re: ShuShu

All calculations were performed using data from previous patches prior to many balance mechanics shifts. To suggest that the math underlying the evaluation is wrong given that it does not match current game play conditions is indefensible hyperbole. It is akin to saying that Dinosaurs could never have been alive because I haven't seen any living ones.



The underlying theory was criticized for not taking into account fleet composition. In the posted pseudo-example it was suggested that a 12 destroyers versus 1 dreadnaught + 8 destroyers would be a better test. However, this assumes that the economic equivalent of a dreadnaught is 4 destroyers. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but IIRC a glass cannon destroyer costs $84? Regardless of the actual number, I'm not sure your dreadnaught costs that same as 4 destroyers. I show calculations and evaluations of this most more extensively in another post, which I'm not going to go look up. You can, and then get back to me with some actual numbers rather than vague hand waving. However, since this was performed based on data from patches 16?+ revisions ago, I don't particularly care about the outcome.



Continuing, lets just assume that 1 dreadnaught + 8 destroyers is the same price as 12 destroyers (they aren't, just pretend they are). Combat orders would be to spreadfire, so both fleets suffer losses of 8 glass cannons (plus some damage to the dreadnaught and another dead destroyer), which puts us right back into the X destroyer versus 1 dreadnaught situation.



Continuing, let's consider Combat Cards. The short version is: go browse the forum and read the discussions on the weaknesses of the combat card system. The net result is that under proper play conditions, cards have little to no effect beyond abusing the retreat cards. Additionally, Glass Cannons make this very simple because they don't need to survive, regardless of the result of the round they will almost always take lethal damage and die. Taking 100% of your health in damage is the same as taking 5000% of your health in damage.



Finally, your counter argument started by assuming your ships always won, and then stated that your ships would continue to win, even more, because they had previously won, gained experience and now were even better than they used to be. No numbers, no facts, and a circular argument. My counter argument is: I like pie. I also hope you continue to enjoy playing Endless Space. Cheers.



re: armor & defenses

It all depends on the relative efficiency of weapons, defenses, and ships. IIRC per 1.1.17 large ships with armor and stacked defenses were virtually immortal. Per 1.1.14? ships with 23? shields were actually immortal (per previous thread). Arguing about balance and ship design when the underlying mechanisms and values change so drastically without including patch versions is not productive.

Indeed. That's the sort of thinking I've been having too Darkscis. Another alternative I had, is just forget these range phase labels entirely and think of them as "How much information we've acquired for a weapon lock".

• In the first phase (i.e., "long range"), the "We just saw them on radar, start shooting" phase, all weapons have a large reduction on accuracy (75% or so). Make it large enough so that only "Long Range" weapons can hit reliably.
• Then we move into the second phase (i.e., "medium range"), the "we have a rough targeting solution, continue shooting but now we have a better idea of where they are" phase, all weapons have a moderate reduction on accuracy (50% or so). Make it large enough so that "Long" and "Medium" Range weapons can hit reliably.
• Then we move into the third phase (i.e., "short range"), the "we know exactly where they are now, full power to the front guns" phase, no reduction on accuracy, all weapons hit at normal accuracy.
  
  

The end result would be:

• Accurate Slow Weapons (i.e., Long Range Weapons) would always hit (guaranteed damage across all phases), but be slower (maybe) and require longer to aim. A gun analogy would be a Rifle.
• Inaccurate Weapons (i.e., Short Range Weapons) would have a higher chance to hit once you get close (damage ramps up as the phases go on), but be fast (maybe) and require no time to aim. A gun analogy would be an Uzi.
• Medium Weapons (i.e., Medium Range Weapons) which would be halfway in between both weapon systems.
  
  

So you could then design your fleets to rely on the alpha strike ("long range") or be melee ships that weather the storm until they get a good enough target lock to unleash the fires of hell (short range ships). Combining this with some changes in the formation and targeting rules, and I think we'd have the start of something good.

