Battleship-sized fighters?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I just noticed this, don't know if it was put in with the new patch or was there all along but...

When making a tiny fighter with the best weapon aviliable (I'll use the mass weapon as an example) It takes up 7 slots on the tiny fighter. So with max minaturization, I can put 2 black hole drivers, 4 hyperwarp III's, 1 life support (or sensor).

With a battleship, the mass weapon takes up FOURTEEN slots. It does NO extra damage, is NOT more effective, and does NOT put in any bonuses. Same for shielding, armor, etc...

Now, it might make some sense to take up more space putting on shields or armor or life support, but sensors and weapons??

Give me a break... it takes 8 logic points to make a battleship. I can make 4 fighters with those slots... and my battleship will end up losing EVERY SINGLE TIME! because those 4 fighters have a total of 8 mass drivers, the battleship fires on ONE SHIP AT A TIME, then the fighters get their turn. Plus, the battleship can only equip 4 mass drivers, but at least it has shielding, right? WRONG!

The shielding and such is not as effective as it should be.... So my question to ask frogboy and co is... Could you PLEASE increase weapon damage with size? It's ridiculous that tiny fighters can take out a battleship so easily. It should take maybe 20 fighters to take out a single battleship, otherwise, in the time alloted, I can make masses and masses of fighters, and my enemy will only have a couple battleships IF theyre lucky. Seriously, do the math, if size increases but effiency doesnt, theres little to no point in investing in a ship larger than tiny or small, especially if you have manufacuting homeworlds heavily specialized... (5 ticks for 1 battleship, 1 tick for a tiny fighter, and if I sacrificed space to only put on one engine, i could have FOUR mass drivers instead of two per fighter, which means three fighters > one battleship, 3 to 1 ratio, with 5 to 1 ratio of production, = pwnage to the poor soul who went battleships)

It's not much to ask, just make weapons do double damage on larger hulls, or do same damage with same size, which means MORE weapons on said hull. Or better yet, make all equipment "canon" and it takes more of said engine to push a battleship further, not more space, but more engines placed on the ship. same for shield, etc, decrease effiency for armors and engines, but weapons should remain the same.


//End sci-fi geek rant
19,920 views 24 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You are so right, you know. It’s only that this has been mentioned quit a few times before….

At this point, large and huge ships are not a viable option. They only have role-playing value.
I myself never build large or huge ships any more. Only small ones in the beginning and medium ones later on. Medium not for effectiveness or strength, but for said role playing reasons.

I feel that it would be a good thing to limit the available weapons for tiny/small hulls to, say, Singularity drivers/stinger/plasma (the 2-damage weapons) and make the high-damage weapons only available for the bigger hulls. But that’s just me of course.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I dunno, usually it takes large ships before I can crush all my enemies. Last game I played, the drengin and torians had similair technology to me, and the drengin were much better at building a fleet. I ended up building 3 large ships, using the exact same technology as the drengin (except the large hull tech). I tend to try and arm my large hull ships with atleast twice as much armour as the enemy have weapons, and because of this the 3 large hull ships took out every single enemy ship on the map (including the Korx, who some previous enemies had surrendered to).

Tiny, fast ships loaded up with high damage weapons ARE good, but you don't always get to strike first, and I've had small enemy fleets of technologically obselete ships destroy a 4 strong fleet of tiny ships with nano rippers (in 1.0X).
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Rule #1 about big ships: They're about defense, not offense.

Big ships are intrinsically good because they have more HP (starting) than smaller ones. The idea isn't to out-damage groups of smaller ships. It's to be able to one-shot the smaller ships (kill one in one shot) and survive the following berrage of fire because you have such powerful defenses. And even if your defense rolls fail, you still have vastly more HP to soak damage with.

2:8 with well-crafted big ships is going to kill the fighter group.

BTW, missile weapons have a noticably lessened "embiggening" effect compared to other kinds of weapons. So try Black Hole Eruptors in your example...
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I understand that, but the primary point that I'm trying to make is that battleships are pretty much for all purposes and intent, gigantic fighters. They are no more powerful than fighters, and a fleet of 20 fighters > your three battleships... or even 5 battleships, even if your the one attacking.

