Good thoughts...

I'm not completely convinced that having the same hit, attack and defense points split in different ways would have a significantly different outcome for a battle occurring within a single turn.  I'm not aware that we can play multiple positions, but if we could then some of this could be gamed out.

Do you know if the defending fleet is burning "movement" points while defending? I'm thinking it does not, but if it did then you could wear down the larger fleet with constant attacks to the point where its defenses degrade or its unable to move much.

If the fleet/planet/starbase/starport docking areas were rebuilt to accommodate an indeterminate number of ships and the existing limits are exposed in the XML, then modding could test it out.

--David

Modding the logistics cap is possible through the xml. Thus, you can make your infinite logistics cap, if you like.

I worry that without the logistics cap the game would devolve to who can put the most tiny ships in a fleet wins.

FYI - a very good description of how different sized opponents fair in a battle (taking into account relative firepower, too) is something called Lanchester's Laws:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws

Related, and relevant to a turn-based game like GC, is the Salvo model of combat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvo_combat_model

Together, both offer a good explanation (and accurate model) as to how firepower and numerical difference affect the outcome of a battle.

On another thread, there was the suggestion to create a meta-grouping for multiple fleet movements, called Task Forces. That might solve some of the issues we have here, but it's not a simple solution to implement.

The thread's titled "Suggestion: gameplay assists"

https://forums.galciv3.com/456376/page/1/#3483049

You could also select multiple stacks by drawing a frame around them (you need to hold CTRL in order to do this).

You could. I did that all the time when I wanted to move several close-by fleets/ships to the same coordinates.

Not necessarily true, DARCA1213. If, for example, both sides consist of ships which are each capable of destroying 1 enemy ship per round, then in a 10 vs 11 situation there's really only going to be a single survivor, or maybe two if you get lucky. If instead each side's ships can take their opposite number halfway to death (e.g. 5 damage dealt to a 10 HP ship) in one round, then opposite numbers targeting gets me 2 survivors, one of which is at half health, while focused fire gets me three survivors, one of which is at half health. Such a situation requires that offensive capabilities have greatly outpaced defensive capabilities, but it's still possible.

Another factor is that, at least under the GCII system, the damage each ship suffers per round isn't deterministic - I cannot say with certainty that my 5 beam attack ship will deal 1 damage to your 4 shield defense ship each round. If the damage roll is between zero and the attack score and the defense roll is between zero and the defense score, and the damage sustained is the difference between these two rolls, I can expect my 5 beam ship to hit your 4 shield ship for on average 1.17 damage per round, but about half the time my 5 beam ship won't successfully deal damage against 4 shields. If the damage is rolled between half the attack score and the full attack score while the defense roll is between half the defense score and the full defense score, then the average damage per round that my 5 beam ship achieves is 1.11 against your 4 shield ship, and about 33% of my ship's shots deal no damage. The above is assuming only integer rolls are allowed by the system and that half of 5 gets rounded to 3. Given that the system is not deterministic, if I suffer a string of bad luck and only hit for low damage numbers while your ships hit for high damage numbers, I could still lose the battle despite going in with a numerical advantage while fighting identical opponents. Granted, I'd have to suffer really bad luck to everything in the 11-vs-10 scenario, but it'd still be possible for me to suffer more than your claimed maximum of seven ships.

The model in the example that I gave is simultaneous (or, if it is taken to be serialized, then the side that goes second gets to launch its return salvo before losses are computed). The only simultaneous model that would always result in equal losses for opponents using identical ships is one which doesn't look at how each fleet's strength changes over time (i.e. at the start of the engagement it says that side 1 takes A damage per turn and has B health while side 2 takes X damage per turn and has Y health, then it computes how many turns the combat would last using those damage figures, computes losses, and never once considers how the fleet strengths change as the battle progresses). Going back to the 10-HP ships that deal 1 damage each per round scenario, and taking an 11 vs 10 scenario with damage concentrated on the lead ship with overkill spilling to the next in line, if my side with 11 ships gets first strike then I win with 6 ships remaining, one of which is on 4 HP. If your side of 10 ships gets first strike, then my 11 ships would still win but I'd have only 4 ships remaining, one of which is on 1 HP.