For any sort of accuracy type changes to work you would need to make accuracy and evasion a viable mechanic, which you have already proven is not in your other thread. I don't tend to agree with evasion in a space simulator game anyway - for fighters and bombers yes, but not for the bigger ships that can carry them (and I do class destroyers as "bigger" ships seeing as they are obviously big enough to carry a compliment of 5 or 6 (whatever it is) fighters along with everything else.



I would hope my suggestion would lead to a lot more balanced fleets rather than an all-in approach. You theoretically should see a mix of long range weapon destroyers coupled with medium range ships to soften them up until the short range where your capital ships take everything out. Then again, there is no telling how a human player will build their fleets but what I am hoping is that there are viable counters to each strategy. The counter to mass long range destroyer spam would be cruiser type ships loaded with defenses and medium weapons, able to fire on them before they can retreat. The counter to medium range ships is obviously short range capital ships that prevent them from retreating and thus draw them into short range combat. The counter to short range ships? Massed long range destroyers that retreat before the short range phase.

my head hurts



Apart from that very impressive post

Good news on this front:

1.1.15 (VIP-Beta-Patch) reshuffled everything you know about weapons/defenses once again!



My personal impression is: It's much, much better than both 1.1.9 and 1.1.14.



I hope Meedoc will do a little writeup about what he did because the Patchnotes are not really going into details here:

"Weapons and defense balancing of some values."

which imho is not worded quite accurately anyways as "Weapons and defense almost completely revamped once again" seems more realistic in reflecting the changes



Here's some things I noticed so far:



Tonnage usage is as follows:

Missiles > Beams > Kinetics

LR > MR > M (for all types!)



Salvos is now always:

1/Round for Missiles

2/Round for Beams

4/Round for Kinetics



Defenses are much tougher. I'd say even stronger than in 1.1.9 BUT weapons also do a lot more damage than in 1.1.9.



I'm not sure, but it looks like Hull-Weakness is once again the same for everything.

Unfortunately I was only able to test small vs. small battles and small vs. medium battles. It seemed that defenses on small ships were really helpfull once again.

Ail wrote:
Good news on this front:

1.1.15 (VIP-Beta-Patch) reshuffled everything you know about weapons/defenses once again!



My personal impression is: It's much, much better than both 1.1.9 and 1.1.14.



I hope Meedoc will do a little writeup about what he did because the Patchnotes are not really going into details here:

"Weapons and defense balancing of some values."

which imho is not worded quite accurately anyways as "Weapons and defense almost completely revamped once again" seems more realistic in reflecting the changes



Here's some things I noticed so far:



Tonnage usage is as follows:

Missiles > Beams > Kinetics

LR > MR > M (for all types!)



Salvos is now always:

1/Round for Missiles

2/Round for Beams

4/Round for Kinetics



Defenses are much tougher. I'd say even stronger than in 1.1.9 BUT weapons also do a lot more damage than in 1.1.9.



I'm not sure, but it looks like Hull-Weakness is once again the same for everything.

Unfortunately I was only able to test small vs. small battles and small vs. medium battles. It seemed that defenses on small ships were really helpfull once again.

Those changes sound so promising, I love you for sharing it and hate you for teasing them.

re:Ail - You need to delete some messages from your private messages log. It is currently full and you can't receive any new ones.



I don't suppose you could do a diff on the files? No worries if you can't, it would just be nice to see what they are doing.



Also, given your post, it seems that you are unfamiliar with diff or similar functions. It is a name for a type of function that is very straightforward, it compares two files (or sets of files) and notes the "diff"erences between them.



Many programs have diff, and it depends on how comfortable you are with it and computers to see what version you want.

WinMerge is one such program: See http://winmerge.org/ OpenSource & Free

Once installed, it is pretty easy to use. All you need to do is have have copies of the data you want to compare, in this case copies of the 1.1.14 and 1.1.15 files. I've got a special directory setup with a copy of the unique data files for each patch as a reference collection on my disk (I've got 1.1.9, and 1.1.14). Just select the directory for the right file (e.g., 1.1.14) and the left file (e.g., 1.1.15) and hit compare. It will provide a list of files that: changed, did not change, and are new. You can then double click on a file to bring it up in a two paned window, with one file of the left, the other on the right, and the differences between the two highlighted.



