I've been seeing a lot of feedback about how weapons and defenses work, and it seems like many people would like to see more diversity in how different weapons do damage, with less of the "rock/paper/scissors" tactic. this is very tricky because we want them to stay balanced, but it does seem like this is an area that people would really like "spiced up." (we're using dune puns too now, right?) so here's an idea i had of how to diversify our weapons...
basically it's mostly combining the different tactics used by gal civ in the past, with a couple additions...
first, i do kinda like the idea of different ranges a bit. It makes a lot of sense considering that you can fire missiles from far away that they would have a little longer range, beams would be next, and kinetic as closest range because u have to be close to hit your target with a physically propelled projectile while you're both flying around in space. the problem we've seen with this is that missiles will def be the best starting out because they can kill everything before they have a chance to fire their first shot. i think that the way to fix this problem isn't by making the weapons all the same though, I think the way to balance them lies in the defenses...
right now defenses work all the same. i think we should change that.
-Point defense could give a % chance of destroying the missile and negating all the damage (since you guys are really into the RNG right now, i thought you'd like this one ). make the numbers a little higher than current for this though, since it's a % chance. i think there should also be a delay in when you fire missiles and when they hit their target if that's possible.
-Shields could absorb a certain amount of total damage and then be depleted. u know, like in star trek, until u can retreat with pattern epsilon and get the shields back up (it's a star trek thing). maybe have the shields recharge at a slow rate during battle. and by total dmg i mean missile, beam, and kinetic dmg. that's right, i'm suggesting removing the rock/paper/scissors aspect. i know, it's crazy, just bear with me plz though. I'm trying to make the defenses more useful than they have been. people usually never really use them, myself included. they're usually just not worth it for the cost, and in many battles they dont help at all and people dont like to risk that. i think a new defense system would make people use defenses much more and make it much more scientifically accurate too. and this would make shields useful in all battles, like they prob should be.
-Armor could prevent either a base amount or % amount of all dmg types from being inflicted on the ship once the shields are down. it makes sense that the more armor your ship has, the more dmg it can take. this will make armor useful on all ships, like it should be.
even if you dont like the specifics i've listed here, i would like as many ppl as possible to plz comment on this and let everyone know if you like the current rock/paper/scissors weapon style or would like to see something different. feedback is key to all of this, so plz, plz provide some. ty all for your time. live long and prosper.
maybe have shields protect extra against beams if beams become the new op, but the higher recharge rates for shorter range weapons should be able to balance it a lot. also, elerium seems to be rarer than all the other resources exept promethion, so maybe it's ok if beams are a little better than kinetic.
Nice post. I agree with everything you wrote. I've always hated the Rock- Paper- Scissors system of GC. That was always the true weakness of the game to me, not lack of tactical combat. GC4 has so far went even more basic than GC3. This is not a good thing. Having the Battle Viewer back is step in the right direction.
I understand this is an empire building game first and foremost. And that combat is secondary, but it doesn't have to be a bad system. It's not MoO2, ISG, nor DW. I wouldn't want it to be. I play GC for different reasons than those games. I hope the devs make combat fun, that can use different strategies. You know instead of just the one or two loaded ships or a dozen small clones. Ship roles in GC3 were a good start, and unique to my playing experience. Weapon ranges, different recharge rates, shields that can affect all damage types, a better point defense system; are all good ideas imo. I hope the devs give us the best game possible.
if longer range weapons are more of a problem, maybe the first defense tech could add more defenses, and shields could have a high dmg reduction against missiles, a med dmg reduction against beams, and none vs kenetic. this would reduce those first hits a lot and give the med and small range ships more of a chance to do well in battles. could always slightly raise the starting dmg of the different types too.
if missiles did more dmg, but were blocked pretty well by shields, there could be an added fleet tactic of trying to combine different types of weapons to have kenetic and/or beam ships take out the shields so that the next missile volleys would do a lot more dmg. if shields protected more against beams while armor protected best against kinetic there would still be the strategy of trying to mix up your weapons and defenses to counter theirs.
right now fleets are often pretty simple, it's just go for one dmg type and try to get as many %boosts to them as u can, and maybe throw in a little extra hp and repair, because that's how everything usually works best. with changes like these players would have a good reason to mix up different weapon types and add basic and possibly specialized defenses in a fleet. i think it would add a lot to the tactics and depth of combat that many people are looking for.
