If you don't put weapons on the starbase, then the fleet will get hit first (the starbase will have 0 target priority).

By design starbases benefit from your defense and HP bonus but not your attack bonus because it was thought that would make them too powerful. Since the consensus seems to be that starbases are too easily destroyed, in future will they benefit from your attack bonus?

Do the combat changes made in DA to allow a high attack ship to take out multiple ships per turn (e.g., dreadnought vs. fighters) apply to starbases?


If the starbase has weapons, why not require the attacker to engage both the starbase and the strongest fleet at the same time?

That is beyond the point. What I was trying to say is, starbese would never be attacked unless there is no combat ships in the same tile, no matter how strong the starbase is. I would like to see this to make guarding starbases with fleets a more viable option. And, realisticly, wouldn't an enemy fleet heading to a starbase have to get through the the fleet first?

Leasing? That is just a great idea! I never thought about that in a game and I don't think I have ever seen that. Maybe another good thing to add to this and it may just work very well would be a market for ships. In other words you can place a new or used ship up for sale on this market and an AI could buy it. You can set the price you want to sell it for and maybe if you have a high dilomacy skill it will be more likely you can sell it for alot more. Much like trading, how you can get better deals. Also, if you set a price too high, the ship may sit there and no one will buy it. The opposite if the price is low, will sell quickly. Could be pretty neat I think, and you may be able to buy ships for a discount and sell them for profit. A totally new concept to making money in GalCiv2, buying and selling. A race may need money bad and will sell a ship very cheap, you pick it up for a deal and then turn right around and sell it for a profit.   

Any hints on the HP addition to starbase factor? I.e., are we talking 10-20-etc -- or 100-200-300-etc?

Personally, I'd be ecstatic with an option that simply adds 10 HPs per constructor (or even 5) --- but to an unlimited degree (or enormous degree). A starbase really needs a solid 6-700 HPs to survice any endgame attacks.

I'd really like to also toss out the idea of allowing fleets to INCLUDE starbases with the idea that the fleet (obviously) cannot move, but rather acts as defenders to attacks on the starbase. This would also solve the annoying "guard" issue -- where a fleet is set to "guard" but then awakens whenever someone comes into the quadrant.

I would like to see the issue with the combat system addressed that is discussed in this thread:

Single ships beat fleets thread

Basically, 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.

The repair ship could join in the fleet. Then everything it is attached to get 10% more healing and is slightly more likely (say 5%) going to survive a shot in a battle. Making fleets harder.

Not sure that would pay off since you will be giving up space that could be taken up by a combat vessel. I really imagined them accompanying fleets...

Maybe if they took up 0 logistical space but you could only have one in the fleet. The reason I think it has to go in the fleet is so it gets destroyed if the fleet looses, adding risk at the same time as reducing it.

I had just put this on the old 1.6 thread not realising this one was running and the other probably now a dead one, so a double post, but with good intentions  

Fleets - when upgrading the ships within a Fleet it is the Click Fest to end all Click Fests. I can minimise it from screaming frustration to mere passionate head banging as i play heavily armoured/full weapon array ships , not the mega numbers of small ships. The latter can be a large number with Logistics at 54 or 63.

Whilst accepting many Fleets are of a mixed ship type, which makes it almost impossible to do a bulk upgrade (even that could be done, although I acknowledge coding maybe somewhat complex for the effect achieved). The upgrading of a Fleet of ships of the same type to the latest Universal answer to the Dread Lords, involves a very large number of mouse clicks as you go in and out of the Fleet Management screen upgrading one at a time.

Why not put in a "upgrade Fleet " button on the Fleet Screen, the code behind that should not be horrendous, and all the User has to do is point and click one ship to the new type, its then replicated across the whole Fleet. While we are there, how about a mechanism to select multiple fleets of the same type for upgrade in the same way - now there would be heaven indeed, on a Gigantic All Abundant Middle-Late game such mechanisms in place would take seconds to use, and save literally hundreds - arguably thousands - of mouse clicks, and literally 20mins+ on game play.

Regards
Zy

I would like to see a more detailed research screen. If I'm interested in Aquatic World colonization (say), I don't particularly care about the in between techs, just that I have to research them to get there. However, I can't see if researching Aquatic World is worth it time-wise (at present), until I've already wasted the turns on the previous techs. The short of what I want is to be able to click a tech that I don't immediately have, and have the game tell me how long it will take to get there.

In the same vein, I would like to see the amount of research each tech requires in parenthesis next to the techs during trade. I can't really remember all the names for the techs, so sometimes I'm not sure if I'm being ripped off by the AI or not.

I would really like the AI to do some work during tech-trading negotiations. Even so far as to just color code the techs on each side. Something like, when I open the trade screen with the Altarians (close relation), the techs I have that they are interested in are colored green, the ones they don't really want are colored yellow, and the techs they couldn't care less about colored red. On the other hand, when it comes to their techs, the techs they are willing to trade color green, the techs they'd trade but you'd have to weasel it out of them, color those yellow. The techs they covet so dearly that I may as well surrender my entire tech-tree for them, color those red. Then sort all the techs by color. If I open up trade with a different civ, the colors should switch because the civ has different assets and desires.

Also, maybe I've missed it, but is there a way to suggest to civ A to start cutting off trade to civ B / supplying civ C to help retard civ B's progress, the way the AI always asks me to?

