The combination of the following 2 options might balance it a bit:



Defence (33% vs non chosen)

and

AOE Damage (33% of over kill - spread to all surviving ships)



I pick 33% in both cases as a start point, the good thing about % is you can tweak them up or down to check the balance without major changes to other aspects of the game.



It would still allow Larger Destroyer Fleets to over come BBs and DN but equal size fleets the favour would be in the BB v DN favour.

Some very nice thoughts and analyses here about the Destroyer-Spam, it is definitely overpowered atm.



I would prefer a simple and easy to understand solution - e.g. incorporating some scaling components (tonnage modules like Advanced Containers and the engine modules spring to mind), applying the economies of scale to the ship sizes (i.e. the increase in size is not linear to CP but instead much higher for Cruiser, Battleship and Dreadnaught) and improving the defense techs.

Buecherwyrm wrote:
Some very nice thoughts and analyses here about the Destroyer-Spam, it is definitely overpowered atm.



I would prefer a simple and easy to understand solution - e.g. incorporating some scaling components (tonnage modules like Advanced Containers and the engine modules spring to mind), applying the economies of scale to the ship sizes (i.e. the increase in size is not linear to CP but instead much higher for Cruiser, Battleship and Dreadnaught) and improving the defense techs.

Sometimes simple is best, I agree.



The problem of overkill tanking/lack of large ships being able to target multiple small ones per turn could only be solved on the design level still, if all that was done was to increase ship tonnage scaling: you'd design ships with the minimum number of guns to reliably kill a destroyer each turn with minimal 'overkill' waste, the better to devote more and more tonnage to survivability.



Improving the defense techs very much has a downside though - shifting the balance over to 'tank' style ships that would create protracted wars full of inconclusive battles and low casualty rates. I'm pretty certain that a design decision was made for combat to favor lethality and decisive resolution over either realism or defensive play - the lack of a 'retreat' option in battle is a signal that the designers want fights to go to the finish. And it's actually a decision I agree with. Yes, combat's going to be bloody, but it's also going to mean that one way or another, wars are going to make things happen.



I personally think that giving medium and large ships the ability to mount engines more cheaply, and/or multiplying their fleet-wide engine and repair module bonuses by their command point cost so they can stay even with 'destroyer swarm' fleetwise bonuses in the same way, would do a lot to close the strategic gap. Making defenses, as opposed to hitpoints, a valid survivability tactic would require a fundamental redesign of how they work, in my opinion.

Vector78 wrote:
The problem [...] could only be solved on the design level still, if all that was done was to increase ship tonnage scaling: you'd design ships with the minimum number of guns to reliably kill a destroyer each turn with minimal 'overkill' waste, the better to devote more and more tonnage to survivability.

I counter your design by adding a single reflective armor to my destroyers. Now your full volley does 99% of my ship's health, requiring that the dread perform a second full volley, wasting most of the damage.



You redesign to include one more weapon. I redesign for the 27 extra hit points to survive.



This continues to an equilibrium whereby your loss of armor is more of a detriment than my loss of weapons.

Draco18s wrote:
I counter your design by adding a single reflective armor to my destroyers. Now your full volley does 99% of my ship's health, requiring that the dread perform a second full volley, wasting most of the damage.



You redesign to include one more weapon. I redesign for the 27 extra hit points to survive.



This continues to an equilibrium whereby your loss of armor is more of a detriment than my loss of weapons.

You speak as if you know EXACTLY how the damage mechanics work in this game. Why?

TheBoz wrote:
You speak as if you know EXACTLY how the damage mechanics work in this game. Why?

The exact mechanics are irrelevant.



If your big ships has the exact number of guns to kill my little ship with minimum overkill, then increasing the hit points of my little ship, even by a small amount, makes it survive your salvo.



That's basic math.



If your salvo does, on average 101% of my hit points, and then I increase my hit points by 2%, your ship won't kill mine, on average as you'll only be doing 99%

Not to mention that damage done to a ship has no effect on it at all.



