I'm not even worried about boarding\capturing ships, targeting engines (all this has been done in other 4x games), just basic things like:
1. Why bother with engine upgrades. You can't flee\escape. What is this The Last Jedi? Why can't ships flee or avoid combat
2. No basic tactics. You can't override targeting priorities. For example you can't order a fleet to go after the transports\troop carriers. If that is too complicated how about max range, optimal range, close quarters
3. Now combine the two, wouldn't it be nice if in some games, if you had long range missiles, and good engines, you could order your ships to fire from maximum, or even optimum range, and pound a more powerful enemy fleet as it slowly gets into range, if it ever did.
The combat is not even in line with the Age of Sail, or even older 4x games. Basically its line abreast, and the fleet with the most firepower wins. Not asking for too much, but if you have a entire tech tree dedicated to ship designs, why not use it? One of my most memorial games was losing in MOO, but then getting new technology which turned the tide of the war. Then the AI adapted with new technology, rinse repeat. BTW I eventually lost, but it was fun, which is the entire point of a game. Maybe I have not played enough, but I have yet to see a technology breakthrough overcome pure numbers in this game. Once an enemy empire has you on the ropes militarily, its basically game over, and instead of updating that, it seems the developers are more concerned about what form of government I'm using, and the election results, instead of the technology level and fighting prowess of the enemy empires. IE somehow they are achieving The Phantom Menace, and parliamentary procedures is overtaking the action sequences.
I'd argue it's not quite as bad you make it out to be, but the point is well made and I generally agree.
1) The ship roles need to be removed or completely overhauled.
2) A more complicated relationship needs to exist between weapons and defense. For example, treat fighters as a two-fold weapon system, vulnerable to certain point defense systems, which then in turn, may have no effect on the beams the fighter fires (for example).
3) Retreats/draws needs to be a thing. Something tactical speed could impact.
4) With hyper gates available I could see nerfing strategic engines more-so.
I generally agree with both the OP and Gauntlet's post above.
Especially this.
And especially this. One nuance to consider: Perhaps in order to retreat, the defending fleet would need to have moves left... in such a case, the attacker could attack again, provided they have sufficient moves to do so, and the defending fleet could again retreat, assuming they had remaining moves. Apart from some mechanism like this, the other option I see is that attacking must use up all remaining moves--which I'm not sure I like... or something far more clever or simpler than I can come up with at the moment.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, while I like the idea of retreat, it does potentially require other changes to the mechanics that I'm not sure about (or that I'd like).
How do other similar games handle this? Or do they not?
I've seen them handle it the way you describe... and also, the retreating party has a chance of suffering damage. That would be my vote.
Attack (use one move), defender retreats (use 1-3 moves, randomly runs away). Defender has 20-70% chance of taking damage depending on tactical speed and the disparity between fleets.
Tactical speed could also be used to measure a chance to prevent the retreaters from retreating at all.
This would nicely create room for "chasers" who are ships who spend hull space on tactical speed so they can chase down lone civilian ships.
The above ideas are fantastic. I am however ignorant to how difficult these would be to implement. I would like to add two things.
First I would hope if Stardock does enhance the combat they leave an auto resolve option for when you know you’ve won you just have to play the remaining 150 turns to “win”.
Second the prospect of carriers scares the living daylights out of me. They are so damning I don’t use them unless the AI rushes me 2 turns after meeting me at turn 50. I just find them completely overpowered. Put a carrier in a fleet and the only thing that can challenge it is another carrier. I think adding carrier supplies such as a carrier modular that allows you to store 10 fighters that you have to build and deploy three of them per modular in battle. So a huge haul could store 30 fighters and deploy 9 of them in a single battle. If fighters are destroyed they do not regenerate automatically but can be refilled by new fighters. The free generation of the most update fighters is what makes them OP if you increase the logistical support needed for these monstrosities it would improve their fairness. Again I am ignorant to have difficult this would be to code or if the AI could pull this off successfully.
Thank you for reading this looking forward to buying the expansion once it drops. Even though you guys removed the tech specializations.
I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implemented, and I agree you would also need to keep auto resolve, but I would just like to see something that shows more use of the tech tree, and that you also have some sort of strategic (dare I hope tactical) input. I don't see the fun of sitting their passively watching a battle unfold to the death. As far as retreats that could be remedied by making sure you have to "sacrifice" a certain amount of ships in a holding\delaying action. If you don't send enough ships, or if they are not powerful enough, then the pursuing fleet can catch up, and in that case you would need to set up another holding action, or go into a general engagement. A simple way of doing this could be done using the timer, if the ships you left behind survive, for let's say 90 seconds, (the time could depend on tactical speed), then they did their job of delaying the enemy. I think the amount of time needed should be accumulative, with a penalty. IE you leave a destroyer behind to protect some transports, and it only survives for 45 seconds. So you send another destroyer, but it will need to hold for 65 seconds, because of a 20 second penalty. Just food for thought
Can't flee combat in civ series. Still great games despite that. I think your complaints are a bit on the petty side. But everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
Maybe so, but considering that we now have the 20 forms of government, and commonwealths (why they don't use client\vassal states is beyond me), I personally don't consider talking about potential changes to how the game handles combat petty, but to each his own. Did you join the tread just to dismiss the idea? If so where do you think they should improve game play next?