So see what changed then all you have to do is open up files that changed (or are new) and then skip down until you come to the highlighted sections.



If that's not clear enough, ask away and I can be more specific or address any issues.

I know what a diff is and usually use the Diff-Function of Total-commander for the purpose of comparing ES-files.



But the list of files that have been changed is quite long. Around 15 or so at least. Some of them, like the files for the weapons and defenses have changes in every item, so I figured giving a small oversight over what's happening would be more appropriate.



I'm not sure If I'm allowed to, but theoretically I could zip all the modified XML-files and upload them here for people who really want to dig the matter. (Not now, though, as I'm not at home, would be in the late evening hours (CET) but still a lot sooner than the patch will hit)



The reason for thinking I don't know what diffing is, probably was my sentence about hull-weakness starting off with "I think". I have to admit I didn't diff Hulls.xml, I only looked into it. And all Items in it had the HullWeakness set to "0" where I expected it to be "100" or something like that. So if you have your Hulls.xml at hand, you might take a look and tell me what you see.



@Gaizokubanu: I really don't know why in the case of 1.1.14 the Devs decided to make it public while in the case of 1.1.15 they didn't. It's not like there is any secret NDA content in it. Only bug-fixes and balance-changes as far as I can tell.

Hi there,



The patch 1.1.15 should be release today as a beta, and if everything goes well, it should become the patch we'll publicly release during the next week. Beside the release of the patch, I'll post an explanation on the different changes.



Cheers,

Meedoc wrote:
Hi there,



The patch 1.1.15 should be release today as a beta, and if everything goes well, it should become the patch we'll publicly release during the next week. Beside the release of the patch, I'll post an explanation on the different changes.



Cheers,

Very nice. Welcome back.

Ail wrote:


The reason for thinking I don't know what diffing is, probably was my sentence about hull-weakness starting off with "I think". I have to admit I didn't diff Hulls.xml, I only looked into it. And all Items in it had the HullWeakness set to "0" where I expected it to be "100" or something like that. So if you have your Hulls.xml at hand, you might take a look and tell me what you see.

No worries. Thanks for being more specific. HullWeakness in 1.1.9 was set to 100 for each ship, in 1.1.14 it was set to 100,200,300 for big, medium,little ships.

Meedoc wrote:
Hi there,



The patch 1.1.15 should be release today as a beta, and if everything goes well, it should become the patch we'll publicly release during the next week. Beside the release of the patch, I'll post an explanation on the different changes.



Cheers,

That sounds great.

I remember posting a GalCiv II who will win this battle question to the GCII forum along several of the lines of this thread. Ultimately, much to everyone's surprise and very much to the surprise of the simulator boys, the Glass cannons got wasted. (tested by save/reload game with new seed).



Whatever the gaming system, I think it is important that all monochromatic solutions are powerful, but easily countered by less monochromatic fleet makeups. I like the dynamic where specialization is most efficient but not optimal. Glass Cannons verses Dreadnoughts is not a fair test. 12 Glass cannons verses Dreadnought+ 8 glass cannons might be a very different outcome.





As for this test, as with the GCII test, common knowledge underestimates the value of leveled up fleets. I have little concrete evidence for its value here, but my feel is that it is not something to be ignored here as well. So not only are you sending Glass Cannons against my mixed fleet. Your rookie glass cannons are going up against a fleet that has already destroyed hundreds of glass cannons.



Finally, this test ignored the battle cards. How can you ignore battle cards when the battle cards alone can reduce the effectiveness of your monochromatic fleet in half much less potentially repair all the damage inflicted to my fleet each round it is inflicted.

From what I can gather, having at least one of each defence is necessary to seriously cut down on enemy fire-power.



Then (Just like in GC2) HP modules can make you the most insufferable tank imaginable.

Igncom1 wrote:
From what I can gather, having at least one of each defence is necessary to seriously cut down on enemy fire-power.



