Roxlimn

I guess I agree then. We do have to agree to disagree. There are several things on which it isn't that simple though: Maybe it is too simple, but it is the system this game has. A more complex combat system is a project for another game, not this one. All I want to do is preserve the rock/paper/scissors strategy. When attack became overpowered, the system became even MORE simple than it is now, because r/p/s is still more complicated than all at

pahis: Your enemy had sizable weapons, logistics, AND manufactuing advantage. As you said - they were dominant. One medium Hulled ship at that stage in the game capable of destroying 5 Small Hulled Ships in fleet (15 logistics score, at least) constitutes a sizable advantage. I notice that you mentioned that you were facing 60-90 missile attack ships in fleet. Even then you said that you LOST SHIPS in combat. Not lost battles, lost ships. Comparing the adv

Wyndstar: I disagree. I think it means the computer does not use defense against your one weapon branch enough. Defense should beat the matching type of weapon at pretty much all levels of the tech tree. I had a really long discussion about this elsewhere where I tried to explain why for game balance purposes. It's the same charge against the Hyperion Dreadnaught - the computer simply doesn't know how to defeat the ship design (

Wyndstar: Thank you for the discussion! There's always something to be had in fruitful conversation. The reason I ask is because all defense builds are NOT universally useful at higher difficulty levels. With more money, resources, and technology the AI is much better at constructing fleets to match and defeat what you are using against it. If you t

I'll address the more important points: What difficulty level are you playing on? Some races never seem to have a problem destroying my high defense ships. The Yor come to mind. Tough, if you'd like to know. The difficulty level should not be a determinant of military strategy. Given relatively equal resources for everything else, all-defense builds should not be universally useful. That hasn

If your defenses are working at all to any effect, then you should be able to field in a mostly invincible ship - that is, a ship whose defenses are so massive that nothing the AI throws at it will damage it to the point of destruction. Such a ship would fall only to the most advanced, biggest fleet the AI can muster. It can take on anything else, so you can have it sweep the galaxy of everything it can handle, and then simply have it avoid whatever it can't defeat. The relati

As an example, it would be nice, for instance, if mixed defenses on a ship aided the other types more than if no mixed defenses were put in. This means that I would like for a 5/5/0 ship to defend slightly better than a 10/0/0 ship, overall. This would make a 10/0/0 ship a viable choice for when you're fighting a specific kind of attack ship or group of attack ships, but that 5/5/0s are generally more useful. The problem of focused defense stems directly from the problem of fo

pahis: Not at all. In fact, I would like for variable levels of defensive involvement to be good for ship design, but that currently isn't the case. You either build a one-defense ship, a no-defense ship, or a max defense ship. No other ship design makes sense. Is it a bad thing that all-weapon ships are always useful? Yes, it is. All-weapon ships should be sometimes useful, just as all-defense ships should also be sometimes useful. I'm

Allow constructors to carry more than one constructor module. It's an easy enough code thing and it'll significantly cut down on the micormanagement. You'll still need to select the modules you like, but you won't have to do it every single turn (unless you're a micro freak and then you're just asking for it). Fix the battles. The Defense problem signifies a more fundamental problem - you devs simply have no concrete idea of what you want out of the military picture. This means that

No hit at all. As I said, just mooch the defensive tech off of other AIs and research the last two, which should be about as good as another level of weapons tech only. Equivalent level defensive tech is effective enough. Nonfleet battles are still real battles, and arguably more important than fleet battles because that's where the real money is made. You usually only need a fleet if your top defensive ship can't take on their top fleet by itself and that happens often enough to mak

What's "WAD?" And yes, I've seen and noticed the off-defense bug. This isn't about that. Even when it's on-defense, the defensive ships are too easy to build and too useful not to build in almost any game. Even if you build only 6 ships - two for each defense type, you'd have a very useful tool at your disposal. Likely, you'll only need to defend against two weapon types, so you'll probably have 3 ships each. Building these ships is easier that building the Hyperion

After the 1.5X patch, I've noticed that it's relatively trivial to make invulnerable ships. The cost is more than reasonable, given that they're invincible, and you don't need to make fleets of them - just one or two. The research cost is defrayed by letting AIs research much of the needed tech for you, and then trading them for relatively cheap tech (they're usually valued much less than offensive technology). Then you just research the last few bits and shield your patrol ships to t

