put 6-7 missle defend modules on your high Hp Cruisers = End of all misslile destroyers.

OMG! I love you guys!

Igncom1 wrote:
Doesn't emergency shelter take them out of combat, but saves them if you win combat?



From what I recall, they would be "destroyed" when they are, and if the rest of the ships win, then you get it back but with 1 HP.

Firstly, you don't need to win for emergency shelter to work. I just recently lost my entire fleet but because I used the emergency shelter I still had all of my ships after the end of combat.

You can also see that ships that go below 0hp with emergency shelter on do not blow up; instead they have this awesome particle effect around them so they're not technically "destroyed". Now, in current battle system, the enemy will not target those semi-destroyed ships (I think) and I'm fairly sure that this is also going to be the case in the new expansion. But some clarification is always helpful ^_^

Igncom1 wrote:
Spread fire forces a even distribution of fire-power, making tanks much, much more effective at adsorbing damage

Just to clarify this bit - spread fire is actually the bane of tanks. The purpose of a tank is to soak up damage and protect the rest of the fleet (hence the word "tank"). And spread fire makes tanks go "Hurr durr, I live and all my friends are dead, poor them". I'm guessing you were thinking about capital ships - dreadnaughts good at both dealing damage and absorbing it. Or a situation when your entire fleet is made purely from tanks.

Shyrka wrote:
Reading the tactics section again, I'm slightly disappointed by the way this actually appears to be worked out. If, for example, the enemy is using glass cannon missile fleets, then no amount of formation tinkering is going to change the result: they'll always use spread fire, wiping out your weaker ships first regardless of your formation. I was originally assuming that this would be done as some sort of calculation, rather than by comparing the lists directly. The way this appears to be written, unless the enemy uses something /other/ than spread fire, the formations make no difference at all. Am I wrong?

I second this comment. Unless I'm misunderstanding the description, there is little reason to select "focus fire" or "strong fire" because "spread fire" is generally more effective against both fleets with tank and fleets without. Since there is penalty to attacking a ship low on the list, you want to always use spread fire to wipe out all the glass cannons first then fire on the tanks that remain (essentially a free focus fire). Another issue that exacerbate this is the fact that both "focus fire" and "strong fire" have dead round for a target switch, making them less and less effective as fleet size grow.



Based on discussion so far, I do see two situation for selecting "focus" and "strong". 1) You are technologically inferior to your enemy and you really want to bring down a few of em before they wipe your fleet. 2) Your enemy decide to use a full fleet of dreadnoughts. Well if you're in situation 1) you're probably losing the game and "focus/strong" just make you lose slightly less badly. And anybody employing full fleet of dreadnoughts will find themselves losing the economic war due to how much more expensive dreads are. Chances are very high then that any competitive game will devolve into fleets of small/mid-size vessels going at each other with "spread fire".



There are several possible fixes (some already pointed out).



a) The most obviously one is to remove the re-targetting delay. I don't see the logic there, why would spread take no time to re-target but focus and strong requires it.



b) Give obstruction bonus to ships that are further back in the formation. For example, let's say the formation is divided into three layers, let's called them vanguard (front), core (middle), rearguard (back). Ships in the core gets a 20% obstruction bonus where 20% of the enemy fire hits the vanguard instead. Likewise, ships in the rearguard would have a 40% obstruction bonus where 40% of the enemy fire hits the vanguard/core instead.

You can also make weapon choice more strategic by making obstruction bonus only apply to beam/kinetics, so that missiles have a specialized role in anti-formation combat. This would in turn make ships that specialize in core/rearguard action be designed with more flak and be weaker in solo action.





An aside, what's with the description of "strong fire"? It says a third of your fleet targets enemy top three, so what's the other two third doing?

PANCZASU wrote:
Firstly, you don't need to win for emergency shelter to work. I just recently lost my entire fleet but because I used the emergency shelter I still had all of my ships after the end of combat.

You can also see that ships that go below 0hp with emergency shelter on do not blow up; instead they have this awesome particle effect around them so they're not technically "destroyed". Now, in current battle system, the enemy will not target those semi-destroyed ships (I think) and I'm fairly sure that this is also going to be the case in the new expansion. But some clarification is always helpful ^_^

XD That sounds silly!

