Don't you like seeing the multiple new weapons effects in the battle viewer?

I was always disappointed with GalCiv I's combat system.  It was basically race for the battle ship or Avatar and dominate everyone.

Now, the "best" weapon depends on who you are fighting.  When I was playing this weekend, it was fun to watch the Drengin adapt to my weapons and me adapting to theirs.  Because as good as my photon torpedos were, their Droid Sentries were nullifying them, I was better off with relatively wimpier Plasma weapons instead because their ships had no beam defense.

Making the battles less strategic by removing the rock-paper-scissors system would be crippling the tactics. And you'd like to do this, just so that players spend more time focusing on the non-military portions? What about all of the people who are really excited about the depth of the military strategy? The goal is to flesh out ALL aspects of gameplay, not remove them at the expense of one another.

Even if changing you changed the damage type to armor type system to be a toggle feature, I doubt you'd accomplish what you're after. Your're still going to be vulnerable, as a diplomatic player, to massive physical force. ( power politics anyone? ) You might spend less time thinking about your descisions if all you have to do is press" build ship, upgrade guns, build ship, upgrade guns" over and over, but you're STILL focusing a great amount of your resources on military goals if that is what you do.

Think of it this way. You can actually rely LESS on massive fleets now, if you just take the time to analyze your opposition. Whereas before, you would need a fleet of strength 3x to defeat a strength 3x, now you might only need a fleet of strength 2x if you make good choices about damage types. Allowing you to spend all of those extra resources you saved on culture and diplomacy.

How bout them apples?

yea. im currently in a game where i do alot of economics versus military. you have to remeber the two go together. i've boosted my income way up by er... assimilating minor races. more planets, more tax payers, more money. TIP build and upgrade as many farms as possible without them a planet cant hold more than 3000 people.

Or do you have to make a couple of farms on every planet?

Correct.

I find the weapon split to be completely pointless as it stands. Here's why:

Missiles rule all. At least at the lower tech, and I've never played a game where anything past tier 2 weapons were deployed so for.

Why do missiles rule? Simple: Each unit of missiles is twice as strong as the other weapon types. But defenses are the same, regardless. Meaning that Missiles pack twice the punch, making them twice as good in all circumstances.

What's this lead to? Watch out as I pack as many missile components on all my war ships. Which, incidentally, are always small. Why? Missile armed fighters (fighter swarms) rule all, at all times. Why? Because you can pack more missiles into a unit of small ships to form a combat unit (fleet) out of then any other hull types.

What's this mean? The AI gets into point defense. Very heavy. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see the AI building medium ships with a big beam 1 attack and point defense of 14 (with us all at just the start of tier 2 weaponry, but the AI heavily invested in Missile Defense as hard as it can) in most of my games. Do you know what happens? My fleets of fighter swarms always triumph--- because they are packing 2, sometimes 3, missile components on each hull, and my swarms of small maxxed missile fighters number 3 or 4 units each (sometimes 5, in the later stages). Eats the AI alive. 14 PD doesn't protect much against repeated 6 points missile attacks so that after just a few hits, the PD cruiser is destroyed, while the fighters small small hull *can* take the same number of hits from their weapon. Power balance: Missile figher swarm.

The AI, however, is completely immune to itself at that point, because its researched missile defense and put it so strongly onto its ships. Remember, defense counts for 1/2 against the other type of weaponry. So all those max PD ships its built cannot hurt each other. But I wipe the galaxy of the AI, and conquer as fast as I can ship out the troopers.

VERY boring. GC1 offered more challenge, racing to battleships and AMM. Unlike GC2, where the Missile Swarm is good from the very first turn after you have researched missile tech.

If Missiles were reduced from being TWICE as good as the other weapons, then I'd just do the same thing. The only real effect of using 1 rating weapons is that you have to make a lot more replacements. But still not a bit of real challenge because there is *zero* R-P-S system in the current set up.

I was hoping the latest AI would do better at defeating fighter swarms, but it doesn't. The problem is the balance between weapons and defense. Defense just isn't worth wasting time on for the first few cycles of warfare tech. Putting defense on a ship is a waste of space that would be better served putting in, by priority/best useage: a) another weapon of the same type as already on the bird; engines (improves getting the first shot); or, lastly, c) sensors (seeing your target).

Right now, defense is absolutely worthless. "Strike firstest with the mostest weapon points" will always win in GC2. It takes too much defense to stop an opponent's weapons. Having a bigger hull doesn't grant enough hit points to make up for that. Not with the current game balance. As it stands now, GC2 has the military challenge of a wet noodle. I know Brad will try to improve that, but without changing the current battle system on a very large scale, it just isn't going to happen.

