Is ship combat over-engineered?

I don't think it is over engineered, but them my favorite part of the game is designing ships putting them into fleets and letting them battle it out with my enemies, I'm a real conquest victory fan.

On the other hand I think they really need to give planetary invasion more love in the future. 

And what factors do you use to decide how to equip your ships and put them into fleets? If nobody can satisfactorily answer that question beyond "bigger/faster/stronger is better", then the system is over-engineered.

It changes, depends who I'm fighting and what race I'm playing as, I try and produce ships for specific opponents where I can, though obviously I have to tailor tech picks too. I like to use thrusters for improved combat speed and long range weapons to get in the first Volley.

I actually think they could do more to make the combat more complex, such has having ship with long range weapons try and keep out of their opponents range while firing.

Can you give an example of how you choose to equip ships for specific opponents factoring in the new elements of the combat system?

I think the problem may be less a matter of whether it's over-engineered, and more a problem of not knowing what various abilities actually do.  There are some abilities that are fairly self-explanatory, like increased fire rate for a weapon type, but many others that are hidden.  For instance, a player will know that more accuracy and more combat speed is good, but there's the question of "How much will a 20% accuracy boost increase my DPS?" and "How much will a 20% speed boost reduce damage from different enemy/weapon types?".

Since you need to choose between those specialty modules and more weapons or defenses, the game needs to better communicate how these modules will help you out - otherwise, your ability to make an informed decision is crippled.

For instance, the ship designer could let you see your effective DPS versus various default ships of different sizes and speeds, and it could also let you see the DPS you take from various default ships with different weapon setups.

Don't forget the ship role plays a major difference. I've illustrated a few times on my stream that a battle where I had better values ended in defeat the enemy had Escorts that destroyed all my assault ships first then escorts. Had I brought a better fleet composition I could have easily won the battle. 

Yes, this is what I was getting at. So assuming ship role makes a difference, how could you have known prior to the battle what fleet composition you would need? Did these defeats inform how you composed your next fleet, if so how? What would have happened if the enemy disbanded the escort fleet and composed something completely different?

You don't know.  That's the perils of combat, if you knew in advance exactly what to build, every battle would be too easy.  

If true, that means fleet composition is not a strategic aspect of the game. Combat is then highly influenced by hope and luck instead of planning and strategy.

I find it much more interesting to not know fully what i'm against. Knowing everything beforehand for me is boring. I prefer lots of little chances taken which I see each fleet's ship as a chance. As far as focusing on weapons, I do not go for a specific one. I find researching each weapon type equally and distributing ships using those type equally a good strategy. The problem is not in the battle, but the AI itself. It highly values missiles so I always put anti-missile equipment on my ships. Which is the AI needing to be improved, not the battle mechanics.

In my experience you can not, nor can the AI, change its fleet 'on a dime.' I have older fleets that need replacing, but the cost of upgrading each ship is a lot. So I have to build new fleets with the newer techs. As well the AI does not immediately upgrade. If I destroy its fleets it has to rebuild them. I've never experienced the AI or myself able to change our fleets instantly. You can change the composition of hull sizes by ejecting ships and moving them out of one fleet, into another. I do not see how that is a problem with battle mechanics.

For using different hull sizes it seems to depend on what you want to do. The AI doesn't spread its fire out amongst ships, so it overloads on one target. So heavily armored ships can be useful, if the AI decides to target them. It may not. Larger ships can take more damage and potentially do more damage, but the damage that would exceed a small hulled ship's hit points will be applied to it. More hitpoints, but not necessarily better.

There are more examples, but I do not want to make this post too long.

What I think is much more of an issues is the AI's ability to react to your weapon techs, especially if you equally research them. Same for defense techs. The AI seems to just send missile based ships and by the time it decides to change designs they're decimated.  The AI also doesn't defend well with its fleets. In combat the AI wins only because it has better techs due to difficulty level bonuses.

What it means is people are still learning the combat system and the devs are still tweaking it.  You do not know in advance how it works.  You get to learn by doing.  Make fleets, put them in battles, come back here and tell us all what you found. That is part of the fun of a brand new game.  Nobody is an expert yet.  Illuana pointed to a video of how it worked in one instance.  Did it tell you anything? 

