Fix the sizes of ship components

from GalCiv2 Forums
A couple of issues to bring up.

1: When in the ship design screen, the sizes of ship components at the top of the screen do not match the sizes in the main tab folder? For example if you point at an impulse engine at the top of the screen, it indicates the size being a 9, yet if you select to add an impulse engine, its size is actually 18?

2: The earth colony ship has 2 colony modules on it, yet it can only hold 500 people. If you remove one or the other, the colony ship cannot hold any at all, even if one is shown on the ship. Then if you try to replace the one you removed, the system tells you that it is too large to fit. This is a bug I think.

3: The overall ship component size concept needs to be re-evaluated. Presently, the same engine or weapon design changes size depending on the hull you use it on. This I find confusing and illogical. After working so hard to get to the next hull size, you discover that the advantage is negated due to the increases in all component sizes. A laser is a laser, why should it change in size with the hull size? If it is a matter of reducing the advantage of larger hulls, then reduce the size of the hulls, but keep the size of weapons the same. After all, a larger hull should be able to hold more weapons and engines than a smaller one.

To reduce the immediate strategic advantage of larger hulls, I suggest adding a "power core" tech option to larger ships. this would allow a player the advantage of more hit points an a couple more weapons on bigger hulls right away, but the ships would require more powerfull power supplies to add more weapons or engines. Perhaps, a standard, nuclear and crystal matrix power sources could be added to the tech tree. Of course these power sources would not be cheap.
5,195 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1) easy enough to work around and figure it out.....

2)) notice this, but really you don't want to use the in-game ships anyhows, best to use small hulls with a colony module, costs less......

basically it sh0ws two but really its only one, and I think this would also come across if you priced it out, besides the extra range/life support they put on the ship, it doesn't charge you for two...

3) really the bigger ships can carry more, so even though the components you add are slightly increased, it still is overall more....also if you research minaturization you can add more and more into ships....its pretty well balanced...

your suggestion makes no sense, the balance is fine as is.....

if you don't like how it works you could always make a mod and set it how-ever you like, and then test it out.....
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with LightVader on all issues.
I have notice the issue with colony ship I suppose the 2nd colony module is for design reasons only it does not add anything at all space or cost.
And on the issue with ship components.. thats another unbalance that tends to keep a balance..
it looks stupid having the same weapon with different size on bigger ships but thats the way they choosed to keep balance on the game.
personally I dont like it and I would like to see a huge ship armed for example with 50 lasers, 20 rail guns and 100 missiles..

Its not the perfect game but lets hope the next version will be better balanced and smarter balanced..
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
3) I don't agree. At least, not in all cases. Armour and engines are things that should definitly be scaling with the hull sizes... its a heck of a lot easier to armour a small ship than a massive cruiser. Increasing the size of the engines is a nice way to abstract away the fact that you need MORE engines to move a ship at that size another persec a week.

Speaking of which, cost should be effected by sizemod to the same extent space is. Its cheaper to give a tiny ship an inch of armour than it is to give a .5 kilometer battleship the same protection.

Weaponry though, should definitily be maintaining the same size between hulls. A laser is a laser, and doesn't depend on the mass of the vessel carrying it. The only justification I can possibly imagine it having is that after a certain size of ship, you need to install turrets and additional targeting computers/sensors for the new weapons, simply because the base hull isn't manuverable enough to do that for you on a larger hull, while a fighter can spin to face a new target quickly. But even that's stretching it... weapons shouldn't have a sizemod.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Increasing the size of the engines is a nice way to abstract away the fact that you need MORE engines to move a ship at that size another persec a week.


Traveling at the speed of light requires that an engine be capable of generating propulsion force at an exponential rate. If such an engine could be developped, the mass of the ship would have little effect on the size of the engine, but the amount of energy required to reach the speed of light would have to increase as the ship's mass increased. If an unlimited source of energy was available, the size of the ship would not matter at all, but the time it would take to reach the speed of light would increase by a few picaseconds. You see, as you approach the speed of light the mass of the ship must decrease proportionally to the increase in velocity or the level of energy must be increased in proportion.