Just to clarify this bit - spread fire is actually the bane of tanks. The purpose of a tank is to soak up damage and protect the rest of the fleet (hence the word "tank"). And spread fire makes tanks go "Hurr durr, I live and all my friends are dead, poor them". I'm guessing you were thinking about capital ships - dreadnaughts good at both dealing damage and absorbing it. Or a situation when your entire fleet is made purely from tanks.

Yeah! lol, but I get what you mean, as poor support ships would be torn asunder!



Guess that what I get fro playing the UE a lot with their high HP ships!

First of all: Wonderfull, I cannot wait to see the Expansionpack.

Second: I know that you cannot change much about the battle-system, so I hope you find these suggestions I already posted in the Expansion-Pack-Discussion usefull and doable:

- Since Range is a problem for many players (with the right weapons, I never ever reach close combat!) there should be options or cards to jump a phase if needed. "Accelerate" or "First-Strike", could be cards which help fleets, fitted for kinetic-weapons, or making small ships more attractive, since they engage in close combat and manage to evade enemy long-range-weapons. Countertactics could be "Defensive Strategies" or "Guerilla-Tactics", to avoid/counter close combat.



- "Formation-Cards" could be choosen before the battle starts. The Fleet will than appear in this choosen Formation and will have boni/mali. Right now the ships seem to fly in a very loose formation. The "Wedge-Formation" could be used as an attacker, since the attacker is the one closing in. (I.e.: + X on Weapon Damage; -Y on Defense). A "Line-Formation" could improve accuracy or a "Loose Formation" would reduce the Fire-round by one, before fleeing the battle. A supperior "Back-door-strike" could position the attacking fleet right behind the enemy, so they can fire on the engines and thus minimizing the threat of counterattack. Basic Formations should be available with the first military-techs, superrior Formations for Heros or late-researche only.





Source: http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/...ion-pack/page6

And by the way: are "Terrains" and "Star-Stats already off the table? You can find the suggestions in the same post.



I personally find the expansion-options really good, since I love to have many options and changing tactics. Perhaps we could use some more Formations and Fire-Options. Sad that we won't be able to use speed and manipulate distances....

I've been looking at this and thinking about it all weekend, I can't help but think it doesn't work. Early game why would I choose anything other than spread fire ? it negates anything your opponent is doing with formations.



The glass cannon model as far as I can see is only supported by this system (mainly due to the fact that if the opponent doesn't choose spread fire they can only kill a maximum of 6 ships a round, meaning the throw away fleet that's just done massive damage/killed your fleet survives). The argument that having bigger ships with better modules for health/def is all well and good but it simply won't work, mainly due to costs. If your producing a dreadnaught costing 1500K+ of production that can survive the throw away fleets spread fire where the destroyers cost like 72 production each, at fleet size 22, your fleet costs a total 1584 production, where as the opponent cost in excess of 7500 and still not at full fleet cap, you can survive the salvo at spread fire, but then the throw away fleet uses focus fire (next time), meaning you lose three dreadnaughts. The guy using throw away fleets is now at a massive advantage, he loses the fight but is killing stuff that costs two to three times what his fleet did, meaning the advantage is with the guy using throw away fleets.



Now the counter argument is using flak on ships but then focus fire negates this again with just using basic missiles, why you may ask, simple, the amount of missiles being fired, late game destroyers can get 30+ missiles per ship with no module used, 22 x 30 = 660 missiles fired, between three ships can you get 220 units of flak on ? (due to flak firing three times, you need a third minimum in comparison to missiles) now the higher tier of flak you go the more expensive and heavy it gets, it's possible but then your loading down three ships with nothing but flak, oh and my throw away beam fleet just turned up and your counter is useless. The costs don't work, the guy using throw away fleets simply out produces the opponent by a factor of 5 fleets to 1, just on cost.



