Maybe it's just me, but it seems like missiles are the best due to high dmg and the long range attack ability. kinetic seems to be worst because it's got the high cost of missiles, the low dmg of beams, and doesnt equal up to the other 2 until you've done a lot of research and gotten a lot of thullium.
Does anyone else have a good stratagy for using the other weapon types first? i know yor get kinetic boost, and some commander ships increase certain fleet attacks, but beyond that is everyone finding missile to just be the best?
Either way, is this something people care about?
I have used missiles in every game but my first, where I used beams.
I do not see any downside to using them. They are cheap, antimatter is relatively common (compared to Elerium), you can attack from a couple hexes away
Missiles are OP right now, and definitely the best. AFAIK there's no reason ever to build any other weapon type.
I did a 300 turn Yor game in 0.81 and ran Kinetic only, and there's definitely no Yor bonus that brings them close to the usefulness of missiles. I posted a screenie in the SitRep for the 0.81 branch of one of my kinetic fleets getting roasted by a weaker missile-wielding fleet. If I'm recalling correctly it was a 160hp fleet with 40 kinetic damage and 50 missile defense vs a 95hp fleet with 45 missile damage and 5 armor. The missile fleet won. (under the GC3 weapons balancing paradigm my kinetic fleet would've shredded them hard).
The annoying thing was that I went Kinetic largely because I was able to chunk off a good source of Durantium & Thulium early-game, so I figured I could lean into the enhanced kinetic loadouts that would eat these resources. But for whatever reason I never got kinetic upgrades that would do this - or at least not any that seemed to make much of a difference.
Similarly, I had a pretty poor antimatter supply that couldn't support Missile fleets. But I ended up having antimatter problems because I was using so much to build the better point-defense to attempt to mitigate the enemy missile OP-ness. I ended up buying antimatter from the Bazaar ...
Yes I care about this. In a game of Paper-Scissor-Rock, the game sucks if Scissors just win every time..
I'm assuming that weapons/defense/combat gets a serious balance pass before 1.0. I'm under the impression that the values are vaguely place-holder still..
Thanks for bringing this up Basilisk,
-tid242
I’ve only used missiles they just seem loads better.
Yeah, I agree. Extra advantage from missiles is that you can also fire missiles from a 3 or 5 hex distance without engaging into battle. So they work great for softening up enemy fleets too.
My understanding (which could be wrong because, after all, this is a mystery mechanic) is that kinetic weapons are more effective against planets, bases, and nests and worse everywhere else. What's more confusing is that shields work against any type, not just the type that matches their color.
I wouldn't read too much into any of this because I suspect it is all going to be rebalanced before release.
I have found this to be fool's gold. The damage from ranged attacks is not all that much and you're better off just attacking and getting off the first shot.
Not if you have a few fleets available. Use 2 to soften up the defenses a bit and attack with the 3rd fleet. It's not a complete gamechanger but a nice little extra on top of already very strong missiles.
And theoretically this should be the trade-off you get with missiles - they get this cool ability that no other weapon has and they're better in head-to-head.
Makes me sad.
Ah, here is that pic of my sadness... ;o
Ah, here is that pic of my sadness... ;o-tid242
Oh wow, that makes me sad too. You'd definitely expect to win that fight based on point defense, firepower and hitpoints.
I'd almost say poor Yor.
damn, that is horrible i gotta ask though, was this before the ranges were equalized? or is this recent?
That was 0.81 (fresh 0.81 game, not a carryover).
Although, since this pic makes kinetic look SOOO bad, as a full disclaimer, I don't recall if this fleet went into this fight with a full tank of hitpoints. But even as such, the point defenses would've led me to believe that missing some HP wouldn't have been that big of a deal...
I'd have to go back and pull an old save to see what the starting HP actually was.
edit: did any of the balancing actually change for 0.90, or is the combat dynamics the same from 0.81 to 0.90?
edit-2: Damn, yea, I cannot find the battle log for that battle in my savegame tree. I was doing a lot of reloading to try to reproduce bugs that game when some of those battles were taking place, so I'll bet it was on a branch that didn't get preserved. Bummer, I'm hella-curious now about the start-state of that battle..
That was 0.81 (fresh 0.81 game, not a carryover).Although, since this pic makes kinetic look SOOO bad, as a full disclaimer, I don't recall if this fleet went into this fight with a full tank of hitpoints. But even as such, the point defenses would've led me to believe that missing some HP wouldn't have been that big of a deal... I'd have to go back and pull an old save to see what the starting HP actually was.edit: did any of the balancing actually change for 0.90, or is the combat dynamics the same from 0.81 to 0.90?-tid242
rate of fire, accuracy, and range have been equalized for all weapon types. and the fact that your fleet took 214 dmg while only dealing 82 with those weapons and defenses is still huge, whatever way u look at it
You'll get no disagreement from me on this point..
I will also add my voice to the "missiles are the only way to go" conclusion. The ability to do ranged attacks as well as direct combat is a huge advantage, especially with large fleets of small ships. I have found that I can destroy starbases, shipyards, and enemy ships with ranged attacks and never have to engage them in direct combat.
I also agree with the voices that say that the attributes of the 3 weapon types need to be seriously adjusted. One of the intriguing aspects of the game should be the decision about which weapons and defenses you choose to develop and use to equip your ships. Knowing that missiles will always be the best option kind of kills that part of the game. Hopefully, our voices here will be the impetus necessary to get the developers to focus on this.
