I like the idea of expanding the role of the pirates.

Me too. They add some much needed diversions when the playing get's a little stale, if they show up. Plus it's nice to cut your teeth on them with some of your new ship designs so that they can gain some XP.

Hi!

Iztok Bitenc, what is the source of your information? Why would the starbase receive the Defense and HP bonuses but not the Attack bonus?

Old post from GC2 beta times, likely from Brad. I just remember reading that SBs were deemed too strong with attack bonuses.

Even if my memory is wrong, don't you think that simple bug would be removed in one of many game versions from 1.0 till 1.4?

BR, Iztok

Old post from GC2 beta times, likely from Brad. I just remember reading that SBs were deemed too strong with attack bonuses. Even if my memory is wrong, don't you think that simple bug would be removed in one of many game versions from 1.0 till 1.4?

Once advanced weapons are researched starbases can easily be taken out by a fleet of small ships! Even with the bonus the starbase can't destroy more than one ship each round.
I first noticed the bug in v1.2 and I have not played the later versions to see if it has been fixed. There are many old easily fixed bugs remaining. There are many bugs in the weapons / defense techs that could be fixed by editing the XML; fixing Subspace Blaster would require coding changes and adding the icons.

and tell the pilot that just attacked a us carrier that the gat. that just shot him down is minor i would use the name of the system but i don't remember it

Most likely it would be an Aegis system.

for a good look at space carriers you can play any wing commander game, watch BSG (Battlestar Galactica)/ Stargate, or even Star Wars I think the correct term should be battle carriers lol

At least in the SW games and in some RPG systems you can find a typical carrier that lacks most if not all OFFENSIVE armaments and only has minor defensive weapons. Even a modern carrer today only has light defensive systems.

This is taken from info at fas.org site.

The NIMITZ-class self-defense measures include: missiles, guns, and electronic warfare. The NATO Sea Sparrow Missile System is comprised of two launchers with eight missiles each. Sea Sparrow is a radar-guided, short-to-medium range missile capable of engaging aircraft and cruise missiles. NIMITZ-class also has Close-In Weapon System mounts for short range defense against aircraft or missiles. Each mount has its own search and track radar, and a six-barrel, 20-millimeter Gatling gun capable of firing 3,000 rounds per minute

That would be a pretty good attack rating, I would think.  

and tell the pilot that just attacked a us carrier that the gat. that just shot him down is minor i would use the name of the system but i don't remember it Most likely it would be an Aegis system.

Aegis is a radar system on cruisers and destroyers. The gatling gun on carriers is known as the Mk15 Phalanx CIWS (Close In Weapons System), aka the "zipper" or "R2D2".

Wikipedia article

Discussion of carriers in GC2 is spam only to people who don't like the idea. To true believers, it's Wagyu tenderloin steak.

Disagree on carriers and Tactical, but 100% TOTAL agreement on... ugh...multiplayer.

Multiplayer in most games is just an excuise to avoid developing an AI. I play computer games to get away from other people

MP games on gigantic maps with everything abundant (e.g., ~500 planets that may be colonized) would be unplayable! Only the AI has the patience to wait for me to complete my turn and play on my schedule.

MP and tac combat go together, since tac AI always sucks tactical combat would functionally turn the game into an MP-only experience. Speaking as someone that never plays this kind of game MP, that'd be the end of it for me. I think there's no chance of this happening to GC2 but I have to admit I worry about it with regards to GC3.

As to carriers, what's the point?

methinks you need a happy pill

Could Stardock make a new ship "weapon" called "Fighter Bay" in wich the firing graphic is that of a group of fighters?
When the weapon "hits" the target the graphic "sticks" to the target and causes peridoic damage(little fighters buzzing around the target and shooting it) until the fighters must return to "resupply" or are destroyed by point defense weapons or enemy "fighter groups". The weapon's("fighter group's") targeting priority would first be enemy "fighter groups" and then enemy ships, with proximity of these two taken into account.
In this regards, it doesn't seem that this would require a massive battle system design overhaul. A carrier will be any ship that has these "weapons"("fighter bays").

What do you all think? Do you have support for this or constructive critisism?

-Wade

That's only point defense. It's not for ship to ship attack.

Hi!

The catch of using fighters and carriers is you keep out of battle your very expensive big ship(s) and "sacrifice" relatively cheap vessels do do the fighting. So there would be no point of designing such a weapon, when the carrier would remain in range of enemy's return fire.

