with equal weapon and defense techs researched, a huge ship should be able to beat an equal logistics value simple fleet of smaller ships that have no support. considering the time it takes to research the upgraded hulls they should by default be a little better by themselves, but all work best when grouped up and mixed together in different ways.

"12 dmg for a 1 logistics ship does sound a little high"

Not in GC3.  That is an easy target.

"maybe if the bonuses were more % based and less "base dmg" based then it would even things out a lot more"

Very similar to what I'm advocating for, just focusing on defenses rather than hit points, or damage.  I think we're on the same page.  It's really a question of how to balance large and small ships.  That's more up to the developers because they know the code and what would be the best option for them to reach this point.

"a huge ship should be able to beat an equal logistics value simple fleet of smaller ships that have no support. considering the time it takes to research the upgraded hulls they should by default be a little better by themselves"

If huge ships are balanced against swarms, they will actually already be better because if the huge ships (lets say 12 logistic points) survives a battle you still have all 12 logistic points vs in the same battle with 12 tiny fighters, you might lose 6 or more fighters bringing you down to only 12 logistic points.

I'm hoping to play multiplayer with someone to really get a sense of what's going on in combat.  The goal rather than actually playing will be to build fleets and try and lay a ground work for how balanced ship types in the game actually are.  I have a sense from playing GC III, but I think actual numbers will be far more convincing and useful to share with the developers.

I don't see how this would be any harder to balance than adding damage reduction.   Damage reduction would actually at a point encourage even higher swarm tactics because as soon a # of ships is greater than the % damage reduction they will murder the larger ship

Allowing larger ships to fire on more targets... even if that reduces damage of the volley or increases miss chance.. would be much harder to code yes... but balance would be pretty easily achieved.

The biggest issue with balancing the targeting computer is that there isn't a number you can change until it roughly balances out.  It either works or it doesn't.  You could add a debuff to ships using the targeting computer assuming that with that modification huge ships can easily overwhelm smaller ships.  That is a number you can balance.

Based on some of the comments made by Stardock personnel a lot of people actually just use premade ships.  More ship ship components also complicates either the prebuilt ship maker and the A.I. behind building ships.  Although I think the A.I. building ships could use some help.

 

 

yeah i agree a lot with both of you. and larger ships being able to target multiple smaller ships would be great, but prob hard to actually do.

i think the balance with swarms should be to make it so that the swarms by themselves shouldn't be able to take down a large or huge hull of equal logistics pts, but if they have a support ship or 2 in the back that's not being targeted then the swarm should be able to take down a bigger ship while losing a few swarm ships. right now they're so good by themselves they dont need support ships, but if dmg was better balanced and support ships were really vital to swarms then it would encourage more mixes of different types of ships. people could have simpler fleets with all med ships or something, but for swarms mixing different types and roles of ships would be the way to go so they dont become op.

and yeah, i really think stardock should have a contest later and add people's fav ship and fleet designs into the premade lists, and make the AI based off them, with better fleets for higher difficulty settings. that way everyone can be exposed to people's fav stuff.

Can't swarms be balanced by having escort ships work well? The escorts would be modest sized hulls that would attack the swarm ships before they reach the big ships, and cut them down to size. That encourages a balanced fleet, with various ship sizes, which is how it is real naval fleets. For this to work, an escort has to outmatch an equivalent cost bunch of swarm ships. It should probably be about one size larger hull than the swarm ships.

That said, maybe there could be a "swiveling turret" module that you can put on a ship to let it attack two targets at once. You could add more turrets for more attacks, at the cost of using up slots.

yeah, i think that should be a good way to counter swarm ships that have support ships, and yeah, a good way to quickly blast through swarms without support. i think trying to figure out good reasons to have a mix of ship sizes in a fleet is def the way to go. and swarms could try to counter escorts with more support ships or maybe a few med ships to target the escorts too, and have your swarm fleet set to try to attack escorts first if you see that there's a lot in your opponent's fleet. lots of reasons to mix up ship roles and targeting tactics. 

Good suggestions here.

