Wow! I am impressed that the AI built a mixed fleet. I have never seen that myself. Bad for you, but good for the AI.

Vector78 wrote:
I hate long sieges myself, especially cause newly conquered colonies are both vulnerable and unproductive. Tying one or more fleets to them for lots of turns doesn't make me happier. I could see using specialist 'invasion ships' for sieges, maybe stack a cruiser with %fleet invasion bonus, and attach one to a fleet of standard warships for each siege.

I agree siege combat is pretty boring. Another player (lost the link) suggested a second rank fleet of cruisers, filled with *nothing* but invasion modules. As long as your front rank fleet controls space, or you leave one small front rank fleet behind for cover, the specialist cruisers can apparently make a siege go pretty fast. I haven't tried it but it seems reasonable.



Interesting discussion about corvette builds regarding shipyard tech and fleet-move boosters here:

/#/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14003-combat-order

Slar wrote:
I agree, there isn't really a reason to use bigger ships. I can make swarms of smaller ships, and be just as good if not better. Large ships need to be truly massive, then scalled down accordingly. There shouldn't be a linear progression to hp and tonnage, there should real advantage to going large ie: 2X more hp and 1.5 more tonage etc.

I dont want to see an all out advantage to larger ships.

I want larger ships to be better in some situations.

I want smaller ships to be better in other situations.

I want a 'combined arms' approach with multiple types of ship in a fleet to be better in other situations.



If any one ship size is inherently better than another then youve got a problem regardless of which size it is that's best - you still end up with everyone producing that one size of ship and nothing else, for ever. Which is boring.

davea wrote:
I agree siege combat is pretty boring. Another player (lost the link) suggested a second rank fleet of cruisers, filled with *nothing* but invasion modules. As long as your front rank fleet controls space, or you leave one small front rank fleet behind for cover, the specialist cruisers can apparently make a siege go pretty fast. I haven't tried it but it seems reasonable.

Suggested in this thread.

I just about something : Use the size of the ships like the cards. If some cards can counter some, why not do the same with ships.



Lets take small, medium 1, medium 2 and large.



Small vs medium 1= Efficient battle, depending of modules, defenses and attacks, both can win (nevertheless, tiny advantage for medium as it's a advanced hull compare to small)

Medium 1 vs medium 2= efficient battle same as above (advantage : medium 2, same reason as above)

Medium 2 vs Large = efficient battle same as above (advantage for large)



Now



Small vs medium 2 = less efficient battle : due to less advanced modules, the small ship can not damage so good the medium 2. The medium 2 are not as fast as the medium 1 to chase these small ships, not so much damage also.

Medium 1 vs Large = less efficient battle : same as above.



And



Small vs large : Draw : The large ship is too well protected for these small ones (we are not in star wars, the death star is well armoured ). The large ships are too slow to chase the small ships which can easily escape death.



When I talk about efficient or not battle. It's about the % of damage dealt on the two sides.

When I talk about less advanced modules for smaller ships. I think it's normal a small ship can't use the last BIG beam researched as it has not enough space, energy (used mainly for the engine... i don't know) It can also be the BIG beam but a smaller then a less efficient one. The % of damage per weapon could increase with the class of the ship.



Finally, the draw battle could avoid a player to use only one type. If because of one destroyer, my battleships can't invade a planet (the small ship, unkillable by the big one can supply the planet to resist for example (if someone search for a reason why))... let's build a smaller ship ( which will be countered by another one and so and so...)

Like the cards system ?

Add Fighter Bays.

• High tonnage support module(a battleship hull with little else could equip one, a dreadnaught could barely fit two).
• Fighter bay tech is tied to later weapon tech, each version of the bay has fighters that use equivalent weapons.
• Launches ten fighters that travel into melee range during the intro phase if no enemy fighters are present.
• If enemy fighters are present the fighters engage at medium range until one side wins, the remaining fighters take another phase to engage the opposing team
• Each fighter can attack a different target
• Each fighter has the equivalent tonnage devoted to weapons as 1/4 of a destroyer.
• Each fighter has no defenses but 1/4 health of a destroyer
  
  

This would make large ships important to have in your fleets and would make defenseless destroyers sitting ducks for fighters.

Nycidian wrote:
Add Fighter Bays.

One enhancement:

Have 2 different types of fighters (2 different bays)

* Bombers - attack enemy capital ships

* Interceptors - attack enemy fighters (interceptors and bombers)

The devs have said that they will add fighters and such, but in their own way.