Having a large fleet might work for us human players, but if the fleet size becomes huge then the AI would have to make a lot more calculations thus longer to make a choice. If the maps end up with 100+ players on them then that is a lot of calculations for the AI's to go through. The fleet size may be restricted to allow "older" rigs to still run the game is epic size with out waiting 10 per turn end. Just my 2 cents

Well this is a some what hotly contested topic isn't it?  And like any self respecting internet user I'm going to offer my opinion even though no one cares.

Point: There must be a fleet cap as has been stated many times before because as  stated before: logistics have been an intrinsic part of every military force (not blowing yourself up is considered a good thing after all), and that for every object you add to a battle the complexity increases by N^N (please note that I have not looked into the math on this but N^N does seem right as you must track every objects position and flight path relative to every other object if you want to avoid collisions, death and subjugation by the Yor), and finally if you remove the fleet cap, the unstoppable fleet ball thing would kind of wreck your day.

Counter Point: Now I am not unsympathetic to those of you on the larger/unlimited fleet cap side of things.   A ship with laser is cool but 10000 ships pitted against each other (with lasers) is epic, and EPIC is what we want.  I mean we are using the resources of a galaxy, in a struggle for supremacy, against all other sentient beings to determine which if any of us deserve to live, and in this struggle we only have fleets of 4 ships? and the most powerful empire, only has 150 ships?  We deserve bigger numbers!  I mean, Masters of Orion III(RIP) had fights with 100s of ships and it came out in 2003 and even the opening video in the beta has hundreds of ships involved in the conflict.

Possible Solution:  Unlimited fleet size is too large and 4-10 ships is too small but surely there is some equilibrium point that can be reached. Fleet sizes can be increased and the order of magnitude of ship size could be better represented (squadrons of small and tiny ships fighting or supporting one or two massive ships).  Other possible ideas include, fleet synergy, multiple fleets involved in the same fight or even possibly the ability to exceed max fleet cap and a reduction of individual ships stats in over populated fleets.  

Other Notes:  I recognize that increasing all fleet sizes really does nothing, 3 vs 4 is the same as 75 vs 100.  The change would be purely aesthetic, bigger numbers provide a better feel and allow for better scaling of ship size. The application of current world situations and problems is only some what applicable to the future as we have no way of knowing what might actually occur (we are in a universe where the hyper-drive has been invented which violates some of the most fundamental rules of physic namely particles with mass cannot travel faster then the speed of light and massless particles travel at only the speed of light).  

Massive fleets have massive co-ordination and control problems. The Armada was virtually unmanageable and was repeatedly beaten in detail by a small number of faster, more maneuverable English ships. At Midway, the multiple plans and operations led to the Japanese risking - and receiving - defeat in detail. The sea battles around Guadalcanal are a textbook case of both sides learning how to use the tools they had (air and naval assets), including how to maneuver and fight at night. Jutland is another textbook case of massive fleets being limited to a few very basic maneuvers because centralized command simply wasn't able to cope.

From Victorian times to WWII all navies had 'pre-packaged' ship units, typically 4 or 8 (destroyers, cruisers or battleships) because that was the largest number a staff could maneuver, fight and administer. I don't see any reason this would change; when going from ocean to space the basic operational principles remain.

Fire control was equally constrained. Fleets worked hard to ensure that enemy ships were engaged by no more than one friendly because it interfered with ranging and fire control - if you are adjusting your fire based on how someone else just shot then you are very likely to miss and keep missing. So the model of 'everybody fire on Mike and then everybody fire on Sam' is the exact opposite of ideal. But to the point: limiting the number of ships under one command tends to make fire control more efficient.

I don't object to a limit on the size of my fleet, I just wish there was some use for smaller ships as there was in WWI and II. Would be nice if smaller ships had their own weapons such as light guns for AA, torpedos, very high attack speed - something. If carriers are available, then screening units should be too...

On the fleet size question, it would be reasonable to allow players to mass whatever they like but have increasing penalties to speed and maneuverability as the horde grows.

As Clausewitz said, in war everything is simple. But getting even the most simple thing done is very difficult.

