Could a core design element of this game be broken?

If initiative was based on ship speed, the problem would still be there, or maybe even worse... unless the AI started designing fast ships.

In real space battles, the ones the government hides from us, both sides fire at once. That's more realistic...

This is one thing that I found odd. It took me a few battles before I figured out that the attacker ALWAYS attacks first. I think it should be the opposite. The defender should be the one to fire first. It's the attacker who is moving towards the enemy, so it should be the defender who is able to get off the first shot at extreme range, while the enemy closes into effective firing range. As he enters that range, he's hit by the defender's first volley.

Perhaps if attacking a fleet with unused movement points the defenders could be considered to be "dug-in" and less likely to be surprised giving them the opportunity to fire first.

 

The OP makes a really good point.

Definitely think there should be some sort of initiative calculations here. Hull size modifies initiative (Smaller goes first) + Bonus to initiative depending on sensor ratings + Bonus to initiative based on #moves remaining + Modifier to initiative depending on whether combat is initiated in your influence territory or your opponent's (ie, whose fleet is more familiar with the area where the combat occurs), etc. As much as I don't want to cheese the game up with fleets that are nothing more than engines loaded up with guns, it's the best thing to do, particularly once you level up. I've had medium class ships with 80+ HP just from running in and blasting enemy ships before they could react.

Personally i have two ship designs, fast ones with no defense for attacking, and ones where i replace the engines with defenses for garrison ships.

I had an idea where if the speed of the ship is greter or average speed of ships in a fleet that beam weapons would riecieve a simulated damage boost since a speed advantage would mean that faster ship would control distance,thus a beam weapon causes more damage the closer you are,and the reverse for stand off missiles ,the ship with greater speed could keep fartherr away to fire missiles,meaning a reduced beam damage or slightly greaterdamage with missiles categorized as standoff technology.

f you fire the first shot -- and you will if you are the attacker -- with extreme firepower, you never need worry about receiving damage.

The attacker will not always be the attacker though.

Yes and with the insane amount of HPs you get from each battle it is safe to assume after about 10 battles even a weak HPed vessel will be able to take a pounding.

J

What about including weapen range in the equation. Even different types of weapen and different technological advances of the same weapen had different ranges.

So, one side may be able to get one or two free shots in because of their ship(s) better range.

If you have MASSIVE fire power then the defender deserves to be destroyed for doing nothing to counter. manuvering fleets is important to strategy. You can turn on the grid so you can see better how and where you should move your ships so they will attack first.

I have had the AI level massive beam weapon damaging fleets at me and get the first shot. But since I had the correct defence in ample amounts they just died like fly's from my counter attack. Which they had no defense for because they spent all their time researching beam weapons.

So the intial poster while what you say sounds like it could happen it rarely ever does. Attacking was always intended to be an advantage, but defense is quite powerful as well. start putting defense on your medium hulls and up. The AI on lower difficulty will routinely attempt to attack with large fleets with no defense and all weapons. They die horribly everytime because I have defense and they don't. Don't fear the weapons. Fear the Lucky ranger with a ton of defense cruising to your homeworld with assualt transports in tow.

Remember that defense and attacks are a number rolled from 1- whatever it is you have. So you have a fleet that attacks with 30beam and no armor. I have a fleet with 10gun and 30 shield. Your beam fleet is going to die in that combat because you will inflict very little damage on average to me while my fleet takes you apart piece by piece. It is more expensive to build ships with defense but they last longer. Heck I would still win if I had 16 shield. below that and it would be less certaint. there is alot of strategy in ship design. It's not as simple as piling on as many guns as you can. Military starbases are also very important to fleet battles as they can adjust offense and defensive values. Don't underestimate the power of defense.

Also you should never be sooo behind that everyone out guns you 10 to 1. You are just d0med then. Pay attention to military ranking.

I find that I am almost never using defence in my ship designs either. Everything smaller then a large hull gets 5pc movement and as many guns as it will hold, and only one type of gun. They send in a fleet with no shields, I hit them with Laser ships armed to the gills. Usually wipe the whole lot out before one ship is even half damaged. With destroyer or larger ships I usually throw in 2, 2, 2 on D guess I just feel I need to use them for something. Also becuase theres no need to waste time on researching defence, you quickly outpace the other civs in weapon tech.
I had an idea that the way you are allowed to load out ships should change. My thought was that weapons\shields\engines should be limited to the size of the hull. So for example you could not use warp engines and photon torpedoes on a small hull. The higher the weapon\engine\shield category the larger the ship you need. You could also make it so that there is a limit to the number of guns you are allowed to place on a hull. The AI ships are real bad too, the defualt ship selection needs way more ships so the AI has more selection, or do they actually design their own ships,

and its not true that you, as an attacker, alwaysdestroy the enemy with the first salvo - they can do nasty damage even if youre the attacker - i had faster and better ships, chose the combat but still lost 1/4th of my ships in combat - and with the enemies sheer numbers this was to much, they overran me!