Well, my strategy is not very creative. It is based on staying ahead in tech and presenting overwhelming force. If I am behind in tech and don't have superior production capability, I am probably in trouble with a competent AI.

The GCIII combat innovations that seem most important from a game designers standpoint, are the support ships. I have not yet been motivated to explore this strategy, in spite of it being an interesting option.

I have been playing mostly on normal, and enjoying the game. If I move up in difficulty I will be less likely to muster overwhelming force, and I will need to try different things.

The other thing to understand is what will be coming in expansions and dlc. Combat and conflict between civilizations is one of the biggest pillars of the game and at the same time something that may be even harder to really expand upon in future updates.

I guarantee you in the future of the game, diplomacy, economy, further customization and more areas open to modding, and far more in depth mechanics and content for all the pillars of the 4X's in the game are coming. It seems combat centric now because it had to be and for many players is the first and foremost way they'll want to win the game. Of course wanting to win by cultural or economic or scientific means is always a draw too and possible in the game as it stands. In future expansions though those are the elements that will see the most gain. If you have any doubt go back and look at base Gal Civ 2, then compare it to what the Ultimate Edition is and you'll see a base line of what to expect.

I promise you have nothing to worry about.

What I meant by this, and it's hard to be succinct about it so I didn't try to explain, is that let's say you have a large battle that is close, with only one or two ships remaining. The enemy's next fleet can have a completely different composition without needing to spend time researching new techs. So it's unwise to take what you learned from the last battle and try to guess what the enemy's next fleet is going to look like. This makes fleet composition not really a strategic aspect of combat.

In the context of the rest of your post, I think you are okay with that, and if so that is perfectly fine.

I wouldn't say he pointed to a video. He mentioned his stream. I would like to see it though. Illuana, where can I see this?

This doesn't make much sense.  Just because you don't know in advance what the enemy's fleet composition is, doesn't mean you don't employ strategy when you design your own fleets. The result of the battle is decided by seeing whose strategy was stronger, yours or your opponent. 

 In most strategy games, you don't know exactly what the enemy is doing, does that mean there's no strategy in most strategy games? 

You can use the diplomancy screen to determine what units the AI has built. Then you can make an eductated guess. How many escorts, assaults what are their stats. ETC. 

The tooltip for teh ship role will display it's targetting priorities. You can use this and the ships attributes to make a guess on the composition needed. In general, you need enough defenders to abosrb the damage while your attackers kill the enemies defenders. If you don't have any escorts your support ships and capital ships will be high priority for attackers. This is best explained with examples

One comment taken out of context. I'm not saying lack of perfect knowledge = no strategy. I'm saying given some knowledge, specifically the composition of one of your enemy's fleets, you cannot predict the likely composition of the next fleet he builds. He is not constrained to building a certain subset of compositions until the appropriate technology is researched. He could compose the next fleet entirely differently, so knowledge you gained from the first battle is meaningless, and it is not logical to use that knowledge to plan your next fleet. Planning ahead is part of strategy. If you expect a certain action by your enemy and you are wrong, you executed poor strategy. If you expect a certain action by your enemy even though there is no basis for that expectation, there is no strategy.

It's not one comment taken out of context, I quoted your entire post.  You said that without prior knowledge of your enemies fleet, then fleet composition is not a strategic part of the game.  That's incorrect.  When you design and build a fleet, you have a strategy in mind.  The question is how well your enemy does or does not counter it.

It just seems like a strange complaint to me.  In no other strategy game that I can  think of, do you have prior knowledge of what your enemy is doing or what his armies look like.  What fun would that be?

It is out of context with the entire thread, which I created by the way, and all my comments in it.

That being said, I do see where you are coming from. You can have a strategy without having any clue what the enemy is doing. "All escorts didn't work so well last time, let's mix in some interceptors". Personally, I like to think a little deeper than that, a la Sun Tsu's "Art of War". Know thy enemy. "I think next fleet he's going to mix in more assault ships, so I'm going to add some guardians." Because enemy fleet composition can essentially be a roll of the dice, I feel the mechanic is arbitrary, and that there is a loss of at least some tactical element.

I would very much like to see a good espionage system added, to gain insights into an enemies strengths and weaknesses.