As it stands now, there is absolutely no reason (other than roleplaying) to build large or huge ships. They are beyond bad in comparison to the other hull sizes. Let's take a look:
Tiny
Your starter warships and extremely useful for stacking weapon amplifiers and other fleet bonus modules. This seems to be the current "meta" of the game.
Just spam a whole lot of them, set them to support role and bunch them together with a couple of Small or Medium hulls (as main weapon carriers) and you get something like this:
g
Small
More module slots and hitpoints than Tiny and may also take over the swarm role described above. Also, they are great for armed standard roles like survey ship, explorer etc. in the early game (needed due to the pirate, space monster and sentinel spam).
Medium
Your standard weapon platform. Enough module slots (12 with maxed miniaturization) for any task and lots of hitpoints, all for the cost of 4 logistics. Overall just great bang for the buck.
Large
15 slots for 8 logistics = 25% more slots *cough* than Medium for double the logistics requirement. Excuse me?
Huge
22 slots for 16 logistics = 83% more slots than Medium for 400% the logistics requirement. Why should anyone ever build those?
IMO, both of these should be buffed dramatically, since right now they are light years away from being a viable alternative to any of the other hull sizes, despite being endgame techs. My suggestions:
This way, both of these hulls would be useful again and fit their position in the tech tree. And they would still be far from overpowered - due to the low numbers of them in any fleet and the GC targeting system.
Some other issues that should be addressed:
Instruct the AI to always use the +20% weapon amplifiers on their ships (for Tiny, Small and Medium at least). Right now it's trivial for the player to outdamage them on any difficulty level (see pic above). Unfortunately, this probably requires a rework of many many core designs.
The whole one-per-ship module system is a mess. At the moment I can put only two carrier modules on a ship, no matter its hull. So you don't want me to build a Huge hull supercarrier filled with carrier modules, but at the same time you have no problem with me creating a Small hull with 2 carrier modules and throwing 40 of these ships into a fleet? Doesn't make sense to me at all.
Same problem with many other modules. IMO, the only modules restricted to one-per-ship should be those giving fleet-wide bonuses and the special ones (colony, constructor etc.).
Cargo hulls should also be given some love. Right now, they give 6 slots (one less than Small hulls, with maxed miniaturization) and 20 base hitpoints. I don't see their usefulness beyond the very early game. My suggestion would be to go back to the GC3 route and give them 10 slots and a base hp of 1 (which can be increased by hp modules if desired). Maybe some special modules (e. g. transport, constructor) should be restricted to Cargo hulls.
I'll forward this to the team. Thank you for the write up.
I agree whole-heartedly. Rather than limiting the number of modules, the additional slots needed (3 for carrier mods) already recognizes these items use additional space and provides a natural limitation on the smaller hulls.
Full-Blown Fleet carriers that are dedicated platforms SHOULD be able to carry 40 fighters at the expense of their own firepower and defensive capabilities. Same with sensors, transport mods, etc.
I would suggest if there is a concern that players get an advantage by creating these dedicated ship-classes, maybe they should be added to the AI classes as well?
Exactly.
Yes, except transports. It doesn't make sense to have more than one transport module on a ship anymore.
Not really needed since carrier tech comes so late in the game, but hey, why not.
Thanks for showing this. I've been trying to point out that large and huge hulls are useless for awhile, but your analysis really hits home most of the problem.
The only other thing I would point out is that swarms beat large and huge hulls because they can target more than on ship at a time. Because large and huge hulls only get one shot at a time they really can't deal with swarms
In my opinion fleet wide modules shouldn't be able to stack. It really unbalanced the game
For combat purposes, yes. However, multiple transport modules could be use to create "starliners" to move citizens to planets more suited to their preferred skillset or to evacuate a planet (for whatever reason deemed necessary),
Well, we've had similar stuff in GC3 all the way throughout its history, but the issue gets aggravated now because those amplifier modules are available from the very start of the game and are quite cheap. It really makes outdamaging the AI trivial on any difficulty level.I think there are 3 things they could do about it:(1) Make the AI use them as well (might be difficult to implement)(2) Increase the resource cost of those modules massively (e.g. 2 Durantium + 2 Thulium for Kinetic Amplifier)(3) Move them far up the tech tree instead of making them available from the beginning (= the GC3 way)
The 75% damage reduction is something I fully agree with. I actually suggested something similar awhile back. It would require a large overhaul of the ship role system, but I think it would make combat so much better.
https://forums.galciv4.com/509104/page/1/#3830841
I get where you're coming from, but the simplest solution would be to prevent module stacking.
