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Edit 1
Sorry for the long post . . .
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I would like to see the issue with the combat system addressed that is discussed in this thread:
Single ships beat fleets threadBasically, it talks about how due to very high attack values at the upper end of the tech tree, attacking a fleet with one powerful ship at a time is more cost-effective than creating your own fleet. It would be nice if the combat system were changed so that fleets became more effective, as they were supposed to be. Right now attacking the enemy fleet in late game with single suicide ships with maxed out weapons is more cost-effective than creating your own balanced offense/defense fleet and taking the enemy fleet on that way. I doubt that is how the system was intended to work.
Also, as someone mentioned earlier repair module would be an awesome idea. You could create a repair ship that would increase the repair rate of all ships in the same tile by certain percentage. Perhaps make it so that multiple ships do not have a stacked effect, or perhaps cannot increase the repair rate past certain percentage to make these ships not too powerful.
I've got a suggestion to cure the "Vrs Fleet" problem. (I just finished reading the full
Single ships beat fleets thread )
One of my gripes with Galactic Civ II is that if attacking a fleet, all of one fleet's damage is singularly focused one opposing craft, until that craft is destroyed, then remaining damage is focused on the next priority craft till it bites the dust. . . . and so on.
The result is that at the end of a battle, typically I'll have one craft which is mutilated and the rest of my fleet remains pristine.
Typically that leaves me with the choice of returning the one wounded craft to a planet, where it might take 4 - 10 turns to repair, leaving me to scramble to replace the firepower (in a tight fight), or to battle on with the weekend craft, which inevitably dies next battle.
I think that this is an extremely unrealistic model of fleet combat.
In Fleet combat it would be impossibles to completely focus all available firepower against one craft.
Instead . . .
I suggest a system where every shot (every weapon on a craft) has a chance of hitting the opposing craft of highest priority, and if it doesn't hit the highest priority ship it will hit a "Target of opportunity" (random ship from opposing fleet).
This would mean that a single capital ship going up against a fleet is significantly less likely to multi-kill, as it firepower will get spread out. This also would mean that defenses put on low priority ships are not complete wastes of money-space.
. . . Some further thoughts on the suggestion . . . .
The Probability of hitting could be size dependent (size of gunner vrs size of target)
Smaller ships then the gunner could be made more likely to be in the 'blind' spots of any given weapon(harder to hit if they are the Priority target), but more likely to be "Targets of Opportunity".
and ships larger then the gunner would be more likely to be hit, if they are the priority target, and less likely to be "Targets of Opportunity".
the net effect would be Hopefully,
Single huge suicide capital ships taking on Huge fleets would be extremely unlikely to kill more the one or max two opposing ships even of Tiny/small craft overpowering fleets. They wouldn't be able to consistently hit the same ship enough times to kill it. but would significantly damage the full fleet. But single Medium sized ships could fair better because they remain more mobile (still loose, but have more final kills before toppling, and leave more undamaged crafts).
One slight modification to the Super warrior skill might be required where they have +10% chance to hit their intended target, regardless of size (which is a MUCH more realistic super ability then the currently rather weak first strike on opening attack ability they have now).
On a Somewhat unrelated note, A VERY quick request, would it be possible to have the attack and defense roles distributed on a Gaussian(bell shaped) probability as opposed to a linear probability . . . prehaps with a bell width of Squareroot(attack)
Example:
Current 50 attack Vrs 100 defense(properly matched).
My intuition tells me that the attacker is lost, hopeless battle, but since the HP's are all so low two lucky roles of the dice for the attacker (low defense roles) and the defender is history(Probability that defensive roll is < 25; 25%).
suggested system.
Offensive rolls would be 50 +/- 7 (67% of the time) and defensive roles would be (100 +/- 10 67% of the time). . . result attacker is TOAST.
I find this system much more realistic, as both weapons and defenses can both Under-preform and Over-preform, but rolling a defense of 12 when your rated for a defense of 100 isn't under-preforming, that qualifies as 'Flat-Out Failing'.
If Gaussian spreading is too weird to implement . . . having each weapon roll and fire independently(rather then just each weapon type (laser,missile,mass)) and each defense roll and block independently would achieve the same result. (a Student T curve rather then a Gaussian, to statisticians out there).
To prevent defensive craft from becoming overly powerful each defensive modal would be able to block a maximum of 1.25*rating per battle round (huge swarms of enemy tiny/small crafts can still overwhelm) high defense capital ships.
Those are my thoughts, they might be Too much to implicate for 1.7 . . . but as a coder ,and casual game designer, I don't see why the first suggestion should prove overly difficult for a 1.8 release. . . the battle system changed to approximately the same extent between DL and DA. The first change was too much in the favour of Lone Gun ships . . this might level the playing field.
also it would make the repair ability MUCH more meaningful. A HUGE fleet destroys an apposing Huge fleet, taking low casualties, but with most of it's fleet wounded/crippled benefits much more from higher repair rates then the same huge fleet being 2/3rds destroyed, with one ship crippled, and the rest of the fleet remarkable unscathed.
In short:
Wars have more wounded then dead, wars in Gal Civ are unreal and have too few wounded for realistic combat.
