Suggestion Re: Rebalancing the military game.

from Stardock Forums
I've been very happy to see some attempts made in this area already, such as the recent change to the Battle Hammer. To me, though, the Hammer should be the next step up in defensive ship technology from the Axe...and it's not. Nor is it feasible to make it a high defense/low attack ship because of what's IMO the BIGGEST problem with the military side of the game right now:

The way that Military strength is calculated.

Right now, it's just simple addition of the attack value of all of your ships. This is a problem for multiple reasons:

1. Things like Axes, while sturdy defenders in the early game, do next to nothing to deter tribute demands/war declarations.

2. Things like Corvettes, while being next to USELESS in wars (other than transport/trade ship hunting), can be used to scare/bully the AI...even into the late game where one of their ships could crush every Corvette you own without a scratch.

I don't have a suggestion for a formula that encompasses Attack, HP, and Defense. Any such formula will be flawed when dealing with any ship with extreme values like Missles. Instead, what I propose is this:

1. Give a set value of military strength for each type of ship. Take into consideration HP, Attack, and Defense when assigning this value. Example: Every Axe is worth 6, every Corvette 3, Frigates 8 (just an example, more thought is needed as to what would be balanced).

2. Penalize the value of any ship which is grossly obsolete. Example: Corvettes only worth half value once a certain % of all ships in the galaxy are battleships or better.

One problem with this suggestion is that bonuses for HP/Attack/Defense from Starbases/Racial picks/etc. wouldn't get taken into account. However, I have no problem with this for 4 reasons:

1. It would still be a less cheese ridden system than we have now.
2. Racial/Starbase/Tech bonuses to military stats help enough during wartime. It would be almost overpowered to have them give you a large boost in keeping the peace as well.
3. From a realism point of view, you could argue that the other races only pay attention to what ships they see cruising around the vastness of space...not their armor thickness/weapons array/other details.
4. It would make it easier to continue the process of balancing out the stats of overpowered/underpowered ships (like the old Hammer) without worring as much about how that ship can be abused with respect to Military rating (since you get to assign a specific value for each ship type). We could finally have a Hammer that has stats of 3/6 or whatever and would be truly an upgrade to the Axe as a truly defensive ship without being a liability with respect to Military rating.

Feedback?
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
From what I've gleaned here, military strength is based on all of your ships' attack power totaled, right? Which means that low attack/high defense ships keep your strength value low. I suppose the easiest solution would be to add the half-defense bonus that defense ships get to your military strength total.

Whether it should add the starbase values is another story.


~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
That's a fair suggestion, but it doesn't fix Missle/Corvette exploits, and it might actually make things like Axes valued a bit too much. They don't pose much of an offensive threat, and they shouldn't be valued equal to a Frigate. They should be valued more than a lousy Corvette, though.
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Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Maybe better to have 2 ratings - 1st to determine attack power of the civilization and 2nd to determine defense power of the civilization. So, during diplomacy, game will compare your attack vs opponent attack+defense rating then you want to demand money etc.

~SDC~
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
@ Ellestar:

Sounds like a good suggestion in theory, but I'm guessing that it would be very difficult to code and implement.

If there's anything in this game right now that needs fixing, it's this IMO. It's sad to scare an empire with Dreadnaughts into paying you tribute when all you are packing is Corvettes.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Dr. No Chance:

I disagree about some of the observations. For example, the Corvettes may seem next to useless on their own, but can be much more powerful than they appear.

In a chokepoint sector containing a maxed out starbase (at least for my tech level), my corvettes were catable of taking on more powerful ships, such as frigates and battle cruisers. While I did lose one or two in the process, the third one was guarentted to win.

The tactic was less effective as soon as Dreadnoughts started to appear, but at that stage, I switched over to the next more powerful craft. It allowed me to build a flanking force and eventually conquer the Drengin.

However, I am in support of updating the military rating. The most common suggestion is to factor the HP into the equasion, which is expected to be a linear multiplier to a unit's attack/defence values.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Using it as a linear multiplier could cause trouble when dealing with Missles, although I suppose some special exception could be made for them (as it is now...they no longer count for their full attack value for determining your military rating).

Point well taken about using weak ships in combination with starbase attack bonuses. Because the attack bonuses from starbases are + and not +% based, they actually do give pretty good boosts to weaker ships.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I know Brad does not want to user selectable load-outs, but I think consideration should be given to ships that "carry" whether attack craft or missles. Counting the AMM as a ship and factoring it as a military strength seems cheesy. Also, the base code for ships is going to have to change if any semblance of balance is going to be achieved. Each ship is going to have to have fields added holding the "current" value of attack/defense/speed in addition to static max values. This will allow fleet attack to cripple a ship by reducing the opponents weapons/shields/engines. Easy to say, it is going to be a complex piece of code. The hope is that we will end up with something far better in the third or fourth iteration. There is good marketing value for this effort, with strong beta to put the code through the wringer. Announcing such a major improvement would be a great press release to boost interest after the initial accolades start to fade. Sorry for the ramble, I really like this game and want to see it do well.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
IF this never gets adressed in the near future, I'm just going to mess around with the data files and do my own in-game balancing.

It would mean increasing the cost and HP of fighters/corvettes, increasing the offense of defensive type ships like the Axe, etc.