You know, I've thought about how to change the current balance point. But as long as a battle unit (fleet) of fighters can mount more single weapon firepower then their larger brethren at the same logistics level, the balance of the game will always favor the swarm. The balance point is determined by when you can mount enough defense to ignore all incoming attacks--- and that takes a mega, mega amount currently (ie, will very infrequently happen, if ever).

What if we simplified defense versus attack, so that it could happen? Let's say the game is changed so that so that 1 PD always cancels 1 Missile (of same tech tier), you still end up in an arms race of just sticking more missiles into the same battle unit then your opponent can stick PDs on their individual ships. Again, the most efficent research strategy is to just research the next weapon tech in your choosen weaponry, so that you can fit more missiles into your ships. And with this behavior, you drive all your current and future opponents (ie, ALL THE AI) to either try to get a higher missile tech then you, or race for a tier higher PD then you. Your ships will eat their ships up for snacks if they are trying to play catch up. Ultimately, this means that Brad will have to make the AI pursue missile (and PD) tech with extreme zeal just to keep up-- and that would force all players to go very hard into missiles until there's enough whining about the system that Brad has to make radical changes, or just abandon the whole thing in favor of something else in GC3 (it will take a while to get everyone going single weapon fighter swarm, after all).

Now, I ask you this--- if a single weapon pursuit is *always* better (and it always will be, so long as an attacker has a chance of hitting a defender with that defense), then what's the point of having 3 flavors of weapons? Other then as a special effect on the galactic map/battle viewer?

These are just my experience and ponderings. However, play the available beta to see what I mean. It's better to have 3 fighters with the same weapon then 2 cruisers (medium hulls). It's better to have 2 cruisers (medium hulls) then 1 battleship (large hull). Etc etc etc. The driving determiner is the amount of weapons, not the amount of defense, you can put into that battle unit. Whoever has the most, always wins. Which means--- why bother with defense? The efficent answer is: you won't. If you can stick more weapons on a group of small hulls for your current logistics then larger hulls, then why bother with bigger hulls? The efficent answer is: You won't. If you aren't wasting time researching defenses or bigger hulls, what that mean? You get a weapon and logistics lead. This means, you can mount even more weapons on more small hulls faster then your opponents. Your opponents will be driven to research defense even harder, falling further and further behind on the military power (and the ability to resist military incursions). A very vicious, reinforcing cycle.

Here's a good bet: GC3 will feature a completely different combat system. And the balance between the hulls be very, very great, rather then just a minor bit of hit points and ever less useful construction space. Humm... you know, if they made those changes now to GC2, it could really change the "most efficent" path to be more evenly divided between offence and defence, then you'd end up with more then just one optimal military strategy.

Star Pilot, you are totally incorrect I hate to say.

First off, missiles use a lot more space and cost a lot more than other weapons. 

Secondly, defenses cost a lot less than weapons both in money and space.  So it's not particularly expensive to counter a particular weapon.

The "Best" weapon is the weapn that your opponent has the least defense technology for.

In a game tonight, I had heavily invested in mass-driver technology.  The AI had gone beam weapons.  Once you're locked into a particular weapon choice, it's very very hard to go back and try to catch up through another one if the other guy adapts.  So we were in a race to try to outpace the other's defense in that area.

Even if I wanted to switch to missiles at the time, it would take way too long to catch up.

A couple of comments to Star Pilot's post above -

By having to keep building new ships and losing them you are incurring an economic penalty vs maint costs and losing the opportunity for the crews to gain experience

Depending on the distance they have to go, you are impacting your ability to fight prolonged battles and to maintain force projection in an area (influence effect?)

If these are not sufficient to balance the play, however, could effects on the (global) home front be implemented? - morale decreases as no "local heros" ever come back, economic/ effective population reductions as eligible draftees [and possibily their families] drop out of the above ground economy (What?? put me in one of them thar suicide boats?), or maybe ship desertions. The trigger could be based on survivability - # battles * ships vs ships lost? or something.

Great victories are wonderful, and use of asymmetrical warfare smart - but only if the warriors have a reasonable chance to LIVE THROUGH IT. This is a strategy game - it would be entirely appropriate for something that seems to be an advantage in one area to have seriously negative effects in another (depending on the parameters of the race in question.)

Brad... I can always get more missile value out of the same tier and minor revision then I can get out of the other 2 weapons. The space difference between missiles and the others is trivial for all hull sizes. You just cannot get a higher beam or driver for the same amount of space on a hull, due to that doubling of missile strength.

Square or half, the difference doesn't actually matter when you are still in the teens.

The economic cost of building those lost small ship is trivial. They can be built quickly by worlds just behind your frontier line. Unlike larger ships, which have to be built at your core worlds. That's a serious difference in travel time on the larger maps. Indeed, in my times of the Holy Extermination, my Core Worlds are churning out the Dark Invader fleets (very fast transports), and my minor sized or new conquered worlds are churning out the missile swarms. Works great. Eats the AI alive.

