Zillions of (Pointless) Corvettes

from GalCiv2 Forums
In my most recent game, the Drengin were one of the last races I conquered. On entering their territory, I noticed a stack of about a dozen fleets of 9 super-dominator corvettes each. One of my huge ships chewed through them in about a week and a half, and it was good.

Then, near the Drengin homeworld, I noticed 3 *more* stacks of SD corvettes, each with about a dozen fleets of 9 corvettes each. "Oh, what a PITA" I thought. These ships are totally irrelevent, but at least it won't take long to kill them all.

Then I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I conquered the Drengin home system, thus defeating the Drengin empire. Of course, all those zillion corvettes were now pirates, organized into fleets of size 1. Talk about a pointless headache. Just looking at that section of space bogged down my machine, and it would take real-time hour to kill all of those pointless ships one at a time.

The point: Is there any chance of changing Super Dominator so it's keyed somehow to your current tech level? Say you have 13 hardcoded designs for an SD corvette: one basic design, and 4 designs for each of the different weapon types. The designs are organized in increasing tech level. So you have SD corvettes that use lasers, phasors, etc.

When the SD ability activates, you get a batch of ships of your highest accessible design. The key point is that the batch is scaled so that it has the same military rating as whatever you would get with the current SD corvette design. That is, you get more effective ships at a higher tech level, but many fewer of them.

I think this would keep the SD ability relevant and less annoying in the late game.
18,959 views 26 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yep the iconic civ of Gal Civ 2's super ability is rubbish. The corvettes should have 1 top of the line engine and 1 top of the line weapon. Then they ability would be worthwhile/interesting. Perhaps the amount they get could be then reduced because of there new effectiveness.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The ability is meant to give you decoys and cheap units, and in the later levels, free cash when ya sell 'em. Thass it.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The ability is meant to give you decoys and cheap units, and in the later levels, free cash when ya sell 'em. Thass it.


How do you know? I've never seen Brad or any dev post that this was their intention for the ability. Have you spoken to a developer personally about it? Just because it happens to be poor now doesn't mean we should just accept it. It wouldn't take much work to improve it and I don't see why the developers might not consider it because of the iconic nature of the Drengin who frankly should have a better super ability.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, that's what I use it for.

And jeez, you didn't have to flame me...  
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do you think its a good ability then SgtRicko? Don't you think it's currently a poor super ability? Wouldn't you like to see it improved?

I think your use of them is right. But personally I wouldn't currently go Drengin because of there poor super ability although I like them a lot in other regards.

Sorry for being a bit flamey your response sounded as if you were saying thats the way it is and we should just accept it and that p***ed me off a little.   
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Super Dominator Corvettes are intended to be cannon fodder. If they get some really early on in the game, they might be useful, but not much beyond that. 
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Super Dominator Corvettes are intended to be cannon fodder.


Whats the point of playing the Drengin or custom race super domiator when there ability is so useless?
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm ok with the corvettes being mostly cannon-fodder, but there's a point where you are just giving your opponent free experience. More importantly, the AI has no idea what to do with them and it can be seriously unfun for the player to encounter such astronomical numbers of them.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yea, honestly, because of the way combat and experience works, I think the Super Dominator ability is awful. In fact, it's more of a liability than an asset. As it stands, you get a bunch of free, but totally useless ships. They can't even hurt my current generation of warships, and I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the military tech trees. Considering that every fleet I kill gives my ships a few more HP from experience, I think it's a bad deal for the Drengin. I would like to see the Super Dominator ability changed in some way, perhaps creating actually useful ships. Otherwise, the Drengin become a big fat galactic joke.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Would it be unimplementable if superdominator instead of givve zillions of corvettes gives core ships already discovred through techs?Clearly these core ships shouldn't be the most powerful core ships available but at least shouldn't be the crap corvettes!
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Guess they should rename this ability to "Colonial Militia" or "Space Volkstrum". Might be a nice game flavour for a star federation representing each colony's militia.

Also guess the drengren race fiel should be modded to give them first strike instead.

BTW: What are those covettes outfitted with?
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
BTW: What are those covettes outfitted with?


