In GalCiv2, I would create Sensor Drones out of cargo hulls + lots of sensors, instead of relying on sensors of fleets. I could max out a cargo haul with low-to-medium range sensors, and get a reasonable sensor area and the game felt balanced. I would typically build 4-6 of these drones, position them around my border to expose my entire border area.
I am playing my first GalCiv3 game on a Medium map, and just did the same, with a cargo hull and 13 Interstellar Sensors (first level sensor tech) and I can now see more than half the map! It is so bad that it would make no sense to have sensors on any ship any longer in GalCiv3, as one cargo hull + sensors would expose most of the map.
Needs a re-balancing.
Is this the correct forum for such comments?
Why not make ships only able to use one sensor only, and then have "sensor boosters" that add a percentage to that number. Would make the concept easier to understand compared to diminishing returns. I would do the same thing with engines and range effects as well. Then of course have an additional percentage boost based on galaxy size that is applied to sensors, range, and ship speed.
Any single player game? Give me a break, there are many where that's not true. Hell, many push you to find any advantage you can, they just do a much better job of limiting the upper limit of breaking the game.
I've been a gamer for near 30 years, most games without house rules are pretty simple to me.
Defintely need to scale this one down, or else allow the AI to do the same - it's just ridiculous when I can mass spam sensor ships with 20+ sensor radius or create sensor augmented colony ships early on, while the AI is spamming huge fleets of rather worseless scouts.
Why not limit the amount of hardware of a certain type that a given hull can carry? Also, why not limit the size of cargo hulls and tie it to tech - you want a huge cargo hull with a size of 100+? research the tech.
you're right, and surely a tiny galaxy also qualifies as a "most extreme setting" as well. the best way to start is to look at how things play out on medium settings. however, the differences from medium/large to insane/tiny are so extreme that it really would be best to not include a static hardcap/modifier but to put this into relation to the actual galaxy size.
I have yet to see a proof that shows that the AI is even using these ships in a somewhat efficient manner, especially on harder settings (which is chosen by players to get a challenge from the game). There, the AI virtually has no FOW, and IIRC he gets bonuses to sensors which enables him to see alot of stuff already with his normal ships/planets/starbases.
The AI also knows the location of every resource by default, the game globally shares information of ships/fleets etc pp.... the only thing he practically has to do is to send a scoutship to a planet to make this planet known to him, afterwards send the colonyship. I do actually believe that it is better for him if these scoutships are designed to be cheap (or fast), because, with the difficulty bonuses these ships already do the job satisfyingly well and then, cranking out more cheap normal scouts out which can go into different directions is probably better than these expensive cargosensorboats. Especially early on when planetary production is still low, time matters (everything that can be dispensed into producing colonyships could decide whether that colony ship reaches the planet as #1) and where pirates are around which continuously shoot down unarmed AI ships (and here, multiple cheap scouts have a better chance to do the job done, or in other words, the loss of some of them won't matter as much as if an expensive cargosensorboat is shoot down)
So in my opinion these cargosensorboats only give the player a really strong bonus, and they could even weaken the AI game in that the AI is spending production & time on something from which he doesn't really benefit from...
both sides of this argument have made their points crystal clear...so I think further debate is pointless. We will see what the devs decide.
for me the argument is now around starbase sensors.
If sensor stacking remains, starbase sensors should either be massively improved or removed, they serve no purpose in the game that another mechanic (sensor ship) doesn't do better.
if sensor stacking is reduced in some way, starbases sensors should be adapted to balance around the new model.
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