Battleship cost & strategies

Hi,

Good post and intelligent questions.

I like to have some variation in my fleets. There is good information on the galciv2 wiki, in particular on weapons choices and ship combat. You should read it. I, however, prefer to have mixed fleets, irrespective whether it is efficient or not. It just feels more fun and realistic (like in scifi movies, tv series).

I don't find it annoying that big ships take long to build. It should be that way in my opinion. Try to specialise planets and have some with almost all factories. In that way, you should be able to build those flagships and dreadnought class battleships quite quickly. I think there is also an formula by which the AI targets ships. In that way you can have either the big ship in your fleet take a lot of damage (so that the smaller ones can survive) or have the smaller ones as cannon fodder. Whatever you prefer. Have fun playing the game and keep us informed!

On high difficulty levels, the game becomes less realistic and there are some strategies that are less fun but necessary to compete. Have a look on the wiki page.

You need to change the the racial number in the .shipcfg file and make sure that the .xml file is also present.

Example: In your My Games/.../ships  folder you will find these files.

S0_UD_DD0.shipcfg   and   DD.xml

Change the S0_...  to whatever race you now run and the ship will show up.  Ex S9_... will change that to an Iconian design. S0_ is terrain.

Its better to use this in the template files as the weapons or other items may not be available in that race.

The only reason to add a Survey Module is if you want to be able to explore anomalies, and maybe if you want to build a scout with a very long sensor range (but the size/cost numbers might make lots of ordinary sensors better for that).

I've read many different takes around on "ideal" hull size, and the main thing they all share is that your personal playstyle (preferred map settings, level of interest in scoring, preferred ways to end a game) is a really big factor. For a long while, I was very fond of getting a game to a point where I could field some spectacularly expensive Large and Huge hulls. By the time I got comfy with TA, the workhorses of my fleets were Mediums, with a good swarm of Smalls backing them up.

If you're interested in looking at older threads on the subject, you should try using a search site like Google directly and add site:forums.galciv2.com to the end of your search string. The local Google search seems to ignore stuff older than some inscrutable date.

I put tiny ships on planets to stop transports that sneak through. The early part of the game I use trios of smalls, one beam ship, one gun ship, and one missile ship. The mix means that my ships work well against any neighbor. It also takes advantage of the combat rules as most of my neighbors are missing one or two defense types. Later I do the same with mediums. If it comes to war. I will mix fleets together where needed to handle what the enemy has. I may even break a fleet apart so that I can chase down more small ships. Mid to late game I create a few large ships. Once I am in a war, I look at what the other side(s) has and adjust if neccessary. In my last game the Peace Keepers showed up in force with a lot of powerfull ships. I started every planet building my largest ship while I researched gun techs fast. I then designed a huge ship with them and converted all builds to that. I had a few large ships and upgraded them all the the best gun ships my tech allowed. I rush built ships to get them out faster. (I also had 95% of the planets and was closing on my first assension victory when this happened. So I was the only one who could fight them.)

In an earlier game I went with the larger ships. The enemy kept slipping things through. I found that more, but smaller ships, gave me the flexibility to stop them.

I generally play peaceful games. My ships are more a deterent than a war machine. I fight when attacted. I am sure that my strategy would have problems on Suidial level and other play styles. But I have found it to work well for quite a few games.

Well, as far as I've seen, the best choice is to use the weapons with the best damage/size ratio if I want to build some of them in a useful ammount of time. Also, about fleet tactics, I've seen something strange.

Playing the Dread Lord champaign (which is nice but is also very repetitive and sometimes frustrating), I've built big battleship with the ... hm... Xalax coordinator. Not sure about the name, but it is the one that improves fleet defense despite of where the fleet is (so it doesn't matter if inside or outside own area of influence) and have equiped it with the ultimate shield defense. Then, I've fille the fleet only with mid-size hull ships: the big battleship was always the first one to be destroyed against the Dread Lords Doomray ships. Now I dont know if it was because that battleship was the ship with the highest specific armor value, because it was the larger and thus with more HPs or because it had a special fleet-empowering module which made it the most dangerous ship in teh fleet. Still, I think that in the next game I will increase the defense ratio of that ship even more to prevent it from being destroyed, just as a true carrier for our jet fighters. Against a super-specialized enemy, it seems a very good choice.

Also, mastering different kind of weapons, I'm starting to re-asses the power of weapons considering how the miniaturization affects them accordingly to the hull size where I'm next to equip them.

C u!

PS: where may I upload & share my starship models?

There's a fresh-for-2010 Show off your ship designs thread.

Ships are attacked in the order of highest attack/defense value. If you didn't have any weapons on the ship, it should have been left for last. I put that modual and a warp buble on a cargo hull and add it to my fleet. (No weapons or defenses, just the two specials and engines) It has never been hit until my other ships are gone.

http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=250 is a place that I have seen mods.

Very intelligent thread. I´ll give my own 2 cents about it.

Designing your ships to be cheap can make out a great difference - something not to underestimate esp. in the earlier stages of the game. Using Yor in TA as an example here, there's a big gap in the beginning-weapons cost: the Missile gives a ATT+2 - but costs 50mp, while the Mass-Driver costs only 8mp, giving ATT+1. It is much better now to use the cheaper Mass-Driver as your weapon, because the ships can be built 3 or 4 times faster as the costly one. Your ships will only have 1/2 the ATT - but you'll have 4 times of them, giving you 2 times the ATT-rating and 4 times the HP. So, if you wanna find out the efficiency of your ships design (in terms of Military Might ranking) you'll need to take the cost-factor also into account.