In the AI improvements section, is there a particular reason why the AI doesn't use many shields, if any? I sure like my defensive technology, but I'm fairly new to the game (still playing on "tough"...I don't like giving the AI bonuses that I can't have )

Also, one little feature that could be stolen from Civ would be an alarm clock. Let's just say that very occasionally , Gal Civ 2 is more fun than math, and I've found myself awake at odd hours of the morning, invading Drengin planets. My advisor does not like to hear this, so I usually tell him that I got stuck on a particular section of the math I'm supposed to be reading. Any features to help us weaker-willed folk maintain a facade of a normal life would be appreciated

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Edit 1
Sorry for the long post . . .
:- $
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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.

I really love this game but I have some suggestions for some simple UI improvements.

Such as:

1) When launching a ship from a planet, have that ship become THE active ship. I can't tell you how many times I have launched a ship and then ended up moving a completely different ship in the wrong direction. This is a real problem with beginning players such as myself.

2) The rally points are awesome but the text box where you name them needs a little work. If I want to accept the default (random) name then I hit Enter, no problem. But if I want to change the name I should be able to hit the space bar and then start typing in the new name. I am not the worlds fastest typist and it is really annoying to have to hit delete or backspace to clear out the characters from the default name'

3) Allow rally points to dragged by selecting them and then dragging them while holding down the control key. As my cultural borders expand it would be easier to move invasion staging waypoints then to have to create new ones.

I would have just one suggestion for the patch:

- Make the area of effect for starbases depend on the size of the galaxy. In smaller universes, a starbase has great effects on a significant part of your empire but on a larger map you need many more to cover the same proportional part. Whether this is achieved by fixing it for different settings or upgradeable is less important for me.

AI rules for better protection of troop transports


Ok, maybe this has been said already but this could be a better and more effective way for the AI to move its troop transports around. As it is now the troop transports, when the AI cares to defend them, form a fleet with combat ships and in fleet combat those transports get slaughtered regularly.

So I suggest the following:

- AI should build transports without any weapons or defences (it does so now);
- in the build-up of an invasion the AI should keep small fleets (e.g. 3 escorts) on the same square with troop transports, i.e. AI should not form fleets with transports and combat ships but it should keep them on the same squares when aproaching the planet to invade.

With these rules the AI will certainly lose less population (and have a stronger economy in the long run) because human players will first have to defeat the combat fleet and only then will they be able to attack the transports.
Right it's just too easy to pop all those transports with ridiculously small combat ships.

Make minor civ's Ai better. Allow a game option that allows them to conquer and colonize planets. Also another option that would be great would be, the option to start with no ships, I find it takes away from the just starting out in space feeling when you start with a survey ship that has modules you do not have techs for. For the space miner you guys could make a prequel tech to space mining that will allow you to build space miners. And one last thing I do not know if this has been brought up but as far as I know you can only have one constructer module to a ship, please allow as many as possible I hate building 30 constructers to update my starbases. Thank you.

I just thought of something: add some more humourous (spelling?) texts in the diplomacy department. I love those: 'I *see* those transports/influence starbases/whatever you're parking there'-remarks. Adding some for surrendering would be nice.

One of the things i would like to see as an improvement is the AI ablity to accept defeat. For example in my current game on a huge galaxy am have been at war with the Yor for the past 3 years game time. In that time I have crushed fleets 5x the size of my own(superwarrior rocks)and taken 15+ colonies from them. They have had no significant victories. Yet the AI will not accept a peace treaty unless I offer them half my empire. I don't want to fight the Yor as my ethical enemies grow stronger.

This makes no sense as no empire fights until it is entirely destroyed, hell they should see my attempts at making peace as an act of mercy. I can understand as to why peace is hard to acheive just by conqureing their planets as you'd have these sneaky prats attacking and taking huge lengths of land before making peace. But in a prolonged war this makes no sense. And on the map size it will take me many more [game] years to take there homeworld and by that point making peace is pointless-I might as well just kill them off.

when is 1.7 scheduled ?
approx of course.

If it's not too much trouble, could you add an option to turn off customization points? I think the racial abilities and super abilities add enough variation without needing the extra ten points.

@Robbie.price

Exellent post, I agree with it entirely, your suggestions could make the fleet combat much more fun and 'realistic'.


While most importantly, the model would improve, it would also look better in battle viewer in my opinion.


It surprises me that this wasn't already the case, I think this is very necessary to get a good feel for what your stats are doing, namely mostly what the number says, sometimes a bit off and rarely completely off (bad luck).

The addition of the leasing options is great. I just have one suggestion (this time). in order to achieve ANY victory ALL debts must be paid off. If you do not have enough in your treasury you must keep playing, possibly lowering (or maybe even highering) your score.

I thought of this when i had to pay 2500 to be neutral (i took just ONE evil choice and they stick me with the bill...). anyway i didnt have the money and i was told id be paying 10 bc per week for 250 weeks. it occured to me that theres a good chance that my game will end before i fully pay this back. its like cheating, no?

Does - let just say for Example - Conquest Victory not mean, that the people you have debts with are dead anyway ? Or at least do not really have power to request pay off ?

Well if you want to nit-pick assuming the people you did business with are your own citizens i guess you'd have to pay them.


Basically i just think that a true win would be if you have no debt. It would be too easy to start long lease deals knowing that you game will end sooner.

Why does a constructor have to be used up when building a starbase or adding a module to it? I think that it should act like the mining ship and spend a few turns building and be able to move on to the next job. In addition the constructor should be able to carry more than one construction module so as to speed up its work. Example say a starbase takes 5 turns to build, with 5 construction modules on the constructor it can be finished in one turn, or 5 constuctors with 1 module could work together and finish it in one turn.

Another suggestion is why not put shipyards on starbases? They can draw resources form asteriods which would give a player construction and repair abilties in areas that could be far from your colonies where it would take weeks or months to return to your colonies shipyards for repairs.