms, you could add a multiplier based on CP size, so while EVERYTHING else is the same, the effect of the systems is magnified by the hull size. So, the bigger hull sizes will hit harder since they can mount larger versions of the system.

Conversely, you could do the same thing with defenses, the larger hull sizes give a bonus to defense due to larger/heavier/thicker armor/screens/flak.

So, it provides incentives for the larger hull sizes, since they can hit harder and take more punishment.

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nosavynada

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nosavynada

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 4:50:13 AM

So strategy cards to counter the monohull, reason to research (possibly in a different tree to force research in those techs) and there would need to be a counter card as you say to keep the way things work in play. I like it and it could apply to some other ship sizes or types that come later in the game.

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