This thread is for the discussion of Carriers/Orbital Bombardment.
Galactic Civilizations II does not have the concept of carrriers (units that carry other units). There are no plans to add this into the game because Stardock does not feel it adds anything to the game other than additional complexity.
Orbital bombardment as a general feature has not been added explicitly because of the way it affects end-game gameplay in other games -- players going on a "genocide run".
That is the official view from Frogboy (aka Brad Wardell, Designer).That doesn't mean you can't talk about such features or make a case for some similar feature but pleae do so in this thread rather than making a duplicate post.
Thanks!
i like the idea of cariers and hanger space, becuase it allows for more practical deployment. also it could be a feature (maybe) to have to buy and train crew for ships. having pods or hanger space could allow you to evacuate bigger ships, therefore saving you money.
If Civilization IV can do it, GalCiv III should be able to do it, since the GalCiv II ship has already sailed I guess.
This thread no longer has a point as there is a game from Stardock that has all three of what people want, which is tactical combat, orbital bombardment, and carriers, and that is Sins of a Solar Empire.
I've recently played the demo through and didn't get to a point where I would have needed to bomb a planet, but is that possible with the latest Ultimate Edition (base + all expansions)? I've read several reviews that mention invasion is necessary to capture a planet militarily.
Thanks.
hmm... genocidal run eh? does taking over the planet first then hitting the destroy colony button count?
and I'm loving the improvised carriers there.
A few points and questions
1)Surely mass drivers invasion is close enough to orbital bombardment and if not then I don't fully understand what you mean by orbital bombardment.
2)AF_Ronin's Idea with the fleet warp bubble is awesome! But try having your "Carrier" and putting it in a fleet with 2 different class attack ships (large ones that are too big to "dock" on the carrier and THE put your little fighters in. I tried it and you couldnt actually see the little ships.
3)Um... What's a dead horse? (other than the obvious)
4) the first post on this thread with the picture: surely the horse isn't dead if its talking!
Ahh yes, the carrier debate.
Bottom line here - what "the developer(s)" want is not relevant. Stardock is a business which must cater to the wishes of it's customers. Since obviously a large number of customers would like these features, whether developers "feel" it adds to the game no longer matters.
Obviously it's too late for GCII, but if it's left out of GCIII it would be a mistake. The concept is in probably half or more of all scifi series ever made. If Stardock (in a theoretical GCIII) wants to continue to ignore the wishes of customers, they should at least design the game in such a way that it allows modders to add a high quality carriers feature.
The only valid argument against carriers and bombardment features are that it would break the game in some way - but that case hasn't been made. (It CAN be made credibly with multiplayer vs singleplayer.)
And honestly, I don't see the problem with players going on genocide runs anyway. he he he (Let's face it--who didn't enjoy watching those little bombs go off in Master of Orion II? And then at the end when you get bored and decide to drop them all at once.... BOOOM!)
If it's that annoying, make it a game option, or put the feature into an "official mod".
It could just be a Carrier module that reduces the logistics cost of X number of tiny or X/2 small hulls to zero when fleeted with a ship with Y number of these modules
in the game now a huge ship can take out a few fleats of tiny ships if not more. smaller ships should have a plus to them, being able to evade the larger ships wepons.
Carriers are a long-time and legitimate aspect of naval warfare, though in modern times the aircraft carried are intended to strike land-based targets rather than enemy fleets (but, that could just be because there are very few if any fleets that can go toe-to-toe with an battlegroup of American vessels and even survive). Odds are, fighter craft would be used for engaging fixed installations such as stations of varying types, or specific installations on a planet's surface.
Instead of "bombarding" a planet's surface indiscriminately ala Star Stupidity...er, I mean Star Wars...surgical strikes with smart weapons from endo/exo-atmospheric fighter/bombers would be preferable to limit damage to facilities you'd rather keep intact when you take over. Then again of course, the very idea that a computer can plot a near-instantaneous jump across dozens, hundreds, even thousands of light-years with an accuracy measured in mere thousands of miles...but not flawlessly aim a giant space gun at a single building on a planet from geosynchronous orbit 100-200 miles away is flatly unbelievable at best, and unacceptably idiotic at worst.