A water pistol.    Actually they might as well be as Kryo said they are cannon fodder. (Att 2 each I think).

Is there anyone who thinks that Sardock should leave this Super ability as it is even though it's awful?
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can't complain. I had one cruiser ambushed by the Drengin Horde go from nothing to level 15 with minor damage. I can live with that.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I had one cruiser ambushed by the Drengin Horde go from nothing to level 15 with minor damage.


I think that sums up how pathetic this supposed super abilty currently is. So much for the mighty drengin...

Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It does have an effect on the other AIs. They're terrified of the Drengin because of the perceived power of their fleet. In that sense, it makes the player the "hero" who's got to go toe to toe with them. The game I'm in now has the Iconians under the influence of the Precursor artifact that's slowly increasing their power, and the Drengin are beating the crap out of them because they're afraid to go on the advance. In a sense, it gives the Drengin pretty limitless initiative when picking fights with other races.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The Drengin have always had the best AI. Currently the only real reason to go Drengin is so you dont have them as an opponent (assuming random opp).

They're terrified of the Drengin because of the perceived power of their fleet.


The affect the corvettes have to the strength of there fleets is negligible.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Besides all the 'advantages' people see in this ability, it sounds totally crap (I haven't been confronted yet with this ability in DA).

I don't want to dominate the galaxy by increased 'perceived power of my fleet' or selling worthless ships for scrap or using decoys or whatever.

Cannon fodder can be suitable for a ruthless evil empire, but I can make cannon fodder myself without a Super Cannon fodder ability. This bonus should give the owner something terrible that destroys things.

This ability sounds a bit like the Atreides fremen bonus in Dune II. Fremen were the Super Dominators of Arrakis, it was just a shame that they were so easily crushed under the Harkonnen tank tracks.

Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It does project the dregin power alot though. When I went to war with them in current game I was like oh boy they have alot of ships. When My early fleets of 4 busted through over 50 of those little things I was like WTH? LOL. I lost alot of ships though, but it was early and I harldy had any defenses. But the Dregin lost everything.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I remember back in galciv1, a couple of times there was a random event that gave you or the AI millions of corvettes (i think about 100?). Normally that event would only give around 4 corvetes.

when the AI got them and attacked one of my overlords, i just went away and got somthing to eat, had a shower, watched tv lah de dah, eventually they ran out of couvetes! hehehe but it was an amusing thing to happen i guess?
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah I remember that one. I also remember being on the receiving end once and damned near having my economy collapse trying to maintain them.

I played more into my game last night, and the Drengin remained pretty fierce, even as I was steadily breaking their back. After wading through hundreds of disposable corvettes, I finally found the heart of their fleet, which was hordes of standard frigates packing HD Spikes and Black Hole launchers. Was a real wake up call after a hundred shredded corvettes to watch three of my huge hulled Emperor class dreadnoughts with 20 points of Subspace Rebounder and 20 points of Arnorian Armor being shredded by a trio of frigates that were nothing but flying guns spewing huge wads of green stuff. I eventually managed to put together battlegroups that were able to break their fleet and keep them pushed down until the Galleon fleet of troop transports could arrive, but it was painful to watch at times.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
After my first experience dealing with 20 fleets of useless corvettes I decided to give the Drengin the "Super-Warrior" ability instead (which seemed like the most appropriate second choice).

"Super Spy" and "Super Breeder" are 2 other fairly useless abilities IMHO. Well, the player could leverage Super Breeder effectively, but I'm not so sure about the AI. I wonder why there's no "Super Nerd" or "Super Capitalist" ability where you can build really cheap labs or markets like the super hive can build factories.

Cheers

h

Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
After my first experience dealing with 20 fleets of useless corvettes I decided to give the Drengin the "Super-Warrior" ability instead


The super abilitys are hard coded to the races aren't they?

Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Can always customize them.
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The super abilitys are hard coded to the races aren't they?


what the super abilities are, that's hard coded. in other words, you can't mod how a super ability works.

but which race gets what ability is mod-able in raceconfig.xml; there's a new tag that determines their super ability, which is represented by a number value. the name of the tag is pretty obvious.

and you can always change this on the custom race setup.