I am not a fan of getting tactical combat in the greater scope of the way Gal Civ is built, but like mentioned earlier I do miss the validity of making cool ship designs in the extensive ship editor translated to the way battles work in the game.

With so much detail available to us creating the ships themselves I feel the combat system should be upgraded from a rock paper scissors system to a more detailed system.

Improve on the choices players have building their fleets on an overal level. And zooming in on how weapons, systems and ship roles work in conjuction helps with improving the overal strategic choices.

The reference to the Dominions games I like as well. That game goes overboard with little details and stacking effects from weapons and magic while still keeping the battles automated, but scripted by the player. 
A system like this, coupled with my afforementioned increased detail in what matters in combat and what effects the ship designs have in combat will provide for a much more interesting battle system.

Another game that, I find, does combat very well is Sword of the Stars. I know its a real time tactical battle format, but I am focusing on the way they make weapons and systems work together coupled to ship configuration and types/roles.

Perhaps a good analogy is less board game and more (light) simulation.

Ideas to help make every ship role useful:

Ideas to help make every ship role useful » Forum Post by Basilisk83 (galciv4.com)

I haven't played the beta. I played GalCiv 3, but didn't like it much. I played GalCiv 2 a lot. So with my lack of cred in mind:

"Realism" is overrated in games, but it does help make systems intuitive. In this case, why not make the weapons / defenses "realistic" and then balance tweak based on the results?

Point defenses should be very effective against missiles, but expensive and fairly advanced technology, just like they are in real life. They shouldn't really work against beams or guns at all. Missiles should have lots of range, but cost a lot of resources to make. They take less tech to make than point defenses.

Armor is pretty low tech, but it should affect the performance of your ship because it's heavy. Making and repairing it consumes a lot of resources. It should be somewhat effective against all weapons, but most effective against guns. Guns should be cheap, short range, low-tech weapons that have trouble penetrating the armor on larger targets.

Shields should be high-tech, expensive, and effective against everything. They should also be failure prone and energy-intensive, just like in Star Trek. Maybe they don't work in nebulas, and they suddenly run out of batteries after a certain amount of damage is absorbed. Maybe only bigger ships have enough reactor power to run a shield generator. Beams should also be high-tech, expensive weapons. They bounce off shields until the shields wear out, they cut through everything else, but their effectiveness depends being able to field ships with powerful reactors to shoot strong beams.

The question is what the developers should be spending their time on. There are the combat aspects and then there is this whole other game that is about building an actual functioning empire. Let's just say I'm not convinced that side of the house is in order either (link 1, link 2). IMHO it is more important to get all that sorted out so that early game domination isn't the only viable way to win. If the answer is to work on both then we're going to be in Beta for a long time. I think it would be more prudent to leave the combat stuff more or less alone for now and to focus on the rest of the game. Advanced combat can always be addressed in an expansion.

I disagree. 
Its pretty important to have GC4 ship out as a great initial product with all main game features already in.

GC3 showed that simple combat and a pretty obsolete ship editor with regards to combat dynamics is something people fall over.

I’d rather spend another year in beta to release as a wholesome game than pushing to release with lackluster combat, but a functioning strategic overall game. 
Just my opinion of course.

Apologies if this is a language barrier thing. I interpret "fall over" as positive, but my perception is that GC3 did not do much of anything well and flopped as a result.

Gaming media outlets are already reporting that the game will release this year.

Hehe its probably an englishification of something from my language.

Fall over was meant as ‘have a problem with’.

Still, I think it’ll be a mistake to release without meaningful combat. 
I do agree that detail might be improved upon with patches / expansions in the form of more options for tactics, but the fundament should stand on release.

Stardock probably doesn't have the money for an entire system rework right now.  It there is enough interest they might add an expansion that reworks combat entirely.

If they can balance the ship sizes I'll be ecstatic.  That being said I actually expect there to be some imbalance in the game.  Onyx get double hit points and can't repair without promethium.  Obviously they'll win more fights when they're at full strength. 

I do think that the promethium repair ability needs to have the amount of promethium used adjusted based on the HP to be restored.