OK. Perhaps this as a way of reformulating.
You may not destroy all of an enemy's ships during the first salvo every time, but it does seem to be the case that experienced players bank on being able to be MUCH more effective in investing in offense + engines without defense, all the time, and this rule seems to work:
Q. If you have some space left in your fast offensive ships, why put any defense on it rather than yet another gun?
If there is no real answer to the above question, then this aspect of ship design becomes a "no brainer".
I think it is a universal law that ANY NO BRAINER of whatever form whatsoever in this type of (strategy) game is detrimental to one KEY ASPECT of the game: its fun.
Let me reiterate: I am not saying it is unbalanced, or whatever -- just that it would be MORE FUN if it were otherwise.
I could imagine that there might be two ways of improving this suboptimality.
1. Rethinking initiative. Many posters gave excellent suggestions above, perhaps some blend could work, with some amount of randomness thrown in. Anything to be able to give a positive answer to Question Q above.
2. Make defense less expensive and smaller than offense, across the board (that is, for tech level Y offense, make tech level Y defense be cheaper and smaller). Perhaps this could also help question Q above.
I am just saying that this would improve the game in the sense that ship design would have more viable options and less no-brainers. No-brainers = no-fun.

That seems to me to be suboptimal. By always allowing the attacker to get the first shot and having his entire fleet be able to fire before the enemy, an important and fun element of this game becomes marginalized. I think this is a flaw, which, perhaps, could be addressed by changing the way in which initiative in battle is handled.

Change is the wrong word here, cos there's Nothing with regards to Initiative in Battle. And worst there is no tactics at all! Even if we don't talk about overpowered ships vs underarmed ships, any armed ship demolishes any unarmed ship!
GalCiv2 should seriously consider taking a leaf from Stars! in which weapons have different initiatives and there are also ship components that modify weapon class initiatives. In addition, movement (from tactics initiative and movement modifier components) is taken into consideration during battle. Together, it makes for much more strategic depth in battles. Stars! have a comprehensive tactics implementation, where you can set separate primary & secondary priorities to attack (e.g. any, starbase, armed ship, bomber, unarmed ship, freighter...), or set tactic (e.g. disengage, disengage if challenged, minimize damage to self, maximize net damage, maximize damage ratio, maximize damage), and set who to attack (enemy, neutral?). These tactics can be created and saved as profiles and selected for new fleets easily. So unarmed ships know and can escape unharmed or with minimal damage while everyone ahs a fair shot at one another

So it's never a dull and lame "we stand Still opposite each other and alpha-strike/slap each other in turn until one is left".

I like the idea of combat advantages based on unspent move points. MPs could be used as a resource in combat, by both the attacker and defender, with a "tactics" prompt screen at the beginning of combat. Some tactics could include defensive maneuvering, flanking and fleeing (a reason to leave unspent MPs on some ships).

On another thread, a poster complained about the inability to intercept fast fleets, as they could run past your ships on their turn. Unspent MPs could be used as an "intercept" feature, where MPs could be used to close with passing AI ships on their turns.

I also liked the idea of smaller sizes for defensive components. If they are included in the game, they should have some advantages against adding more speed and/or firepower.

You can crush the ai on normal difficulty by focusing on one weapon type and no defense up to a point. But the Ai will and does adapt to this. It will eventualy put out ships with defense. Now your ships with no defense are in danger if they fail to alpha strike.

If the ai puts out fleets with high defensive value against your weapon of choice you are sol. You should be putting defense on your bigger ships.

Try dueling against the dregin on a small map with the ai set to intelligent and post what happens.

Hi!

Remember that defense and attacks are a number rolled from 1- whatever it is you have

It seems this is not entirely correct: weapons roll from 1 to their max, defenses roll from 0 to their max. Proof: attacks on the ship wihout defenses always do at least 1 damage, never 0. 1-point atacks on ship with 1-point defense do cause damage sometimes.

Q. If you have some space left in your fast offensive ships, why put any defense on it rather than yet another gun?

Because enemy still fires back on one of my ships, and I hate losing ships so cheaply. So if I know what I'm fighting, I put on my ships so much defense to match their average ship. That's quite easy with medium hulls.

Definitely think there should be some sort of initiative calculations here

... and weapons range, and additionall computers for better init/higher accuracy, and combat speed, and
... and you'd get Stars!
My suggestion: don't. Creating a proper (counter)design in Stars! is almost a science - overly complicated for a casual Emperor. I quite enjoy simplicity of the ship design here in GalCiv.

BR, Iztok

Correct Defense is actually more valuable than offense, offense dice of all enemy ships are not pooled, they must =individually= break through your defenses to do any damage whatsoever. If they have no defenses, they're SOL.

