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.

Really? I do feel as if the problem is already solved, neither i nor the AI have been seen building fleets of mono-hulls.



The defenses in the current game are more then capable of protecting a ship, and with the superior HP for larger ships (especially once leveled up) means that they are hard to defeat with out taking as much fire as you receive.



Why i say this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVgYMNOnL2s go to 9:55 if you wanna see the start of my battles.

Ah, I see that this should have gone in the proposals forum. Would a mod kindly move it for me?

Aha! This is the old splash damage problem!

The problem of balancing many small fighters against a few large ones.

The historical (but certainly not only) solution is, well, splash damage.



RTS games (yeah, I know) deal with this a lot, and Civ 4 used a similar solution to deal with self-optimizing "stacks of doom"



The idea is this: You have a weapon (maybe retool missiles for this purpose, or have a special module or hull type, or have a certain percentage of every weapon) where a very small amount of damage is dealt to each ship in the fleet. The idea being that a fleet of a few ships would take less total damage than a fleet of many ships.



The danger is, of course, that splash damage would be so powerful that only large ships would be used. The way to avoid this is to make sure having splash damage in your fleet means less directed damage, and to have it only powerful enough to weaken, and not destroy ships.



Too much splash damage, and you'll do hitpoint damage, but won't actually kill anything (this would also make certain support modules more useful). Too much direct damage, and you will be vulnerable to fleets of smaller ships.

Now fleet compositions are forced to balance survivability against firepower. Too many small ships and your softened fleet will quickly die before doing damage, too many large ships, and you'll be outgunned.



That's what this problem made me think of. I'm not an experienced enough player to defend it against one of the ideas you've already got up there, but it's food for thought.

Isn't this already being discussed here: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11190-discussion-altering-individual-hull-stats-will-never-fix-mono-hull-spam ?

I like the idea and hope to see it implemented in part or in full added defense for smaller ships by using big ships with perhaps tech specific mods to create the defense.

Moved to the right section.

You've actually produced a wholly new situation, namely that you have achieved to make several suggestion on one thread but stick to a single topic in the process. This is fine with rule #2 and me.

Another idea I've thought of:



XP Adjustment Model



Currently the XP model already favors large ships with defense, as the ships that survive combat will gain XP levels whereas small offense oriented ships will be killed and replaced frequently.



However, XP is generated rather slowly, and its benefit is only truly felt at higher levels.



Larger ships could gain XP more quickly and perhaps even gain additional benefits. As such, destroyer fleets would still be stronger as a baseline, but well preserved larger hulls become dominant as they gain XP. In this model you would see the few veteran large ships protected by replaceable smaller ships, maintaining the desired flotilla model.

But...but...no one thinks about the pour souls aboard the "replaceable ships".



Okay seriously, I really like the idea as it takes what could be rather complicated and transforms it into something easy to implement. Something my own concept severely lacks.

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.

Hello everyone.

As pretext, I don't own ES yet (Still waiting how Legend of Pegasus will compare to it) but after reading the forum and the wiki I also want to offer one suggestion, If it clashes with the way the game actually works I am sorry.



Wouldn't is be rather simple to make different hull types more or less effective at different encounter distances? For example destroyers can only fire once or twice at long range while a dreadnought can fire the full 4 times. At close range it is reversed and at mid range cruisers are best.

If that is too harsh on destroyers then you can maybe also give ships a accuracy debuff when firing at small ships at long range.



Theoretically that means:

Dreadnoughts do worse against destroyers because they can hardly hit them at long range and they fire not very often at closer ranges. Destroyers lose against cruisers which can hit them well at mid range before they get into effective range but the cruisers lose against Dreads which blow them apart from afar.

But that might clash with the weapons already having different effectiveness at different ranges.

That's an peculiar idea, although theoretically it might make larger ships the new mono-hull, but i like it.



I feel like this game needs bigger guns for the bigger ships, because ATM we are all chipping away at each other with arrows when i wanna start shooting cruse-missiles!