Whats the skinny on ship levels?

I think your ships only gain hit points as you level up. I have never seen any comments in the forums suggesting otherwise. Also I have never seen any gain other than to HP in all my games, and I have been playing since Dec. 2005 (I was one of the beta testers for GalCiv2) but I have yet to try 1.31 (last game was v1.2).

Trying to find that post- It was here that I read it. Where a guy was getting his ships smoked- and one of the guys answering suggested that he needed to build up the levels of his ships, since they are alot more deadly. I read that and went, "huh?"
All I thought you got where more hitpoints. More hitpoints is not something that makes me fear a ship. The poster seemed to imply the ships became more effective with weapons and defence- I'm sure I'll find the post if I keep looking...

Experience increases hit points only, and only if some hit points are first lost during battle.

Military resources increase attack and defense numbers.

Trying to find that post- It was here that I read it. Where a guy was getting his ships smoked- and one of the guys answering suggested that he needed to build up the levels of his ships, since they are alot more deadly. I read that and went, "huh?" All I thought you got where more hitpoints. More hitpoints is not something that makes me fear a ship. The poster seemed to imply the ships became more effective with weapons and defence- I'm sure I'll find the post if I keep looking...

people say alot of stupid things. I heard this today after I commented on a functional group "Oh nitrile, it sometimes makes up nitrate"... if your a chemist you would find this amusing. Now if i took this serios i would fail the class.

It would be strange for there to be a bonus on efectiveness on weapons that isnt shown. Cause the values never change with level.

Experience increases hit points only, and only if some hit points are first lost during battle.

Just to expand on that, only if hit points are lost *by the fleet* during battle. A ship doesn't have to get hit itself to start getting experience.

Experience increases hit points only

I'm not saying that what you say couldn't be true, but what evidence do you have to support this?

I have many fleets of the same ship. Some fleets are very experienced (level 20 and above) while other fleets are fresh off the assembly line. I have not recorded any explicit statistics, but it's my subjective opinion that ships with greater experience seem to take damage less frequently than ships with no experience when fighting ships of equal attack value.

More hit points may equate to less damage showing on the damage meter; it takes longer to get enough damage to register as a red bar.

Also, there is a luck factor to consider also. Perhaps when you were watching more closely you were also getting better dice rolls.

But, I have watched the attack/defense numbers. And I have noticed that only hit points change with experience. Maybe Luck is raised behind the scenes for experienced ships, as well. That is not something I have looked into.

On the other hand, gaining and outfitting a military resource only raises the attack/defense numbers, not the hit point numbers.

I have many fleets of the same ship. Some fleets are very experienced (level 20 and above) while other fleets are fresh off the assembly line. I have not recorded any explicit statistics, but it's my subjective opinion that ships with greater experience seem to take damage less frequently than ships with no experience when fighting ships of equal attack value.

That was pretty much the jest of my question- And what I gathered from the post I read. I was just wondering if anybody knows for sure- Since if thats true, I really REALLY need to be taking better care of my high leveled ships...

Oh and more effective with weapons and defence doesn't necessarily mean having higher numbers- if your ship is more efficient with its weapons- a ship thats rated to do 6 points damage- from my understanding does 1-6 base points damage depending on the roll- Total damage inflicted of course depends on the defense roll the other ship throws if it has armor... Now it would be huge if the same ship was a high level and instead of the 1-6 roll, got a 3-6 roll. The ships attack value would be the same- but it would be far more productive in combat.

More hit points may equate to less damage showing on the damage meter; it takes longer to get enough damage to register as a red bar.

No, that's not what I meant. With experienced ships I seem to get 0 damage more often than I get 0 damage on inexperienced ships. Again, I have no hard evidence to back this up, but it sure seems this way to me.

Also, there is a luck factor to consider also. Perhaps when you were watching more closely you were also getting better dice rolls.

Clearly, luck is a factor which makes a definite opinion more difficult to determine. However, perhaps experienced ships are simply luckier than inexperienced ships, this would account for my observations. Anyway, I'm making my observation on the long term averages of behaviour of experienced vs. inexperienced ships which should at least reduce variation due to a short run of good or bad luck.

In some sense, does it really matter? It's only if you'd do something different if the answer to the question is yes or no that it makes any difference. Regardless of the answer I think experienced ships are very valuable and should be protected as much as possible. I always keep one inexperienced ship in a fleet of experienced ships to be the scapegoat. Since the inexperienced ships hit points are less than the others that's the first ship that is targeted by your opponent.

