GalCiv3 Forums
Should ships have special abilities or perks like in Elemental?
How I think this would work is that you would attach "modules" onto ships like GC2. These would take up room or cost money. Alternatively building ships at a certain place could assign "perks" like the Nav Station for Arceans did in GC2.
There are already modules like that in GalCiv II that gives bonuses regarding speed, defense and attack, depending in which zone of influence you are.
I never used them once but I suspect they are actualy worthwhile. Am I right?
They were, and were pretty easy to exploit. Slap a fleet defense module and a fleet speed module on a huge hull, give it one weapon and the rest engines and defense. The fleet modules had such a high targeting priority for the AI that all incoming fire would hit this ship, allowing you to fill the rest of the fleet with ships that didn't need defense at all.
That comes down to having a good AI.
Real time tactical combat too could address that flaw.
Well for the most part it wouldn't need modules like what we already have, but we could do it like Sins of a solar empire or several other games where you would just simply pick abilities as you level up. Here's even an option for all those people who think this minor inconviencce would be to much. I could have an in game option to set these for all ships or certain kind of ships when they level up. Heroes was also an option for this.
Now dealing with real time vs. turn based on this. Since combat is automated on the game the bonuses could be added as normal before the combat starts. Since they will let you pick combat options for types of ships before the battle starts you could just add these bonuses automatically before combat starts. If you did this the combat would look the same not requiring real time strategy. Civilization has this for when units level up which isn't real time why does this game has to be real time.
One of many problems about making this game real time you either have to take away many features on the game because there are to many features to manage a real time game, or just as bad they would have to automate many features so you don't have to manage to many things. Losing the flair of making this game real time. Since a lot of turn based games have this option why do we have to implement real time to have this option. I'm not saying you can't have real time; I'm saying this game won't work for real time.
where do these magic resources come from? The ones we don't know if we will even need yet? https://forums.galciv3.com/452195 I made that post and if the two ideas merged it would be great. If there was a "The banker" screen similar to talking to another civ but all it did was sell.
if you don't have a needed resource either though trade war or expansion I would say you deserve whatever Fate comes to your Empire. Muwhahaha! If resources are needed for building components.
DARCA
I liked the idea of xp giving units a 'perk' in the Civ game rather than more hp's.
Would be cool in GCIII .... Possible fleet captains who add perks to the fleet and they level up gaining additional perks.
Perk Ideas:
Weapon Damage
Defence increase
Movement Speed
Sensor Range
??????
Good AI is needed either way for the tactical combat system or it will be gamed.
To be honest, if they made the same game as GC2 but changed space stations (to be less tedious), the tech tree (so that we don't end up with laser 1, laser 2), and the production slider, but added tactical combat and more modern graphics, it'd be one hell of a game.
Lol. All THAT is gone, and much, much more! Better stuff is here now. 
DARCA
This comment really confuses me. but that could be that I'm familiar with Civilization, or Sins of a solar empire. Games like this sometimes gives additional abilities when you level up, but requiring you to have resources to do this is all right. I guess you could have a cheap option that don't require much resource while you don't do much while you could have an expensive resource that does a lot, or options in between. They already have resources on the game, and are planning to add galactic resources. This idea could be added to my idea.
Where could the abilities come from. Precursor- Dread lords-Doginol-Ancient ruins-resources-Better computers-Rediscovered research-more experienced people these are just a few places the abilities come from leveling up. I also would like to mention that Sins of a solar empire call these anti-matter abilities.
Ok, so options include:
- Choosing abilities on level up
- Automatically getting new perks on level up
- Typical level up (gains of hp, damage, etc)
- Maybe upgrading the unit on level up?
I rethought modules it could be that when enough ships reach enough levels then you could get modules to add when you level up, or this could be workable for upgrading if you up grade that ship. The problem with modules is that it would require you to upgrade the ship to recieve the ability.
It could be automated somehow - like a perk.
Yet another option could be to design a ship from ground up:
- Reactor
- Defense systems (shields, armor, PD)
- Weapons systems
- Sensors, support, etc
- Utility functions (ex: mining, trade)
- Special abilities
Then each part would gain experience and get progressively more potent.
I personally do not think ships should get special abilities that are not enabled by their setup. As I see it, the experience should represent the skill of crew to squeeze every last bit out of their ships systems, maybe doing some unofficial modifications to it as well.
Suddenly developing a deathray kind of fights against this idea.
This is my main issue with it as well. Your brand new ship straight from the builders should not feel handicapped.