The only thing I really see this doing is making low tier builds able to cripple better tech and stronger fleets, as the formation doesn't do anything, and focus fire from lower tech means you still causes damage, which is great the person in the weaker military position hurts the other guy more, which then reinforces more throw away fleets due to cost's.



As my friend says, it's bobbins!!

It's not entirely bobbins, but it's pretty close. I'm fairly certain spread-fire always wins unless you're massively technologically outmatched. Mixed fleets have tactical possibilities for formation as long as the enemy doesn't go spread fire. Otherwise there's no relevance to what formation you choose.



The glass cannon fleet you outline should always use spread fire. If I have a fleet with 3 massive armour/flak ships in it and a bunch of smaller ships, spread fire guarantees taking out the smaller ships. If you focus fire, you'll take out the front 3 ships, but I can game that and choose to put the weaker ships at the front for this combat, in which case you don't touch the flak-barges at all (and I can presumably produce cheaper ships at the same rate you can).

Antera wrote:
I second this comment. Unless I'm misunderstanding the description, there is little reason to select "focus fire" or "strong fire" because "spread fire" is generally more effective against both fleets with tank and fleets without. Since there is penalty to attacking a ship low on the list, you want to always use spread fire to wipe out all the glass cannons first then fire on the tanks that remain (essentially a free focus fire). Another issue that exacerbate this is the fact that both "focus fire" and "strong fire" have dead round for a target switch, making them less and less effective as fleet size grow.



Based on discussion so far, I do see two situation for selecting "focus" and "strong". 1) You are technologically inferior to your enemy and you really want to bring down a few of em before they wipe your fleet. 2) Your enemy decide to use a full fleet of dreadnoughts. Well if you're in situation 1) you're probably losing the game and "focus/strong" just make you lose slightly less badly. And anybody employing full fleet of dreadnoughts will find themselves losing the economic war due to how much more expensive dreads are. Chances are very high then that any competitive game will devolve into fleets of small/mid-size vessels going at each other with "spread fire".



There are several possible fixes (some already pointed out).



a) The most obviously one is to remove the re-targetting delay. I don't see the logic there, why would spread take no time to re-target but focus and strong requires it.



b) Give obstruction bonus to ships that are further back in the formation. For example, let's say the formation is divided into three layers, let's called them vanguard (front), core (middle), rearguard (back). Ships in the core gets a 20% obstruction bonus where 20% of the enemy fire hits the vanguard instead. Likewise, ships in the rearguard would have a 40% obstruction bonus where 40% of the enemy fire hits the vanguard/core instead.

You can also make weapon choice more strategic by making obstruction bonus only apply to beam/kinetics, so that missiles have a specialized role in anti-formation combat. This would in turn make ships that specialize in core/rearguard action be designed with more flak and be weaker in solo action.

Antera has managed to explain and elaborate on the point I was trying to make. We're racking or brains here trying to come up with other scenarios when we'd want to use anything other than spread fire and so far, apart from the ones described above, we're failing.



The majority of our battles at the moment feature glass cannons of some sort, usually missile destroyers. No amount of clever tank builds or formations is going to stop a spread-firing missile destroyer fleet from wiping out your support ships. Frankly, in our experience, high-tier missile destroyer fleets can threaten even heavily armoured dreadnought fleets due to sheer damage output, even using the current spread-fire mechanics. I know that weapons and defences are going to been changed significantly in the expansion but, as it stands, the formations aren't really going to change anything.



Personally, I like Antera's option b as outlined above: something that allows the ships at the front of the fleet to intercept shots directed at those to the rear. Until there's a mechanism for allowing ships to protect other ships with their own defences, I don't think we'll see any major shift in fleet tactics.

Well generally all ships should have defences, just some should have more then overs, and if your enemy is spreading fire to avoid moving through your list, then you won't need many defences per ship anyway.



And really even the current missile glass cannons are easily beat by even a few flak cannon destroyers with kinetic guns, so I don't get the problem beyond the early game, especially with flaks 3 to 1 ratio of effectiveness.

Igncom1 wrote:
Well generally all ships should have defences, just some should have more then overs, and if your enemy is spreading fire to avoid moving through your list, then you won't need many defences per ship anyway.

