Suralle

Join Date 07/2004

Defensive Firing On Paper, works for me.

"On paper it looked good, the attacking ships fire, if the defense survives they fire back."

And the other way sounds hokey. I am a "French-made" Mirage Fighter Jet. I closed within 32 NM of a nicely defended O.H. Perry Frigate in this worlds most powerful navy, not once, but twice. Getting no response I launced two (2) "French-made" Exocet Missiles. The ship never stood a chance at firing back and are lucky that the Exocet at the time didn't have a pop-up approach and the second warhead didn't go off. Oh btw, the ship never fired back, not even its CIWS (Phalanx), which was probably off for maintenance reasons or because it performs poorly in the heat, or folks (even allies) get nervous when its radar points its 30 mm cannons at your. Who knows.

I am a submarine, I prowl the oceans depths, frequently below or in the layer that even the most modern, sophisticated accoustical devices can not penetrate. MAD doesn't work here, I am degaused regularly anyways. Given the wire-guidance I employ and the classifed sonar and FCS I use, a surface target does not stand a chance. My crew is trained every day. They are a well oiled machine, working on an 18 hour schedule, 6 hours of watch, 6 hours of maintenace and training, 6 hours "off". Every day, approximately 245 days of every year. My torpedoes do not impact a ship, as this causes a 50% on average failure of the weapon. Instead I generate an envelope of air directly below the ship causing the hull to lift and split in half. There is no chance in the crews last 90 seconds from detection to even come close to a firing solution as I come in from a different bearing than where my submarine is.

I am the tank commander with the most modern electronics, GPS, gyro stablized firing system in the world. My shells reach 3 times what the next most capable enemy tank or apc can sense. I rain depleted shells down on the most entrenched force well beyond their own gun range.

My point. Sensors and Speed are a factor in the game. If an enemy has no idea your coming and you warp into position on a single turn and engage that enemy how are they supposed to logically shoot back on the first turn to begin with. As it is, the defense that survives is allowed to fire back, I can hand that one in as sophisticated AI wants to survive so fires back if it is still alive. Now if I am in sensor range and the defensive fleet can see me than sure, I can go for they are at red alert or yellow alert and ready to fire. However, comma, you can not keep a crew at red or yellow alert indefinitely, they are the weakest link.

So in a nutshell I do not agree that the current combat system is going to improve by letting all the defenders fire on the first round. Defenses still count, I use them all the time after the second generation of weapons is placed on my ships.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

warfare

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Defenses still count, I use them all the time after the second generation of weapons is placed on my ships.

Nah, defenses don't count for much, especaily if you are using swarm type tactics. The real difference in the change is one of attrition, it will not take you slightly longer to take out AIs since you will be losing some ships along the way.

In the current system (with or without defense) AFF (atacker fires first) makes warfare pretty much walkovers on any race since the AIs simply cannot handle sensors or speed as well as (most) human players can.

That said, I too employ defenses on my ships, but usually because I wind up with mega research into whatever the appropriate catagory is, so its trivial to put ~20 defense on a ship, and then instead of needing 4 ships I can use only one. It lets me spend more money on research then on military, or it lets me build so many constructors I run out of useful things for them to do...

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or it lets me build so many constructors I run out of useful things for them to do...

I just keep using them to upgrade military/economy bases. Amazing what 300 to 400 in research with 100's of hammer and shields can get done on a 14 / 15 PQ planet.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

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I believe the changes are just to balance the AI in the battles but I would prefer that some technology played a part in deciding the capability of the defenders to retaliate.

You mentioned speed and sensors and I agree with that completely. I think it would be great to jump in from completely beyond AI sensor range and get the battle played out the way it is in v1.11. Sacrifice speed for weapons for the attack bonus. Great stuff.

How about some "soldiering" tech that affects your fleets? Either the ones that exist or some new "fleet combat ability" tech line that branches from starship defenses? The more "fleeting" ability you have the more of your ships can fire in the first round if attacked. Just thinking out loud.

Also that was great fun to read Suralle, give us some more examples please

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I like your real world examples, except that in space detection is surely going to occuer at even the most extreme ranges and negate any sort of surprise and speed advantage. See http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html for some fun info. So it comes down to MAD. What it boils down to is that there is no thermal layer or hull down defilade in space. That is, nowhere to hide.

I think the combat system is they way it is ensure players must continually turn-out ships and thus balance an economy.

Anyways, my 2 cents.

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a true first strike capability is needed as well as cloaking.. and then you can have a multi firing option, simultenous firing.. etc...

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Eh.

So far I've found the combat a li'l simplistic. Completely dumbed down. I appreciate the cinematic views of the combat. Usually nicer to look at than how it was in GC1. However, if there are plans to take the combat further than a LOT needs to be done. And I say all this not having a clue about the programming involved

I woulda gone on (at length) about the whole combat thingie but decided to wait. Has this already been addressed? And is there material concerning the whole combat system and the way it works?

And does anyone wanna hear what I gotta say (write) anyway?