I just want to point out that 10,000 ships is not "epic," it's pointless. There's no practical way to show a battle between 10,000 ships on the battlefield at a level where the detail is much more than a bunch of little specks and flashing lights. There's a reason why movies, even those depicting major battles, typically focus in on small groups of people rather than showing the bird's eye view of the battlefield with a bunch of little specks floating around and occasionally producing little specks of light; even those movies, documentaries, or television programs that do depict large scale battles from the bird's eye view do so after reducing the number of things being shown to color-coded blobs labelled with markings like "1st Division, US 1st Army" or "3rd Battalion, 9th Panzers," of which you might typically see 5 to 30 at any given time. 10,000 ships fighting one another is a potentially interesting backdrop and can be an interesting tactical and logistical question, but it's not a particularly interesting engagement from the point of view of watching the fighting at large.

I would further point out that you do not have grounds to claim that you know what "we" want - you know what you want, but without the input of any other person, you do not know what a group wants. There are more than likely other people on the forum who want "EPIC" battles, where "EPIC" is defined as "having a significant number of ships in the engagement," but this is probably not the entire forum. Nor will everyone agree that this is a suitable definition of "EPIC," nor will you likely get an agreement on the minimum number of ships required to qualify for this definition of "EPIC."

I will also add that real-world naval battles, which are the real-world battles which have the most similar level of investment in the individual fighting units engaged, very rarely have more than a couple hundred ships engaged, and smaller engagements which involve only ten or twenty smaller ships at most are much more common than the large fleet battles involving hundreds of ships.

In Galactic Civilizations, we are very clearly not using anything approaching the resources of an entire galaxy. Indications are that the entire map of Galactic Civilizations is no more than a ball perhaps a couple hundred light-years in diameter (the actual absolute dimension of the Immense GCII map are unclear; Toria and Drengi are known to be separated by 20 light-years, I'd estimate Arcea and Drengi to be separated by about 15 light-years, and I'd estimate Earth and Altaria to each be about 23 light-years from Arcea, based on the information in the Databanks, though relative locations are elusive and only the absolute distance between Drengi and Toria is a known quantity; still, that's at least four of the known major species who have homeworlds contained within a sphere of diameter no greater than about 60 light-years). Further, FTL warships are a relatively new and extremely expensive thing for the known major species in the Galactic Civilizations universe, and in-game even the tiny hulls are shown to cost sizable fraction of the gross domestic product of a world of 8 billion people to maintain (of course, this varies a bit depending on what you've built on the planet). This is not the kind of setting in which you can expect to have enormous fleets of warships available for whatever purpose you need them for. Another argument is that we know that there are at least eight major species which are to be included in GCIII, and there were up to twelve in GCII; since none of these are known to possess the ability to travel to other galaxies, none of these could have the resources of an entire galaxy at their disposal since none of them actually controls the entire galaxy (well, in the GCII campaigns, the Drengin and Yor at some point could be said to control the majority of the part of the galaxy in which the major factions reside, with the Drengin holding a slightly larger piece of the pie, but even then it's doubtful that that represents anything approaching the entire Milky Way).

A further argument against Galactic Civilizations involving access to the resources of an entire galaxy is that even if the parsecs of Galactic Civilizations were taken to represent real-world parsecs (3.26 light-years), it would take a GCII:TotA huge hull with the best Terran hyperdrives roughly 11.8 years to cross the Milky Way, as Huge hulls with Stellar Folding hyperdrives cap out around 50 parsecs per week (huge hulls have the greatest potential number of move actions per turn of any GCII hull size). We also know that Galactic Civilizations parsecs do not actually represent real-world parsecs; my best guess for how they actually relate would be that the real-world parsec is the distance that a hyperdrive-equipped vessel with a 1 parsec per week movement rating would travel in one week when the hyperdrive is negligibly affected by gravity (i.e. far from any nearby massive bodies like stars and planets), though Gaunathor may turn up with a quote linking to Draginol's not particularly useful description of what the Galactic Civilizations adjusted parsec represents to argue that this isn't what was meant. Regardless, indications are that the Galactic Civilizations parsec averages out to something considerably smaller than a real-world parsec, and so that 11.8 year trip to cross the Milky Way is likely considerably longer. Good luck making practical use of the resources of an entire galaxy with those kinds of travel times, even if you don't need to be limited to controlling only a piece of the galaxy because you have seven or more competitors of sufficient size to be ranked as the major powers of the Galactic Civilizations universe.