Sure, theyre paper, but theyre dirt cheap, and you can have SWARMS of them. Ever hear of the term strength in numbers? This holds true cause one fighter gets shot down, whoopie do... theres another one right behind it, and it's got your name on it's guns... I'm NOT saying nerf fighters, that'll take the fun out. I AM saying boost battleships... medium and then on hull decreases in effiency and firepower, but increases in toughness and cost. But heck, if you have 5 fighters on your planet, and your versus the dread lords (note, with orbital fleet management) you could very well win the engagement... since the dread lords dont form fleets!

Let's assume you maxed logic to 73 ok? Now, 2 logic for each tiny fighter, built by your choice. that's 35 fighters in ONE fleet. Now, take an equal sized fleet of battleships, 8 logic per ship. 9 battleships. Versus 35 fighters... where only 3 fighters equals or surpasses your battleship in firepower. so we're looking at what, 24 fighters needed to beat the 8 battleships. You have 35... and the battleships do NOT have more firepower, they can NOT target more than one fighter, they can NOT fight back well enough. Even if the battleships fired first, the fighters win. 8 battleships, 8 fighters down, that leaves 27 fighters, you need 24 to obliterate the battleships.

My bet is, your tanking stragety worked due to high hp, and the enemy NOT making massive fleets. (Personally, I wish this was multiplayer, then I could show you what I mean by fighter fleets ALWAYS winning, because the ai just isnt smart enough to max out its fleets)

P.S. that reminds me... why in the world did the ai build 4 starports and 5 orbital managements on a planet?
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
LOL defence in GC2 is pointless, I had a ship in one game with 36 shields and it was almost owned by a fighter with 5-7 beam attack. This was on a one on one battle, I tend to just load up with weapons. If you hit them hard enough they not going to even have the chance to hit back.

2 hyper warps + 10 phasers tends to do the job nicely.

-J
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Your examples feature very high tech levels.
The final-stage weapons are very very powerful, eliminating the battleship advantage.
Fair enough. If you're hit by a black hole it doesn't really matter how big you are.
During the early&mid tech levels, however, the larger hulls have a much clearer advantage.
I've never had a game go on long enough to even reach black hole drivers, even on a large galaxy with suicidal skill level against 9 opponents. What difficulty are you playing on?
In realistic (short) games, large hulls have a clear advantage - 28hp beats 6 hp hands down when you're battleing it out with lasers V and the like.
I suggest you pull your finger out and try playing the AI on a hard difficulty setting, and try to win quickly, if you want to see the advantage of battleships.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Im going to disagree with you. In many of my games the first person to get large and massive hulls has a huge advantage. When that group of fighters takes 12 dmg they lose damage potential while the large ship keeps on shootin. And once they start leveling up they're almost unbeatable. My endgame fleet size even on gigantic maps end up being 5 or so fleets of massive ships maybe with a fighter in there, and so far they end up taking out at least 30 -40 fighters before going down, not even counting times when I can heal them or swap them out.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Another reason is that real minaturization is not being applied correctly. Why make the ship have more space and then the weapons are bigger than before. If you have real minaturization would it not apply to everything that you are building. The further you follow the tree the smaller the previous weapons are supposed to become. With minaturization the ships can contain more and the offense and defense are supposed to become even smaller. True minaturization means everything that you build is smaller and has the same power as the larger version. Why is the minaturization only applied to the ships when it should be applied to everything?
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm with Morberis, earlier in the game large and massive hulls have a great advantage. its only much later in the game that this advantage is lost, and after playing nunerous games on challenging and above, I have hardly ever (if at all) got to the level of techs mentioned in some of the previous posts.

I personally prefer fleets of smaller ships which are fast and pack a punch. but the point kof smaller ships is to make them cheap/expendable. But, there is nothing like rolling out the huge motha custom built death machine and with defences being on the expensive side, these are the ships that its worth putting them on.

Also, with these larger ships you can create havoc with just one or two ships as they gain experience like mad, gettin harder to kill whilst you mobilise fleets of smaller ships for conquest. And for those killer fleets I like to have one huge and tons of tiny ships...all the benefits of both, loads of firepower and cool to watch!