BR, Iztok

Ok how would a carrier really differ from having a capital ship in a fleet with a bunch of fighters? Besides the graphics of it.

Another thing with the fighters just being "weapons" is that when they are destroyed it wouldnt affect the HP of the ship the launched from, there would just be a loss of crew which doesnt figure into the battle. But i guess there could be a modulke you add to the ship to give you drones and i guess point defences would be the defence against them.

And post #3 very funny, i was "screaming" with laughter.

I've been trying to make some sense of the carrier thing and just had a thought.

What if you had a module, ideally a very large module, which could be placed on capital ships. This module would be called a carrier bay, and its affect would be twofold. First, it would cause this ship in question to act as a range extender, like a starbase, for small and tiny hulled ships. Second, it would cause the speed of any small or tiny ships fleeted with this ship to be that of the ship it's attached to.

Wouldn't that pretty much do it?

As for MP and TAC, I agree with Vinraith. I found TAC vs the AI in SEIV, slowed down the game but I couldn't resist because it gave me a huge advantage. Also the AI in SEIV was very poor at designing ships to counter my ships!

Adding carriers to GalCiv2 would require lots of rebalancing. Currently tiny ships are really more like corvettes than fighters when compared to huge ships, dreadnoughts. I don't see resizing ships and rebalancing weapons/defense happening in a future expansion pack but maybe in GalCiv3.

I would rather see the current combat system fixed. The advantages to the attacker are exploitable and defense is too expensive!

Since Dec. 2005 (I was a DL beta tester), I have complained the first strike advantage was exploitable! When it was announced that it was being removed in v1.2, I said at last! However, an exploitable attacker advantage remained. In a 1 on 1 battle where both the attacker and defender wipe each other out, the attacker should survive with 1 HP but in fact is restored to full health! Even without this bug, having the attacker survive with 1 HP means that high attack ships in 1 on 1 battles will almost always win. In DA things are worse since we have brought back the old (pre-1.2) first strike advantage as one of the special race abilities; so now we can again extend the exploit from 1 on 1 battles to fleet battles!

In my opinion the only advantage that should be given to the attacker is deciding who and when to fight! If both the attacker and defender deliver a lethal blow then both should be destroyed; why can't battles end in a tie!?

Even if this change is made, I agree the high cost of defense makes the all attack ships more cost effective. Recall one weapon type is optimal against two defense types but one defense type is only optimal against one weapon type. Researching weapons is more expensive than researching defenses but I only need to research one or two weapon's trees whereas he needs to research one weapon's tree and all three defenses. For the cost/time of building a single dreadnought with moderate attack and very high defense, I can build 2 all attack dreadnoughts each with a different weapon's type. At least 1 of these all attack dreadnoughts will have the optimal weapon and easy destroy the high defense dreadnought! If you place all three defenses on your dreadnought then your effective defense will not be enough to block my attack!

Only when the attacker advantage is removed and the cost of defense is lowered will defenses be worthwhile!

I'd tend to agree with Mascrinthus that I'd rather see the current combat system, and for that matter everything else already in the game, tweaked, and made better rather than seeing resources poured into new features like those being discussed. At least for the time being.

Brilliant! Although, I agree with Mascrinthus that Tiny hulls are more like Corvette size ships while Small is like Frigate size. So definately only use Tiny hulls, and not Small hulls, as "Fighters". Even better would be just a new hull called "Fighter".

Let's get stardock to implement it.

That's exactly what I was thinking. However could there be a way to mod GC2 to include this ship module?

At the expense of sounding "Star Fleet Battles" fighters could be managed via fighter bays - which hold a fixed number of non-hyperspace capable fighters each with 1 hit point and doing 1 point of damage (either mass driver, beam, or missle). A typical wing is 3 to 4 fighters. They could be a support module i.e. mass driver, beam, or missle bay which could be added to your ship to increase your fire power. That means that 7 huge hulls could support 7 bays with 4 fighters each totaling 28 bonus adjusted fighters massing firepower against one target with the additional installed firepower of the 7 huge hulled vessels(if any). Thus the defender either wastes time eliminating the fighters or takes the damage inorder to eliminate the enemy capital ships. Game balance could be maintain by making fighters attack priority choose enemy fighters before capital ships, so after the defenders fighter cover has been removed the capital ships would be vulnerable. It think this is very do-able with a mod vs major revision.