What this game needs is an in game proving ground, where you can simulate battles between ships that you create with your own techs and ships you have encountered in the game. Yes, a simulation within a simulation.
I play a lot using random settings, so quite often some resources are set randomly at none, like anti-matter. This irks me, but I like randomness. In any case, this forces me to go with the resources that are available.
So, based on prior a comment, do shields just protect against lasers or do they protect against all? Clearly, point defenses were worthless in the above battle.
I am pushing for attacks to take out not just HPs, but random modules. Destroy 10% of a ships HPs and take out a random gun, defense or other type of module in a ship with 10 modules.
Or they could simply publish how combat works instead of making it a mystery mechanic. The idea that we should have to reverse-engineer how combat works is ludicrous.
I did a 300 turn Yor game in 0.81 and ran Kinetic only, and there's definitely no Yor bonus that brings them close to the usefulness of missiles. I posted a screenie in the SitRep for the 0.81 branch of one of my kinetic fleets getting roasted by a weaker missile-wielding fleet. If I'm recalling correctly it was a 160hp fleet with 40 kinetic damage and 50 missile defense vs a 95hp fleet with 45 missile damage and 5 armor. The missile fleet won. (under the GC3 weapons balancing paradigm my kinetic fleet would've shredded them hard).The annoying thing was that I went Kinetic largely because I was able to chunk off a good source of Durantium & Thulium early-game, so I figured I could lean into the enhanced kinetic loadouts that would eat these resources. But for whatever reason I never got kinetic upgrades that would do this - or at least not any that seemed to make much of a difference.Similarly, I had a pretty poor antimatter supply that couldn't support Missile fleets. But I ended up having antimatter problems because I was using so much to build the better point-defense to attempt to mitigate the enemy missile OP-ness. I ended up buying antimatter from the Bazaar ...
Yes I care about this. In a game of Paper-Scissor-Rock, the game sucks if Scissors just win every time..I'm assuming that weapons/defense/combat gets a serious balance pass before 1.0. I'm under the impression that the values are vaguely place-holder still.. Thanks for bringing this up Basilisk, -tid242
You wouldn't happen to still have that save. I'd love to check it out.
i thought this at first too but i'm really not so sure now. the release is supposed to be in like a month they said, and missiles have been op since alpha. at this point you'd think they'd be just working on the bugs and typos and minor balancing and updating the ui to have accurate descriptions for things, not making major combat changes. they honestly dont seem too interested in balancing or diversifying combat for galciv4 beyond the new missile ability and sieges taking a few turns, which are both actually out of combat. they weren't even planning on including the battleviewer until they got tons of angry feedback from people saying that they wanted and expected it to be included. they seem to have the stance that unless there is another big movement like the one that they had for the battleviewer they're not going to make any big changes to combat. and the most recent changes they did was to make accuracy, rate of fire, and range equal for all weapon types. still not quite sure how ship roles work either. like a month to go though apparently... unless there is a big movement from the community i think they're going to be fine with having missiles be op and fleets being very simple. hard to balance a special ability like the ranged missile attack too when the other types have nothing special like that and missiles have no downside. and even if they do make balancing changes soon they're hardly leaving any time for testers to properly evaluate it and make possible changes based on their feedback.
Unless the community shows that we really care about this, i dont think they're going to care about it that much. they're usually focusing their time and attention on other matters and dont see enough feedback for wanting changes to combat.
btw i've seen no evidence that kinetic or shields work like that... and they just said they're keeping the r/p/s aspect so i dont think they would do that with shields...
I looked earlier trying to find the pre-battle conditions and didn't find it (I also couldn't find the old battle notification either, oddly enough). I'll look more closely through my saves Derek, but no promises on finding it..
I'll poke you on discord if I can come up with anything.
edit: https://discord.com/channels/299942486095167489/852476471448305674/959437931473436732 this is the best I could do Derek.
I am not liking the missiles. They seem OP. It seems like other weapons should have ranged attacks as well even if we give missiles a bit more range, there needs to be a downside to that.
I kinda (reluctantly) think the ranged missile attack across multi hexes should be removed. It makes the other weapon types a less attractive choice. Also considering the huge vastness of space that each hex represents it seems a bit silly launching missiles across so many hexes. On one hand I like the ability but on the other it doesn't make sense and ruins the other weapon choices.
Or... balance out combat, and add a situationally useful and appropriate perk to Beam & Kinetic. I had proposed something on the discord that got limited accolades (unless everyone liked it after I went to sleep or something).
I had proposed something along the following:
So missiles wouldn't need to get a "take away" for an ability that players might or might not use if Beam & Kinetic got a similar perk that may or may not be useful/used/noticed by players.
In addition to overall weapon balance pass So that "regular" battles, play as balanced game of musical chairs for itemizing/outfiting/planning against an enemy ..
People have some other, and more extensive ideas on weapon balancing, etc. And I'm not really have been participatory to those discussions - my main concern is just having weapons/defenses that are "good enough" that there's some choice in the matter and unbalanced weapons don't disrupt from my macro-game.
I was thinking about this this AM as Frog has indicated that he wanted all weapons to have a ranged attack. If we wanted something more interesting than just: all weapons have a generic ranged attack, thinking along the lines of my prior "special weapon properties" pontification one could something such as:
Ranged Attacks:
Just throwing ideas out there.
That's interesting. I also worry that giving range to everyone will make missiles less special.
I wonder if it would be cool if kinetic attacks disabled repair for a time?
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