Playin as the Yor right now, goin for conquest victory and have stuck with tiny ships all the way with the odd capital ship heading up my most important fleets...killer! I have the edge now so whilst most of my worlds can churn out my tiny ships its time to unleash my huge which will be practically unstoppable compared to my enemies tech level..mooo haa haa haaa!
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually, I'm testing out only tiny ship stragety, with the exception being troop transports, etc.. so far in the game, my tiny ships now have 50 hp

note, i started at basic tech levels, playing on challenging difficulty with full map, and i've come across quite a few battleships, etc, but they just cant stand up to even a fleet of 5 of my tiny fighters, what does THAT tell you? Dare you to make about 3-4 production worlds, churn out 3-4 fighters each tick, upgrading as you go. You should find that pretty much any enemy fleet ends up dying. Sure, you lose 1-2 fighters vs a battleship, but theyre replacable, the ones that died werent the high levelers anyways

But my POINT is... shouldnt a battleship NOT be costing more and more weapon space? it should be canon, not increasing. If your going to increase battleship size cost, you might as well increase effiency. I'm sure you know the difference between a gigantic machine gun and a regular machine gun... One is much more powerful (albeit ridiculous to use) so why in the world is a big laser fitted on a battleship equal to a fighter's laser? And why is the shield bonus also equal? There should be a small bonus for the fighter's defense, shield and engine-wise, but a small bonus for the battleship weapon, armor, and missile defense. either that, or just make everything canon
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
LOL defence in GC2 is pointless, I had a ship in one game with 36 shields and it was almost owned by a fighter with 5-7 beam attack.

What was the Shielded ship like? A cargo hull?

The chance that a Fighter with an attack value of 6 inflicts damage at all on a ship with 36 defense is like 14%.
The average damage per shot is ~ 0.6

Taking out a ship with 30 HP would last 50 Shots in average. Surviving 50 turns against the shield-ship would require
-insane amount of hitpoint
-the shield-ship beeing almost unarmed
or the most likely
-it had some good defenses too!
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with the original post. However, I would not fix the issue by increasing the weapon damage on larger ships - this is bound to be a balancing nightmare. No, the solution should be to simply leave all weapons at the same size and damage, for any type of hull. It's simple, it's realistic and intuitive. Balancing the ship sizes should be done through the available space, hit points, and logistics points (as it already is).
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Another reason is that real minaturization is not being applied correctly. Why make the ship have more space and then the weapons are bigger than before. If you have real minaturization would it not apply to everything that you are building. The further you follow the tree the smaller the previous weapons are supposed to become.


I don't know if this is a bug, or another feature of miniaturization, but not all systems take the full space that they say they will. Often, when I go to upgrade an older design, I find that the systems already installed have 'shrunk'. It's not immediately obvious, because you have to remove or add a component in order to force the screen to update, but it does happen.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I also think that weapons and armor should stay the same size no matter the size of the ship. Though it might be good to make a few ultra-large and powerful guns for the Huge and Massive hulls (Omega Beam fire!).
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
since the dread lords dont form fleets!


ummm...they do. The one trip through the campaign I've made, the DL used fleets from the first DL mission. I beat them with larger fleets supported by overlapping military starbases.

Still the point is the same; near the end of a long game large fleets of fighters can exist that make the larger ships less viable. I think Alien Duck is on the right track with:
the solution should be to simply leave all weapons at the same size and damage, for any type of hull. It's simple, it's realistic and intuitive. Balancing the ship sizes should be done through the available space, hit points, and logistics points (as it already is).
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I could link to the thread on this that started way back when I first started posting in these forums and a few other areas but of the mentions above I find the following to be true.

1) Minaturization could be fixed by simply leaving weapons and defense sizes alone, as well as sensor and other logistics that can be added to ships. After all, just because I have a 30MM Phalanx system on a frigate that is one size, does it mean the 30MM gatling gun on an aircraft carrier (which is somewhere in the neighborhooed of 83000 tons bigger) has to be a bigger size? Lets look at that some more shall we. Parts would be them same function but your stock would have to have sizes for each tiny, small, medium, large, huge hull... yet the damage would be the same? Doesn't take a space pirate to figure out that I would rather put a weapon from a smaller hull on my bigger hull.

2) Offensive weapons are the key to winning a war, defense might help save the day but if your cruiser can not produce a hot enough beam of energy to light a freaking match your pretty screwed.

