Hey all,



this is a major irritation for me. It was adressed in other threads already but as those seem to be dead and I was unable to find any more info regarding the matter I thought I d do a new thread asking if I missed something. The "problem" regards weapons and their range options. As far as I understand it......



The weapon class (kinetic, beam, missile) decides over the general damage type of damage. I remember the Devs saying (admitting) that missiles would be overall the best long-range weapons, beam weaponry would excell at medium range while kinetic weapons would deliver a pounding at short range. These performances would NOT dominate the other 2 respective weapon types but there would be a slight advantage as listed. In an example given there were melee range missile modules described as being able to deliver kill strikes.



The weapon range will give a definite accuracy rating for the weapon class and combat segment, (in the beginning) would change combat graphics and also decide about the rounds fired as well as their damage. Long range modules would fire the least amount of rounds but those rounds would pack a punch while melee range would fire dozens of rounds with a small damage per round. The accuracy rating would decide about general damage dealth in each segment. Also the range also (used to) decide over the number of times the weapon system would fire per combat segment. Short range would fire 4 times, medium range twice and long range only once. This was true for all weapon types but was changed in a later patch so melee range missiles used to fire 4 times per segment now only fire once.



So far my understanding of combat mechanics....please feel free to correct me if I m wrong somewhere.





The last few weeks of play show me some massive differences to the above scenario to a degree that I think I m either running an old version or am bugged to hell and back. I ll give my last match as example. 4-string galaxy turn 40 all 3 AIs declare war (another thing the devs REALLY should look into) and move onto my outer colonies. I do have the smallest military force but am leading in tech by a mile. My economy is strong enough to "boot-strap" my first warfleet consisting of 2point-hull ships tier2 modules 3 defensive modules for each weapon type and I was going with MELEE RANGE missiles for that design. The enemy has the standard all-tonnage-into-meleerange-kinetics design resulting in ~200 attack rating to my ~60 defense rating for kinetics. He has ZERO missile defense. It was my 4 corvettes versus his 6 destroyers. I went with a nosebreaker attack pattern (all my attacks on a single target)



Long range: all my rounds miss, one of my corvettes takes 50% damage

Medium range: 2 of my rounds hit for no (visible) damage the rest of the salvo misses, I lose one of my corvettes, another one takes 50% damage

Melee range: approximately 1 third of my salvo hits destroying 1 of his ships, I lose all my corvettes to enemy fire



I loaded an auto-save from 3 minutes ago and changed my ship design before combat going with long-range missiles instead. The rest of the stats given is the same.



Long range: I obliterate 4 destroyers, one of my corvettes takes 50% damage

Medium range: I kill off the last 2 destroyers, I lose 1 corvette

Melee range: NA



Yeah, long range missiles did the job and I didnt expect melee missiles to be as awesome but I expected melee range missiles to be APPROXIMATELY on par with melee range kinetics (I could live with melee kinetics being superior, I m not minmaxing here) but melee range missiles are completely WORTHLESS in their current state. Even at melee range!!!!!



In order to test out the other side I changed my ship design yet again to melee range kinetics. The enemy has a kinetic defense rating of 25, I go with an attack rating of 325.



Long range: I completely wipe out the enemy fleet by the second salvo, half of the combat segment still to go, none of my ships take any damage

Medium range: NA

Melee range: NA



......................this is weapon balance?



Same fight with long range kinetics. I win the fight with the same result but whats funny is that LONG RANGE kinetics fire 4 salvos per segment......how is this not broken?







Is this a known issue and I m barking up the last-week-tree or is there a patch available or do I simply miss something in the big picture? In my understanding there is no reason why I should ever take another weapon range then missile-long, beam-medium, kinetic-short which would make 66% of the other choices worthless.

Interesting testing....so far everything I've read by experienced Disharmony players suggests only using each weapon at its default range...and that mass melee kinetics are most efficient of all (the lack of accuracy vanishes with the number of salvoes)

Yea, this is a known issue in that thuvian calculated SR kinetic would be way better than the other weapons. I think the summary section on this page summarizes the overall results.



But its not a well known issue, or maybe just not well known enough. I guess we'll see if the devs will address it in upcoming patch.

The thing that scrubs my hide the wrong way is that the weapon performances were different (aka better) when Disharmony first released. Back then you COULD design long range kinetic ships or melee range missile boats and watch the cinematics change accordingly (kinetics were more like sniper shots and missiles were like mini-missile swarms from robotech hehe) AND had a good performance with em. Then the devs patched the whole thing and reverted combat to its dull classic design...they just left the options in there to f**k yourself over. So maybe the original Disharmony design had its imbalances but it certainly was a whole lot more fun then the thing we got now and didnt justify the changes to its current state.



Yes there are mods to "fix" this but I m still working on a few more achievements besides I cant understand why the devs did this and obviously dont intend to improve the current state but seem to think everything is "great".



Well this is a report from a dedicated player reporting that things are NOT good and that the options available in the game do NOT work properly so I d say change em or take em out.



P.S. I apologize if this sounds hostile. Its not my intention but I wanted to transport the frustration rather then make it sound like its nothing. This really is an issue for me.

I haven't posted before, but this problem's bad enough to make me complain. I'd like to make it clear up front that I love this game (800+ hours racked up to date) apart from the issue described in this thread.



For what it's worth, I've stopped playing Endless Space completely because of this. Just as I was beginning to grudgingly accept the new combat mechanics in Disharmony (the flaws of which have been widely discussed elsewhere by thuvian et al), the latest update changed it to "whoever has the most melee kinetics wins, regardless of pretty much everything else". It's not satisfying to have your entire nicely-balanced early-game fleet wiped out in the long-range phase by a few Amoeba destroyers loaded up with melee kinetics.