Thus my complaints earlier about difficulty to manage: if your ship doesn't have all the functions you designed it for until it hits level 3 or 4, how much of a pain is it to run around killing things until you have a functional warship? Sins did it well: few ships to level, the first few levels buyable, pirates to level ships against relatively easily without being at war with someone, etc.
I agree Sins did it well. That is my point is that games do this with no problem. Honestly I don't see how this could be a lot of work. You will probably rarely do this. Honestly how often do your ships level up. Mine take awhile.
Most don't, ever. Most of my ships are built solely to sit under a military starbase array and never see combat at all.
The ships that are designed and built for combat are another matter - those tend to level up at least a couple times. And some never level up at all, depending on how often they are used and the targets they are used against. As long as the benefits of leveling up aren't large or a fundamental change in the function of the ship, it doesn't matter if/when/whether a ship is leveled or not. It's fundamentally the same performance regardless of experience.
Now start throwing fundamental changes at ships when they level up and your unleveled ships are handicapped - they aren't fully functional warships when they are built. Looking at Sins, compare level 1 capital ships against level 10 ships. The greater abilities are enough that the single leveled ship could take on multiple level 1 ships, easily killing 2-3 times its HP in level 1 ships. The balance becomes even more pronounced when you include lesser ships and start introducing fleet support abilities or AOE attacks like the Marza missile barrage.
Quick! Use Malice!
Depends on your stratgey ... I sometimes zerg ... wave after wave of cheap ships and wear down the enemy. Leveling up doesn't matter since few ships survive.
But quality fleets are a different strategy, and having them level up is important .
You caught me napping, your fate will be the same as all the others... crushed by my fleets.
Fate,:beer:
There's advantages to both a Zerg and a Veterancy strategy. It will depend on the incentives for leveling up.
By the late game in GC2, you should be fielding thousands of supremely well-spec'd ships in fleets of a dozen or more. You have too, because the AI is doing the same, and you will sustain massive casualties no matter what you do. Ships need to be rolling off the assembly line every week at every shipyard planet, and they need to be outfitted with doom rays and invulnerability shields out the wazoo.
"Zerg" and "Quality>Quantity" strategies aren't mutually exclusive; my personal favorite ship is a medium hull I call the "Paragon Soul", with in excess of 400 defense, 75 attack, 15 PC sensors, 20-something speed and maximum life support. It is by any standard absolutely top of the line in every respect. Despite that, I can lose dozens, sometimes hundreds of them a turn because of the way defenses and weapons work, and they need to be replaced constantly or my front lines fall apart within a few turns.
If Galactic Civilizations 3 doesn't radically change the combat system and the way weapons/defenses and 'dice rolls' work, then you can expect that trend to continue, and once more even the mightiest ships will have to be made expendable.
Sins is an RTS, and it only applies to capital ships and titans, with no custom ship design. Very, very different from Galciv.
Having your ships in Galciv gain experience with combat and thus an HP bonus or something is pretty reasonable, but having abilities popping up would be really out of place. Those should be special modules you place on the ships, which you have to research and devote space to (making it a trade off).
It would be cool to see interesting modules like the ones MOO2 had, which seem to be something generally missing these days. The oddball weapons and other goodies.
I'm not sure I'd want to see a "unit promotion" type of system. That works really well when you're buying stock ships, but if you're designing ships (with hull space limitations) then all the goodies should be there due to you designing them in, not from a promotion type of thing. It wouldn't make sense.
The unit xp/leveling in GC *is* somewhat bland and having some kind of simplistic perk (like getting to choose between basic ship stats (att, def, etc)) might be interesting but not adding entirely new super abilities to units. Plus, you often end up having a lot of units that level a lot (in GC2 at least) and manually doing such small-scale promotions might get to be tedious (unless unit xp was scaled down to be more like civ).
I would also really like to see leaders (ala MOO2, ES, numerous others) in GalCiv III, it adds another element of customization and oomph to planets and/or ships. It also adds some potential extra stuff to put in tech/ideology trees. More, more, more!
I would also like to see heroes.
I really don't know if special modules would work better than abilities when leveling up, but if we had special modules I think it would either have to be for a leveling up of the player in general or if you get special modules it would only work on upgrading the ship that was leveled up that was why I didn't think it would work in the first place only to realize later that this system would have to be programmed into the game.
If you did have abilities you would use it to add to the fleet statistics in the beginning of the battle which is automated.
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