A further advantage of the "cheap ship design" is that your ships have a lower maint (which might be outweight by the fact that, over time, you'll have plenty more of them, though). Plus, an upgrade is more cheap, thus, it's still doable only to built empty hulls (who are maint free) and upgrade them to warcrafts once the need arises.

About the "free" survey-module: Don't built that wonder - built Eyes of the Universe instead. It gives much greater sensor-range without having to equipp anything.

I always go for miniaturization instead of huge hulls, and instead of big weapons I´ll use on type defenses. This is much more cheap, you're able to overrun the enemy during the beginning/mid parts of the game. And avoid being soked in by Tech inflation (esp. in TA) on weapons (which you can get/trade from the AI's)

Keep your fleets always busy at war against weaker opponents (even if you don't plan to invade their worlds) so they can destroy a lot of ships and gain some levels, and these "strong ships" I´d later upgrade to a fast and expensive best-weapon/defense ship that can intercept enemies alone.

I´ve made the experience that tiny hulls added to a fleet are almost always attacked first - and thus get destroyed. Thus, adding them prevents damage from the rest of the fleet who get an upgrade on a constant basis.

About the transport modul, well it depends. If your plan is to invade a planet with only 500 troops of course the normal modul stuck on a tiny hull is most cheap. But I wouldn't do it - because what do you want with a planet that has just a few people on it, it'll drag your economy down and the pop grow rate is really low. Better to leave some people there to get it over 2.500b people ASAP, and for that you'll need the big transports. The only reason for the "cheap low-yield transports" I see is if are going to attack a big planet by using Mass-Driver on it, decimating the population until you are able to take the planet normally.

Thanks for all of your naswers: I'll try some new strategies ASAP. About transport, I understand your logic quite well: basically, the point is that even if a transport ship is consumed while invading a planet, all the remaining soldiers will form the new population and so, even if the ships is basically lost after use, the same DOES NOT happen to soldiers. It is better to transport big number of soldiers also to being able of quickly re-build a planet economy after invasion, right?

But this cause another question: I've seen that it is extremely difficult to keep big pops happy! After reaching the 2.000 people on one single planet, it becomes really hard to keep the population happy especially if I don't controll any yellow/morale resource in the space. Even planets with happiness bonus tiles have big difficulties in keeping big number of population happy: building Virtual Reality centers is good but after the 2K limit their cost negate the bonus of a big population. I know that now we are off-topic but this is still connected to the transport matter, so... well, just give me your opinion if you have any strategy to grant high morale on overpopulated planets!

Avoid having them. Seriously, the morale cost of having a planet over 20 billion is actively counterproductive in terms of making money. Economic output is proportional to the square root of population, so keeping the population in the 15-15 b range with a couple more stock markets gives you more money than 20 b and a few more VRCs.

Yes, exactly. Also, you need troops at the front anyway, so keep pumping them constantly from your old outgrown planets to your new planets - even when there are no other planets to conquer for the moment, let these transports sit into your new worlds. Levelling your population adds greatly to your economy; and your overall population growth rate is also highest.

Yes, it's difficult, and therefore I wouldn' do it. Why do you wanna have your people happy anyway? It doesn't bring you anything good (except winning elections where you can raise taxes just the turn before....) but it'll decrease your tax income.

Honestly, this game is driven by money and the only thing you want from your people is to pay taxes. For this, settle for a 79% tax-rate. Your planets population should be so high that at least, an approval rate of 20% is sustained - thus no loss of population occurs. In the beginning your pop will be low, but later on, esp. after mining out moral-resources, this can be achieved with 15-20b people.

However, whenever you want popgrow you'll need to lower taxes so an approval rate of 100% occurs - do this until your money is drained or your planets are maxed out. Then go back to 79% taxes. This is much more efficient than having a constant approval rate of 45% or 75% throughout the year.

Orion, Willy is pretty right, superpop planets are an absolute drag. A 22b planet gives you approx. 4% more taxes as a 20b planet - if you then take into account that you'll probably have to built an add. farm + VRC (which could be Stock Markets) then this planet will give you fairly *lesser* taxes.

That's great. Then there is absolutely some nonsense about having 300% or 700% food bonus tiles on planets, if I can't use them. The only way is that they must be counter-balanced by morale bonus tiles.

Anyway, after playing some more I can confim the advantage of the military strategies described above (both for transport and ships), so thanks a lot to everybody

Wow I don't know where to start this is my two cents a survey module is not a sensor. It has a different purpose. I like cargo hulls for transports. They have a lot of room, unless you have large or huge hulls ships. There cheap. I would not worry about population, but if I did colony or transport ships from larger populations are good. A good morale booster is low taxes. My question is are rebellions still going on in the game, because that is what a low approval caused in dark avatar. I don't know what the best way to go. When you say that small size ships are not competitive. My friend John used them nicely, when I preferred huge hull ships. But his style is four factories and a power plant for every planet. Cost can counterbalanced by production. If you are building big ships have really good factories. If you don't have good miniturization. As far as weapons, what do the ai have? You don't need super weapons if your opponent has an attack of three. I one time had bought a tech from the korath clan. This tech increased hit points. Verses a small or tiny ship. After I increased my hit points on a cargo hull to 10. I had more room for everything else. Making a cargo hull a better idea if your a korath, or if you traded for the tech. All I really have to say your best engine and a sensor will help you a long ways, unless your fighting the yor or defending a planet. Sincerely the troll.