They suffer from Critical Existence Failure



http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CriticalExistenceFailure

Rather than making all the defenses work the same, or something, would it help matters at all if the defenses worked at, say, 1/2 to 2/3rds effectiveness on non-optimized weapons, at least of the same teir. Like, say if Flak Gave 100% defense verses missiles, 2/3rd defense vs beams, and 1/2 defense vs kinetics, and the values would stack with each other. Might help the whole either no damage or you're dead issue.

Thats what Galactic Civilizations did, and its more or less the same.

I feel that the "Defenseless Destroyer Rush" is not the problem itself, but rather a symptom of an underlying problem with the current balance of the combat system. The problem is, that ships die way too easy and that even the biggest ships die regularly.



As I have only played 1 game so far (on normal, currently in my second game, this time on hard), I don't feel qualified to give an opinion on how this could be helped, but as an idea, what about ships granting some of their defenses to other ships in the fleet? You could go as far as making it depend on the position in the fight (currently they are purely cosmetic) or just give a plain bonus depending on the number of ships of different classes. This would entice you to mix the different ship classes...



*Edit* Forgot the main reason why I was posting: Which difficulty are you playing on? I was able to use Dreadnaughts with decent sucess on Normal difficulty (fully teched, balanced layout, mixed weapons). I lost maybe a couple in a rather long war and mainly to some purely missile Battleships or something...

Humm, speaking of Critical Existence Failure.



What if ships could damage eachothers modules after their HP was depleated, if not the HP of a ship is determined by the modules themselves? That might give a boost to the bigger ships who have more 'guts', and by giving a evasion bonus to the smaller ships could balance out the odds by promoting the use of the better bigger ships, and the utility smallerships.



But i dunno, just a thought. lol

Flipp wrote:
I feel that the "Defenseless Destroyer Rush" is not the problem itself, but rather a symptom of an underlying problem with the current balance of the combat system. The problem is, that ships die way too easy and that even the biggest ships die regularly.



As I have only played 1 game so far (on normal, currently in my second game, this time on hard), I don't feel qualified to give an opinion on how this could be helped, but as an idea, what about ships granting some of their defenses to other ships in the fleet? You could go as far as making it depend on the position in the fight (currently they are purely cosmetic) or just give a plain bonus depending on the number of ships of different classes. This would entice you to mix the different ship classes...



*Edit* Forgot the main reason why I was posting: Which difficulty are you playing on? I was able to use Dreadnaughts with decent sucess on Normal difficulty (fully teched, balanced layout, mixed weapons). I lost maybe a couple in a rather long war and mainly to some purely missile Battleships or something...

It actually doesn't necessarily matter on the difficulty rating, because the AI has a number of things it does in ship design that mask combat balance issues in my experience - in my first game I also progressed through larger ship types, and didn't notice the issue. It wasn't until I played a game as the sophons on normal that I noticed the phenomenon in fact... I noticed it because I out-teched the AI so badly that I was fielding dreadnoughts and battleships against primarily destroyer packed fleets - and got slaughtered.



If I hadn't had a tech lead I wouldn't have had that happen because in most games the AIs will switch to favoring their largest possible hulls over destroyers once they have the tech to.

I'm going to second Vector78 in saying that the difficulty doesn't matter. As far as I can tell, there are no direct combat modifiers for difficulty level, and in the higher difficulty levels the AI still can't design ships worth a damn--it just throws more of them at you.



In fact, I'd say we have to distinguish between what's good against AI, and what's best compared to other possible ships. Against the AI's badly designed ships, you can often run up a better kill ratio with a more defensive design, even though such a design might not hold up well against (not computer designed) kamikaze destroyers.

So in summary: We really want beta here so we can do some multiplayer!

Even for singleplayer, more balance is never a bad thing. I want the AI not to be at a severe disadvantage if I rush it with destroyers, nor be severely advantaged against me should I choose to use Dreadnoughts (which I do for the challenge and the fact they look really cool). And it's better that the Beta takes time to iron things out, then we can take time to analyze it. Indeed, Time + Effort = inspiration!

Igncom1 wrote:
Humm, speaking of Critical Existence Failure.



