First off let me compliment your artists:



To make this many racial ship designs and not have any of them look like crap is a huge thumbs up for your art department. Star Trek has more diversity (almost all of them look good) (especially voyager - their art department was very good) but they had a far larger budget to work with.



This is probably an expansion thing here. Considering you are just starting what is looking to be a long series of games like the civilization series this is a great start.



There is at least 1 major ship class missing from your list. In addition, at least, Both Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire had a more diverse ship hull selection (Especially Galactic Civilizations 2 but I'm not expecting this to be put into Endless Space any time soon).



I know this is probably something that is not easy to implement but I think it would be very nice to have carriers/fighters/bombers added to the ship class list.



I'm thinking along the lines of a mix of purpose-built hull designs as well as a new support module that would allow you to convert 1 or more of the ship's cargo bays into a hangar as well. Considering that your space combat most closely resembles that of Star Wars (Star Trek targeting systems making fighters difficult to uses effectively) then fighters would be a major component.



Anyways discuss/troll.

Carriers are only missing when:



You have strikecraft to go them or there is no other class that can fill the role of a carrier.



Which is not true, the ship hulls present 80, 100, 200, 400 more then fill the requirement for different ship types, especially with upgrades.

Every ship has practically zero defense against a cheap 3-man fighter-bomber shooting it's rack of missiles from close range. The only counter weapon it has is flack and smaller ships, especially, cannot afford that.

Other then the logic that a fighter won't be able to be equipped with enough firepower to actually be effective in the first place.



I have always wanted strikecraft to be deployed from battle cards, leading to a new influx of battle strategy's and counter strategy's based on your ability to use the right cards at the right opportunity.

Triplitz88 wrote:
Every ship has practically zero defense against a cheap 3-man fighter-bomber shooting it's rack of missiles from close range. The only counter weapon it has is flack and smaller ships, especially, cannot afford that.

A solution is to made a new class of defensive weapons, specific against the fighter/bombers.

Or made sure that your fighters/interceptors shot down the enemy before reach you.

Roguim wrote:
A solution is to made a new class of defensive weapons, specific against the fighter/bombers.

Or made sure that your fighters/interceptors shot down the enemy before reach you.

If you watch the "manual" version of the battle you notice something right away. All weapons have a high miss factor. And this is when we are shooting at targets the size of cruisers! Heck even a few missiles out of a missile barrage will miss the largest ship class. It only gets worse with the beams and the rail guns. Rail guns miss in droves. On top of it the weapon velocity of everything currently in the inventory all the way up to the top tiers is so slow that an aware fighter pilot could dodge it even at close range.



Seriously watch the "manual" version of the fight and just consider what a fighter like this (the closest like universe) with a rack of missiles (the same ones the ships are firing) delivered at close range (and therefore higher accuracy) could do to even the larger ships: http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/2012/04/06__06_36_45/EnemyFighter3.jpgdd638786-912c-482e-9dd4-7258e356438bLarge.jpg



As for what can carry them. Well try something like this: http://images.wikia.com/astroempires/images/b/b1/Fleet-carrier_perspective.png



And what about space stations?



Now lets say that I'm in the midst of a massive war - 1 side of the galaxy against another. The ships are huge and they are being lost on both sides at a huge rate.



What if you were able to build an orbital shipyard. The biggest, say a fleet yard, would be able to build 4 ships at the same time, each with 65% of the system's industrial output. So although each ship, by itself, will be built slower, the total net gain will be huge (but the structure that built it took some time to build). And to clarify, that is each ship will act like its using 65% of the system's net industry output, but that would be 65% X 4 in new production.



So this is a major orbital shipyard right? Well why not have something that can be attacked. Not just blockade, but actually damaging infrastructure.



As for what the shipyard could look like: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RwUKg3nkXXE/UDrlTbq0PQI/AAAAAAAAAAg/aXXap47D5NQ/s1600/UtopiaPlanitiaFleetYards.jpg

A bunch of individual docks or: http://images.wikia.com/omegagroup/images/c/ce/ScorpionFleetShipyards1.jpg

A massive Complex.



Heck use your imagination: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100704050848/worldsofsdn/images/d/dc/OrbitalYard.jpg



Stations were big features in both Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations 2 and carriers were large features in Sins of a Solar Empire so to leave these sorts of things out would detract from the gameplay.

Well the game is very new, and points like these could be excellent topics for the games expansion.



There is always going to be a a lot of abstraction in a game like this, and not everything will be beneficial to show.

For parts:

Triplitz88 wrote:
If you watch the "manual" version of the battle you notice something right away. All weapons have a high miss factor. And this is when we are shooting at targets the size of cruisers! Heck even a few missiles out of a missile barrage will miss the largest ship class. It only gets worse with the beams and the rail guns. Rail guns miss in droves. On top of it the weapon velocity of everything currently in the inventory all the way up to the top tiers is so slow that an aware fighter pilot could dodge it even at close range.



Seriously watch the "manual" version of the fight and just consider what a fighter like this (the closest like universe) with a rack of missiles (the same ones the ships are firing) delivered at close range (and therefore higher accuracy) could do to even the larger ships: http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/2012/04/06__06_36_45/EnemyFighter3.jpgdd638786-912c-482e-9dd4-7258e356438bLarge.jpg



As for what can carry them. Well try something like this: http://images.wikia.com/astroempires/images/b/b1/Fleet-carrier_perspective.png

Yes i've use manual a lot love to see the space-fireworks.

And yes the weapons it's not quite accuracy, but even so enough shots hits the target, so what i proposed it's not a long range but a short-range high-rate of fire defense system a little of Spray an'pray system more to give some comfort to the crew than an ultimate defense system, some fighter would be shot down, but the focus it will to be a deterrence system to hurt the enemy.

But as i said the main defense against a fight is other fight an interceptor class for instance, so there would be 3 sub-battles the ships versus ships, the fighters versus fighters and them the fighter versus ships. Note that will not be a turn system all this "sub-battles" would happen in same time.

The carrier could be either has it own hull type or what it might be a easier way to implement in Endless space could be any type of ship with an carrier module, this module would take a lot of space ( tons) so will have a very specialized ship somehow defenseless against the normal warships, in the sense of lack of offensive weapons, like the real Carriers who needs other ships to protect them against any other ships that might approach to gun range.

As in endless space all ships are in the enemy range this will balance the power of the fighter approach the enemy unhurt it may easily destroy the ships but at same time the same ships could already destroyed or badly damaged the carrier.

And what about space stations?



Now lets say that I'm in the midst of a massive war - 1 side of the galaxy against another. The ships are huge and they are being lost on both sides at a huge rate.



What if you were able to build an orbital shipyard. The biggest, say a fleet yard, would be able to build 4 ships at the same time, each with 65% of the system's industrial output. So although each ship, by itself, will be built slower, the total net gain will be huge (but the structure that built it took some time to build). And to clarify, that is each ship will act like its using 65% of the system's net industry output, but that would be 65% X 4 in new production.



So this is a major orbital shipyard right? Well why not have something that can be attacked. Not just blockade, but actually damaging infrastructure.

Like that idea, also these Shipyards could also repair the ships in a higher rate than vanilla. But in this case reduce the number of ships it could build as the resources are used in the repairing.

Also it could have it own defense system either translate in more normal system defense or to really counter-attack the enemy.