i'd have to say, the combat system in galciv2, 1.2, is pretty darn good.

ya i know it was basic but alot of people on here are dont know much physics or math, just stating it so that you know i am not talking about my ass..

However, you don't know English expressions. "you know I'm not talking about my ass"..

The expression is , "I'm not talking out of my ass."

Just poking fun. No need to get all pedantic on us.

I've noticed everyone says that once you get above 400% miniaturization, things level off. I've also heard it said that were all the ship capacities and component sizes multiplied by 10, it would take care of the rounding errors. How about modifying GC2Types.xml and simply multiplying all Size values by 10, including that of the hulls?

Well I created a mini-mod to do just that, and right away I've noticed that some of the pre-packaged ship designs take advantage of the rounding errors, most notably the basic Constructor! Here's how it looks normally with zero miniaturization:

CargoHull0 = 55 capacity
BasicSupport = 2 + 5%
BasicSupport = 2 + 5%
HyperDrive = 6 + 10%
ConstructorModule = 35 + 0%


That adds up to about 55.8 capacity units. Since it's always rounded down, this ship design works. However, multiply all that by 10 and you have 558 capacity units, which will NOT fit on a 550 capacity hull! I'll continue playing now and see how miniaturization behaves, who knows it'll probably be more realistic/unexploitable!

Ok why not try this idea then. Have an option during ship creation for the size of the weapons. It could give you a choice use miniturization for more weapons of that class or forego the miniturization for more damage thus requiring more space for the weapon. I would suggest that the larger weapon be at least no more than 3 times as strong ( since there really is no range specifics in this game for weapons systems..) Lets say we have the following: With Miniturization: a 1 pt damage laser taking up 10 ship spaces each with miniturization you have 10 pt damage at 100 ship spaces.. Without miniturization: a 3 pt damage laser taking up 25 ship spaces each Without miniturization you have 18 pt damage at 150 ship spaces.. At least it's gives you an option on what you want to use. Since lets face it if you can build it and you can build it small you would naturally have the choice of whether or not you wanted to use the miniturization. The only factor that would be of real importance would be the cost vs the space and damage ratios.

Remeber braiks dont work in space. Basiclly the ship has to turn around and fire its engines in the opposite dirrection. This is all for basic physics involving speed being over an area, and not warping space. Still working on that.

Well, he's definately a math major... (i.e. What the hell are "braiks"?)   

To complete the entire physics/astrophysics debate. It's a fictional game where they made a hyper drive that operates on principles we don't understand and/or never will understand since the game never goes in-depth about how the hyperdrive works. So we can theorize all we want, but in reality, it's just that, theory. Heh, the devs reading this post I made are probably going "What the heck are these guys on? They should stop trying to comprehend made up stuff and play our game we worked hard on!". or something to that effect.

Although, to continue the physics debate a little more... We have not yet been able to prove that it is physically possible to travel as fast as the speed of light (Let alone faster!). More on relativity, in a nut shell, a moving clock runs faster.

As in, if I am traveling at near light speed, I can go travel a certain distance in say 8 months, at least what is 8 months for me, but for everyone still on Earth, it will have appeared to have taken me a whole year. So it's all relative to perspective. Since I am the one in the ship, I say it took me 8 months, but to everyone else, I had been gone for 12 months. For those of you non-physics understanding over-nerds, this is possible because space-time is curved, the faster we go, the more we bend that curve towards us. Time and space would still go around the curve, but since I am moving near light speed, I am essentially "jumping" or bending the curve so as to move a certain distance in what is actually less time for me compared to everyone else who isn't moving.

Heh, I think this might be why we can't reach light speed, the faster we go, the more we bend space/time, so if we reached light speed, we could literally be anywhere and everywhere all at the same time, hence we'd probably just disappear, but I can't even fathom much more than that and it's all just random theory to me so feel free to argue any point for or against it.

Ok why not try this idea then. Have an option during ship creation for the size of the weapons. It could give you a choice use miniturization for more weapons of that class or forego the miniturization for more damage thus requiring more space for the weapon. I would suggest that the larger weapon be at least no more than 3 times as strong ( since there really is no range specifics in this game for weapons systems..) Lets say we have the following: With Miniturization: a 1 pt damage laser taking up 10 ship spaces each with miniturization you have 10 pt damage at 100 ship spaces.. Without miniturization: a 3 pt damage laser taking up 25 ship spaces each Without miniturization you have 18 pt damage at 150 ship spaces.. At least it's gives you an option on what you want to use. Since lets face it if you can build it and you can build it small you would naturally have the choice of whether or not you wanted to use the miniturization. The only factor that would be of real importance would be the cost vs the space and damage ratios.

If you want to get into that sort of weapon "customization" now, check out Master of Orion (a.k.a. MOO). Very similar to GC2, but not as well-made as GC2. MO02 is better than MOO3 in my opinion and can rival GC2 in gameplay, but GC2 can blow it away with features and graphics since MOO2 is 2-D with 256 color graphics, but it does have tactical battles and miniaturization is based upon how much farther you progress down the same path as the weapon you just researched.

For gal civ 2, components have to be scaled otherwise smaller ships would be useless pretty much instantly when the enemy went up a size.

As it stands now, I've won most of my games with Medium hulls.

just a thought on the weapons sensor scaling ... that lazer you take from the tiny hull and slap on to the large hull, well tehy may have the same hardware (the actual bit that shoots) but the command and controll aspect is going to be so different.

in a tiny hull (i think as them as a 1 man spacecraft, or at least few crew) the pilot will do the flying, navigating, shooting, ect ... but in a larger hull the pilots are in the command room with a crew manning the weapons

another thing i was thinking about ... do you realize how much cabling their is in an aircraft? for power supplies, command and control, communications, redundency (all the things that a weapons module is going to need) and in a larger hull requires much more physical hardware