Ah. More time now. Sorry for the delay. I hope you didn't miss me that much So far in the future? Yup. Galactic space battles and the colonization of the galaxy are way beyond anything we have that it's purely fantasy. Once you get that far out, anything goes. Are people *living* in orbit? Real

I don't see much, if any, validity to the con side of the argument, even if the con side is posting as much letters as the pro side. If you're more worried about movement points than an auto-fleet, then you're going to win anyway. Having the AI auto-fleet its ships isn't going to make a big difference either way. If you ARE worried about a fleet, then it makes a very big difference, and that makes the AI substantially tougher where it would otherwise be a cakewalk. It

The tech is worth much more, but I know people who wouldn't tech trade AT ALL if they played GalCiv2, or would ask for an arm and a leg every time. They're very good players, too, at least at Settlers of Catan. The value of tech is such that you can literally buy half the galaxy from the AI for the price of a few techs. If you have high Diplo ratings, are friendly with everyone, and generally ask only for low pop, new, and hostile environs planets, it's trivial. Heck, you could buy p

Tos Iceman: My time is brief, so I can't comment on everything right now. Sorry. I'll get to you in a few days. But that's not what the current line says, is it? Maybe you were confused? Were you confused then or are you confused now? I think you're not getting my point. And those purposes would be? They have to be very good, requiring you to man a starbase in the middle of nowhere...

Mystikmind: The source of your woes can be difficult to ascertain immediately. Look at the individual items on your economy screen to find out where your money is going. Net money going into the bank is not that important. You can always boost that by reducing spending. Gross money coming in is more important. Even when you're netting 200 bc or less, you're probably earning a lot more - it's just that you have a lot more ships and planets to support now, so the money

I'd agree with that. Even at Tough, trading out everything from under the AIs is still a cinch if you're Terran with massive Diplo advantages. I even buy planets and ships wholesale.

Perhaps it would also be sensible to end a fleet's movement after it has attacked an orbital fleet? Under the current system, it's not sensible to put more than 2 defensive ships in orbit around every planet - it's too costly in terms of maintenance. Thus, planets you're not paying attention to will be defeated in one or two attacks anyway . Since the proposed change would fleet your ships according to your logistics, plus a significant attack bonus for being orbital, be

Tos Iceman: And where do I say FOR EVERYONE? If I need to put IMO in all sentences I write, my posts will exceed yours in length I thought it'd be a given that whatever we write here is our personal opinion, and there would be no need to clear that with each sentence. Noone can ever talk for everyone else, and I think that's pretty much accepted by everyone. That you're turning this into an arrogance thing is odd... But t

I doubt it would make a dent on AI on AI wars, though. If the player can figure out to attack lightly defended planets instead of major fleet garrisons, then I think the GalCiv AI is also smart enough to do the same to other AIs and to the player. As noted, there are also offensive advantages to having all the defenders bunched up.

Concomittant with that, something weird seems to be going on with the planet values. Playing as Terran, on Tough, with plusses to Diplo, diplo techs and the DiploTranslator, I was basically capable of buying my planets from my foes without sending out any colonization vessels whatsoever. The newly settled hostile environment planets are particularly vulnerable. It's not ideal for war, since your empire will be spread across the map and far flung, but it's ideal for trade since you can

Sure, but that's just a rationale. If entire moons can orbit a planet in basically just one isolated location, surely a couple ships, or even a couple hundred ships, could do the same? Fleeting ships around orbit makes better sense from a gameplay standpoint - it's more intuitive, you don't leave you fleets out of orbit for defending planets, and it rewards the AI for doing what's natural.

I second that motion. All ships in orbit really ought to be fleeted automatically, with a few limitations in the early game. You could even limit Fleeting in Orbit to your Logisitics score, with Orbital Fleet Manager allowing you to max to the 10 ships without being limited by your Logistics.

ToS Iceman: That's precisely what I said. Specifically: Nothing new here. I have 2 "gripes" with GC. Lots of cheese potential, and lots of bad sci-fi/details/QA/consistency/whatever. That's all I've been saying. Again, for the Nth time, it's a good game, it just isn't great because of details if you will. It has potential (to become a true strat game *in space* - true space strat game seems to confuse people), but it'll need some major ov