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GalCiv II: Size Matters

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GalCiv II: Size Matters

Part 1

from JoeUser Forums

When it comes to battles, size matters.  To balance that, Galactic Civilizations II introduces the logistics concept.

The logistics concept was designed to prevent the age-old strategy game issue where each side just builds a single mongo fleet/army/whatever and wipes out everything in its path.  The number of ships you can put into a fleet is hence limited by your logistics ability which you can research to improve.  How many logistics a ship uses is based on hull size.

In Galactic Civilizations II v1.0 that was:

Tiny: 2 points of logistics
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 5
Large: 5
Huge: 6

It was done this way to keep it simple for players.  But here's the problem -- ship sizes.  A tiny hulled ship has 16 space.  A large hull has 55 space.  That's over 3X as much space but the large only uses up 2.5X in logistics. Advantage: Large hulled ships.  There are other factors involved too such as hit points and cost -- which are well balanced. But logistics are out of whack in our view.

So in v1.1, it's going to be this:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 4
Large: 7
Huge: 9

The various logistics techs will be pumped up too.  The fact is, we want people to be able to build swarms of ships as a viable strategy. We also want people to be able to fixate on building huge capital ships as well.  Now, the current system isn't horribly imbalanced by any means, the guy researching the larger hulls isn't able to put in time researching some mongo weapons.

If you go strictly by a spreadsheet, you can see plenty of imbalances depending on how you want to look at it and how nit-picky you want to be.

But I want to stress - the guy who's building huge ships had to go and research (or trade some equally valuable) technology to those huge hulls. They also had to put together the manufacturing capacity to create them and make the sacrifice of putting their marbles into a single ship rather than a bunch.  In addition, there are various "round off" things that they have to deal with as well and many components, particularly defenses, take size into account when determining how much size they use.

Update: 

After play testing during the evening and taking more into account things like starbase bonuses and the cost of getting those large hulled ships I made a minor tweak:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 5
Large: 6
Huge: 8

The Cargo hulls didn't need to come down because the new logistics abilities increase your logistics quite a bit. Before you would have 12 logistics after researching enhanced logistics. Now you'd have 15. You could hence fit 3 transports into a fleet at that stage versus 2 previously.


 

68,831 views 63 replies
Reply #51 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


I really hope this path of adding more "options" does not continue. Options make the metaverse worse by splitting it up into too many categories.
Reply #52 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So did you add the full hitpointmodifier to the ships?
You get +40% from technology.

That means that 1 tiny ship has 8 hp. One huge has 67 hp.
Means little for a tiny fighter but can probably do quite a difference for a huge.

Note that you get +15% hp when you get huge hulls so they will never have less than 55 hp.

EDIT: You will also have 200 space on a huge hull in 1.1 while you now only can have 160 (with +100% miniaturization from technology).

EDITTED ONCE AGAIN:
See only one ship per side can be destroyed per turn. That means that in a full out, currently 28 logistic point, fleet i have to have my capital ships last for 14 turns.

Not true, with 28 logistics points, you can kill up to 4 enemy ships per turn (until you begin to lose ships) and you won't have to last that many turns.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #53 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the whole small vs. large ship balance is a non-issue because there is a much bigger imbalance in ship combat. The attacker has a HUGE advantage!!! Having all ships fire at the same time would restore balance.

In the Dread Lord's campaign missions (playing on level Tough) I'm able to crush the total Dread Lord's, Drengin, and Yor fleets with just a few fleets of heavy fighters. The Dread Lord's have powerful weapons but they are useless if they never get to fire them! Since the Dread Lord's are not using defenses, my fleets of 4 heavy fighters (each with life support, a warp engine, and 3 plasma III bean weapons) with my race's 50% attack bonus has attack 36. They can take out any ship in one shot except for the DL's battleships but even in this case I only lose one fighter, as the battleship is lost in the second round of fire! From leveling up, pretty soon my heavy fighters have as many hit points as a frigate or even battleship!

A huge ship with strong optimal defenses can block the attacks from fighters, unless the fighters are getting high attack bonuses (from race bonuses, military resources, and/or military starbases).

I have been playing GalCiv2 since last Dec. In my games so far (played at level Tough), I have won all my games before things could progress beyond medium hull ships.

I'm playing the last Dread Lord's mission now. In Jan. 2226, I captured a Dread Lord's planet they had captured from the Drath Legion, and in the progress got the Blackhole Gun! After I research medium hulls, I can design a frigate with 2 Blackhole Guns, 2 Warp engines, and lots of life support. With my race's 50% attack bonus each of these will have attack 48 and with a speed of 10 and my race's sensor bonus, I'll always be the attacker (soon I'll also have Eyes of the Universe)! Once I build a few of these, I'll be able to wipeout the combined fleets of the Dread Lord's, Drengin, and Yor.