The options you gave are nice, but I don't know if they fix the issue.
Option 1 would help but A.I. still struggles to stack large fleets so option one would require a ton of overhaul to the A.I. On top of that it really means that now the only way to win is to abuse the stacking mechanics. I really want to have some diversity in fleet styles.
Option 2 doesn't really prevent determined players from stacking modules until they have an unstoppable fleet, but it does slow it down. Overall though, this is probably the best option you gave if stacking remains in the game.
Option 3 just kicks the problem down to the late game combat which already has so many issues, I'm not sure if this really helps the problem.
I really do think we need a massive balancing overhaul to the combat system.
I would gladly pay for an expansion that provides an improved combat system that has more mechanics.
Not even a "balancing overhaul," just a complete scrap and redo of the system. IMO, I am finding this part of GC4 to be the most disappointing. It is easier to list flaws with the current system than positives. I reallyyyyyyy hope this is high on the list for addressing for the longevity of the game.
I *also* would be very willing to pay for a full priced expansion if it means fixing the combat mess that made it into the launch game.
Yeah, I hope it gets fixed as well. Balancing it would be a least better if they can't or don't have time to make a better system.
Unfortunately they never fixed the GC III system so I don't know if there's enough incentive or desire to fix the GC 4 system.
I would like to see an official poll asking what improvements players would most like to see added or worked on in the game.
Combat is top on my list, but I'm interested to know if I'm in the minority
I wonder if this is an example of the downside of broad-engagement with fans from the start of the development cycle. Because of time constraints in real life, this is the most uninvolved I've been in a SD game's development in a decade so this is only based on my experience with the end product here and contributing in the process with other games....
The combat system appears to be something that in its entirety is clearly a mess and looks to have fallen victim to a combination of feature creep and late-stage plugging of exploits/fun-holes somewhere along the way. There is zero variety in how to play the game from the combat-side. Whatever weapon resource you have the most access to is your go to weapon research path. You will do nothing but cram more and more of said weapon on tiny/small haul ships as you advance in research. Don't worry about having a variety of weapons. Don't worry about mixing up sizes of ship hauls. Don't worry about basically any element of a ship's design other than putting as many weapons (and the required weapon mod) and some balanced defenses. If there is not any depth to the combat mechanics, why even bother with it? I'd be having more fun with space combat in GC4 if every ship just had an aggregated ship power value which used random dice rolls to determine victory based on ship power. The system actually implemented in GC4 detracts from the fun of playing GC4.
The moment the devs had to make a minimum damage value of one despite the weapons and defenses at play to just make the mechanic "not broken" is the moment there should have been an "a-hah" we should redo this entire thing (to be fair, I am sure there were many warning signs... that is just an example I did personally read Brad post).
I know this all reads harsh, but I am a huge GC fan and want a fun GC game. I also do believe SD does what it can to do right by consumers. I'm hopeful, not upset.
I have not much cared for combat systems in 4X games, with one exception.
The system of designing ships and tactical combat in MOO2 was at once simple and enjoyable.
No other 4X including this one has had a tactical system that IMHO was worth a gram of sand.
The main strength of MOO2's combat system was you could fire each weapon separately and you were limited only by your brilliance or stupidity in ship designing.
I am aware that an exacted copy of MOOs system may not be possible but a similar one would be welcomed.
If they cannot do this and put in a "user friendly" tactical simulator the other than balancing the current system to me because I would never waste my time on anything other than "do you want to engage in combat?" "Yes." "You won /lost." on to next move.
Ground combat I believe would slow down the game way more than those who would engage in it would think as a true system would need to include the full range of tactics available to Generals to use. This might run the price up to unaffordable levels.
Your're right, of course. My suggestions are not much more than a band-aid to fix the most pressing issues.