That said...there are sometimes issues with game balance, so certain things get cut... Frankly, I think cutting such features as more viable bombardment or the concept of carrier craft was silly and unnecessary...and kind of smacks of laziness. But, there are deadlines to meet, so it could've been that too. Actually...now that I think of it...cutting targetted bombardment is really just flatly stupid, when one considers how they modified espionage in TotA. It was so drastically far-fetched to add a nearly identical command aspect to planetary invasion? "Here, pick an improvement...blow only it up and gain a combat bonus." Simple, no? Oh well.
I give GalCiv 2 a pair of immeasurably huge thumbs up for the amazing AI and the refreshingly innovative approach to the relationship of population and economics...but the rest of it is just kinda sad. Not the graphics, mind you...graphics are pretty unimportant to me...but the excessively and unnecessarily complex formulas for determining relatively simple results, the lack of tactical command of any sort in combat, and the "one size fits all" style of mechanics relative to gameplay are just disappointing in the extreme. I don't like the idea of "ultimate trumps". I prefer a more "rock-paper-scissors" style of potency...just as they attempted with the three weapon-defense pairs.
Huh...I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean it to become a rant.
I like carriers myself. I agree with the orbital bombardment, but look at what starcraft did with carriers! True, they are mabe a little naturally powerfull, but a high cost and long wait time can fix that. Its a stragety game, you should not throw out something just because it adds to the stragety.
I have always thought that carriers would be a good idea to implement, although choosing how is complicated enough in and of itself. Though the warp bubble can let you make a makeshift carrier, there is plenty of room for improvement.
The main point of a carrier is launching short-ranged fighters from a long-ranged navy. In GalCiv2, it slowly becomes essential that your ships have the speed and range to reach the enemy, while still having the firepower to engage them. Tiny and Small hulls cannot effectively do this, and they seem to become obsolete not too long after the medium hull is unlocked. What I believe should be implemented for carriers is two things :
1.) Carrier modules that would increase the logistical cost of the ship equipped with one, but would allow it to tow a limited number of ships. This could be used with hyperdrive-free vessels (below), or with vessels that lack in the life-support needed to reach a certain area. This means that carriers could be giant tugs for slow or short-ranged ships.
2.) Mini, Tiny, Small, and Medium-sized hulls that start with no base speed or life-support but extra space and a cheaper hull. If the carrier was lost, these ships would float in space until destroyed, picked up, or (based on size and life-support tech) lost some critical system and became derelict. Therefore these hulls would be useful since they would be superior to normal models and could fight either above planet or with a carrier; yet at the same time they would be risky, since they require a carrier to move at all.
I do not want fighters to have some kind of maneuverability bonus - if modern weapons have pinpoint accuracy in an atmosphere and we are already making pinpoint-accurate lasers, I don't think that dodging weapons-fire would be realistic hundreds of years later in the vacuum of space. Additionally, carriers should have the disadvantage of being either unable to hold many ships, or needing to be very large to support both weaponry and the hanger.
To respond to a few criticisms:
WhoStoleMyNickName: Although I agree with much of your post, I don't equate tiny and small hulls with triremes and cogs; rather, I equate them with gunboats and corvettes in a navy of cruisers and battleships (since in space, aircraft carriers as they are now have no real place). What I want is to be able to make those gunboats and corvettes fill the roll of fighters and bombers since as GalCiv2 has it now, all you really have are just the biggest ship you can afford to mass-produce filling your ranks, with larger ships acting in more critical areas. And yes, I know no modern navy uses gunboat-carriers or corvette-carriers, but remember that aircraft carriers and submarines dominate modern naval theory.
No one in particular: I like the idea of fighters as a weapon module, but I want something more than just a Homeworld Drone Frigate.
To sum up what I have said since this post is long: carriers could use extra logistics, ships without hyperdrives can be used with carriers to allow for more focus on weapons, and fighters do not get unrealistic maneuverability bonuses. I also understand that balancing makes this far more complicated than this summary allows.
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