Then (Just like in GC2) HP modules can make you the most insufferable tank imaginable.

That is the case. All armor, no defense used to be the way to go in vanilla, and heavy armor and light defense worked great. But now, having little to no defense merits a quick defeat. It makes defenses a little too powerful, actually. The only way I can kill the Harmony is with bombers.

I don't understand why you would have long, medium and short range weapons if they can all fire all the way from long range to short range anyway. The point of classifying them should be that short range weapons do HUGE damage, but cannot fire until the short range phase. Medium should be able to fire at medium and short, and long can fire in the long range and medium (with a penalty) but not the short (not enough time to prime the warhead after launch).



What this boils down to is a choice of whether you use long range missles in "hit & run" style battles where you fire for the long range then retreat, whether you use medium range weapons as an attempt to "counter-all" (and to get a few shots at the retreating long range ships) or whether you load up on defenses and survive long enough for the pounding of short combat.



So in this situation I would classify it as something like this:

Long range weapons: Fire once in long range at 100% damage, fire once in medium range at 75% damage, can not fire in short range.

Medium range weapons: Can not fire in long range, fire twice in medium range at 100% damage, fire twice in short range at 75% damage.

Short range weapons: Can not fire in long range, can not fire in medium range, fire four times in short range at 200% damage.



Obviously the numbers would need to be tweaked and balanced but you get the general idea behind it. You then have a choice how you want to build your ships, the weapon range choices are actually meaningful and you would need to constantly be responding to the enemies tactics. If they use long range, you can either use long range and both fleets die at once, or you can load up on the corresponding defense (most likely flak) and survive until medium/short range and tear them apart.



I think for this system to work you would need to have some sort of way to prevent retreat as well, similar to the Sheredyn affinity. Perhaps a battle card that can be played, eg if they use normal retreat and you do not block it then they get away without suffering shots. If you use "Blockade Retreat" then it counters normal retreat and they get stuck in combat for that round and can try again next round. They would also then have the option to do an "Offensive Retreat" which is already in place - this should be a combination of the two. Yes, they do successfully get away but it's after the round ends, rather than halfway through. This would then mean that the long range hit & run tactics either need to offensively retreat in the medium range suffering a full round of medium range fire or run the risk of their normal retreat being blocked and getting stuck in combat and thrust into the short range.



EDIT: The upside of a system like this is that you also make the bigger hulls more necessary. Obviously, to make the full use of short range weapons you need bigger hulls with more tonnage available to load up on the defenses needed to survive into the short range in the first place. This brings us to a more traditional role for each class, with the smaller destroyer types being loaded with long range weapons, the mid class ones being packed with medium range weapons and the huge capital ships going toe to toe with high powered short range weapons.

thuvian wrote:
re: ShuShu

All calculations were performed using data from previous patches prior to many balance mechanics shifts. To suggest that the math underlying the evaluation is wrong given that it does not match current game play conditions is indefensible hyperbole. It is akin to saying that Dinosaurs could never have been alive because I haven't seen any living ones.

I mentioned Battle Cards and fleet leveling up. I did not realize those were new additions.

thuvian wrote:
re: ShuShu

The underlying theory was criticized for not taking into account fleet composition. In the posted pseudo-example it was suggested that a 12 destroyers versus 1 dreadnaught + 8 destroyers would be a better test. However, this assumes that the economic equivalent of a dreadnaught is 4 destroyers. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but IIRC a glass cannon destroyer costs $84? Regardless of the actual number, I'm not sure your dreadnaught costs that same as 4 destroyers. I show calculations and evaluations of this most more extensively in another post, which I'm not going to go look up. You can, and then get back to me with some actual numbers rather than vague hand waving. However, since this was performed based on data from patches 16?+ revisions ago, I don't particularly care about the outcome.