Getting back on topic... and thinking of do-able and easier to implement changes to the combat system (not thinking a big complete redux with tons of features here)...
Bear in mind my goals: diversity of ship design and the potential for multiple valid design choices:
1) Scanners should impact tactical battles, I would have them impact the accuracy and the RANGE of a ship's weapons. Note, this is a per-ship result... a big sensor boat in the back will not help the fleet in tactical combat.
In-game justification? Jamming and false communications are too likely. Ship's rely on their own sensors when engaging... (sure why not?)
Out-game justification? Opens new combos of possibilities and creates more complication for optimizing ships and their payloads. You could be well behind in weaponry compared to your enemy, but far ahead in scanners giving you a distinct advantage in range.
2) Unused hull capacity/space = either additional ship HP or a slight increase in tactical speed, IE evasion. Lighter ships = easier to move. Not really a big deal, but I just like the idea that the 2-7 slots i couldn't fill helped somehow lol.
3) Carrier fighters that die, regenerate after three turns. Create a new hull category for Fighters that has less space and less health than tiny. Not by much mind you, but a bit. This should nerf carriers in any sort of protracted war of attrition.
4) Reduce roles to three "stances". Aggressive (moves at full speed towards the enemy), Neutral (Moves at 2/3rd's speed towards the enemy) and Defensive (Remains stationary). All targeting is simply on a "whose closest" basis...
So essentially all ships are "Capital" or "Support" with an additional "Fast" option.
5) Nerf Commanders/Admirals. They are kinda broken. In particular their speed bonuses (which with Hypergates we should need less anyhow).
6) Remove Leaders option to increase fleet HP. This is insanely broken. I can put 10 leaders on HP for an important battle, than instantly shift them back to other priorities. If there must be a fleet Leader use, have it affect strategic repair rates and reduce upgrade costs. Which you know... makes SOME SENSE.
7) Drastically reduce the size of Thrusters and make them one-per-ship.
8) Consider adding a penalty to evasion for each main drive engine you add to a ship.
That is a pretty good list, and for the most part, could be implemented via modding, so it shouldn't be drastically consuming for the developers. If I thought this was going to be a major focus for an expansion, I'd definitely come up with something more creative regarding the roles, and ideally I'd also radically change the engines into "strategic" "tactical" and "thrusters", and have various advantages and disadvantages to hull sizes in combat both in and out of orbits... so huge hulls SUCK at attacking a nest of 20 tiny hulls in orbit... but can annihilate them in open space.
Etc. etc. Lots could be done... but even a modicum of attention would make the current system more enjoyable.
I agree with the general thrust and details of your post. Even though the expansion is not focused on this, some TLC here--even a little--could make a big difference.
My only concern with changes that give more strategic design combinations is whether the AI could easily be modified to use such changes effectively.
That's a good point. I'm kind of surprised the default designs are kinda poor, and updating those would help a little. Though the designs are mostly poor because of their engine choices.
In a perfect world id give the AI a "fleet" blueprint for assembling fleets. If it had that and could somehow flexibly choose to launch ad hoc fleets when desperate and assemble larger thought out fleets when it felt confident...
Well I think that would be great.
Wow, obviously someone has given this more thought than me . As Far as the AI if they can program the AI to run a empire, they can program one to use basic strategies. Were not talking complex tactics. IE they could allow us, and the AI to make strategic decisions, then allow both AIs to duke it out, like they do now.
Oh indeed... couple years.
As far as I can tell Frogboy's least favorite aspect of GC is combat... (okay... maybe the economic wheel of days past lol) to the point where I often detect a hint of scorn over any suggestion of deeper combat mechanics (manually controlled tactical combat). I get the impression that somehow the tactical combat of Fallen Enchantress (elemental) series must have caused a great deal of pain and misery for him or others, so now he's just burdened with game dev/CEO PTSD lol.
He's always been pretty clear that he prefers the civilization with the greater overall strategic advantage win on the battlefield. So weapon selection, tech choices, planet choices, industrial capacity... etc.
Which is fine. No one should seriously be trying to make GC into a tactical micro-managers haven... play StarCraft or Sins of a Solar Empire for that... but we should have at least a decent "sanity pass" on combat since the tech tree is getting completely overhauled.