Even though your strategy may be no different based on the answer to this question, I'd still be interested in hearing any explicit evidence about how this actually works.

First let's take a look at the survey ship. You can hit an anomally that says your ships weapons will be more POTENT next time you UPGRADE this ship.

Now in game experience. I had mini-destroyers 2 att and 2 def but had a varying hp's from 16-30 hp's. So upgraded them and gave them 10 attack and 20 defense plus I had a fresh ship of the same type come out of the starport to make it a full fleet using 100 percent of the logistic points. Now most people know that the ship that is at the top of your fleet is the first one to be attacked, or most simply is the one that has the highest attack to hitpoints/defense. So when the stack was put together I had a 16 hp ship above a 13 hp ship but both had the same components. So I thought bug, dismantled the fleet, put it back together and the same oreder appeared. So I looked at both ships details and realized the EXPERIENCED UPGRADED ship got a bonus on attack.

So experience only increases hp's but upgrading an experienced ship increases the attack and possibly(but I dont think so)the defense.

So theres ingame obsevation by me that shows this and theres the proof of the anomally statement that says the ships weapons will be more potent upon the next upgrade.

If you have 10 ships 5 of which are level 1 and 5 of which are level 10 the computer will always target the lower level ships because they have fewer hitpoints and are therefore more likely to be destroyed. That's why your high level ships avoid damage and you end up constantly replacing your low level ships.

If you have 10 ships 5 of which are level 1 and 5 of which are level 10 the computer will always target the lower level ships because they have fewer hitpoints and are therefore more likely to be destroyed. That's why your high level ships avoid damage and you end up constantly replacing your low level ships.

That isn't whats been said OR asked. Its been said that if you have a high level ship- BY ITS SELF - So its getting targeted- It seems to take less damage then its rookie counterpart ship (meaning both ships are of the same make and revision). I am just looking for a definite answer.

Starting to test it here- with 2 dreadnaughts. (30 beam/100 point defense) 1 is a rookie, 1 is a level 8 ship. All made from the same planet. No Bonuses. The Experinced ship so far, has a higher average of damage inflicted going solo against the same ship- (23 to 18 on 8 battles) neither ship has been damaged yet. Each ship will fight solo against the same ship or fleet 10 times. I won't know for sure until I have 100 fights a piece with the ships against the SAME opponents. Is it a luck roll? Is it a plus to the basic min. damage the ship can inflict/deflect? Or are the results I'm seeing random? If they are random both scores SHOULD be close to the same within 100 fights. (I think)

Each ship will fight solo against the same ship or fleet 10 times. I won't know for sure until I have 100 fights a piece with the ships against the SAME opponents. Is it a luck roll? Is it a plus to the basic min. damage the ship can inflict/deflect? Or are the results I'm seeing random? If they are random both scores SHOULD be close to the same within 100 fights. (I think)

Yep. This will answer your question, let us know your results. If I remember much from my statistics course (it was 25 years ago), you can never actually "prove" anything by this method, but if you have more samples you have a higher confidience factor. The confidence factor is what they report when they take a poll. For example, in the latest poll the presidents approval rating is 36% plus or minus 3%.

I think 10 samples would start to give you a good indication, 100 samples certainly will give a much better one.

With regards to the anomaly statement, I thought that it was only the ship that found the anomaly which received the bonus, just like planets where you encounter pirates or receive one of the random starship bonuses, the bonus is only effective on the planet in question. I've never really conducted a "study" in game on the stats, I just play it, but it would be nice to know about the effect experience has on our ships and exactly how the "bonus" finds impact this.

An anomoly that improves a survey ship is basically worthless.

I don't think I've ever had a ship get an experience promotion, mainly due to my odd sort of conflict-averse playing style.

I don't think I've ever had a ship get an experience promotion, mainly due to my odd sort of conflict-averse playing style.

No,no,no Shiva, you have to go around and decimate all living organisms throughout the galaxy, didn't you know that? Well now that you do get out there and fight,fight,fight, even if your military is wrong and you don't really need their resource laden planet...

