Yamota

Join Date 10/2006

Enchancing combat without introducing tactical combat

To my dissapointment the Dark Avatar expansion does almost nothing to enchance the rather weak combat part of this game even though there are many things they could introduce to make combat more exciting and fun than it currently is without adding tactical combat.

Here are my few suggestions for this:

Hero characters

I dont know how many here have played Lord of Magic, its a very old fantasy strategy game which had heroes to enchance your armies. I think something similar could work quite well in GC II. What would happen is that from time to time named "heroes" would approach you and at a monthly fee would offer their services. Those services should be mainly combat related like boosting any fleet that it is part of but they could also have empire wide bonuses like bonus to diplomacy, economy and espionage. Ofcourse to use the bonus they give in combat they have to actually be part of combat and as such could risk dying and since they are unique, once they are gone they could never come back again so you have to plan carefully of when using them.

Turret tracking speed vs ship signature

As it is now there is little point of having small ships once you get the bigger, more powerful variants so why not introduce the concept of tracking speed. The bigger the ship the largers its ship signature would be and the lower tracking speed. Smaller ships would then be harder to hit by the biggest ships making it neccesary to have a healthy mix of small and big ships to counter your enemies smaller ships. It would be kinda like in the original Star Wars where they set out to destroy the death star and the death star couldnt hit the small rebel fighters.

Weapon range

Every time a new weapon is researched you will have two variants of the weapon. One with shorter range but more powerful and one which is long range but less powerful. One could then have the ships with long range weapons at the back out of range of ships with low range. For this to work the space which combat occurs must be increased and another feature needs to be implemented....

Formations

Before the battle you have the option of setting a formation. Like putting your vulnerable transports or ships with long range weapons at the back along with heroes perhaps.

Starbases

I think most veteran players aggree that starbases arent really worth building since they take a long time to build properly and even then they are relatively weak compared to even one of the bigger ships that you have at later stages of the game. They also arent very useful since the only thing they ever can protect are resources. So my suggestions to making them more useful are:

Everytime a battle occurs within its sphere of unfluence then the starbase will be present in that battle. If you have more than one starbase in that area the one which is more powerful will be present. Also add more hps to it so it can properly defend itself. Also if a starbase is attacked directly then the largest fleet within its sphere of influence would be present at that battle. This means ofcourse that an armed starbase within close range of a non ally would be detrimental to the diplomatic relations between the two.

Add a training module to starbases. A training module will cost quite alot to build and have a montlhly cost but if you do build one (only one is allowed for each empire) then it would slowly train any units within its sphere of influence. This would introduce a strategic element to the game since there are only one of these you and they are rather expensive you wont want them too close to your borders because of risk of them being destroyed but then on the other hand you want them close enough so you can use their bonuses.

The third "enchancment" is maybe a bit controversal since it is a nerf but I think it could add a twist to the game. The suggestion is to reduce the range of all ships by a significant percentage maybe even 50 %. This would force you to build starbases so you can reach colonies that are far away and in effect you would then have a supply line to defend in the event of war. This would be rather interesting I think because then an offensive campaign wouldnt then just be about building tons of ships and zerging your enemy but you also have to think about maintaining your supply line.

This what I got so far. What you guys think?

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I think most veteran players aggree that starbases arent really worth building since they take a long time to build properly and even then they are relatively weak compared to even one of the bigger ships that you have at later stages of the game. They also arent very useful since the only thing they ever can protect are resources. So my suggestions to making them more useful are:

Youve got some interesting ideas, but I dont agree with this at all. My territories are peppered with starbases of all kinds, especially econ. Evil alignment+Starbase = teh uber.

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I like the idea of a defensive bonus for smaller ships. My take on this would be introducing weapon mounts. Light mount is smaller, deals less damage, and has a better chance of hitting small ships. Normal mount is just that - normal. Heavy mount is larger, deals more damage, but is only good against large ships. Imagine light mount as small rapid-firing weapons, and heavy mount as large artillery-like guns.

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Yeah I thought about that and it could work just as well. Escort ships, large/medium ships with light mounts, would then be quite useful to have around if your opponent goes crazy on small/tiny ships. I guess that could be part of an AI personality, going for a few huge ships or masses of small ships or a combination of both.

An addition to heroes that I forgot to add is that they could have the ability to gain experience from every battle that they survive, thus enhancing their bonuses. So again you need to balance the risk/reward of assigning heroes to your fleets on the front line or tucking him away in a safe system somewhere.

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Youve got some interesting ideas, but I dont agree with this at all. My territories are peppered with starbases of all kinds, especially econ. Evil alignment+Starbase = teh uber.