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I agree. More complex battle options would be an excellent addition.

And defenses play a great deal in my defense of planets. I only have 2 or 3 battle ships that are heavily defended at each planet and no one can take them out.

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The combat system is tilted towards offense, but it is a design decision made early and reinforced often. Release 1.2 will make defense maybe 20% more useful, but the strategic advantage of attacking remains. If nothing is done to the cost structure, an offensive player can still field 4 or 5 ships for every 3 that a defensive player can build. Guess who wins, all else being equal?

A strategic defense has to waste space with the orbital fleet managers. If a player is down building those, they are usually going to lose (on the higher levels). There is also the conundrum of force concentration. If an attacker has one powerful fleet, and there are three planets in range, the defender has to have approximately triple the force to properly defend all targets, or send their ships out from the planets and risk a clever transport rush.

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I kinda like the idea of giving the attacker the advantage (on the first round of combat) if his sensor range is better than the defender--this becomes a "surprise attack" and the v1.11 rules of attacker fires first are carried out. Follow-on combat rounds (if the defender survives the initial attack) would become simultaneous attacks since the defender is now prepared.

If sensor ranges are equal or the defender has better sensor range, then the first round becomes simulatneous attacks because the defender is prepared.

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Wll, Galciv2 is really a simple game. The combat system is a simple thing :

Weapon type A => Defense type A
Weapon type B => Defense type B
Weapon type C => Defense type C

Each side fire after the other (or at the same time, now ? Don't played since the Beta).

The tactical idea is just a "choose the type of weapon against which the enemy has the weakest defense".

Stardock don't add a lot of feature. Just two :

1° Inadequate defense has a value of 1/3.
2° Size of the ship-hull.

For the moment, we have only three class, with a redundancy in the tags (Stardock do a lot of redundancy, you don't think ?) :

Weapons and Defenses have TWO tags for the type : The standard Category, but also the tag Class (what the use for this class tag, my good Frogboy ?)

And we have three values for Defense S & Shield , A & Armor and PD & Point Defense. Same thing for attack.

I suggest:

1° That we can add our own values (a inertial missile is neither really a gun projectile, nor really a missile with explosive head),

2° That we can define ourself the percentage of success for each defense (for the moment, PD has 100+33+33 against missiles/rays/projectiles, and impossible to change it.

3° That we can have a tag "bonus" for the equipment. Thus, we could add equipment "radar", "ecm" or "cloaking" which would provide no-claims bonus to our vessels.

P.S. And I think, moreover, that we need a tag "No trade/No steal" for technologies.

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The current combat system is not balanced. I create fast ships with high attack and no defenses. I build "Eyes of the Universe" early in the second year. As a result, I NEVER lose any combat ships! I usually take out the enemy fleet in the first strike and then level up. The few times the enemy survives to fire back, my ships have levelled up to the point they can easily absorb their counter-attack!

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I really don't find your real world examples to be accurate except that I agree that like your tank commander if you have a huge tech edge you win.

Your right sensors and speed but just getting to a spot kick doesn't mean you win a battle. Your assuming since your moving into a space than you get the first attack. Yet, everyone can see you coming. The only thing speed does in real life is negate how much build up the defense can have.

Look if we are even in tech, I see you coming I'm going to be ready to shot at the first sign you are there. Your assuming that you just pop there and shot yet good intelligence can always estimate when an attack is going to happen.

Real world examples - take D-Day. Did the defense fire back or did the attackers get to shoot first? Take any example from WWI.

Now true space is different, but your just not popping out of anywhere.

Maybe they'll add sensor blockers or cloaks later on to let the attacker get a free shot but they don't have it yet. Right now it's too space fleets that cross paths and start firing. If your the attacker, you already now what force to bring to bear - that is an advantage.

(By the way, one of the best games of all time -Risk, gave the defender the advantage).

Just my point of view.

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None of the combat is realistic.

Range, rate, velocity and power/yield/penetration are the the most important factors for weaponry. I'm leaving out power source (and such) because that doesn't seem to be a concern.

I LOVE the game but the RockPaperScissors combat bugs me. "A good defense is a good offense" is a popular line but it's been taken to extremes here. The ONLY way to play is offensively. This game won't make even a half-hearted decent multi-player game simply because of the combat. There is no strategy.

I don't need to controll every ship. Or even have direct control of a fleet. But I WOULD like to see the ability to assign their actions. At least just once before the combat. Granted there would need to be a complete overhaul to the weapons systems. Which, by itself, would completely change the way combat is perceived and initiated. Adding in semi-realistic defenses (at least) would bring the entire game to a whole other level.

Combat is not the only "component" about this game. However, it IS one of the main ones. And it was, I believe, done a disservice. As a result it is dragging down the game for a LOT of gamers. It is just like MOO3. Nice and big. Micro-management out the yin-yang (I like that). Lots of options. I'm pretty sure most everyone who purchased it, and was familiar with the MOO universe, felt the same way. Until the combat. Everyone's response was a concerted "WTF?". Pretty much what I'm sensing here too

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