I cannot argee MooseTek, In several games I have played, the survey flagship found anomolies that boosted HP as well as Experience. Later I upgrade the flagship to a frigate and used it as the fleet "target" for the AI and gained more HP thru multiple battles. A ship like that is a pretty good mid game-ship.

I agree with Byram. The survey ship can be a midgame badass with enough anomoly bonuses after you upgrade to medium.

I agree with Byram too- I can make alot of hay with the survey ship, or even the Cargo Hull Sensor ships I build. In one game, I ran into a thick of those anomoly, before I knew it, I had a cargo hull with 17 hitpoints. Let me tell you- When I upgraded that thing to be a armed cargo hull- (55 units of space for guns/armor/engines) with 17 hitpoints- I thought I'd died and went to heaven... Not to mention it was nice when I upgraded it to a Large hull ship-

I agree with Byram too- I can make alot of hay with the survey ship, or even the Cargo Hull Sensor ships I build. In one game, I ran into a thick of those anomoly, before I knew it, I had a cargo hull with 17 hitpoints.

That would have to be the ONLY way to get more than 1 HP on a cargo hull: I've built "raiders" in the early stage of a game before using a cargo hull. I then attacked troopships, freighters and small/weak enemy ships with them. This was back when the attacker got to shoot first and if you got the other guy with your first shot he never got to shoot back. Even after gaining substantial experience, these ships never got more than one HP, and since they were expensive to build, I soon realized that it was not cost effective to build them, as they would eventually cross paths with a ship that could take them down...and it wouldn't even have to be a very powerful ship: just in the right place at the right time to get a shot off first. It really p*ssed me off because my plan was to do what you were talking about. (i.e. upgrade them later and have a really bad*ss ship with room for tonse of weapons/defense/whatever).
Actually, the whole anomaly/survey idea annoys me because by the time I can research the tech to build survey ships, all the anomalies have been found. IMNSHO, anomalies should randomly appear thoughout the galaxy over time at some specific rate (possibly tied to the difficulty level in some fashion) so that survey ships/techs and the Galactic Guidebook building would be useful instead of just a total waste.
BTW, Polarpawn, How did you manage to get a survey/cargo hull ship built early enough that there were still anomalies left for it to scout? Do you play in a huge galaxy with only a few opponents?

Ya- I've done that Raider thing to- I still like them for picking of Transports - found that the cargo raider well still kill the 1 hitpoint armed transports- it fires first, destroyes the target- and since the rules say 1 ship must survive, the other ship doesn't do any damage... (That realy should be changed to a random flip to which ship survives when both ships destroy each other - or let them both die)
To answer your question: I play all metaverse games - where this happens most frequent is on the Gigantic map/9 opponents/all abudant on the Maso level with scattered stars with a custom race. Now This is a pic from my last game before I started running tests on the question I had that started this post(Still have alllllllllllllllllong way to go on that) First pic is a Cargo Hull with 9 hitpoints (Being groomed for combat) and her sister ship with no bonuses.

Yep. This will answer your question, let us know your results. If I remember much from my statistics course (it was 25 years ago), you can never actually "prove" anything by this method, but if you have more samples you have a higher confidience factor. The confidence factor is what they report when they take a poll. For example, in the latest poll the presidents approval rating is 36% plus or minus 3%.

Nice idea, I use statistics a lot for my reseach (I'm a Phd student), if Polarpawn is willing to test this systematically, lets say spotting an enemy, saving the game and using the save game to do the same battle over and over with the two different ships, just post the numbers.
With for instance 15 numbers for each ship, two averages can be computed with the variation of the numbers making up the averages.
If the difference between the averages is greater than the random variation within the averages, you can claim that the ships abilities differ, which is not absolute proof, but can be statistically tested with 95% accuracy.

I bet if you do a couple of runs you can probably see a difference easily if there is one, but if you post the numbers I can do a statistical test easily.

I bet if you do a couple of runs you can probably see a difference easily if there is one, but if you post the numbers I can do a statistical test easily.

Yeah. It's been so long for me that I wouldn't know a standard deviation from a hole in the ground, but I had the feeling that Polarpawn was doing way more than necessary by trying for 100 samples. 15 samples each seems a lot more reasonable.

This is a pic from my last game before I started running tests on the question I had that started this post(Still have alllllllllllllllllong way to go on that)

Maybe not so long after all. Post 15 results from both experienced and inexperienced ships and I'm sure SideMancer can give us a good answer.