I also would prefer a complete balancing overhaul, but I'm afraid this won't happen. None of the Space4X games I played since MoO2 had a well thought-out combat system (maybe Sword of the Stars, never played it). Stellaris and ES2 have similar problems.
I guess the reason they get away with it is that the Space4X community is so roleplay-focused, at least for PvE. If this was the ARPG community, Brad and Derek would have had them at their throats on day one of the beta.
Interesting that you suggested something similar in that December threat. I missed that because I didn't play GalCiv at the time and didn't follow forum discussions.
Perhaps make the weapons systems more specific to the hull types? Tiny Lasers do 1 damage base, while Massive/Huge Hull is like 10 (Just as an example). Tiny ships simply don't get to mount the monstrous weapon systems, and the Massives get firepower that can really only be matched by similar class ships. 2 Mediums should not be able to pound a Massive into submission, not without a huge tech discrepancy between races.
Maybe the fleet multipliers need to be removed or nerfed somehow? I can see how central control could increase Point Defense or Targeting, but never really understood the logic behind one ship supercharging the weapons of ships around it.
Disregard
I did my own analysis of ship sizes in this thread: Ship Size (Balance) » Forum Post by Stalker0 (galciv4.com)
There are two areas in this thread not accounted for, to create a true argument.
The optimum way to use large ships right now is either:
I understand the point of your post, but this is the current "meta" of the combat system and it only supports the idea that the entire combat system is broken. We are discussing how the system is broken in this thread, not pointing out how best to exploit the broken system.
I wonder how Stardock tests balance. If you could separate the battle calculations from the game you could feed it hundreds of scenarios and get some good statistics and a better feel for how to make adjustments.
Stalker0, you might be right about the tiny vs huge ships normally. They might be more balanced than we think. The larger issue which this thread started with is that fleet amplifiers exist and they can stack. Because I can have many tiny ships vs only a few large, I can stack amplifiers to get ridiculous damage outputs.
I really would like a combat system that make ships feel more unique. I think it would add to the role play aspect rather than take from it.
For me a lot of the fun is in building and maintaining fleets.
I also disagree with allowing sensors to stack on one ship. That allowed you to create "super probes" in GC III that covered ridiculously swaths of areas, making any other sensor use irrelevant. I think the current model is a lot more balanced.
There is nothing broken about that model, its just that its not intuitive.
The main issue is the role system. A person has to manually assign them for it to work properly (because the auto assigner is terrible), and there is so little info about them (and most of it is confusing) that a regular player would have no idea how it works.
If there were two simple roles, and it just made it that a ship that is mostly defense was always an escort, and a ship with mostly weapons was always a capital ship....it would work very well.
OK, I didn't think about that particular use-case.
That's the system MoO2 used and it was awesome. IIRC you had Point-Defense, Light and Heavy versions of your guns.
Maybe make the weapon amplifiers exclusive to Large and Huge hulls and increase the limit from one per ship to 4 or so (otherwise no one would bother)?
Just went through your thread, interesting read.
A note on the "overkill" issue you mentioned: the overkill on a tiny ship from focus fire is only half the problem. The other half is that a fleet of tiny ships has much less of an overkill issue themselves, since they might fire on all the enemies simultaneously (each ship will fire at the nearest enemy in range).
This is true, especially if you take rushing into account (you can only rush one ship a time, no matter which size). But still ...
... True, the full tiny fleet won't necessary have enough ships to beat the next small fleet, but it will absolutely have enough ships to beat the next large or huge fleet, which is kinda the point of this thread. No argument about the worth of Tiny/Small/Medium, they are all great. But Large and Huge are incredibly bad, especially considering their position in the tech tree. As icing on the cake, they cost maintenance while the others do not.
The medium hulls in the screenshot fleet above have an attack rating of more than 900, the tiny ones 129 (apart from logistics, there is not even end-game tech involved, it's just plain Graviton guns). This is not deflectable anymore, I'm afraid. Your defenses argument stands only if Stardock does something about the amplifier stacking.
The optimum way to use large ships right now is:
Here, I corrected it for you.
What about making some of the modules exclusive to certain hull types?
Point taken and I basically agree. But a bit more sensor range would be nice.
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