Experienced ships with (insanely) high hitpoints

I posted this problem n another post but my ships was a lot overpowered than yours.I was playing apocalypse campaign mission and projected a ship to compete against dreadlords ship.It was 46 HP, 16 beam attack and 12 movement.Well i built a fleet of 4 these ships and was able to wipe out from the galaxy the dreadlords only with this fleet it was like shooting on the red cross.I was able to do it because my ships had 612 HP at the end of the game.So experience gave me nearly 15 times the initial HP.I add that it's very easy for a good player to have overpowered ships due to experience.So it could be really exploitable for a metaverse game.Experience should be capped

Why is this an exploit? I'm not really into fighting stuff all day long just to improve my ships, but since you are, and you enjoy doing that just to improve your ships, you should be rewarded for doing that, which makes it fun, don't you think? It's another aspect of the game.

I agree...needs to get toned down. Although I don't do it to exploit, when fighting I will often send in fleets of combat only ships into areas where the enemy has ships, clear them out, then post small fleets next to the alient planets to take care of the single ships they produce, then send in my transports without cover for an invasion. Doing this means I will often kill off 5-6 newly produced ships, not including the ones I needed to bump off to clear the area before my transports can come in. It's cheap experience.

Why is this an exploit? I'm not really into fighting stuff all day long just to improve my ships, but since you are, and you enjoy doing that just to improve your ships, you should be rewarded for doing that, which makes it fun, don't you think? It's another aspect of the game.

1. I don't think that experience ships should get HP nearly 20 times greater than at the beginning.It's simply unrealistic.A ship with a max of 2-3 times their initial HP could be better
2.It's exploitable for 3 causes.First I have destroyed the DREADLORDS only with these fleet it was like god mode.Secondly it's exploitable because ships balanced between speed and attack will easily be more experienced than ship only with firepower due to multiple attacks for turn.Try and see.Concluding I think to be a good player and i know how to increase HP of my ship in an easy way, AI don't. So it's a great advantage for me over the AI

Personally I'd like to see a more boarder improvement of ships instead of just Hitpoints and at a decreased rate.

Like for example.

An initial cruiser of B4 S4 HP16 M2 going to B5 S5 HP17 M3 after say 5 battles, this symbolises the experience gain a bit more fairer, no massive increase in one area but a gradually climb in power. Any ship that can survive 5 separate battles REALLY deserves a bonus due to their combat experience, simply adding huge amounts of HPs is a sure fire way to create an uber fleet in no time. I saw 4 Destroyers of mine go from 36 HPs to 96 after a few battles with the dreadlords.... I was able to go one on one with a DREADLORD Dreadnaught...

J

No offense, but I guess I don't understand why you're wasting time farming EXP for your ships instead of overrunning their colonies with troop transports, and then complaining about it. *lol*

What other possible bonuses or benefits could your ships have other than Offense/Defense/HP bonuses? Maybe the ships could have a "Luck" bonus after hitting a certain level.

Hey I know what would be really cool: visual representation of how bad-ass a ship has become. Like kill markers or nose art or something. Perhaps even an alternate color scheme to distinguish it from the other "grunt" ships. Wouldn't that be nice?

I also won Apocalypse earlier than I otherwise would have this way. One fleet cleaned them out.

No offense, but I guess I don't understand why you're wasting time farming EXP for your ships instead of overrunning their colonies with troop transports, and then complaining about it. *lol* Seriously, if it bugs you, stop farming exp!

What other possible bonuses or benefits could your ships have other than Offense/Defense/HP bonuses? Maybe the ships could have a "Luck" bonus after hitting a certain level.

Hey I know what would be really cool: visual representation of how bad-ass a ship has become. Like kill markers or nose art or something. Perhaps even an alternate color scheme to distinguish it from the other "grunt" ships. Wouldn't that be nice?

I also won Apocalypse earlier than I otherwise would have this way. One fleet cleaned them out.

ooooooorrrr a rank marker, all ships start at ensign and make their way up the ranks, each new rank give them new bonuses but also a % of that bonus can be given to other ships if it joins with them in a fleet.

A kind of leader feature.

Ensign = +1 no fleet bonus
Lt = +2 bonus and +1 to fleet ships <- will only affect the overall scores not individual scores.
Lt Cmdr +4 bonus / + 2 to fleet
Cmdr + 8 / + 3 to fleet

etc....

So hero ships would play a huge role in the galaxy by rallying and inspiring other ships.