The combat has always been Endless Space's weakest point relative to the likes of MoO2, which had tactical combat where you could genuinely make a difference in the way you designed and used your ships. For example, you could swarm an enemy's powerful ships with stasis field generators on small fast ships and take them out one by one, or you could create "launch and run" missile ships to combat powerful beam weapons, or you could nullify ships with narrow beam arcs by spinning them around with a special weapon, or you could spec your ships up to target the engine core instead of hammering through the hull. You could even disable and/or capture ships. This is back in the mid-nineties, remember.



By contrast, Endless Space's combat is a combination of rock-paper-scissors and 1700s-style "line up all your ships and fire all your cannons until one side is dead" naval tactics. Except now rock beats everything, and even in the 1700/1800s they had better naval tactics than those available in ES (see Nelson's "Engage the enemy more closely" approach at Trafalgar, for instance).



The point that was made in an earlier thread about face validity is extremely important. Regardless of whether or not evasion, hull weakness, disorientation, etc, etc are documented properly (or at all...), it's no use when people have to use spreadsheets to work out how to fit their ships. It should be intuitive. The vanilla system at least had that with regards to the weapons, defences and armour. It still falls down in terms of tactics, though; why the hell would I bother closing to melee range if I have a long-range-heavy fleet? Why on earth do we stop fighting once we get to melee range? If I have an advantage, let me press it; if I have a disadvantage, let me try to mitigate it.



Until the ES combat system gets sorted out, I won't be playing the game again (and by extension, I won't be persuading my friends to play, which is a shame as I was beginning to have some success with this until Disharmony landed). It's regrettable, since the rest of the game is generally fantastic and an excellent homage to MoO2 and its descendants (despite the lack of any espionage mechanics, but that's a gripe for another day, or a feature for another expansion). Sadly, however, until I am persuaded otherwise, I don't have any confidence in the designers' ability to create a combat system that's even half as good as the one in a 20-year-old game from the DOS days.

Yeap, I found out pretty quick it was Kinetics all the way, after only recently having picked this up in the last Steam sale.

Tweak your defence to whatever weapon the AI you're fighting leans towards, without mixing it up, and victory is assured.

I recently came to terms with this major irritation but honestly...it makes the game boring. Knowing in advance what weapons my ship will (have to) end up with eventually takes a lot of fun out of it for me. I now can neglect certain techs completely and even tho I dont change my kinetic-route I stay in control from start to end. Its boring and a lil disheartening.



These days with combat being even less appealing (before I was able to try out new designs or change my ships in order to stay competetive....now its just piling more kinetic modules on top of what I had /yawn) I focus more on economy and quit games after a certain turn when combat starts to dominate.



Doing that I realized how hard it had become to play peacefully or concentrate more on diplomatical means. I hope for the next major patch /crossesfingers

I'm almost famous, woohoo?



At this point, I haven't played ES in ages, mostly due to life. I enjoyed the glass cannon long range missile destroyer version of the game much more than the kinetic short range missile destroyer game. I still haven't finished calculations to determine if there are viable defense ship builds.

The combat in ES is... underwhelming. It has devolved into simply who has the strongest economy and tactics/strategy are limited to one reasonable path. I think Antera is on the right track with the Hectic Mod, but until the battle cards add sufficient depth to the combat system, I'm apathetic at best. For my 4x space fix, I've been playing Sword of the Stars 1, which is very dated now, but it is pretty and my choices in combat make a difference.

I'm starting to get tired of ES as well. I'll try to at least finish up Hectic, but its really starting to feel like a chore to balance combat when I've always considered that to be the dev's job (and not a modder job).

I have high hopes for your mod Antera, you made me enjoy the ES combat once again. I certainly understand your frustration and share it too because this situation has been live for quiet some time now without any reactions. It appears like the devs dropped everything in the middle of a test run and left it like that.



Either way I hope you manage to get the mod done, kudos for your work so far

RELEASE NOTES - THE SEARCH FOR AURIGA [1.1.27][Disharmonyversion]

* Added a reduction on damage for weapon which are not firing during their range speciality: -50% damage

Seems like Long-range Kinetic spam is the way to go now based on my first post-patch play-thru.

Did like 10 matches so far in various combinations and going for various victory conditions. In all of em sniper kinetics are the new uber-specc to go.



I do like the fact that the AI composes its fleets more sensible now and also uses tanking shields to protect the weapon-platforms, nicely done. I went for various weapon sytems but unfortunately anything else then kinetics greatly underperforms compared to it in any given range.



The current problem is that kinetics always fires 4 times regardless of range setting.



As the rate of fire is tied to the weapon type and not to the range (which it was originally when Disharmony released) kinetics will ALWAYS be 4x better then missiles and 2x better then beams in in every range scenario.



Its not really a bug just very unbalanced. As the player can make the system work for him in a match the other changes (fixes) to the AI outmatch it still in order to provide what the new combat system advertised (more freedom and choice for viable ship designs) it still needs to be worked over.

One thing I really don't like about the way the devs have approach weapon balancing is that all they do is keep adding new rules in hope that the result will work out. First was hull weakness and dis-orientation, then these outrageous accuracy numbers at different ranges, and now damage penalty by range. The core of the combat system is so complicated and unnatural already and all they've done throw on one bandaid after another when what the system really needs is surgery. Somebody should just start a discussion for how to rebuild the combat system from scratch.

Hi sorry to bump but I just want to verify--was this definitely never fixed? Just want to be sure before I sadly consider abandoning the game.

Speusippus wrote:
Hi sorry to bump but I just want to verify--was this definitely never fixed? Just want to be sure before I sadly consider abandoning the game.

Try a mod which re-balances combat, your mileage with the game may increase significantly.