Ship hitpoints, starbase, combat & ship design bugs

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hi,
first of all this is from the same game played with custom civilisation, which I always play - seems to matter to some bugs.... Sometimes I use different bonuses, but always I pick Luck and Universalists party...
BUG 1 - I've decided to report this, because it seems to linger from 1.0 and 1.0X version and now it makes quite a lot of trouble when my 5 elite ships should defend me from full scale antarian attack with 20 ships a turn... Here it goes
It seems that the combat (or main galaxy screen) does not correctly calculate number of hitpoints for my ships - on main screen it looks like my fleet with 5 huge ships has about 630 hitpoints (2 around 70-80, 4 around 110+), but in combat I have always much lower amount displayed, and if the combat results are correct, sometimes my ship shall survive combat, when it does not (based on its main screen hitpoints). Now my combat screen shows about 509 hitpoint for this fleet, which is A LOT lower that it should be.

BUG 2 (?) - I am not sure if this should or should not work, but I've tried to build 2nd military starbase in a close spot to cmbine bonuses from missile blooms etc. and it seems it works, but only after I finish my turn or something - in the same turn the combat values of a fleet in both support ranges were not recalculated, during my defence in altarian turn it seemed that they were recalculated to higher values...

BUG 3 - I am not sure as well as the combat should wok, however I did not see anything like this in 1.0 or 1.0X version. Now it seems that there is a huge amount of pure luck needed in battles - and the altarians build their fleets to reap the benefits. I should mention that I have luck +50 (party + ability), so the luck should be more or less on my side always... But in most combats where my fleet of 5 huge ships with support of military starbase with stats like 45/15, 44/15, 250/280 (laser, missile, railguns) fights with antarian fleets of about 0/0, 0/20-40, 240-280/0 (composed from 7-11 ships most of the time - fighters, heabvy fighters, escorts, occasionaly battleships) I am sometimes unable to do 9 or 15 or so damage with one hit one tiny ship and kill it with one shot from one huge ship. This is completely stupid when my ship has about 15 laser attack and 50 railgun attack against no protection on the side of altarian tiny ship, and about 8-10 extra missile power over its missile only defences... And sometimes such a small altarian ship with attack of approx 25-30 railgun does as much as 30 net damage to my huge ship, when my ship has railgun defence about 45-50, so quite a lot higher, and quite an expensive one.. Similarly once my ship with defence 50 railgun got from his ship (when he was defending without any armor and thus should not have in any way survive attack of my 2 ships, but what the hell) with railgun attack 100 at least 83 damage and was dead in one shot (possibly even more, but overkill damage is not shown). I should once again mention that I have +50 luck and my ships are quite a few levels above the skills of antarians (unless the black hole gun whih they could employ has some bonuses like chance to score extra damage, I have only neutrino pellet gun, so one level lower tech).

BUG 4 (?) - Well, this is maybe intentional, but slightly annoying. When I try to create an upgraded ship model in shipyard, it seems to replace the previous model in building queues, even though I did not make the previous model obsolete. Therefore if I delete immediately the new design as not bringing anything new, my shipyards cease to work, and I have to select the previous model everywhere manually - I kinda lost quite a few production turns in this way...

Hope this helps in development somehow
Choock
3,798 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Bug 1: This is known, and is one of the things that is being fixed for 1.2
Bug 2: Should work... sometimes bonuses do take until the end of the turn to appear
Bug 3: Are those missile/beam stats just from the starbase bonuses? You really shouldn't equip your ships with multiple weapon types, it's less effective because of the way the damage is calculated. You should still utterly destroy them though... Bear in mind that your average attack power is always going to be half that of the maximum power of a single shot. Also, you might be better off with Tiny ships when you are near starbases, as every single one will recieve the bonuses...
Bug 4: It's not a bug. I'd find it annoying if it worked the other way around... If this happens, use the planetary governors screen to change all shipyards building 'None' to building the old type again.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Bug 3: Are those missile/beam stats just from the starbase bonuses? You really shouldn't equip your ships with multiple weapon types, it's less effective because of the way the damage is calculated. You should still utterly destroy them though... Bear in mind that your average attack power is always going to be half that of the maximum power of a single shot. Also, you might be better off with Tiny ships when you are near starbases, as every single one will recieve the bonuses...


how come its less effective if you equip your ships with multiple weapon types?
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Because the defense is taken off each weapon type individually.