J

I just think the experience gained should be dependant on the experience of the oponent and the type of ship. A very skilled medium frigate should get very little experience from destroying an unpexerienced defender.

ooooooorrrr a rank marker, all ships start at ensign and make their way up the ranks, each new rank give them new bonuses but also a % of that bonus can be given to other ships if it joins with them in a fleet. A kind of leader feature. Ensign = +1 no fleet bonus Lt = +2 bonus and +1 to fleet ships <- will only affect the overall scores not individual scores. Lt Cmdr +4 bonus / + 2 to fleet Cmdr + 8 / + 3 to fleet

very good idea.But i don't think devs would introduce it in the game, it would really be a revolution in terms of gameplay while it would be probably a great improvement

Crazyhawk: I get crazy HPs on my ships and I don't farm. Mainly because the AI sends lots of fighters and heavy fighters at me. Still, getting well over 50 hp on a ship that starts with 10 hp is insane and pretty unbalanced. You say don't exploit the game, I say I can't help it, what do you want me to do, destroy my victorious fleets?

Marioflag: Revolutionary? MoO2 had leaders you could put on a planet or in a fleet.

It needs to be harder to gain exp (especially in a fleet, a 18 logistics fleet should not gain exp from killing one dumb fighter) and exp should be capped so it doesn't get out of control.

ooooooorrrr a rank marker, all ships start at ensign and make their way up the ranks, each new rank give them new bonuses but also a % of that bonus can be given to other ships if it joins with them in a fleet. A kind of leader feature. Ensign = +1 no fleet bonus Lt = +2 bonus and +1 to fleet ships <- will only affect the overall scores not individual scores. Lt Cmdr +4 bonus / + 2 to fleet Cmdr + 8 / + 3 to fleet

just like warzone

I've small hull fleets with excess of 600hp during the course of a normal galaxy game. Some sort of limit on the maximum HPs that can be attained via experience needs to be planked down.

Crazyhawk: I get crazy HPs on my ships and I don't farm. Mainly because the AI sends lots of fighters and heavy fighters at me. Still, getting well over 50 hp on a ship that starts with 10 hp is insane and pretty unbalanced. You say don't exploit the game, I say I can't help it, what do you want me to do, destroy my victorious fleets?

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you were just parking your ships by their planets or something. *lol*

Well, I see two very different solutions to the problem.

1) scale, cap, or otherwise hinder the massive accumulation of experience

-- OR --

2) teach the AI to do the same to us

The latter *may* be easier to code, and just so long as it's not a situation of a human player taking advantage of an AI weakness, I'm fine with incredibly powerful ships. Just imagine two opposing fleets of such ships going up against eachother. The strategic significance becomes huge, as does the decision on whether to commit such vessels to such risky battles.

Actually there are a couple of big disadvantages to this technique.

a) You constantly have to upgrade your ships unless playing on small maps. Upgrades get very expensive very quickly.
if the AI does kill your ship that you've spent al the time and money upgrading, you've suddenly lost a massive investment.

The big problem with this is that the AI doesn't know how to react to it well. Instead of deciding those ships are major threats, the AI just ignores it as they'll lose their fleets and you just pounce on them and destroy them.

It's unrealistic for ships to become more sturdy (more hp) in real life, yes. The game implement the hp bonus as a reflection of level. It it meant to represent how the crews are able to better maneuver against incoming fire, better at aiming, etc. It boils down to the ship being to out-fight their enemies, so it's not really an issue.

I think the system might be slightly broken since you would gain hp enough to compensate your loss for the previous battle. Say you have 10/10 fighter and you lost 3 hp and won. Your ship would become something like 10/11 or something which allows you to immediately go after another enemy ship and get more exp & level. If the ship's maximum hp increases but the actual hp doesn't increase, then the player will have to send it back to planet for repair before they can utilize the ship in combat once again without losing it.

I have seen an AI fleet with significant experience (when compared to my ships). The Korx in one of my games had a fleet of heavy fighters with around 36 HP each. While that isn't nearly as much as you guys are talking about, my ships were inexperienced and could not take down that fleet in a battle with the same strength fleet battles. The kill ratio for them was 4 of my frigates to one of their heavy fighters. That single fleet has still not been taken down as I have not amassed the fleet (or fleets) capable to do it.
Also, on a side note, the AI "Farmed" the XP out of a minor race that I was keeping afloat (trade route with them was producing ~45) until they could take the over with transports. I kept feeding them troop techs as well as a couple of my frigates that they used for planet defense. In effect, I created my own enemy’s monster fleet, but the AI knew to take advantage of it.

I think that the experience is just gained too fast. If you have a fleet of five ships and then attack a freighter you should not gain +2 HP/Ship. Or atleast slow down the XP gain after the first levels. Getting rookies better should not be difficult, but elites should have to see some battle before they become ridiculously strong.

Have to agree with those saying the amount of hit points one gains from experience is just too much. It should be slower and it should be capped at double the original hit points of the ship.

I don't think the initial rate of improvement is too fast, but it should DEFINITELY depend on how much experience the ship already has.

I don't understand why they didn't code it that way in the first place...the game already awards experience based on the relative power of the ships doing battle...surely hit points and experience should be part of the calculation of ship strength anyway? Maybe they are, but just aren't weighted correctly.