Yeah but thats because of an deficiency in the AI. Starbases are easily taken down and the AI should do that whenever possible. It doesnt for some reason.

But I agree since the AI doesnt seem to care much about starbases, economy and influencial starbases are worth building but not for military purposes.

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I wish speed was a weapon in the game.

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Nope, enhanced combat wouldn't be good enough for me. It's either tactical combat or I never play a GC game again.

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Well good-bye then. I remember the devs hinting that it *might* be present in the GC3, but with your attitude I hope they never implement it. Some of us like the way the system works right now (although I think some of the suggestions here are a good idea), but I don't want tactical combat - at least not without a major re-working of the tech trees.

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Yamota, you do know that you can put defenses and weapons on starbases...right? The AI(both empires and pirates) tend to attack my starbases a lot. You build up the starbase defenses tech and starbase weapons. After loading on some defenses and weapons my starbases last for a long time. They are useful tools, you just need to know how to impliment them.

And Azrune, shut up. You can't be tatical in space....it's not logical.
Besides, the game isn't about fighting.

-Spencer

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The amount of hps and whatever defence and weapon you put on a starbase does not scale well with the bigger ships out there.

That wouldnt be such a big problem if it wasnt for the fact that starbases always fights alone where as ships are in fleets so a starbase will have a very tough time fighting of fleets of ships.

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Well, I've brought it up before, but as far as the smaller ships versus bigger ships thing, couldn't you simply add a targetting/evasion variable into the mix?

A targeting system would increase the minimum damage a ship could do, replacing the effect luck has on minimum damage in Dark Avatar (50% luck means you always do 50% damage). The minimum can't go over the maximum, of course. The opposing technology would be some kind of evasion mechanism, be it a type of ECM, partial cloaking device, manuvering thrusters, whatever... they'd simply decrease the minimum damage, even putting it into the negatives (where the end result is a total miss).

In combat, a shot rolled against an enemy ship would be a roll from (targetting ability of attacker - evasion ability of defender) to the maximum damage of the shot.

How would this help make tiny hulls better? Well, if the sizemod was substantial enough for the evasion technologies, small ships would get them cheap while larger ones would be sacrficing an absurd amount of space for them.

It'd also mean there'd be more possible types of ships you could make. A fighter design for taking out other fights might have several targeting systems at the expense of firepower, where a bomber type fighter would just load on the weapons to hit capital ships as hard as possible.

You could also have racial abilities for targeting and evasion.

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Except that the enemy tends to attack starbases with small ships or small fleets. I've had bases take down entire fleets by themselves on more than one occasion. I mean, they get the speical weapons(sub-space cannon ro whatever that gives it +7 beam) to fight with PLUS the module that adds +1 to all attack scores. They are able to handle themselves if you use them correctly.

-Spencer

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Early game, sure. And with a WHOLE lot of constructors sent to them, but starbases are at a severe disadvantage. For instance, their weapons can only hit one ship at a time, so they can't wipe out a fleet as fast as a similarily speced capital ship. Also, the number of constructors needed (each with their own build cost) to make any use of the fortification technologies is absurd... the cost and build time for merely defending a starbase is MUCH higher than the cost of a fleet that, once your tech level is a bit higher, will be more powerful. Add in the fact that the Arcean first strike ability (in dark avatar) can kill a starbase before it can even fire back, and you've got very expensive and vulnerable pieces of metal in your space that are far more economical to defend with fleets of starships than putting guns on the starbases themselves.

Either a better way to upgrade the starbases, better fortification techs/modules, or both are needed to make defending starbases worth your while against any ships but the weakest early game fighters.

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Sir, are you OUT OF YOUR F'N MIND?

A maxed MILITARY starbase loses to 1 late game cruiser (medium size) ship, or maybe even 1 frigate(small size), if it's an offense heavy loadout like Drengin uses, on Suicidal. Why? Because your dealing with something that can do an average of 75 damage which will single hit your starbase.

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Excactly and then you lost 15+ constructors to one single enemy cruiser.

At the very least, other ships should be able to assist a starbase under attack. I dont understand why that is not possible.

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I've had starbases take on frigites by themselves. Now, granted I tend to play on nomral, I feel that if you don't like them then don't build them. But then you can't flip an opposoing planet. Besides, having a fleet(even if only a few ships) nearby as a backup is just commen sense.

