In each case, we always have to communicate very clearly to the player what is happening but at the same time not overwhelm them with data.  This is what makes this so difficult.

In general, I feel better about the weapon systems than I am feeling about the defense system designs.

As the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words". 

In this case I sincerely believe that there are too many numbers to communicate what is going on to the player effectively.  Having them sift through the numbers will create a lot of complaints about how it's too difficult to figure out strategy. For the record I want to see that complexity added to the game.  Don't give up.

I would seriously consider using a graph that gives the player a high level overview of what is going on.  The graph may not always be exactly correct, which should be okay as long as it provides the most important and useful basic information about the fleet.

Then if players want to sift through numbers for a better understanding they can do so.

In the case of defenses, I understand it's hard to communicate how they affect the battle outcome.

You could use the fancy bar graph with the arrows I mentioned above.  Then if the player clicks on the fleet to veiw details on the right side could be 2 spiderweb diagrams one showing the weapon composition of the fleet and the other showing the defense composition of the fleet.

Now the player can get a high level overview of weapons and defenses they're dealing with.  After the the player really just needs so understand how these weapons and defenses will affect gameplay which can be communicated mostly through description of the weapons.

If carrier modules will remain in the game I wouldn't make them complicated this time around (Maybe in a future expansion you could add custom loadouts for carrier modules)

I would suggest two modules.

Fighter Carrier Module:  Provides 2 fighters that have a mixture of the highest non special kinetic or beam weapon and the highest non special shields or point defense.

Bomber Carrier Module:  Provides 2 bombers that have a mixture of the highest non special missile or beam weapon and the highest non special shields or armor.

Part of the problem here, as I see it (as a writer and Air Force Vet) is the misappropriation of words & terms. Point Defense, for example, exists specifically a counter to missiles. That is a concept that anyone can understand if they are familiar with the term "point defense" in even a cursory way. The idea that PD would stop a kinetic or beam attack plays against people's expectations and existing knowledge. It would be like going into a restaurant and ordering a pizza, only to receive a hamburger with pepperoni as an additional topping. By misappropriating terms and/or creating new definitions for them, you are making it more difficult for players (new and old alike) to grasp the system. Part of way people begin to understand complex systems is by relying upon shared terms and knowledge. If we use the word "Shield" then we're setting an expectation for what that mechanic does, and that can help players grasp the system faster. 

So that's one problem. Another problem is that (thus far) I see no way for the player to control target priority. Range & positioning are two of the most important facets of battle, and yet this system seems to either negate, ignore, or misuse them.

If it were me, I'd be looking at adjusting the combat in a way that factored in player expectations for common terms (like range, fire rate, Point Defense, Shields, etc.) as well as a system that could reasonably translate these common terms into efficient dice rolls. Because at the end of the day, that's what this all boils down to: dice rolls. 

I see above the argument that Range should be removed. I could see that if and only if players had a lot more control over target priority (which could then effectively stand in for range and work as a simulation of it), from both an offensive and defensive perspective. Part of the fun of GC3 was building diverse fleets to take advantage of the targeting priority - to build smarter fleets than the AI, so we could ensure our glass cannons weren't getting pummeled. It was possible to build ships into "roles" - tank, support, glass cannon, etc. Escorts were targeted first, and knowing that allowed us to build our own defensive escort packages, as well as understanding how our own offensive-minded ships would attack. If target prioritization is either uncontrollable by the player, or simply to complex to be of any strategic use, then monolithic fleets will become the order of the day. And that will be boring. 

The one Idea I do like in here is how shields and armor work, which appears to work more or less like it does everywhere else. Shields absorb damage until they reach zero, then damage is passed on to armor. The nice thing about that system is it's easily understood by nearly everyone and it lends itself nicely to tech, like shield recharge, recharge rate, nanite armor regrowth, etc. 

The bugaboo is missiles. As an offensive weapon, fine. They work like beams and kinetics. Hit the shield until it's zero, then hit the armor. I'd like to see point defense only affect missiles, as it would make sense, but it don't know that there's any kind of impetus from the devs or the players to see things implemented that way. 

But anyway, that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problems, to me, are range and target priority. If it were me, I might be inclined to try something like this:

First, allow players to assign roles to ship hulls. Hull is completely different from role, and however players want to do it should be up to them, to grant them the freedom to experiment. And how I'd start off is something like this:

Each side of combat has five zones: 

Support(5) => Artillery(4) => Guard(3) => Intercept(2) => Assault(1) || Assault <= Intercept <= Guard <= Artillery <= Support

A ship is assigned one of those five roles, thus placing it in that "zone" during combat. This defines the ships targeting behavior and has the nice side effect of being easily represented with a number in code (5,4,3,2,1). It also works as a stand-in for range. 

Assault ships attack anything in zones  1 (on each side) and zone 2 (on their own side)

Intercept role attacks anything in zone 2, 3 and 4 on its own side. 