Next I'll play my first Metaverse game on a gigantic map with 9 Intelligent AI opponents under v1.1. It would be fun to have a fleet battle of huge ships squaring off against each other!!!
Reply #54 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Aet - your ships lose because your capital ships are, sorry to say, terribly designed.

Your argument boils down to this:

in 1.0X, Capital ships that are balanced in types of attacks and defenses still manages to win 2 out of 3 engagements against fighters that are focused on a particular weapon.

In a "real" battle, the point of capital ships isn't to make a hodgepodge of weapons and defenses. It's to have the room to put on more defenses.

What happens when you give your capital ships say 60 armor against those mass drivers of the fighters?

The biggest disadavantage of fighters is that each one has a relatively small punch. Capital ships have enough room to put defenses to counter their enemies effectively.

Using your stats, I did a mini battle with 1 capital ship with most of is defenses put into armor against those same fighters and the capital ship won 9/10 battles.

 

Reply #55 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I welcome improvements.

I did however fidn smalls hips effective already in certain scenerios. One with starbases, but also vs larger ships without defense. If you have a huge ship that has no defense, the tinies will have an ace up their sleeves. And that is that their total HP will be less than the damage you usually do. So every combat turn you will fire but more than half of your damage will be irrelevant. For that you could have traded half your guns for defense.

I think that adds more to the strategy than just tiny vs huge. Because when you have a huge ship you need to balance defense vs firepower depending on what class of ship you are facing. Agianst huge swars of tiny ships, you only need to do average 6 pts of damage (assumign no hp buffs), rest of the space should go into defense which is mroe efficient when defending against a swarm of little shots vs one big shot from another battleship.

But if your enemy all of a sudden switches to small hulls, now you have to pack more firepower on your huge ships and sacrifice some defense to ensure your capital ship will kill a small craft in one shot. I think that is where the real potential of the system lies. Yous hould balance it so that a Huge ship with all guns and no defense looses to a swarm of tinies, but a huge ship with just a bit of firepower but lot of defense wins (This is already mroe or less the case). But scale it so that if that huge ship is countered by number of medium ships, it will loose because it doesnt have enough firepower. (It's more or less the case now as well, given equal tech)

Ok guy's I cant wait for the patch and redoing fo the logistics and all the other features.
Reply #56 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Brad: Huge hulls having OVER twice as much space per unit of logistics is not balanced, even if you take into account the cost.


Me: ...the size of ship components increases with the hull size. So huge hulls have LESS than twice as many components per unit of logistics compared to tiny hulls.


When I made this statement at 3:19 a.m. EST I was very tired so I failed to consider that on a huge hull ship, life support and engines take up a smaller percentage of the hull, so a greater percentage is available for weapons and defenses. So the huge hull ship will have MORE than twice as much space for weapons and defenses per unit of logistics. If the huge hull ship has strong optimal defenses then the fleet of fighters will have difficulty taking it out, unless the fighters are getting high attack bonuses (from race bonuses, military resources, and/or military starbases). So I agree the change to logistics will provide better balance.

Brad, what about the HUGE advantage given to the attacking fleet. Would not having all ships fire at the same time provide better balance?!
Reply #57 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Brad, what about the HUGE advantage given to the attacking fleet. Would not having all ships fire at the same time provide better balance?!


Maybe balance in this regard isn't what the developers want.

After all, they make you use up a tile and build a planetary building in order to have a fleet defend a world. This all screams, "Don't defend; attack!" to me.

The only case where this becomes a problem is because the AI doesn't design its ships with sensors or speed. I can outsee and outrun them easily, so I'm always able to be the attacker. All that requires is better AI.
Reply #58 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
...they make you use up a tile and build a planetary building in order to have a fleet defend a world. This all screams, "Don't defend; attack!" to me.

Ships in orbit get attack and defense bonuses. If you have an Orbital Defense Manager and Omega Defense System, then your orbiting defenders also fleet up and get double the HP. With the right defenses they can absorb the initial attack and then the advantage shifts to them. However, you must spend the time and money to build these defenses and waste two titles on the planet. Thus I would only consider it on a high PQ capital planet along the border with an enemy. I learned in the Dread Lord's campaign missions the value of having a fast fleet to defend a solar system by attacking.