I like the double caps & increased tonnage. I don't want really want to change the rock paper scissors mechanics. I don't like AOE. It always bothered me that Dreadnought's get no bonuses, regarding weapons stowage. I'd like to gets some free, high-end engines with my Dreadnought too:

Vector78 wrote:


- Double command point caps; increase small ship CP cost to 2, medium ship to 3, and large ship to 5.

- Increase the tonnage available to larger ships to 250 for battleships and cruisers, and 600 for dreadnoughts.

- Give production cost discounts to equipment installed on larger hulls, making them more efficient in terms of production cost per tonnage.

- Allow all defenses to function against all attacks, at reduced effectiveness where they aren't the optimal defense.

- Make overkill damage AOE in combat, having a portion of it hit other ships or divide across the entire remaining fleet.

- Add a "target everything" card that makes your ships divide their attacks as evenly as possible against the entire enemy fleet for that phase.

- Reduce the tonnage cost of healing modules, and make healing modules scale with ship size (use percentage healing more, and at higher percents).

- Provide ship healing alternatives, such as production -> healing or dust -> healing, for hangared ships.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Double command point caps; increase small ship CP cost to 2, medium ship to 3, and large ship to 5.

What purpose would that serve? We just need to make the bigger ships better, not the smaller ones worse.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Increase the tonnage available to larger ships to 250 for battleships and cruisers, and 600 for dreadnoughts.

Mabey, we coauls always just give them diffrent reduction modifyers.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Give production cost discounts to equipment installed on larger hulls, making them more efficient in terms of production cost per tonnage.

To again make smaller ships worse? why would you even build them? in the mid-late game?

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Allow all defenses to function against all attacks, at reduced effectiveness where they aren't the optimal defense.

Im really not a fan of the GalCiv defencive system, you end up just learning how to play off it in a way where you can lose to the AI unless you are really behind in technology.....like actually having no weapons.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Make overkill damage AOE in combat, having a portion of it hit other ships or divide across the entire remaining fleet.

Agree shots should be more like actually shooting and less like simulated dice rolls.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Add a "target everything" card that makes your ships divide their attacks as evenly as possible against the entire enemy fleet for that phase.

Agree.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Reduce the tonnage cost of healing modules, and make healing modules scale with ship size (use percentage healing more, and at higher percents).

Disagree, repair ships should be seperate from combat ships. But yes they do need a buff.

MrAgmoore wrote:


- Provide ship healing alternatives, such as production -> healing or dust -> healing, for hangared ships.

Agree.

I played a bit and i noticed the ships defenses are way too simplistic and close to rock scissors paper, in fact its not even worth building any ship with defenses , putting a bit of everything and your ship will be killed, put specialized defense and if the ia field a fleet able to bypass the def, you will lose all your ships. An efficient strategy is indeed destroyers with full weaponry using the 20% bonus. They may be killed, but your ships with defenses dont have longer survivability.The other ships bonus are too spread out and clearly less optimum than a destroyer. No really we neeed a little more diversity more type of armors, electronic warfare, more choices of (viable!) hulls.

what about limiting the amount of weapon systems you can put on a ship ? If destroyers have only 5 weapons slots available and even with the bulkiest weapon it doesn't take 60% or 70% of the tonnage, they would be less effective on a Command point to commande point basis compared to battleships.

fixou wrote:
what about limiting the amount of weapon systems you can put on a ship ? If destroyers have only 5 weapons slots available and even with the bulkiest weapon it doesn't take 60% or 70% of the tonnage, they would be less effective on a Command point to commande point basis compared to battleships.

Then this game would truly have a worse combat system then Gal Civ2.

Having read this thread, when before I used the highest tech hull and highest defenses or tried specialist fleets.





Yep; 16 destroyers with 10-12 of your top beam weapon > anything else, in terms of build time & tactical impact. The only issue is against missile users ~ so for fleets with a hero, I usually include a single heavily armed / defended 'capital' that will survive until the end. x14 destroyers + a heavily defended cruiser = winning. Since learning this, my games have become exponentially easier / more boring ~ and I was decimating Impossible even before knowing this.



In fact, the AI encourages this shit, by building missile spamming fleets ~ and often getting 50/23 builds in there





Alpha 3 patch: let's fix this shit.

I wonder if part of the problem isn't the progression of weapons technology?



Currently as you advance through to better weapons, every factor improves except for tonnage requirement.



Perhaps one way to introduce more mixed fleets rather than shifting the balance one way or the other is to instead have technology progression unlock more options in that specific weapon category rather than just constantly improving the single option in that weapon type.