What if ships could damage eachothers modules after their HP was depleated, if not the HP of a ship is determined by the modules themselves?

Space Empires did that and varied in execution, but typically you had shields (hitpoints that refreshed every battle, if you had them) and then components. Components came in three layers:

Armor Layer

Outer Hull

Inner Hull



Only armor could go in the armor layer, weapons could only go in the outer layer, but everything else could go in all the other slots (you could use inner and outer hull for armor, but generally wasn't done).



Components were damaged from the outside inwards (duh) and a ship was only destroyed if it had no bridge (there was also a backup bridge module as well).



It was pretty abusable though. I'd stack so many shield regenerators that it was impossible to actually damage my ships, but I could also carry significant firepower. I don't think the AI ever created a ship my medium sized vessels couldn't kill (unless it was something five times bigger than my ship, and simply had more ordinance than my entire fleet). Though I'll admit this might be because the AI favored the crappier laser weapons.

Kingherod wrote:
So in summary: We really want beta here so we can do some multiplayer!

Soon.

Hmm, I have just started playing ES and noted the same problem. One thing that might solve this would be to ad hangar capability/improvements to larger ships. I.e. larger ships can ad hangars where they can store bombers and fighters. Fighters counter bombers and bombers attack other ships. Small ships like destroyers would not be able to mount fighter bays and would be defenseless against the bombers. The bombers would have the advantage of spreading out on all ships and attacking where there is a gap in firepower to avoid overkill's.



Other possible solutions could be delayed firing missiles and intelligent missiles; the missiles are not fired all at once but in longer salvos and re-targets when it looses its target. Thus the missiles will attack a ship one at a time until its destroyed and then find a new ship. Maybe it could be a battle card or something. And to avoid missiles getting overpowered maybe stack flack defenses.



But there is one thing that would help massively; ship positioning and tactics. I would love for there to be a way to position my ships in the fleet and have it affect the battle.



For example; In my fleet I have a few Battleships and Destroyers. The battleship have a lot defences, flak and what not but little weapons. The destroyers is opposite. I place my battleships at the front/edges of my fleet and the destroyers in the centers. This means that the battleships will suffer the brunt of the attack, protecting the weaker destroyers (some of the attack would still get trough the breaches, but much diminished). This would make defensive ships more attractive as they could actually protect the fleet. But perhaps it would be a good idea to put in some penalties too; if you place the destroyers to far away from the action and behind a wall of battleships they will get a penalty on their damage output both from the distance and the fact that your own ships are in the way.



This could enhance combat as once could ad the option of moving the ships around during combat; deciding when to open your defenses and to let the destroyer have a free shot at the enemy would be vitally important.



If hangars was added this would make Dreadnought mother-ships with fighter/bomber fleets very attractive to have at the center of the fleet because the it would be able to send its payload to the front without risking itself, it could stay put far behind the front lines. One could also add in improvements that have huge tonnage requirements but give large bonuses to the fleet so you could have ships that functioned as command ships. Lastly, adding in this and perhaps a way to decide where to attack one might also see Dreadnoughts used as spearhead vessels where it have heavy armaments intended to punch trough a defense to get behind it and attack the support vessels.



Of course, these a just general suggestions, there might be a need for modifications to make it fit in to the game mechanics.



EDIT:



On the note of ship placement, it need not be overly complicated, do it like current combat mechanics and have 3 positions, at the edge of the fleet closest to combat, in the middle distance and far away from the combat. I made this shitty mspaint picture to illustrate.









This forum needs a spoiler tag.

@ vector78, now that we have moved several posts into this strategy section, we can clearly see two different approaches both claiming "optimal" results. What do you think of the omnitank battleship fleets proposed by supersoaker9?



/#/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14018-what-is-the-best-fleet-design-strategy

Yes, please check the END of this post where I do the analysis, and have my point of view failz miserably.



However on a redeeming note, I derived the tactic against AI, which always tries to add at least one type of defense against your weapons. My design strategy is more of an exploit of the current AI's inept ship designs. Ie., works against AI but not DD swarms.