Guards attack anything in zones 3 & 4 on their own side. 

Supports are ignored. They are the last thing attacked by any role. 

With a system like this you don't need any actual ranges, and the concept of Tactical Speed then becomes a facility for moving from one zone to the next. Fighters would have the highest tactical speed, so they could conceptually have the best chance of moving from zone 1 to 4, but they're also the smallest and most easily destroyed. Advancing from one zone to the next could simply be a matter of rolling dice for evasion and tactical speed. 

Players and AI could then be free to build ships and fleets as smartly or dumbly as they wanted. Sure, go ahead and put a bunch of glass cannon missile ships in zone 1 with the Assault role, and watch them die right away. Or, give them the Artillery role and let them sit in the back, protected by the rest of the fleet. 

Large ships with poor tactical speed wouldn't be able to advance due to the glut of ships in zones 1-3, but if they clear the field then it's easy pickings. 

I'm sure there are a lot of potential problems with this sort of design, but I think it also lends well to this particular game and the need for things to be condensed into dice rolls. The problems could probably be worked through. Meanwhile, it seems like there's potential (for the player especially) to build some interesting and functionally diverse fleets. 

Because the way I see it, the two most interesting aspects to combat - the two things that can make it complex or simple - is range/positioning & target priority. If you remove those two elements, then you greatly simplify the combat. It's just going to come down to shields being drained until armor comes into play, and weapons that do various DPS. Ship diversity, and in fact fleet diversity, will not be necessary (nor preferred). At that point, you'll just want to build the most robust ships you can with the highest DPS weapons package possible and then slam them together in monolithic fleets. And like I said above: You can do that, but it will be boring. 

As for how to show it to the user: Someone above said a picture is worth a thousand words. A 5-zone screen on each side of the battlefield showing how each ship is progressing each round - what its position is, who it's firing at, whether those hits are landing - all of that could be shown in a simple turn-based manner to the player. It would be easy to grasp and understand. Right from the first turn of battle, you'd see where all your ships are positioned, so you'd know: I have 3 ships in the Assault zone 1, and 2 ships in Intercept zone, and 3 ships in Guardian zone with beam weapons, and 2 glass cannons in the Artillery zone with missiles, and a support ship in back. Bang. Easy peasy. Watching the battle progress - watching the ships move through the zones - would be kinda fun. It would be like watching a time-lapse of Civ/Old World/Desperados. Hell, I bet that would be really addicting to watch. 

-CF

Well, I'm having trouble reading the new fleet cards. What does a combat rating of 13 mean? Do I have good weapons and good defense? I find that a good mix of weapons and defense is usually required, so a single rating is misleading to me. I used to be able to take a quick look at the attack types, defense types, and hit points.

Though the numbers can be a bit odd for me since I like having high hit points and high repair speed instead of any traditional form of GalCiv defense types.

Yeah, the single number can be misleading, but the basic premise is do I have a higher rating than the enemy fleet.  If I do, I'll probably win.  Then it's just looking how much larger your rating is by comparison.

I have read this thread with interest, and so far have the following observation.

If players are not able to control their ships in a battle then primarily it is the game's management that ultimately will determine how effective ships are and what weapon systems, etc. are the most efficient. A simple example, there is little point in designing a ship that is suppose to engage at a distance, when the game runs battles in such a way that it hurls the opposing fleets at each other and that ship will only get one shot off before the opposition gets to close range and begins to make multiple attacks. So perhaps some consideration should be given to what the Devs have devised as the battle management.

I agree with the sentiment that PD should be restricted to missile defense. I wonder if having damage to shields and armor vary based on specific beam, missile, and kinetic weapon types would add interesting strategic decisions. It certainly would make a weapon tech discovery more exciting and  loudout decisions more significant than simply opting for the latest in a linear series.

This is what Stellaris does, and its necessary if one wants to add a strategic layer to the combat. Otherwise, the offense and defense are all the same. If every weapon just "does damage" and every defense (except PD) just "absorbs damage" then what will happen is players will figure out the optimal defense and offense in short order, and design all their ships that way. 

Considering Kinetic Weapons have the greatest rate of fire and Shields recharge, the meta will probably be those two things. It will be unwise to research multiple defense types - since Shields and Armor are basically the same (with shields getting the nod thanks to recharging) then it wouldn't make any sense to research both. One might as well research all the way down a single tree for the greatest defense-to-weight ratio. Same with weapons. Since there is no functional difference between a Beam and a Kinetic - they just 'do damage' - then rate of fire becomes king. Kinetics win. 

This would be different if range actually mattered (and could be maintained by individual ships in a fleet, like in Stellaris) and/or if weapons actually did different damage to different defense types (again, like Stellaris, where Kinetic weapons do more damage to shields and Energy weapons do more damage to Armor and Hull). 