The only other way to travel that fast is the bend space, effectively putting the departure and arrival points side by each, hence the trip seems to take a second or two. This is more difficult to understand, so I won't go into it, but, again, the size of the ship has no bearing.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Not to pick but, the size of the ship has no bearing. ???
Actually wormholes are inherently unstable in the presence of mass, do to poorly understood quantum effects. In this game reality takes a backseat to the AI. Specifically what makes for a better AI versus more realistic models. I think that's a fair exchange overall. I may not agreed with everything, but it works ...   
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A few points:

1) Light speed wouldn't be sufficient to travel a parsec in a week. GalCiv's hyperdrive is a warp drive, bending space in such a way that one never exceeds the speed of light LOCALLY, but the space around you moves faster. This could theoretically have you move faster than the speed of light without actually having to do that in local space.
2) GalCiv assumes a powerful, but NOT infinite, source of energy to power hyperdrives, that being cold fusion.
3) Assuming that GalCiv's hyperdrive works on similar principles to an Alcubierre drive, then you have your space bending description a fair bit off. All an alcubierre drive does is bend space one way in front of the ship and the other way behind it (which is a wierd setup that requires negative energy, but theoretically possible). This has nothing to do with placing entry or exit points... the bubble and ship inside it are self contained, moving at a constant speed that is, with sufficient energy, several times faster than c.
4) Given that model, the size of the ship is a substantial factor. For one, increased size is going to require a larger warp bubble, which is going to take more energy. Hence, more engines.
5) Mass as well can still be a factor. If sub light engines are used to accelerate a ship inside a warp bubble to take advantage of the warped space, then the mass of the ship is going to have an effect on how quickly that acceleration happens.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In a real warp "bubble" there is an event horizon that occurs when time dilates. This prevents light from entering or exiting the bubble. Besides, warp bubbles allow time inside the bubble to speed up, not slow down. I think this game doesn't need to rely on any real physics. The devs could just invent their own physics and technology like Star Trek did. What matters IMHO is that the system is balanced and playable. Besides the AI should always be the focus in any change of game mechanics, whereas the player should always be the focus of playablilty issues. That is if Stardock wants to keep selling GalCiv games...
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The earth colony ship has 2 colony modules on it, yet it can only hold 500 people. If you remove one or the other, the colony ship cannot hold any at all, even if one is shown on the ship. Then if you try to replace the one you removed, the system tells you that it is too large to fit. This is a bug I think.


The look of the core ships sometimes operate indepentently of the actual components on them. This is the case with the Terran Colony Ship; while it looks like it has two modules, it only functionally has one. You can also have the option of adding fake modules to balance out your designs by using KHSM.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The overall ship component size concept needs to be re-evaluated. Presently, the same engine or weapon design changes size depending on the hull you use it on. This I find confusing and illogical.


Sad but true. If the sizemod makes sense for some components, it doesn't for all components. Like it's already been mentioned, it's ok for engines and defenses and life support. But for weapons and sensors and the special modules?! Gah. Worst than that though is the special modules being affected by miniaturization - a mini colony module?! And even worst, all special modules being the same size as early weapons... how stupid can that be?!
Costs are also ludicrous. Ion Drive being cheaper than HD/HD+? Between 2 IonDr and 1 ImpDr, it's almost a no brainer choice... Armor Plating seems way too cheap. The costs for PtDef/PtDefCb don't follow the standard same-cost routine. And the special modules, those are funny. A trade module, which isn't much more than a cargo hold, is more expensive than a colony module (which is supposed to have all the facilities and resources for an initial colony - with all its manufacturing and research capabilities), a mining module (with all the mining gear to start a mining base), or a troop module (with all the transportation and landing gear, including the tanks that we see in the ground combat screen). Then there's the Constructor module, which costs 70, and builds starbases... yep, those huge beasts, for 70bc, while a huge hull costs 320 base.

thats another unbalance that tends to keep a balance..


It's more of a non-sense to keep from having too much work   

weapons shouldn't have a sizemod.


I suppose they never heard of hard points, as a way to keep weapons(/components) in reasonable numbers...
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
On engines:

The cost for the Ion Drive should be increased. It costs less than the HD/HD+, and is smaller too. Doesn't make sense with the rest. The problem is, the size of modules has been decreased because with the engine nerfing the colony ship would be made illegal... this wouldn't help. Drop some life support?

The Warp Drive V shouldn't really be Warp Drive but HyperWarp, given its stats. Same cost and speed as HyperWarp, size in line with HyperWarp too. HyperWarp II and III don't really follow the standard either.