I just bit the bullet and finished off my collection of DLC for GalCivIII. I understand that IV is out but I think this feature would help to improve the realism of both III and IV. As it is in, when tech is researched, the game automatically decides what ship-build mix is optimal, particularly when it comes to defenses. I like shields so I prioritize them with near top-tech shield, and then I went back to research missile defense and suddenly, none of my ships had shields in the ship-build menu.
I think the game looses a bit in the realism and flexibility as, even with high-tier defense technology available, the auto-generated ship-build list can suddenly feature ships with no defensive elements at all. It basically invalidates a good portion of the military tech-tree.
My idea is that three buttons could be added to the top of the ship-build screen, shield, armor, and missile defense buttons. The ship build menu would be populated according to whichever buttons are active. When just one is selected, such as shields, all ships in the list would have shields equipped. If two are selected, such as shields and armor, the defense of ships would be balanced between the two defense types. The same would apply if all three buttons were selected for an all-around defense.
This would reflect both reality. For example, how even while modern fighters are armored, air forces are also rely on active missile countermeasures, sensor jamming, and are seeking to include high-energy lasers to shoot down missiles. Similarly, tanks are equipped with armor, reactive armor, active anti-missile countermeasures, and Boeing is even seeking to develop energy/plasma shielding to harden them even further.
As for sci-fi, major franchises are filled with mixtures of difference defense systems or from special armors, countermeasures, and multiple types of energy shielding.
It may help if defense systems were given their own mass total to count against rather than the overall universal one. This separate total for defense systems would allow players to specialize their fleets and ships more, creating a bit of an arms race where defensive techs and offensive techs are researched according to what competition may be using rather than just throwing as many weapons on a ship as possible and leaving it without any defenses at all.
Taking it even further to have separate mass totals for weapons and utility systems may be good as well.
Each ship would be given mass totals in weapons, defense, utility, or general according to the type. For example, support ships would have high utility mass totals and would be lower in the other areas. A carrier would also likely have high utility totals for fighter bays. A battleship would have high totals in defense and offense, but would lack more in utility. The general mass total could be used for anything and would allow for additional room for customization without a rigid barrier. Also, if someone really wanted to, they could exceed the total for an area, like weapons, as well as the general mass, and dip into the total for other areas, like utility, but at a penalty where some mass points would be lost.
That sounds like a great idea. I would like to see in the early game after researching defenses the ability to have an armed ship sporting all three defense types. The arms race is in improving them, not in research that allows more mass totals. Right now it seems like it's mid game before I can have a small ship with decent weapons also having armor.
I think it would prove to be a real boon to the custom ship builders, as even different combat ship hulls would have different focuses or balances between offensive and defensive systems like destroyers (heavy defensive systems to screen larger capital ships) and battleships that are all-in on heavy weapons. Cruisers can be in the the happy medium while some are more specialized (Probably reflected in having more in the general mass category so they can go offensive or defensive), and then you have ships like cutters that are are built more for speed to respond to smaller threats closer to home.
It could give additional life to the different races as well since their approaches to combat could more closely be molded to fit their personalities.
I can see Humans being well balanced. The aggressive races would be focused more on offense with lower defense totals. The peaceful races would have more focus placed on utility but would have ways to compensate for lower weapons and defenses like expanded support options that can compensate for their lower defensive and offensive stats like fleet-wide buff tech.
Hey, thank you for this detailed post!We appreciate a lot the feedback, as it allows us to get a better picture of what our playerbase actually wants (and sometimes may even save a working hour, since the ideas are so great!)
Your welcome! If you have any questions, I used to be a very details-oriented game designer and could probably talk your proverbial ears off with details and mechanics on how to implement and refine the application. I am now a sci-fi and fantasy author, so I'm still immersed in the nerddom of imaginary worlds.
Also, for the ship battles, I highly suggest searching for Birth of the Federation. I won't share any links on the open forum, but it is widely available as abandonware. It featured a very innovative combat system that put the player in the driver seat of being able to assign taskforces within each fleet different maneuvers such as circling, strafing, assaulting, bombarding, avoiding, etc each combat turn. It made for very engaging battles and it really made the composition of fleets more impactful.
Thank you FoxURA!My ears are all yours, so whenever you feel like you can contribute, you are welcome!We have opted for early access for this very reason - get feedback from our community and shape the game accordingly. I cannot promise you a direct implementation of your ideas, but I can promise you that I will gather and analyse and forward everything and anything our playerbase shares
(I also posted an additional idea for Space Elevators here: https://forums.galciv3.com/518578/space-elevator-and-equivilant-expansion )
Here's a more specific breakdown according to general personality of the races and distribution over overall ship-mass concentration. The specific percentages would have to be sorted out in play testing:
Hyper-Aggressive (Races bent toward conquest and brutality):
Aggressive (Easily agitated and may wait for a semi-justifiable reason to launch war)
Vigilant (Races who generally don't want to start fights but are prepared if they come):
Balanced (Races who have no particular focus and are highly flexible):
Hopeful (Races who hope for peace but still realize the galaxy can be a dangerous place)
Pacifist (Races who strongly favor peace or who are just that bad at outright war)
I did a bit of a study based on TA in III for small hull ships as a starting point for a balanced race that would serve as the comparison for other races based on their traits as far as how the auto ship design system would treat distributing mass between different aspects.
A warship with shields, beam weapons, and support system would roughly break down to:
Specialized utility or support ships would be excluded from this as a colony ship with low utility would be useless, for example. My thought is that things would change, based on a race's personality by 5% increments being shifted between the sections. That should still allow for pacifist ships to still be capable of making competent warships or aggressive races to make useful combat-oriented support ships.
I think higher-mass ships along the same lines would allow for increased capability overall. The extra utility space moving from small to medium (and/or improved tech) would allow for thrusters and/or engines to be added without changing the distribution while also improving the other areas.
I think tiny hulls might require breaking from this to allow for higher percentages of general mass due to their small mass size and would force players to choose whether they really want to try for a shield or just settle for something like a tougher hull.
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