The maths doesn't support that, in the case of missiles, more missiles than defenses means the defenses can't stop them all, as long as the damage out put is great enough to kill the target, then your only option is to add more, at which point you have less weapons as such you can't kill the opponent. This also plays into reduced weapon cost, where the is no option for the opposite cheaper defenses. A destroyer have 30+ missiles means you need "at least" 10 units of flak, but then you have to take into account that the three times flak fires has a decreasing interception rating I believe it's 90%, 70%, 40%, respectively. So to make the defenses actually guarantee your ships survival you need to increase the number of units of the defense your using, card play can come into this but it becomes mute when your opponent knows what your going to use just to make sure the missiles hit and kill you.

Igncom1 wrote:
And really even the current missile glass cannons are easily beat by even a few flak cannon destroyers with kinetic guns, so I don't get the problem beyond the early game, especially with flaks 3 to 1 ratio of effectiveness.

I've only ever seen this work with snipers 3 damage buffs and high end flak, making the cost of the destroyers massive, upto 4-5 times what the missile boat costs, and then my cheap beam fleet comes in and kills you, and both fleets together still cost less than yours, as such i'll out produce you comfortably.

Depends how you play, Currently I have been using 50% repair/HP mods and 50% kinetics and being able to conformity kill even dreadnoughts within the first phase.



Generally missiles are only at their best in the beginning and end of the game, mid game beams are better, and late game kinetics are unavoidable.



And destroyers with 30+ missiles? How is that even possible? You would need some mid game tech tonnage boosters for that, meaning that a cheap glass cannon beam ship could wreak them all.



Further more if the enemy is using basic level missiles for the monopoly, that both means they need a monopoly and that I can just as easily use basic flak to still comfortably counter most of the missiles.



But you are defiantly a MP guy, all I'll say is that a cruiser with repair, 50-70% HP mods and the rest kinetic can easily tank a huge amount of missiles, even in the late game these ships are hard to take out, better to go for HP% traits then snipers (That really isn't needed).

Igncom1 wrote:
all I'll say is that a cruiser with repair, 50-70% HP mods and the rest kinetic can easily tank a huge amount of missiles, even in the late game these ships are hard to take out, better to go for HP% traits then snipers (That really isn't needed).

Even running at 40% extra ship health from faction traits and the top percentage health armour module, my cruisers were getting annihilated by T1 missile destroyer fleets (22 missile destroyers filled with T1 missiles with the fleet percentage damage module); for cost you need to survive 3-4 fleets of destroyers and even if you get lucky you don't have enough time to heal them all back up before the next fleets of destroyers show up. No point going defences instead of armour as you just get a cheap beam fleet thrown at you instead and you can't stack enough of both defences.



And that's 3-4 GC fleets using spread fire. If the first fleet in just focused fire the front 3 ships, the rest of the fleet will die to spread fire from the second GC fleet.

Doesn't emergency shelter take them out of combat, but saves them if you win combat?



From what I recall, they would be "destroyed" when they are, and if the rest of the ships win, then you get it back but with 1 HP.

Igncom1 wrote:
Depends how you play, Currently I have been using 50% repair/HP mods and 50% kinetics and being able to conformity kill even dreadnoughts within the first phase.

This is true, I happily kill insane AI at home with similar tactics, I also use tactics of throw away fleets using beam and missile, the AI dies horribly to this, as long as your production can support it anway.

Igncom1 wrote:
Generally missiles are only at their best in the beginning and end of the game, mid game beams are better, and late game kinetics are unavoidable.

Again I have no disagreement with this, the mid game fights are more strategic, however as you said at the start or the end tactics just goes out the window to mass glass cannon.

Igncom1 wrote:
And destroyers with 30+ missiles? How is that even possible? You would need some mid game tech tonnage boosters for that, meaning that a cheap glass cannon beam ship could wreak them all.

+30% tonnage on ships at the start, plus another 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% later on, tier one missiles weigh next to nothing, they can get up to 40 with the right build.

