A thought about fighter balance.
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GalCiv2 Forums
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Recently there is something that I found quite to be a problem. It's a long post so please bear with me.
It's the balance between fighter and judgenaut classes toward late game when the tech tree is almost max for each side. Here is the detail from my analysis:
- At the beginning the different is obvious enough and the bigger ship has clear advantage. Since the equipment size is generally large and the ships don't have much point without good miniturization.
- But, toward the end of the game there is a problem. Given the size of the fighter it's pretty pointless to give it any amor because even if with half of the point spent on armor the fighter most like won't survive a blast from a judgenaut anyway. But this "sounds like a disadvantage thing" actually work greatly in favor for the fighters, here's why:
+ By the end of the tech tree as I said, the fighter hull doesn't need armor point, and since it's not often used as long range it doesn't need a lot of engine or other support hardware either. So you guess it, whatever point it has it goes for guns! Since the fighters with or without armor doesn't matter at this point, but although it dies fast, it's cheap, much cheaper then a battleship.
+ Now, it doesn't mean much when a figher is blown up, but losing a jugenaut is something else. That's why I believe while the Huge and Large hulls have more points, they can not ignore the armor/engine/life support like the fighter hull. It's ok for a fighter to get blew up in one shot, the same can not say for the Huge hull. So the point is distributed.
+ And here is where the problem appears. When the tech tree is not max ala the equipment size is still big and the point available is still low, the fighter is far outclasses. However, when the tech tree is max, this difference becomes very small. I find that at this point in the game the fighters always match the Jugenauts in term of fire power. As you can imangine to that amount of fire power, a 40 - 60 armor points on the Jugenauts can only provide below average protection. And as you can see, the way the battle system work this is a great disadvantage for the Jugenauts:
* First: while it's true the Jugenault almost guarantee a death for the fighter. HOWEVER, most of its fire power is a waste because it doesn't take all the fire power to kill a fighter, but as we know each ship only attack one target at a time with all its fire power.
* Second: while the Jugenault fire power is wasted a lot for every single shot, the fire power on a fighter (about 120 at this point) certainly score big against the Jugenaut's armor and HP. With this set up a group of 2 fighters has a very good chance to eliminate a Jugenault or at least smoke it to 1HP, and a group of 3 fighters can almost guarantee the Jugenault's death.
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Ok, that analysis of mine doesn't come out of the blue. It's what actually happening in my game. The thing is as I said, this is only an issue in later game when everyone are pretty high tech. If you only play short game or don't go very far on the tech tree before the game is done then you won't even notice this.
In fact, usually at this point in the game the fighter is the one that scares me the most from the A.I. Because when they use Cruiser or battleship they still have to distribute the points to armor and other systems like myself, but when they use fighters, it's all about guns (and I must say that's a smart decision on their part). So as ackward as it may sound usually when I check their formation, usually the fighter formation pack a much higher fire power value comparing to a cruiser/battleship formation, and my survival rate with fighter is much lower comparing to the rate with other ships.
So this is a little too ackward IMHO and imbalance, not to mention a little on the counter-intuitive side. And the problem lies with with max mizuration and guns, a fighter can still pack a lot of gun, and because it doesn't matter at this point they have armor or not, they will just go for guns.
My suggestion for this problem is ... in the future if the combat system is to remain the same, should we limit the fighter hull to certain tech level? I'm thinking about excluding the last 5 or 6 levels of the weapon tree to prevent the fighter simply pack a wallop like this. Plus don't you think it makes sense, a fighter shouldn't have enough power to equip the same amount of Black Hole Generator like a Huge hull.
It's the balance between fighter and judgenaut classes toward late game when the tech tree is almost max for each side. Here is the detail from my analysis:
- At the beginning the different is obvious enough and the bigger ship has clear advantage. Since the equipment size is generally large and the ships don't have much point without good miniturization.
- But, toward the end of the game there is a problem. Given the size of the fighter it's pretty pointless to give it any amor because even if with half of the point spent on armor the fighter most like won't survive a blast from a judgenaut anyway. But this "sounds like a disadvantage thing" actually work greatly in favor for the fighters, here's why:
+ By the end of the tech tree as I said, the fighter hull doesn't need armor point, and since it's not often used as long range it doesn't need a lot of engine or other support hardware either. So you guess it, whatever point it has it goes for guns! Since the fighters with or without armor doesn't matter at this point, but although it dies fast, it's cheap, much cheaper then a battleship.
+ Now, it doesn't mean much when a figher is blown up, but losing a jugenaut is something else. That's why I believe while the Huge and Large hulls have more points, they can not ignore the armor/engine/life support like the fighter hull. It's ok for a fighter to get blew up in one shot, the same can not say for the Huge hull. So the point is distributed.
+ And here is where the problem appears. When the tech tree is not max ala the equipment size is still big and the point available is still low, the fighter is far outclasses. However, when the tech tree is max, this difference becomes very small. I find that at this point in the game the fighters always match the Jugenauts in term of fire power. As you can imangine to that amount of fire power, a 40 - 60 armor points on the Jugenauts can only provide below average protection. And as you can see, the way the battle system work this is a great disadvantage for the Jugenauts:
* First: while it's true the Jugenault almost guarantee a death for the fighter. HOWEVER, most of its fire power is a waste because it doesn't take all the fire power to kill a fighter, but as we know each ship only attack one target at a time with all its fire power.
* Second: while the Jugenault fire power is wasted a lot for every single shot, the fire power on a fighter (about 120 at this point) certainly score big against the Jugenaut's armor and HP. With this set up a group of 2 fighters has a very good chance to eliminate a Jugenault or at least smoke it to 1HP, and a group of 3 fighters can almost guarantee the Jugenault's death.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, that analysis of mine doesn't come out of the blue. It's what actually happening in my game. The thing is as I said, this is only an issue in later game when everyone are pretty high tech. If you only play short game or don't go very far on the tech tree before the game is done then you won't even notice this.
In fact, usually at this point in the game the fighter is the one that scares me the most from the A.I. Because when they use Cruiser or battleship they still have to distribute the points to armor and other systems like myself, but when they use fighters, it's all about guns (and I must say that's a smart decision on their part). So as ackward as it may sound usually when I check their formation, usually the fighter formation pack a much higher fire power value comparing to a cruiser/battleship formation, and my survival rate with fighter is much lower comparing to the rate with other ships.
So this is a little too ackward IMHO and imbalance, not to mention a little on the counter-intuitive side. And the problem lies with with max mizuration and guns, a fighter can still pack a lot of gun, and because it doesn't matter at this point they have armor or not, they will just go for guns.
My suggestion for this problem is ... in the future if the combat system is to remain the same, should we limit the fighter hull to certain tech level? I'm thinking about excluding the last 5 or 6 levels of the weapon tree to prevent the fighter simply pack a wallop like this. Plus don't you think it makes sense, a fighter shouldn't have enough power to equip the same amount of Black Hole Generator like a Huge hull.
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