And a lot of defenses do become equal or smaller in size than offense. They do seem to be more expensive, but if you're able to mount enough for them to absorb sufficient damage this makes sense; your ships come out of engagements less damaged, thus you get more value out of the ship before it gets blown up.

The argument that it's cheaper to invest purely in offense is only true until you hit that first ultra-expensive weapon upgrade. For instance, going from Stingers to Harpoons, I've seen that take 18+ turns whereas the next upgrade to my shield take is only going to take 3 turns. The further you go up the tree, the more you hit these vast leaps of cost. It's true at a certain point, when you're bringing in enough research, you could have Harpoons in 4 turns while those shields are going to take 1 - 2 turns anyway due to the research-speed 'cap', but in a realistic scenario you're not going to be very far ahead in weapons techs if you wait that long to get Harpoons.

I think it's a fairly moot point.

If you are the attacker, you want to have all guns.

If you are the defender and you have all guns, you're dead.

If you have optimalised defense against the attacker, you can survive the initial barrage, possibly with all your ships which then fire back on all those defenseless attackers.

I've had many games where defenses came to play a huge role - even the AI was sporting massive defensive numbers across all three types.

In the early game weapons rule, in the late game with larger hulls, better miniaturisation and cheaper defenses, you cannot leave them out of the equasion... they become relatively much more powerful.

On another thread, a poster complained about the inability to intercept fast fleets, as they could run past your ships on their turn. Unspent MPs could be used as an "intercept" feature, where MPs could be used to close with passing AI ships on their turns.

Well, are you sure you can intercept ships that have warped space After all, you aren't near them.

I tend to play for a Cultural or Alliance Victory, but usually one of the evil races will declare war on me.  They usually end up regretting it.  At the start of the war, my ships have less firepower and more defenses, but in fleets they tend to win over the AI ships because not as much damage goes through.  In the meantime, I'm pouring my resources into cranking out more powerful ships that I send to take out the enemy defenses, and escort my transports. This tends to work well on Normal, although it's much harder if you don't have friendly AI players for trading. 

Regarding intercepting warp ships, you could sense the wake from their space warping. Works the same as instantaneous communication with alien races half a galaxy away. You could even make it a ship componenet - "Warp displacement detector"

Q. If you have some space left in your fast offensive ships, why put any defense on it rather than yet another gun? If there is no real answer to the above question, then this aspect of ship design becomes a "no brainer".

Because at some point, more guns won't help you, while defenses will. A couple games back I was going against an AI who was using the "swarm" mentality with tiny and small ships. I ended up building huge ships, but didn't have enough of them to fleet them together. Since I was good, however, I got the ethical defenses, and I had a couple military starbases and the defense increasing achievement. So... I ended up fighting battles where my one huge ship took on several 8-12 ship fleets. With a huge ship that had all weapons, the ship died. Fast. His weapons did so much damage that any ship he fired at was an instant death, but with 11 ships firing back and no defense, he soon followed them. The next ship I tried had some basic defenses against their main weapon. It still died, but took a lot longer. After loading the game again, I dumped most of the weapons except for about 20 points worth, then loaded up on defenses, at least 20 points in each catagory. In the process of wiping out their entire standing army single handedly, I think he lost a total of 8 hp. He'd go up against fleets with a combined attack of a bit less than 200 damage, but since it was split into 8-12 parts and he had 35+ cumulative defense no matter what type of weapon they used they just couldn't touch him. Sure it took 2-3 shots to kill some of the larger ships, but if they can't touch him, and neither can their friends, then he had the time to finish them off.

Against small groups of large ships, you're probably better off with going all out attack. Against large groups of small ships, defense is key to survival. Overkilling one ship won't help, and surviving his friend's attacks is critical. Weapons only work against one ship per turn, defenses are active against every single ship he has.

My rule of thumb:
No defense for tiny ships or most small ships. Occasionally I'll put defense on a small planet defender, but its usually best to see them coming and attack first.
Put at least some defense on medium ships, but don't go overboard. 1 of the best defense tech in any catagory is enough for most games. Up it for any planet defense ships or later in the game when you get better tech.
Balance attack and defense for large ships, 1-2 catagories of defense.
Heavy on defense for huge ships, about 3x the defense compared to attack, spread out or concentrated as needed to counter enemy weapons (i.e. if you have 10 attack and are going against someone with beams and missles, at least 15 beam/missle defense. If you don't know what you're facing, 10/10/10 defense.).

It's true at a certain point, when you're bringing in enough research, you could have Harpoons in 4 turns while those shields are going to take 1 - 2 turns anyway due to the research-speed 'cap'

Side note: There is no real research speed cap, any extra research from one turn is applied to the next tech on the list. In some games with very fast tech I've actually researched 4 techs in a single turn, since I'd ignored the early levels of a particular tech tree while I built up my researching machine, then dumped enough research points in one turn to research the first 4 levels of armor/shield/whatever.