The only case where this becomes a problem is because the AI doesn't design its ships with sensors or speed. I can outsee and outrun them easily, so I'm always able to be the attacker. All that requires is better AI.

According, to Brad's posts in v1.1 the AI will make better use of speed and range, I don't know about sensors. Being able to see the enemy before he sees use you (that's why I choose +2 sensor race bonus) and having a faster attack ships are critical to exploiting the attack advantage.

Even if all ships fired at the same time, the attacker would still have one advantage. He would be able to see the attack and defense strengths of the enemy before deciding whether to attack.
Reply #59 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, the idea of big ships is that they have place for enough defense to be impervious to damage from tiny crafts. If you don't specialise them to counter a certain kind of weapon, then you're better off using small ships.

'sides, you'll be facing one enemy at a time usually. Most of the time they've specialised. Why bother with balancing defences between all three kinds? At most you should split it in two.
Reply #60 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, the idea of big ships is that they have place for enough defense to be impervious to damage from tiny crafts.


In Jan. 2226 of the last Dread Lord's campaign mission, I obtained the Blackhole gun when I captured one of their planets. This gun has mass driver attack 16! I can fit 2 of these along with a warp engine and life support on a heavy fighter (size small) which will have attack 32 but with my race's 50% attack bonus, 48! This will do damage on ships with even advanced armor! Imagine being attacked by a fleet of these!

In this mission I'm going to research medium hulls because I want room for 2 warp engines and lots of life support / range. Once I have a few of these and Eyes of the Universe the fun will begin!
Reply #61 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I guess I have to ask.. why are ALL weapons aimed at a single ship?

Surely each individually placed weapon on a ship would fire in sequence and when a ship is destroyed it would then move to the next?

That would be how I expect a large ship to function... not firing every single thing it has at a single ship!


Maybe that is where the issue lies here
Reply #62 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Imagine being attacked by a fleet of these!


What of it?

A corresponding huge ship would have enough hitpoints and defense to survive the first salvo. Your ship, with its lack of defenses (not like they could ever have enough...), wouldn't.

I guess I have to ask.. why are ALL weapons aimed at a single ship?


Because large ships would be even more overpowered than they are. And there would be no real advantage for having smaller guns.
Reply #63 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Blackhole guns are nothing, finish the missile tree and get blackhole eruptors. They do 25 damage for about the same size, and not that much more cost. The problem is, even if you can stick 2 of them into a tiny, and have a weapon bonus of say 50, you end up with a 75 attacking craft.

On the otherhand, the top of the line armors, are all around 8 or 9 space (maybe more now since the size has been increased), and protects around 10 (in their category). In order to protect against 50 missile (let's assumine you have +defense as much as they have +weapons), you would need about 50 space for defense TOPS. Then, all you need is one or two of these guns on your huge ship and you're ready to go. Now, send your 4 fighters against the huge.

Asumming normal rolls, you'd never even be able to scratch the huge ship. If you get a luckly roll, then yes, you will be able to hurt it. But that's just luck. So the question is, do you feel lucky? You have four turns if you attack first to be lucky, you have three if he attacks first. Every turn that passes, you have one less ship to be lucky. Oh, did I mention if you lose the battle he'll gain a ton of HP, where as you might not even get one?

The obvious solution is to switch weapons and attack the huge with something else. This, of course, is the designed gameplay mechanic. There is a reason why there isn't an armor type that can defend against all three. Secondary armor should only be put on if you can't think of anything else to fill the space.


Now, for the argument that says 2 huge against 14 tiny is unfair and you need to survive 14 turns... frankly, you need better math skills. First of all, a huge = 8 logistics, a tiny = 2 logistic, which means 2 huge against 8 would be fair, 3 huge against 12 would be fair, forget the mediums, they are a completely different size and will die first anyways. No matter how you do the math, it still comes down to 4 turns. If you attack first, they only have 3 turns. If you really want 14 tiny in your maxed fleet, ok, 5 turns. The ONLY way the tiny can win is if they manage to string together enough 'lucky' hits to kill 3 huge ships in 4 (or 5) turns. Snowflake in hell... snowflake in hell... maybe pick that 'luck' trait and hope it helps. That is, assuming you could somehow get 14 tiny ships together to form a decent fleet without it being picked off one by one as HP loot for the bigger ships.


IMO, Those who are crying have obviously never went around with a couple of battleships looting HP. Horribly imbalanced, but amusingly fun. It's like an RPG game of sorts, with a turn button. (Hmmm... next time I'll start naming those ships, no wait... individualized designs! LOL! )