But, since the weapons here don't do any of that - they just do flat damage to flat defenses - then there's no reason to worry about choosing more than one weapon and one defense. 

Sorry to say it, but the rock/paper/scissors system was actually elegant and did force players branch out along the research tree and trade for tech they wouldn't otherwise research, because they needed to counter their enemies. This system here is overly simplistic. The only way to make it more interesting is to go full Stellaris with it, or go back to R/P/S. Where it stands right now, it's gonna be boring as soon as everyone figures out the meta. 

At least with the old R/P/S system, every galaxy - every play through the game - would be different. Sometimes Missiles ruled the galaxy. Sometimes it was Kinetics. Sometimes it was Beams, because Elerium was abundant, or whatever. Here? Just figure out the meta and make every ship the same. 

Food for thought while Laser/phaser type weapons would be immune to most Point Defense.

Anti-missile-missiles and Kinetics could be effective against both missile and kinetic weapons.

Anti missiles could have a decent chance at blowing up both as would a rapid-fire Kinetic weapon. 

Also I believe Chaff would disperse some of a light weapons power. 

Could you add a gameplay setting that hides the battle predictions if checked?  They reduce the risk I'm willing to take because I have a good guess as to what the outcome will be.  I'd prefer to have to try and figure out if I can take an enemy fleet on by checking the combat rating.

So just a few thoughts:

I am thinking we should move hard counter stuff into the special mods area.  This would require a lot of tech tree changes but I think it's time to do that.  I just don't think Point Defense is worthy of having its own called out stat on every UI.

When I designed some of this stuff I was a lot younger and dumber.  Well, younger.  And when it comes to warfare, whether we are talking Bronze age or Space Age, there are really only 3 things  you can do about an attack:

1. Evade it (ideally)

2. Mitigate the damage you get (Armor)

3. Find a way to deflect it (shields).

Everything else should fall under a special case so that we're not limiting our options on weapons and defenses in the future.

The GC4 series is really in its infancy.  I want to see this game develop such that there's a full own military industrial complex designing lots of different options to deal with different types of threats and write the AI to focus on those as well.

Anyone who keeps up on things like the development of aricraft or tanks or even aircraft carriers will have a good understanding of what we are looking to do.

I will clarify the language slightly.

1) Avoid the damage entirely (evasion)
2) Reduce the damage through a never ending source (armor)
3) Reduce the damage through a depletable source (shields).

now of course there are various flavors of those mechanics. For example armor right now removes a certain amount of damage, it could remove a % of damage as another option (not saying that's a good option just noting the design space). You could also have "reflection" type mechanics, where damage mitigated is rebounded back on the attacker. You can also have a defense that stops a lot of damage initially, but then provides a trickle of protection later (this would be regenerating shields, or HP repair type mechanics).

One potential problem with armor the way its written right now, its extremely penalizing to weapon generalization.

Lets say I have Ship X vs Ship Y. Ship Y was 10 armor.

Ship X has 10 laser. On average, Ship Y will absorb 5 damage per round.

Now take Ship Z with 5 laser and 5 missile. On average, Ship Y will absorb 10 damage per round (because armor is checked with each attack barrage).


This means it is very unoptimal to put multiple weapon types on a ship against anything with even half-way decent armor, which I think is the opposite of what your going for. You want ships with lots of variations, not a system where every ship has to go with 1 weapon type to feel effective.

One other food for thought. For a long time now we have had a system where I can pile on as many weapons and as much armor as the ship can hold. With the though of possibility removing or changing point defense, you could consider moving some weapons/armor into a more "special module" type function.

Example: What if Missiles and Kinetics were your main weapons, and shields/armor your main defenses. Again you can pile them on as much as you want. Armor is best against kinetics, shields best against missiles.

The laser then becomes a specialty weapon module that does "something cool", maybe it can burn away a ship's armor value with each strike, or something something. 

Or maybe laser is your main weapon, and missiles become a specialty module for that "out of combat barrage ability".

This would let you focus on balance from a narrower range, using the 3rd option to provide more specialty and "interesting" tactics, leaving the other 2 as your workhorse components.

Frogboy,

You forgot #4 point defense shoot arrows, catapults, bullets at those attacking you. Landmines, Claymore mines, punji stakes, Smoke screens are all modern PD for land warfare. Anti aircraft guns/ missiles as pd against aircraft.

Conversely the only real defense against kinetics is evasion as any ship hit by a rock coming at a significant % of the speed of light is going to know it has been nudged if it survives.

Speaking of Kinetics because dropping a big rock on a planet is exactly what mammals did to clear earth of the Dinosaurs so they could take over, there should be no ground invasions. They should either surrender or die once their orbital defense is neutralize. No officer who wanted to make it home to his loved ones is going to order a ground invasion, to do so would be the quickest way to doing an EVA without a suit I know of. 

Just my 4 cents worth on the invasion subject.