Where I'd like to see the military of the game is this:

1st category: Light Fighters
Star Fighter, replaced by Corvette, replaced by Pheonix (Pheonix needs major reworking)

Purpose of this category: Fast ships best used for harrasing transports/cargo ships. Useful as well against opponents who are hoarding missles. Also, they should be the most effective means of attack IF you have a maxed out starbase in the area (since starbases give + bonuses and not +%). This would keep them useful the whole game long.

2nd category: Stay at home defenders
Defender, replaced by Battle Axe, replace by Battle Hammer
Purpose: These ships should all have higher defense than attack values, and get a bonus when attacked. They should be less useful for boosting Military rating...but not useless. They should have relatively low maintenance costs, which is appropriate since they will probably live for a long time (they won't be on the offensive front). They should have 0 values for range/speed (although these can be boosted). They should be the most effective way of defending a planet, but not of attacking one.

3rd category: Heavy fighters
Battle Cruiser, then Frigate, then Battleship, Dreads, Rangers, Avatars, Overlords, then Excals.
Purpose: The most effective means of attacking planets if you don't have starbase support in the area. The most effective way of boosting your Military rating as well. Each new ship type should be better than the previous, scaling up such that a ship should have a noticeable edge on a ship one step worse, but a two step difference between ships should be VERY hard to overcome.

The other stuff: Missles can stay close to same as they are now, since they were recently slightly tweaked so as not to inflate Military rating as much. The Star Hawk technology needs to be made available VERY early in the game for an upgraded survey ship to see any use at all.

I'm basically through playing this game until I see a change in the military side of things...but eventually I'll just tweak things myself if need be. I do like how Gal Civ is very easy to modify with Notepad.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
The linear multiplier, as well as a square-root multiplier, takes into account missles.

Missles have 1HP, 100 attack, and 0 def. Their rating is 100. As a comparison:

Linear Multiplier:
Starfighters - 5HP, 2att, 1 def = 3*5=15
Corvettes - 12HP, 3att, 2def = 5*12 = 60
Battleaxe - 40HP, 2att, 5 def = 7*40 = 280
BattleShip - 40HP, 9att, 4 def = 13*40 = 520
Dreadnought - 50HP, 12att, 5def = 17*50 = 850

Square-root multiplier:
Starfighters - 5HP, 2att, 1 def = 3*sqrt(5)=6.7
Corvettes - 12HP, 3att, 2def = 5*sqrt(12) = 17.3
Battleaxe - 40HP, 2att, 5 def = 7*sqrt(40) = 44.3
BattleShip - 40HP, 9att, 4 def = 13*sqrt(40) = 82.2
Dreadnought - 50HP, 12att, 5def = 17*sqrt(50) = 120.2

As you can see, the missles are either rated below the Dreadnought (which has a 50% chance of surviving a missle strike), resulting in an armada of dreadnoughts being comparable to an armada of Anti-Matter missles.

While missles can be considered more powerful than Dreadnoughts, they are one-shot and are not guarenteed to obliterate the enemy ship. They aren't very durable either, as others have reported a single Star Fighter wiping out these missles in spite of an escort.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Anti-matter missiles will act as a tank in any square they are in if that square is attacked, so there is no way to protect them that I know of: use them if enemies are around or lose them. Stacking defensive ships with them doesn't work.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
The square root multiplier seems to suit missles better. They are ranked a little low with the linear system.

I personally don't mind that missles can be rooted out with fighters. It gives fast moving units a purpose...to do strike down missles before they can pose a threat. Missles are very powerful when you look at their cost, and consider that they are pretty much assured to at least damage stronger ships if not destroy them outright.

I think the game should a bit of a rock, paper, scissors effect, in that:

1. If you build mostly big capital ships, and I build mostly missles, I win.

2. If you build mostly fighters, and I build mostly missles, I lose.

I also feel that missles should be looked at as more a defensive than an offensive weapon...they should sit in orbit and strike out at enemy capital ships as they come into range. However, your enemy might be able to get to your planet with fighters in a single turn without ever being within missle range and eliminate those missles before you can fire them. I like the idea of fighters/capital ships/missles all having uses. Just my opinion, but I think missles should be vulnerable to attack even within a group.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
The real missile killers are fast units, so starfighters, corvettes, and rangers do an excellent job, but since missiles move at speed 0 any unit that is speed 1 or higher (or even your speed 0's if you have gravity accellerators) will do the job.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Maybe missles need a speed tweak so that they are only vulnerable to the really fast movers. It does seem wrong that speed 1 units can beat them to the punch.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmm, not too sure about powering up AMMs further. In seems that in most games, I take out a significant number of enemy ships with AMMs while losing none/minimal to the AI.

The AI currently does not use it near as effectively as we do.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
I also would like to suggest that the Phoenix be disabled till cloaking is implemented. The AIs builds lots of them and despite its increased HPs, it is still only comparable to a mid-era ship.

Having the AIs waste resources building these at capital ship era weakens them.

Maybe I could just remove the Phoenix ship from my game directory. That shouldn't be illegal I hope.
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
My solution for using AMMs is to field a screen of heavy ships a hex or two ahead. This lets the AMMs survive until they are in striking range.

Of course the AI won't use this tactic, which means they are much more lethal in the hands of a human.