Also, with the missile swarm strategy, it's easier to rotate ships out for repair (and rotate in the new replacements), and still have an effective combat unit. When you have 4 units in the fleet, and you rotate out the half damaged unit, you've only diminished your fleet by 25% of its attack value. And when you have fleets of 5 units, its an even smaller drop. Plus, you have a lot more reinforcements arriving, as more worlds are able to kick out the smaller units. When you are doing medium hulls or bigger, you are only able to fit 2, and eventually 3, medium hulls into a unit. You won't get more then 2 large hulls in a unit (unless you are on the biggest maps), so most of the time with anything other then small ships, you are losing 50% of your fighting strength. Fleeting *really matters*. One lone medium hull is easy meat for everything else. One lone large hull is easy meat... One lone small missile swarm ship is a replacement for another unit that is a ship down or just building up. It's loss is trivial, as the empire chugs out more faster then the AI can blow them up. In war, this means your opponent has lost.

The ship aspects of GC2 are just a much more boring game then GC1. As soon as you have the Missile Tech-2 (not sparrow, the first one up from it), the AI is *dead*. And the AI doesn't go missile heavy on its missile boats, so you will always be ahead of it. The AI has this odd idea that defense and bigger hulls are superior. Completely bonkers at the current component space usage versus damage done.

Brad, you just admit that you were just racing for more of the same weapon. So your playstyle says you agree with my assessment of the combat system (you just think that missiles are a poor choice of weapon because you think you can get more beam/bullets in the same hull!). Try out a medium map, rare/rare/rare game, so that you go directly into midgame tactics (the only worlds available for colonizing at that setting are the home world give-me's (ie, Mars, Wisp, etc) in over 90% of the time). Play that setting for a few games. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about. It lets you jump straight into the meat and potatoes of GC2. The diplomacy, the deal making and tech trading, the consolidating of your empire, the arms rush to make sure you won't be picked on, and the rush to grab all the minor races worlds as fast as possible, so that you can then turn around and crush the other majors/work on your cultural/tech victory.

I've played the ranges available. And what holds true at Medium/rare/rare/rare holds true at all other settings. The only difference is that on Large/many/many/many, I get much further in the tech tree before we reach "mid-game" status (ie, when the AI starts targetting the minor races and the weak majors for conquest). I've gone heavy in beam and mass drivers in games, and missiles still are better (can create ships with more bang value) as long as I have the same TIER (ie, Tier 1 Beam-Version 5, (maxxed) can just *match* Tier 1 Missile-Version 2 on a small hull).

When it only takes 5 turns to run a whole tier or weaponry (due to such a strong economy and research empire), its easy enough to design ships with maxxed weaponry. Missiles, due to their double value, always win. And the trivial difference in space isn't enough to make a difference in final count, bracket for bracket. Sure, my max beamer might have room for some better sensors on it... but I can build a complete sensor boat (an AWACS) and deploy that with the missile swarm. It doesn't need to be fleeted to be in the same space and provide its eyes to my knowledge. Sure, my max missile boat may not even have the extra engine that a max beamer can fit, but as my speed tech goes up, it doesn't really matter.

Their is zero balance. Most players, once they've tried misiles, will always go back to them. They give better bang value. When everyone else have Defenders and Star Furies (those scary Beam 1 small craft), I have my SM-2 Stingers... which pack twice the bang into the same hull. That's 6 missile at Log 9 values, and 8 missile at Log 12. And that's just using base small hull and the tech above Sparrow. By the time I've got a miniturization and the Missile tech below Harpoon, that small hull can pack 3 Missile components, yielding a SM-6 Slammer. And if that's packed into a Log 12 fleet, that means it has an attack value of 24 missile. Trivially done. Such a unit will regularly crush an AI Cruiser of Beam 2 and PD 14 with no loses, and if my little SM-6 fleet gets first attack, they'll wipe out a fleet of 2 such cruisers with no losses. Mind you, that Cruiser B2 PD-14 costs much, much more then my SM-6s, takes longer to make, and takes longer for the AI to get to the front. In a war, that means the AI is doomed.

Try it for yourself. Weapons always beat defense. It's simple math. It's not even worth bothering with defense if you cannot have a significantly higher defense value then what is shooting at you.

Now, if you want the game to be whoever builds the mostest missile swarm fighters the fastest wins, then you've got an excellent game balance. If you want it to be whoever builds the mostest [weapon] fighters the fastest wins, bring missiles in line with all other weapon systems (ie, have them take the same space and do the same damage). If you want it to be 50%/50% over what will win, the Naked Swordsman or the pocket knife weilding Heavily Armored warrior, then defense has to be seriously changed in how it resists attacks. Defense is not an effective choice for star ships. Right now, the Naked Swordsman always win.

I'd just like to support the three weapons/shields system and I hope the balance between them is better, so that the missile swarm strategy is impossible (useless).