A more advanced ballistics weapon might fire less volleys but have significantly higher min and max damage values and accuracy but can only fire a few shots off a phase.... a destroyer using one of those would be pretty ineffective as it would likely die before firing more than 2 shots... but give them to something larger that has more tonnage to dedicate to other things like survivability and it's an effective weapon.



A less advanced ballistics weapon might be more catering for destroyers, above average refire rates for the tech tier, below average min and max damage but lots of projectiles per volley and lighter tonnage... so destroyers could provide excessive blanket fire whilst the larger ships used the slower heavy hitters for example.



Similar approaches could be introduced to both missiles and lasers... making it more a question of what flavours of weapon type are needed to give hull sizes roles? And the fine tuning on each 'roled' weapon to get the desired result.

Tikigod wrote:
I wonder if part of the problem isn't the progression of weapons technology?



Currently as you advance through to better weapons, every factor improves except for tonnage requirement.

The real issue is that the tech tree is actually just a linear additive progression with trimmings, and the differences between hulls is very slight.



Added to that ~ the tech tree is non-dependent [meaningthateachsteponlyrequiresasinglepriorstep] and each hull is only 1 stage separated from the other.





This combination = dreads look cool, but suicide destroyers clear the field. And are basically your only answer to heavy-hulled / defended missile spam fleets.

Adding a multiplier based on hull might work too? Larger hulls can more modules, combined with a multiplier from uh... call it "improved power generation based on reactor size" or something might give larger ships the edge?



Also, making the math in favour of defences might also tip balance back a little. It could lead to a mix of heavy, protected, ships accompanied by "expendable" light ships? (the mix that 4x_Fan proposed).





I am not sure this is the right venue, but I should probably also note that I never really worked out why you need (fictionally...) more and more technology to make bigger ships. I'd like to see new access to hulls replaced with "missions" that allow you to match hulls with particular sets of bonuses (so you could make weapon heavy corvettes if required). Development of tech could allow hulls wider (and more significant?) bonuses based on mission type as the player climbs the tree.

I think there's good discussion here, and I agree in general with a lot of the points, but there are quite a few percentage-based buffs that seem to bring the big ships back into favour.



A Dread benefits to an unholy degree by the armour improvements that increase HP by a percentage of HP. See how many you can tack on: it's insane.



Similarly, a large bulk of defence (assuming you have the right defence type) seems to let a big ship resist multiple cruisers firing at it with fairly minimal damage. Do defences reduce each attack by some amount? Does armour?



And then there's the battle-card that increases your armour by a percentage of your HP...



All of that has meant (for me, at least) that the big ships can knock out a destroyer each volley, reducing the incoming damage, and still have enough defence to soak the initial burst.



Finally, regarding mixed fleets, I've had good results from having small TANK ships, which stack defence, and only a couple of larger, more offensive ships in the fleet. The large numbers dilutes the damage each ship takes, which keeps the offensive ships alive, while the offensive ships have enough output to whittle the enemy down.



The objective for me is not just to win battles, but to come out of a won battle with as many surviving ships as possible.

I agree larger ships should not be linearly larger. 1.5 or 2x larger etc. is what it should be. atm smaller ships are even cheaper than larger ships with the same amount of weapons/ hp etc.

Trithemius wrote:
Adding a multiplier based on hull might work too? Larger hulls can more modules, combined with a multiplier from uh... call it "improved power generation based on reactor size" or something might give larger ships the edge?



Also, making the math in favour of defences might also tip balance back a little. It could lead to a mix of heavy, protected, ships accompanied by "expendable" light ships? (the mix that 4x_Fan proposed).





I am not sure this is the right venue, but I should probably also note that I never really worked out why you need (fictionally...) more and more technology to make bigger ships. I'd like to see new access to hulls replaced with "missions" that allow you to match hulls with particular sets of bonuses (so you could make weapon heavy corvettes if required). Development of tech could allow hulls wider (and more significant?) bonuses based on mission type as the player climbs the tree.

Never had any problems building my ship with defenses to stop missiles. You guys seem to be married to single hull fleets for some reason. I've killed the AI destroyer fleets in a single volley, I've killed their BB fleets in a two. Usually one. Even can balance my designs so my destroyers can survive missile launches, while having enough offense to pound with. And with the techs to increase tonnage coming online with future builds/bug fixes, will have even more space to mix and match with.



And "Decimate" means 1/10th of something destroyed, NOT the whole of anything. One tenth is what the prefix DECI means. This word gets almost as abused/misused as Epic does.