Smaller is better?

Get your mind out of the gutter!

from GalCiv2 Forums
My last few games I have noticed somthing, my fleets of small ships tend to hold up much better than my fleets of larger ships, heres why:

My smaller ships are constantly upgraded with the latest offense/defense capabilities since they are cheaper to maintain.

My ships are much faster than the AIs so I dictate when and were I fight, thus gaining the attackers bonus. Since I get to fire first I can wipe out half the enemys fllet before they get of a shot!

Additionally since a ship can only fire at one target per turn, I dont have to worry about overkill, ei. if a ship has only 2 HP left my ship with 15 attack is wated on only 2 HP. A smaller ship only has 8 attack. Since the smaller ships can group into larger fleets, I can more accuratly ditribute my attacks!

And finally I can build a heck of a lot more smaller ships a heck of alot fater than larger ships!

Now ofcourse Im totally hosed if the AI fleet gets the jump on me... but thats what strategery is for right?... Or have I just been getting lucky?
6,981 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Tiny, Small ships are best for fighting ship/fleets with lots ofference power but no defence; DreadLords, etc (total damage deliver will be more, because more rounds of fighting).
But once your opp. add defence to their ships, Large, Huge ship become better chioces (because space needed to add off. power to overcome their defence).
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Depends on the circumstances, and very much agree to what MonkeyLogic said.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Every situation is unique and both strategies in terms of ship sizes work well. With a high enough miniaturization level you can build small hulls that have 50+ space in them. That is almost as large as cargo hulls start out at. So it's unfair to say that you must build larger ships to get more weapons. My last game I had small hulled ships doing upwards of 40+ points of damage between my military bonuses from resources and weapons tech. Three resources with maxed out (49%) mining tend to do that . Also with the hull trade good and all HP techs that small hull has plenty of hit points to survive in battle.

I tend to build mixed fleets of small / medium or medium / large depending on if I'm playing defensive or offensive. Small planetary defenders are fantastic since you don't need engines and they are really cheap so you can build a lot of them without really impacting your ship costs. One orbital fleet manager and all of a sudden you've got six or seven ships to defend your planet in no time flat.

When on the offensive I build a lot of military starbases. Even with the changes in v1.1 it is still useful to build one fully upgraded near the major fights. This can also turn small / medium hulls into large / huge equivalents without the added cost of the larger ships.

One of the best things about this game is there isn't one absolute *right* way of doing things. There are several viable and useful tactics. Granted I'm sure if you crunched a bunch of numbers you could come up with the best *optimal* configuration but for the most part you are squeezing probably an extra two or three percent out of the system that the vast majority of players will never even miss .
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
ships without engines eh? You mean orbital forts.... i'll have to try that sometime
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
MonkeyLogic is correct.

I had some medium ships that were getting beaten down by an onslaught of fighters but as soon as I added shields with fewer weapons then I started winning so you have to watch for that.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Additionally since a ship can only fire at one target per turn, I dont have to worry about overkill, ei. if a ship has only 2 HP left my ship with 15 attack is wated on only 2 HP.

And once the guns get *really* big, the large-ship side will be wasting attack points on overkill -- swatting your 10-hp fighters with 30-point attacks.

Always tradeoffs, though. If you aren't winning the vast majority of fights, you have to watch out for enemy battleships racking up experience to the point where they can survive 10:1 of your fighters.