Igncom1 wrote:
Further more if the enemy is using basic level missiles for the monopoly, that both means they need a monopoly and that I can just as easily use basic flak to still comfortably counter most of the missiles.

Doesn't quite work, I've tried it multiple times, you need superior flak and in large numbers, and with damage buffs, +10 min max damage on fleet x 22, and jadonix, and starting damage buffs, it's easy to get tier one missiles to +300% damage late game, at that point you only need enough to hit to kill, or at least damage enough that the next GC fleet finishes them off.

Igncom1 wrote:
But you are defiantly a MP guy, all I'll say is that a cruiser with repair, 50-70% HP mods and the rest kinetic can easily tank a huge amount of missiles, even in the late game these ships are hard to take out, better to go for HP% traits then snipers (That really isn't needed).

I play single player at home, and multi-player at work, any strategy I use can be used in either, the only difference is that MP games mean Im going to have a harder job to even get close to a victory, And as stated you only need to do enough damage that the cost to produce kills the opposing fleet which cost more, If I can make 4 fleets cost the same as your one, but it only takes three to do it, i'll win no matter who or what the opponent is human AI mineral or vegetable.

Meedoc wrote:
This list evolves through the game thanks to specific technologies unlocking new formation.

What does this mean exactly? Are there going to be more formation options than the 4 already listed, unlocked with specific techs?

Right now, I feel like formations and targeting are a little... underwhelming. It would have been nice to include ship-role based bonuses...

What about this engagement:



Fleet A: x Cruisers and battleships with lots of Armour/Defence.

Fleet B: x+/-1 Cruisers and battleships with lots of Armour/Defence.



thus two tank fleets of similar strengh.



With spread fire it is unlikely that you will kill any enemies in the first round, It basically only happens when several of yours target one enemy ship. With Strongfire this is not the case as you will probably take out a few of his ship. in the second round however your ships will all be damaged to some degree but you will most likely still have them all. Your enemy however has 3 ships less that can't fire the second round, netting you a considerable advantage. In case of HP heavy cruisers Nano-repair also plays a large roll because damaged ships can be repaired, destroyed ones... well not.



It is however correct that this novelty does not change anything about Glasscannons.

Hello,



I would like to join in to remind you that you have to consider these mechanics within the context that will be brought with the expansion pack.



Here is an example (I still want to keep some surprises for the release! =) ): Long range: they shoot only once, during the phase. They are designed to deal heavy damage during the rest of the fight. They can be countered using a lot of armor, but they will be really efficient against repair. To maximise their effect, you may either use a spread fire to decimate weak ships or rather use one of the orders focusing on less ships to be sure you'll shut down at least a part of the opponent's fleet.



What I can say is that you will be able to work on the fleet composition, combining different ship designs to exploit the formation & targeting mechanics at their best.



For instance, if you happen to be using a "glass cannon" strategy, I will be able to counter it with a fleet full of ships with lots of armor and a few long range weapons: I'll receive a lot of damage, but my armor will save me so I'll be able to deal enough damage to kill unprotected ships. However, this strategy can be countered with a different setup, etc. etc...



We count on you to dig deeply into this system and find creative combinations!



Cheers,

Guess I'm late to this party. Just bought the game this week and like what I see.



One concern about just now reading the targetting changes planned. If I understand correctly ships will be manually assigned targets right? My concern is that this: One of the unique things I noticed right off the cuff about ES is that the combat doesn't fall victim to the general tedium of other space strategy games (for example Space Empires 5, Homeworld 2, or even Eve Online) where all tatics boil down to every ship sequentially concentrating fire on the enemy fleet in a predicatable pattern. The unpredictability and dynamics out of the fights are then lost.



I view the current ES battle mechanics as a creative solution to the general tedium that almost ever other space fleet game ultimately boils too and which ultimately kills there re-playability overtime. Yeah, some in the community may be requesting it, but are they still going to be playing in 2-3 years?



2 cents

LoBlo wrote:
One concern about just now reading the targetting changes planned. If I understand correctly ships will be manually assigned targets right?

No, that notion is wrong. You just employ a targeting strategy, you do not click each and every ship yourself.