This would make more sense in a Star Trek sense. There, torpedoes are basically only good if the shields are down. And kinetic weapons bypass shields entirely.
just to be clear i wasn't saying kinetic should bypass shields, i was just saying that the other dmg types should have reduced dmg vs shields, more resistance vs missiles and a bit vs lasers.
Not sure how doable it is to rework weapons right now but I'll forward these ideas on and similarly I encourage others to chime in if you have ideas on reworking combat balance.
I have hated rock/paper/scissors since it was first introduced years ago. People love the ship designing aspect of this series, but it is boring to me since defense has been almost pointless for many years.
It makes sense to me that each defense works somewhat against everything, but works really well against something. Shields get worn down and need to be recharged. Point defenses obscure the target (chaff or jamming) or attack the projectile (missile, mostly, but kinetic once in a while). Armor is spread around the ship, so it protects against everything until it weakens in some part of the ship.
So, a point defense should have a low value against projectiles (obscuring aim), a medium value against lasers (chaff reflects and distorts their energy and a high value vs slow moving missiles.
Shield defense should have a high value vs lasers, medium vs missiles and moderate vs kinetic (concentrated mass and speed of the projectile). Think of an direct fire armor piercing ammo round vs a high arced lob of an indirect artillery round.
Armor defense should stop everything dead, allowing no damage unless the individual attack value exceeds the armor value.
So, what should take damage. Point defenses are usually not targetable, so they only take damage randomly and from all types of attacks. Shields get worn down each time they block an attack but can recharge. All successful attacks reduce armor first, then hit points.
Finally, all defensive values need to be high enough to make them worth the cost and space they occupy. In a pure R/P/S system all values should probably be tripled since they only have a 1/3 chance of being needed. Perhaps point defenses can be placed outside of the ship, thus taking no space but being always vulnerable to being hit.
continuation of this system... how fleet tactics/setup would be enhanced under a new weapon/def system » Forum Post by Basilisk83 (galciv4.com)
What if later in the game you could unlock a stealth/cloaking/jamming module that made ships immune to long range targeting. So your fleets would have to engage enemy fleets directly if they deployed stealth modules on their ships.
I also LOVE the idea of shields and armor being able to counter all damage types.
nice, yeah i like that idea. prob wouldnt be good enough to put on each ship, but maybe if one ship in a fleet had it that could cloak the entire fleet.
Defensive modules takes up the same amount of space as offensive modules but defense gets used up while offense does not. It's time to even the playing field.
After any HPs are lost randomly remove the affect of one or more modules until the total number removed is equal to the integer calculated below
(Original HP - Current HP) x (Original used Mass + # of upgrades) / (Original HP) > or = to 1
Defensive modules would not take damage or be reduced in power or effectiveness in any other way.
So, weapons, systems and defenses would now be vulnerable to fire and battles could end in a draw if both sides lose all of their offensive weapons. Also, keep in mind that defensive systems still may need to be upgraded if they continue to be effective only against one type of attack, since offensive weapons work against everything. There is no point in spending money on armor that only covers 1/3 of your body if the same price buys you a better weapon that works all of the time. (The best defense is a good offense.)
Well, I like the RPS combat system that GalCiv 2 had. I think it worked well.
I think something overlooked is that researching weapons in GalCiv 2 was expensive. It was really expensive. It was quite the investment to go even a moderate distance down one weapon type; enough so that trying to change what weapon type you were using really hurt. A player had to make a choice of whether to continue going down the weapon tech path that have already invested a lot of research into, to change weapon techs to avoid the enemy's defenses even if it would be weaker than what you have now, or maybe try counter their opponent's weapons by researching defenses of your own.
Yes DivineWrath, I remember liking GC2's system. I can't remember if that was the square root system or if that came later, which was still OK, at least until offensive weapons got large. In linear vs square root, linear wins big after 2, especially if you round down.
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