3) Capital ships should have more defense, or at least in GC2 have a sufficient defense to offense ratio that the little ships get targetted first in the fleet. So that the capital ship can get a few turns in the one shot kills prior to being targetted. Now having said this some of you may argue this... well pay attention because here is a lesson in combat. Little ships make themselves look big when the missles are flying in, even today. Thats one of the functions of ECM, so the real world factor actually supports the little ship getting waxed before the big ship. Of course you would never see a submarine doing this, which is why I changed from an Electronics Warfare Technician to a Submarine Electronics Surveillance Technician. Same job with a bit more pay and besides, I sunburn alot.

4) There is never going to be an ability to change the "Miniaturize" or "Logistical Increase" for any races. Short answer to a great question that was asked on a speak easy one night at SDCs chat room for Galactic Civilzations (where I might add the staff for SDC hangs out a freaking lot, even after work.)

5) Size does matter in GC2. Large and huge hulls get a freaking "METRIC BUTT-TON" more hit points than medium and smaller hulls. If your a passive non-aggressive, give money and ships to the enemies of your enemy than you better hope that they win. Because even if your making the same size ships and are at the same damage type weapons and defense as the enemy, their HPs and skill level are going to walk all over you when your friends economy collapses.

Anywho,
Gotta go, its time for my daily brushing, I do hate spring and hair balls.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Defence has a big value, as do huge hulls. As previously mentioned the benefit of a large or huge hull is the ability to outlast your enemies. Repair might take awhile, but at least you crushed the idiot. Unless you've substantial damage bonuses against a larger ship (equal tech, 1:1 ships) you will lose.

However, if you have numerous small ships, even with a fraction of the power, you can still defeat the large ship. Tech advantages comes into a huge play with the big ships, since a tiny one could potentially pound a huge if it had good enough shields.

I beat with 5 Small ships 4 Medium Corvettes. I had 6/0/0 defenses (bonuses included) and 25/0/0 offence with ~14 hitpoints per fighter. The Corvettes had ~15 (I think) beam attack and 11 shields, along with more hitpoints. I lost 2, the AI lost all 4. What's the point? Easy. The rounds (number of volleys) easily exceeded my ship's hitpoints, and while I had initiative, the Corvettes would've pounded ~3 the first volley because of their hitpoints and shields. I lasted as long as I did because of my higher tech, racial bonuses and [slightly] larger numbers.

Don't underestimate defenses. The Arceans turned out to be a total paper tiger, although they had 150% the military rating I had. I only lost those 2 ships the entire war. The Arceans lost 20 at least. G'head and loose your veteran ships, I'll keep mine awhile.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hello all

I have been experiencing this "imbalance" too. It is really unfortunate,
that, all techs maxed out between two opponents, the big berthas are
limited to being eye-candy.

In my opinion, it is not really a problem of loadouts and size. You can
stick anything to a tiny hull and it will fly and fight (though maybe slower
and less maneuverable). It is primarily an "energy"-problem. Weapons
need power - the more destructive a weapon, the more power it would
supposedly need. The battleships biggest advantage (apart from HP)
should be its powerplant.

Assuming bigger ships have more available energy to power their guns -
you should be able to fit more powerful and bigger weapons. Smaller
ships should have a max. energy cap that prohibits them from using
heavy artillery (or only with appropriate disadvantage in firing rate). It would
be a more interesting way to implement weapons / class limitations.

Otherwise the logic of building larger ships is obsolete - as stated
before. No race would use additional resources to build bigger ships -
why should they - except for the additional HP, which is not decisive at
all.

Saying this, I must otherwise admit that this is one of the best games
I have purchased in the last 20 years or so. So please dont take this
as a rant - more as constructive criticism. I also think that the developers
and publishers are doing an excellent job - especially while interacting
with the community. This is a very rare attribute these days...A big thumbs
up for Stardock and Paradox!

Thanks for reading.

~S!~

Dioscur
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with the original post. However, I would not fix the issue by increasing the weapon damage on larger ships - this is bound to be a balancing nightmare. No, the solution should be to simply leave all weapons at the same size and damage, for any type of hull. It's simple, it's realistic and intuitive. Balancing the ship sizes should be done through the available space, hit points, and logistics points (as it already is).