You are still making the same arguments now, leaving out the same variables now, so it really is irrelevant whether the dollar cost is $84 or $94 because, well... your cost constraint is misguided. Evaluating ship capabilities based on construction cost makes sense if total ship strength determines outcomes. But, as with GalCivII, fleet capacity is a greater constraint than manufacturing cost. The true cost is fleet capacity, not dollar cost.

thuvian wrote:
re: ShuShu

Continuing, lets just assume that 1 dreadnaught + 8 destroyers is the same price as 12 destroyers (they aren't, just pretend they are). Combat orders would be to spreadfire, so both fleets suffer losses of 8 glass cannons (plus some damage to the dreadnaught and another dead destroyer), which puts us right back into the X destroyer versus 1 dreadnaught situation.

Yep… that’s why I said ‘might’. It was shorthand for… you consider battles as individual unrelated events. Repeat the above scenario 10 times. My dreadnought has now leveled up considerably. Your glass cannons which survived the first battle did not survive the subsequent ones. So the glass cannon side of the equation has not changed. The dreadnought side, however… is very different.

thuvian wrote:
re: ShuShu

Continuing, let's consider Combat Cards. The short version is: go browse the forum and read the discussions on the weaknesses of the combat card system. The net result is that under proper play conditions, cards have little to no effect beyond abusing the retreat cards. Additionally, Glass Cannons make this very simple because they don't need to survive, regardless of the result of the round they will almost always take lethal damage and die. Taking 100% of your health in damage is the same as taking 5000% of your health in damage.

.

Sounds like you are saying that if you are right, cards don’t matter.

Although that last sentence sounds more like, if it is not an evenly matched fight, the battle cards won’t matter.



I agree, I cannot argue against either claim.

thuvian wrote:
re: ShuShu

Finally, your counter argument started by assuming your ships always won, and then stated that your ships would continue to win, even more, because they had previously won, gained experience and now were even better than they used to be. No numbers, no facts, and a circular argument. My counter argument is: I like pie. I also hope you continue to enjoy playing Endless Space. Cheers.

.

You can say ‘I like pie’. You can even say that is the equivalent something I said. But when you do, your paraphrase should be accurate.

My counter argument assumes SOME of my ships always SURVIVE. You also accuse me of making up my observations. Here we have a difference of opinion. I trust observed behavior more than I trust theoretical numbers. I do not see my fleets losing 100% of their ships. Even in the battles I lose, I tend to have survivors. My glass cannons die, my ships built to be more resilient level up. Be it play style, or be it some subtle interaction of the variables you don’t include (say fleet leader focusing on accuracy downgrades… those aren’t in your model either, are they?) I do have ships that survive and level up. If I understand correctly, I should play my battle cards so that my entire fleet is destroyed when I lose a battle, and then I would see how the numbers don’t lie… and yet, I am not convinced.

thuvian wrote:
re: ShuShu

re: armor & defenses

It all depends on the relative efficiency of weapons, defenses, and ships. IIRC per 1.1.17 large ships with armor and stacked defenses were virtually immortal. Per 1.1.14? ships with 23? shields were actually immortal (per previous thread). Arguing about balance and ship design when the underlying mechanisms and values change so drastically without including patch versions is not productive.

As of last week, I believe you are arguing for long range glass cannons, and I am advocating for self-repairing ships relying on battle cards and repair capabilities (oh… did I forget to mention that is another variable you leave out). When was this debate resolved again?



I respect you, I respect your efforts to deconstruct game mechanics. I even leverage that wisdom to take next steps in understanding what is happening. I am not attacking you… just your narrow focused blinders on approach to… err… just questioning some of your sacred cows.

I have to admit your posts baffle me. You start with claims that have face validity and seem reasonable (but are generally flawed), and then take things out of context or in the wrong direction and end up seeming like you are trolling the board. Your arguments about "tank ships" are a good example. I'm virtually certain that no active posters who have studied the current mechanics support such designs. Yet, you have continued to claim that people are divided on this. My best guess is that english is not your primary language and we are failing to communicate accurately.

ShuShu62 wrote:
I mentioned Battle Cards and fleet leveling up. I did not realize those were new additions.

I'm not sure how you got this claim. Neither is new. My post was about the combat mechanics, specific values, and the underlying formulae. This is completely out of context.