For instance, say you have a beam attack of 4 and a missile attack of 4. Your opponent has an armour defense of 4. Assuming eveything hits for full power:

Beam damage = 4 - 2 =2
Missile damage =2

Total damage = 4

But if you have a beam attack of 8 against the same defense.

Damage = 8 - 2 =6

Also, you can concentrate on a single branch of the tech tree, meaning that you can research the better weapons faster. Of course, you have to be careful when you choose which weapons to go after so that your opponent doesn't have the defenses to match it...

This even works if their defense is shields instead of armour:

For 4/4

Beam damage=4-4=0

Missile damage=4-2=2

Total damage=2

For 8/0

Damage=8-4=4
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ad bug 3) Well, the all beam/missiles and part of mass drivers attack are only from the starbase support. Of course I could build only the small ships, and receive higher bonuses from starbases, however (i) my ships would die much more often and therefore would not be able to reach high level (smaller defence AND less hitpoints per ship) - at least in the moment when I am attacked and the enemy would shoot first, (ii) if even my huge ships are unable to shoot down the small enemy ship in one salvo, then it seems rather pointless to expect high performance from the small ships, (iii) if the enemy breaks through the defensive line, I am finished (he has several times as much planets and I do have military starbases only at borders - also has a higher tech level), and larger enemy ships should be able to increase the defence per ship just enough to be nearly invulnerable by small ships, even with starbase support - therefore he would be able to break through easily, (iv) larger ships are much faster, so I might be just unable to catch his fleets in time for the starbase support to apply... (v) and it seems that miniaturization has smaller effect on smaller ships (some components are nearly the same size even when ship size differs a lot - but it makes sense. Essentialy there are some components (like weapons, sensors etc) which need the same energy output to be effective the same, so they should not even differ in size, while some like defense, engines etc should differ based on ship mass to cover or push)
However I am thinking of trying one fleet of small ships - they could be effective if they would be attacking only, but with their small speed I am afraid I will not be able to return them back into cover after the attack, so it probably be just a failed experiment

I completely agree that I should be always be able to shoot down with one salvo such pesky small ships, but it seems the random factor has too great a role, and I seem to be quite unlucky, even though I should've been rather lucky... Maybe the randomized damage should take into account the level of the ship firing, and let's say that minimum attack hit would be (level-1)*2% of total attack or something - few hitpoints more do not help the "hero" ships survive much longer as some lucky shots are bound to happen soon... It also seems strange that nearly all ther military forces of the greatest existing empire in my gargantuan galaxy are just petty fighters with crew of like 1-2 soldiers

I do understand the mechanism of attack hitting ship with one defence type - if I am protected from all, shouldn't all defence stats sum up to final number or something, or I am just being chosen the best number from 3 available?

From how my opponent builds ships it seems that he doesn't mind, that I use mass drivers only and still uses only the missile defence - it seems that either only one defence is taken into account or his AI isn't working so great (he should obviously know, that armor is what he should use as a best tactics (or maybe is the missile defence so cheap that it is effective even on half power? dunno I don't have those techs) - I am playing on tough, but maybe he doesn't have enough of those ships yet). Anyway he doesn't even try to break through much less defended parts of my border, even though he know them (I can see his ships from there, but I have the eyes of the universe), and also he seems to attack me with kind of small power considered what he has hidden just under the closest border of fog of war.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This looks like a good thread to add this bug.

I designed a custom ship from scratch and picked a 'random cool name' out of my head (I don't remeber what it was now). The problem was that the computer decided to use the same name for one of its core designes later in the game. From then on, the computer got all confused about which one I wanted to build, which one I wanted to upgrade, and which one I wanted to delete or obsolete. (I selected the one I wanted, but it deleted the other one)

Not exactly a showstopping bug, but quite annoying, and probably easy to fix.