Couldnt agree more.

Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find replacing lost ships too much of a pain. Once I build a few good fleets of large hull ships, that pretty much is it for the AIs. I generally don't lose very many of them. Also managing many production worlds for small fighters is a pain.

Perhaps the maintenace costs per ship need to be higher to straighten this out. Find that in GC2 maintenance cost is never a factor as compared to GC1
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
One thing that may be worth pointing out is that everyone is talking about using groups comprised exclusively of large and massive hulls. Now I'm no military genius but I do know for example that if you put a group of tanks on the battlefield with no infantry support they're gonna have a very bad day. It's all about balance.

I was also a little disapointed when I discovered that after all my research that my large and massive hulls wouldn't be the unstopable monsters I was hoping for but when I grouped them with heavy fighters and frigates their usefulnes was made abundantly clear. I fought three wars and did not lose a single ship.... granted my weapons tech was vastly superior but I was using the wrong defensive tech and I still raped and pillaged my way across the galaxy.

Try making balanced groups with a few fighters and frigates with your larger ships and prepare to be amazed.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
granted my weapons tech was vastly superior



You coulda made little gnat fleets with superior weapons and owned them so hard.... but if you had EQUAL weaponry, I doubt you could have done as well, or at least, you'd have been replacing the smaller ships a lot more often.

As for above, I DID state to keep the weapons canon... for those who dont understand, canon means keeping everything to the same standard and size. at least, thats my definition of canon lol...

As for increased firepower, that would take a lot of math and stuff, I'm sure frogboy has had it with mathematics, so why not just remove the increasing weapon size formulas I mean, if you're going to have a bigger hull, you should be able to FLAUNT it, to WAVE it in your enemies' faces and go HAHA, BEAT THIS! As it is, the bigger hulls are just a variant of the fighter, just more HP.... That is NOT how warships are! If you have a patrol ship, it has the baby brother of the big guns of a battleship, but a battleship can take out MANY, MANY patrol ships before it even gets its paint dented. Same should be true for a battleship-to-fighter! A battleship should be an utter and complete DREADNOUGHT. It should be capable of going into a fleet of 30 tiny fighters and killing 29 of them before the last one kills it. It should be capable of going vs 15 small fighters. 7 medium cruisers. 3 large battleships. 1 dreadnought. Thats the ratio I beleive it should be able to handle, and to hell with worrying about game balance, its unbalanced as-is!

Larger hulls are expensive to research, so make them more expensive if you do remove the increasing weapon sizes. That makes them worth it.

(Although the huge hull tech is ridiculously expensive already, it'd be TOTALLY worth it in the end if it can put on 30 lasers to the fighters' 1-4 )
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Look, as has been mentioned before, the point is big=survavibility. On a huge ship, I often have one or two of my best weapons, an engine, some life support, a sensor, and all defence. It doesn't matter if they swarm me with 20 fighters, not one fighter will survive, and I'll often take less than 5 damage. Because they just can't touch me.

If you're building big ships with an idea of putting on lots of weapons, then you're just wasting your money.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Try making balanced groups with a few fighters and frigates with your larger ships and prepare to be amazed.


From the beginning of any game I always balance my fleets, as you suggest. Even if it was
merely for a role playing effect. I just liked to have a "combined" fleet with multiple classes.
In the end game I usually get owned big time anyway on harder difficulty levels by fleets of
small ships. I can only counter that by using more force (i.e. battleships). I think this needs
to be balanced differently somehow.

Now I'm no military genius but I do know for example that if you put a group of tanks on the battlefield with no infantry support they're gonna have a very bad day. It's all about balance.


I couldnt agree more. Its all about balance. The example you give is basically correct. But
you cant compare it with fleet battles in space with a different technological background. If
you use a more or less coherent sci-fi setup, you must assume, that targeting systems are
greatly improved and size or speed will be less important. Thats where firepower kicks in -
and the power to provide it. So I would still lean to a solution that would reflect the power
producing capabilities of larger ships. Its not the point to give big advantages to the larger
ships. But I think in Gal Civ II 1 giant hull should - with similar technology - be able to
withstand 5 small hulls with ease. But thats just my opinion.

Anyway - a great game.

~S!~

Dioscur