I updated the AI blueprints. They are not super duper, due too SD linking the weapon augments directly into the shipyard UI, its how it sorts them, addign multiple augments to a design makes it spack out and you end up with 100's of design all scrambled up for low mass to max mass and lots of repeating, but are significantly better than vanilla. (UCP_Combat)
Its not just about Blueprints though, AI also equires some weight changes in the Tech tree to encourage it to take mass techs and mass reduction techs, as well as range techs, etc etc.
True--to a point. I was in the process of writing a lengthy post (longer than what follows) about how hard it would be to program "basic strategies" that are anything more than arbitrary.
Whenever I see a dev journal or some indication from Stardock about a new feature in the game, one of my first thoughts is, will the AI be able to use it as well as the human players. Making it possible for people to do things--giving them more options--that is easy. Making the computer use those options well... not so easy. Think about how mercenaries are barely used (and if used, not used well) by the AI. Think about the AI using government ships to explore when they should be buffing planets. It's easy for us to look at the ship and say, "Yeah, I'll station that here." The AI is like, "What the heck is this for? I guess I'll send it out exploring."
I'm not going to profess to know a ton about AI programming--I do know enough to know that doing it right (e.g., making the AI respond to the current circumstances of the game in a meaningful way, using resources like ships most effectively, etc.) isn't easy.
I don't doubt Brad and the dev team's ability to make it work given sufficient time. But I do not expect that this is a priority and that they have the will to make it happen. Maybe I'm wrong (about the will--not the ability), and I hope so.
All that said--and back to topic, I would love to see the dev team invest the time to provide us more options for strategic ship design and make the AI able to take full advantage of such changes. And to your point, Gauntlet:
I agree. This is a good time to do it. With a revamp of the tech tree, different options could be given to make ship design more meaningful and diverse.
Four out of the eight suggestions you give above, Gauntlet, are moddable (which you acknowledge)--but again, not sure how the AI would deal with components having both pluses and minuses. And the more important changes, in my opinion, are your points #4, #5, and #6.
If the dev team does nothing else, I hope they make ship roles more meaningful and fix the OP citizen-related tactics that human players can exploit but that the AI doesn't.
Good points, also.
Certainly the AI stuff is beyond me. You guys get the gist of what I'm getting at and seem to agree. Woot.
In regards to modability though... and forgetting the AI... it's been a while, but I think nearly all of my ideas are moddable. True... there may be unintended consequences... but I think they can be done.
The big one I remember having trouble with playing with it in the past was ship roles? Or am I mistaken?
Oh and I bet Carriers can't be done...
as for the AI, I'm by no means qualified to talk of it... but I sorta suspect a system of ship design "styles" could be built, and then you could assign a style to each race. Sort of like Sins of a Solar Empire where you could assign personalities to the AI.
So for example perhaps we assign "Aggressive Fleets" to the Drengin. Aggressive fleet designs are using a set of blueprints that favor kinetic weapons, thrusters, and repair, and generally eschew defenses.
etc.
It would obviously be a big downgrade in the AIs ability to respond and adapt to their enemies, but it might be easier to program them to develop coherent fleets and strategies. Sure... 1v1 you'll know exactly how to counter the Drengin... but if there are say ... 5 styles, and you have 10 opponents, you'll be hardpressed to customize your navy 10 times to perfectly counter every opponent. Perhaps then also add a degree of randomness to it all... such as "choose random fleet style" for each race at the beginning of the game.
Again... much less adaptable, not really an AI so much as a sort of scripted set... but in aggregate it might actually be more interesting to play against. Dunno. Just thinking aloud.
Such a system wouldn't be without precedent in science fiction--in Star Trek, for example, Klingons use disruptors and the Federation uses phasers... and there are a lot of other differences, too. Same could be said of every major franchise. In B5 there is the Shadow weaponry, conventional weaponry, mass drivers (used to destroy the Narn homeworld), etc. In Star Wars, you have radically different hull, defense, and weapons systems from race to race... Anyhow. You get my point.
That said, I think it all depends on how the AI is already set up. I don't know. But it could be set up to have a list of priorities dependent largely on race, but also on circumstances. So, Drengin could favor aggressive fleets, but if another player is evading them, they could be given an added priority of more accuracy. Then they'd focus on kinetic weapons, thrusters, and repair but sprinkle in some accuracy-buffing components or fleet-wide support ships. This would require the AI to build ships with a specific target in mind (not sure that they do that now) and manage their fleets such that the right ships go to the right war zone. All doable--but not necessarily simple. If some of these systems are already in place, then it might not be too hard to implement it in new ways.
In one of Brad's recent posts, I think he mentioned how much time they have to invest in playtesting to get things right. Something like this would take a ton of playtesting, I'd imagine. It would be cool, and I hope they consider doing something to make combat more interesting.
Like you, just thinking out loud.
"but we should have at least a decent "sanity pass" on combat since the tech tree is getting completely overhauled."...Hear. hear! That would be a start, researching technology that actually makes a difference in a battle, outside of the bigger\more is better.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