I will also point out that the Drengin armadas over Arcea and Earth, depicted in the opening cutscene, may well represent abnormally large concentrations of the Drengin fleet. The only other known power which could potentially seriously threaten the Drengin as rulers of the known part of the galaxy, at least as things stand in Galactic Civilizations lore, are the Yor, and the Yor are currently allies of the Drengin. Earth and Altaria are all that is left of the human and altarian empires, with their former colonies conquered or eradicated; both the Arcean Empire and the Torian Confederation have been completely conquered, and the Drath Legion has been virtually exterminated. There were only eleven major powers in Galactic Civlizations II (the Korath don't really count as they were a rebellious faction within the Drengin Empire, and thus presumably much or all of their territory is currently in Drengin hands and had been prior to their rebellion), and the Drengin and Yor now together control the majority of the territory of seven of those powers (including themselves). The only other faction which could likely have comparable resources at present is the Krynn Syndicate, as they're the merger of the Krynn Consortium and the Korx Dominion, two of the lesser major powers of Galactic Civilizations II; the Iridium Corporation might possibly have comparable resources, but the Iridium Corporation is at present a largely unknown quantity, and since they're a power which was late to the party, so to speak, I rather suspect that they're a relatively minor power at present.

If all twelve of the known powers originally had approximately equal resource bases, the Drengin are now equivalent to at least 3.5 major powers (probably more, since although they split the spoils with the Yor, the Drengin took the larger share), the Yor are similar to but somewhat smaller than the Drengin, the Krynn are equivalent to no more than 2 major powers, and the Iconians, Thalan, and Iridium are at about 1 each. Of course, we also know that the Drengin and the Arceans were the greatest of the known powers, and the Drengin now control at least the Arcean homeworld and probably much of the former Arcean Empire, so it's probable in my opinion that the scales are even more skewed in favor of the Drengin (and, to a lesser extent, the Yor), the Thalans and Iconians are likely relatively small powers, and the Korx were a lesser power before they merged with the Krynn; the Iconians are also known to have been part of the coalition which fought the Dread Lords, which would suggest that they may have lost some portion of their resource base during the wars, and as allies of the Humans and enemies of the Yor, they may have taken part in the wars against the Drengin-Yor Alliance, which could have resulted in some of their resources ending up in Drengin or Yor hands afterwards. In short, the Drengin and the Yor are likely the biggest bullies on the playground by a significant margin, except perhaps in comparison to one another. They have the resources available to stick ~30% of their fleets over the conquered or besieged homeworlds of their enemies and still have the strength to face any of the other current powers, and possibly any combination of the other current powers, and as such I don't consider the opening cutscene to be a reasonable guide to the number of warships that any of the major powers could, or even would, have normally fielded in a single fleet, and I also consider it likely that there are a relatively large number of transports, rather than true warships, present in both fleets shown in the cutscene.

You mean this description?

"A true parsec is 3.26 light years. An adjusted parsec varies from 1.9 x 10^6 (million) miles to 1.9 x 10^14 miles depending on how much mass is in the area.

Simply put, a GalCiv ship that moves 1 move per turn is moving 1pc (adjusted parsec) per turn. Going from Earth to Jupiter might take 2 moves. Going from Earth to Sirius 8 moves or 8pc. Sirus is 0.8 true parsecs away in the real universe."

I find it perplexing, that you are arguing, that the lore-makers description of the lore, is not useful, when discussing lore-related issues. It's the only thing we can go by.

Anyhow, I'm not getting further into this discussion. You're making far too many assumptions for my tastes, some of which aren't supported by the lore (e.g., the Krynn/Korx merger didn't add any new territory to the Krynn, only more population).

The logistics bonuses should be percentages perhaps instead of just raw numbers , at least in terms of racial bonuses.

Also, I think combat shouldn't cost movement points, that will stop the fleets of trash delay tactic the AI loved to use in GC2 which was annoying and lame.  This would make logistics more important. 

(or better idea- combat movement costs are based on how long the battle is, a long enough battle may not finish in one turn)