You are still making the same arguments now, leaving out the same variables now, so it really is irrelevant whether the dollar cost is $84 or $94 because, well... your cost constraint is misguided. Evaluating ship capabilities based on construction cost makes sense if total ship strength determines outcomes. But, as with GalCivII, fleet capacity is a greater constraint than manufacturing cost. The true cost is fleet capacity, not dollar cost.

Leaving out what variables?



Cost constraint is NOT misguided. Total ship strength (this is an undefined term, I'm not sure what you mean here, but I'll use it as you have used it), IS how wars are evaluated. Fleet capacity does limit you, but doesn't have the effect that economic strength does. The reason is simple, 1 dreadnaught can cost as much as 30-50 destroyers. To claim that single combats involving that dreadnaught and another fleet of equal CP strength is the proper comparison is very strange. It isn't a single combat that resolves a war. It's ALL of the combats. If you have a fleet of 6 dreadnaught, I'd have several fleets to contain my ~180-300 destroyers (based on previous estimates which are just examples). Saying that the first combat is the only one that matter dismisses the other 162-282 ships. Sure your ships will survive combat, sure they'll gain experience. But they will take damage and won't survive combat with the other ships. The point of all of this is to make cost effective ships.



These ideas have been discussed in other threads, accompanied by math. You've been invited several times to present your own arguments and numbers. However, you keep responding with hypothetical situations and no way to validity your theories. The key of the scientific method is to present something that can be empirically validated and rejected, there is no way to reject any of your claims because they are not specific enough to be replicated. If we did create situation and your method failed, would you accept you are wrong, or say that we didn't do it right? If it is the later, then please, provided sufficient evidence to represent your argument accurately.

Yep… that’s why I said ‘might’. It was shorthand for… you consider battles as individual unrelated events. Repeat the above scenario 10 times. My dreadnought has now leveled up considerably. Your glass cannons which survived the first battle did not survive the subsequent ones. So the glass cannon side of the equation has not changed. The dreadnought side, however… is very different.

I believe the previous response answers this. I've never considered battles to unrelated. In the results I list above, the dreadnaughts are annihilated (which means they don't get a second battle). The destroyers are assumed to die, because we don't care if they survive or not. If they do survive it only makes our case stronger. Now, you might say, well, I'll just retreat my ships and hide them on the planet after each battle. That's fine. You still have 172-282 ships to worry about. Plus, what happens if I start dropping troops on your planets. You can't retreat and stay in the war, so you have to fight as much as possible. This brings us back to the above situation.

Sounds like you are saying that if you are right, cards don’t matter.

Although that last sentence sounds more like, if it is not an evenly matched fight, the battle cards won’t matter.

I agree, I cannot argue against either claim.

This has been discussed in other posts in detail. Go reference those if you are interested.

You can say ‘I like pie’. You can even say that is the equivalent something I said. But when you do, your paraphrase should be accurate.

It's posts like these that really make you think you are trolling. I never said you like pie. I said I like pie. The rest of my paraphrases have been extremely accurate. Unlike yours which take everything out of context and then distort it.

My counter argument assumes SOME of my ships always SURVIVE.

How are your ships surviving? Per the previous responses I don't see how this is happening, unless you are talking about playing against the AI. In which case, all of this is for naught, because the AI is bad. The AI has huge resource bonuses and some significant ship bonuses. But it has horrible tactics and strategy. If you are saying it is an AI only strategy then... I don't really care? Finding a special case solution for a highly constrained solution is of very little interest. Virtually any strategy would work in those cases.

You also accuse me of making up my observations. Here we have a difference of opinion. I trust observed behavior more than I trust theoretical numbers. I do not see my fleets losing 100% of their ships. Even in the battles I lose, I tend to have survivors. My glass cannons die, my ships built to be more resilient level up. Be it play style, or be it some subtle interaction of the variables you don’t include (say fleet leader focusing on accuracy downgrades… those aren’t in your model either, are they?) I do have ships that survive and level up.