-Spencer

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they get the speical weapons(sub-space cannon ro whatever that gives it +7 beam) to fight with PLUS the module that adds +1 to all attack scores

But what if this starbase is attacked by a fleet with combined attack and defense scores of over a thousand, which is possible. The ships of this fleet would probably use +7 beams just to clean space debris from their hulls.

Ok, enough smart talk, I would like starbase defenses to scale with ship capabilities, but they don't. I agree with Yamota on a lot of his points actually, turrets, ranges, formations, it all sounds great. I'm not sure about the heroes. As well as the 'tactical combat', it could be a great addition to a game, but I'm not sure if this game needs it. I would be perfectly happy just watching the battles if there are some interesting features to raise it above watching dice rolling. I think Stardock has done a great job already, and I hope that it's possible to remove at least the current glitches.
Starwars Empire at War has great space battles, even though the game was very simplistic and I was dissapointed everytime I played it. But it took me a long time to put it away, because the space battles besides looking awesome looked just very 'decent', things that were happening (fighters vs capital ships, big and small weapons, targeting features) made sense, creating its own realism. I think Galciv can achieve this too, I hope it will.

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Starwars Empire at War has great space battles, even though the game was very simplistic and I was dissapointed everytime I played it. But it took me a long time to put it away, because the space battles besides looking awesome looked just very 'decent', things that were happening (fighters vs capital ships, big and small weapons, targeting features) made sense, creating its own realism. I think Galciv can achieve this too, I hope it will.

Except that in Empire at War the smaller fighters tend to swarm by themselves. You it's a lot less micromanagment that makes controlling fleets in GC2 much more difficult. You have to pick exactly what type of ship you want and how you will use it. Like SideMancer said, EAW is a much more simplistic game than GC2. But it still didn't provide an exact "tatical" combat. You tell shipA to attack shipB and see what happens. BomberA is good against CaptialShipA. But in GC2 it's not quite the same. Both great games, but when a combat unit could travel in 360 degrees it makes tatics worthless. Basic physics.

-Spencer

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At the very least, other ships should be able to assist a starbase under attack. I dont understand why that is not possible.

Word. This makes no sense to me at all.

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Eh starbases are useful, we just think they should defend themselves well enough if 1 mid/late game ship slips by you don't lose 15 constructors or whatever you spent.

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As posted elsewhere, hit point modules as well as additional defense technologies would do most of that for us. If a starbase can increase it's hit points to 300 by late game, that means it'll have matched most fleets, or at least made it a significant contest.

Also, modifying the way starbases handle their firepower from a single blast of multiple weapon types (ala Dread Lords) to allow them to target each module individually (like Dark Avatar) would be a nice addition to the expansion pack that, in concert with hit points modules, might allow a heavily upgraded starbase to last more than a few mid-late game battles.

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If you ask me, there should be a lot less defensive upgrades for starbases. Right now, there are more defensive upgrades than functional ones. I think there should be only a few defense upgrades, which are powerful but expensive.

Another solution would be a 'starbase defense module'. It is designed like a ship, and every starbase can have one of these modules. They're built by a constructor, and the cost depends on the weapons and armour you've installed on the module. Maybe there should be different 'hull sizes' that grant more hp and space.

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Well that is a solution but I think it would be alot better (and make for more interesting battles) if the starbases would take active part in combat, like for example if a fleet is attacked in its sphere of influence then the starbase would be present in the battle and vice versa, if the starbase is attacked directly, the biggest/closest fleet within its sphere of influence would take part in the defence of the starbase.

This would give an advantage to the defenders as offensive actions should always require more strenght than defending. To qoute Sun Tzu and his excellent book the Art of War:

"Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength."

The devs should btw read that book if they want to improve how the AI acts during war. The "rules" in that book can be applied for almost any kind of conflicts.

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I like the idea of designing military starbases in the ship editor, and upgrading them as required. That'd be far nicer than having to crank out a hundred constructors for defenses... simple send in a constructor to implement a design and be done with it!

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Hi!

Sun Tzu and his excellent book the Art of War

I read it, when I've been in intense gaming of board game Stratego. IIRC I couldn't find almost anything that would improve my play. I had really strong opponents at that time, so Sung Tzu didn't had much chances to teach me something new.

He was simply outdated.

"Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength."

Well, generaly speaking yes, but comforming firmily to those rules all the time makes one predictable. Being predictable in any conflict isn't good, if one wants to win. Deception, surprise and speed are keys to winning. Here Sun Tzu isn't outdated, and will never be.

BR, Iztok

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Hi!

enhanced combat wouldn't be good enough for me. It's either tactical combat or I never play a GC game again.

You forgot to mention multiplayer and carriers.

BR, Iztok

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