I don't suggest you are making up observations. I suggest you provide no evidence for those observations. Day and day out people come on the forum, make some unsupported claims and then get angry when people disagree. Unless you can provide evidence there is no way to refute your arguments with any sort of validity.

(say fleet leader focusing on accuracy downgrades… those aren’t in your model either, are they?)

This is another example of why I think you are trolling. If you have read anything about the combat mechanics, you know what my response to this is. If you are serious about understanding the combat mechanisms you should go read the various threads on them.

If I understand correctly, I should play my battle cards so that my entire fleet is destroyed when I lose a battle, and then I would see how the numbers don’t lie… and yet, I am not convinced.

Really? You are really saying that my advice was to follow a "all my ships die (when I lose a battle) strategy"? I don't even have a response to this. Either you are misunderstanding, in which case you really need to go back and read things. Sure, I'm confusing at times, but not that confusing. Or you are trolling me, in which case I'm very gullible.

As of last week, I believe you are arguing for long range glass cannons, and I am advocating for self-repairing ships relying on battle cards and repair capabilities (oh… did I forget to mention that is another variable you leave out). When was this debate resolved again?

This is the hilarious part. This entire thread is based on a previous version. It is NOT current. The breakpoints and efficiencies have completely changed since then. I have no real idea where the balance lies in the current patch, I'd guess it is still closer to high weapon destroyers. However, the "big tank ship" arguments have never changed. Go do a forum search. Count the number of times people bring up big tank ships as the ultimate strategy and provide no evidence for it. When this patch was valid, this thread demonstrated why they were wrong, in ways that could be independently validated. Go check out the 0 Hullweakness thread. There are numerous other times mechanics have shifted that have made massive differences in strategies. I can't with certainty say that big tank ships are not viable. I've not done the math on it. I have very little interest in doing so. However, countless times we've seen people in the past come up, make huge claims about tank ships, and then we demonstrate they are wrong. It might be the case you are not wrong, however, you need to present some numbers demonstrating how they are superior. You can't keep saying, "And it works against the AI" and have the be valid. The AI blunders its way to victory when it wins, it doesn't do it on purpose.

I respect you, I respect your efforts to deconstruct game mechanics. I even leverage that wisdom to take next steps in understanding what is happening. I am not attacking you… just your narrow focused blinders on approach to… err… just questioning some of your sacred cows.

My analysis, my recommendations, and my formulae are readily viewable to read in any number of threads. My time has been spent showing the weaknesses of the combat mechanics system. Feel free to show me in great detail how I'm wrong. But don't just keep repeating: "I am advocating for self-repairing ships relying on battle cards and repair capabilities" without some context. Otherwise I'll have to bring out my 1.1.12? ship design with 0 hullweakness and see how you deal with that.

I use Dreadnoughts only because of the prestige to be honest...



every other ship can do their job better. Maybe not as Super Tank but well if your enemy also have Tanks or High hull ships then good luck to kill one of them when u got almost no weapons on your Dreadnoughts.



Also i cant understand the high rating of High Monohull HP ships.



to be honest i found them much stronger actually in the vanilla (but also only with the Race Specific United Empire Armor Modules)



cause with that high tonnage costs of the Armor which scalls with the shipsize and the incredible tonnage expensive Repair module (which brings +10% HP repair per round) i found my ships just laking the Firepower to destroy any decent other Tank. Long living Ships good and fine...but the enemy will not explode just because he sees your shiny Armor

and i also cant wait till they have hundreds of XP.



all in all i found that Hybrids out of different ship designs (Glass Cannons/Monohull/Omnitank/Invasion Ships) served me best.



(But i also almost only play against other Humans so no idea if thats different)

I feel like we may have made the ships in ES overly complicated for very little gain.

Absolutely.

I put it down to this obsession with ship building within the Space 4X community which makes balancing an utter nightmare.



The Civ series gets along just fine with cookie cut units.

It's far too late for ES to make that radical a change but some constraints on ship design to limit the possibilities and force a bit more combined arms would be welcome.