legendde

Join Date 01/2006

Ship classes in combat

Just flipping through the manual I read through one example of fleet combat where some fighters took on a dreadnaught. As I have found no hull size description I could be wrong but my guess is that a dradnaught is a huge ship.

Now, in this example, the dreadnaught had 40 hits and each of the fighters (4) 12 hits. Thus, 4 fighters can take out a capital ship???? Or at least insanely damage it????

I am amazed!

Sure, I do not know the production cost of those ships, which should be fairly equal considering the close battle it would be. However, I think it kind of *uncool* that capital ships should fall so easily.

Maybe I am overlooking something...

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When a ship fires, it fires all its weapons against ONE ship. It can't spread fire against multiple targets.

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BTW, the dreadnought will fall because it hasn't any defense. So any shot made by a fighter will do damage.

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When a ship fires, it fires all its weapons against ONE ship. It can't spread fire against multiple targets.

Maybe I am a bit ... limited... but that answer did not really have anything to do with my original post? Moreso, it opens new questions for me as then a capital ship would be limited even more. If I had a fleet of capital ships vs. a fleet of fighters the fighters could take out 1 capital ship per trun (theoretically) and my capital ship fleet could only take out one fighter per turn (which I guess it would do... hopefully so).

So why should I even build capital ships if I only lose flexibility and make myself all the more vulnerable with them. Capital ships then are just a waste of resources.

BTW, the dreadnought will fall because it hasn't any defense. So any shot made by a fighter will do damage.

Well, all things even, the fighters have no defense either. My point is exactly that, all things even 4 fighters in my mind should not be able to take out a dreadnaught (if that is a capital ship, which I can only assume from the name).

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. If I had a fleet of capital ships vs. a fleet of fighters the fighters could take out 1 capital ship per trun (theoretically) and my capital ship fleet could only take out one fighter per turn (which I guess it would do... hopefully so).

Well there are 2 differents things:
- for a given ship, when if fires, it fires all its weapon against the same ship. So a capital ship can't kill 2 fighters at the same time when it fires
- a ship in a fleet will target the same target than the ship in the fleet that have previously fired. But if that target has been destroyed by the previous fire, it will target a new one

So your fleet of n capital ship will be able to kill n fighters when it will fire.

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My point is exactly that, all things even 4 fighters in my mind should not be able to take out a dreadnaught

Well, generally, in various SF universe, if you haven't any shield, you won't survive to lots of hits made against you.

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So your fleet of n capital ship will be able to kill n fighters when it will fire.

OK, thanks, that is logical. However, I read somewhere that small ships get to fire first. In fact that is also in the manual: "All four of the fighters get to take their shot before the capital ship can respond". Thus the fighters still would be largely superior to the capital ships, as you can pack many more into a fleet and if they get to fire first they (at the ratio above) would take out a good many capital ships before those could respond. And a capital ship as it can only fire on one opponent would probably have excess firepower (i.e. with its attack it could probably take out 2-3 fighters but as it can only fire on one only one is destroyed).

I am not in beta so that are just some things that sound imbalanced to me. Right now my miliary strategy would be: Only build fighters as you rarely lose firepower vs. capital ships that *could* loose firepower quite frequently as it would take much less to destroy the target than the punch they have. That would be a sad strategy as I enjoy battleships and the like.

So the question really is, are the ship sizes balanced or is the game leaning toward smaller ships having more utility. In the various dev posts and stories by beta testers I have rarely seen a bigger ship than a light cruiser, most of the ships were tiny or small hull sizes...

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Well, generally, in various SF universe, if you haven't any shield, you won't survive to lots of hits made against you.

Well, take Star Wars as an example. How many fighters would it take to terminate a Victory II Class Star Destroyer (capital ship). Both sides are on the same tech level (So really it does not matter if you factor in shields or not). Would the number be closer to 4 or to 40?

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So really it does not matter if you factor in shields or not

I am not speaking of tech level, I am speaking of the fact that the ship is protected by defense. What happen when all shield generators are disabled?

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However, I read somewhere that small ships get to fire first

Well, the attacker shot first.

In the various dev posts and stories by beta testers I have rarely seen a bigger ship than a light cruiser, most of the ships were tiny or small hull sizes...

Well, Drengin tends to build lots of fighter. And I guess it is easier for testing purpose not to have to research huge capital ship and wait important time to get them build.

BTW, small fighters doen't have lots of space in them. So it is difficult to put engine (for having a better speed), life support (to improve range) and lots of weapons.

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Y-Wing could do the trick ..

but i now understand the point .. it's all about logistics !
if the number of ships is limited in a fleet the only way to increase firepower is to raise firepower ships ..
so shield is a way to force ennemies to increase inital firepower

i regret that different kind of weapon can't target different ships ..

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Just had a look at the example you mentioned, legendde... A little clarification - the fighters in the example do attack first because they are the attackers, not because they are fighters. The attacker always gets the first shot.

To the question of balancing smaller and larger ships... first of all, a 40 HP ship isn't that capital - there are larger hulls in the game.

And from my experience with the beta, I think it's very well balanced. The trick is the way ships are contructed - depending on hull size, you've got a limited number of slots you can fill... for example, 20 slots for a small vessel. Different weapons, engines, life support, defenses etc use up a different amount of space (usually somewhere between 5 and 15 slots).

So, while building large number of fighters instead of capital ships is an option and has its merrits, it also has one big disadvantage: Fighters are just to small to give them everything - a good engine, weapons, shields and life-support (which increases the range of the ship).
So, it is for example possible to build fighters with decent weapons and shields - but they will be slow and short-ranged and only useful to stay in orbit to defend your planets. Or you could build them without any shields and give them better engines instead, thus creating fast but fragile Interceptors, like the TIE-Fighters from StarWars.

But Capital Ships, on the other hand, are big enough to give them a decent life support AND a solid engine AND a few weapon systems AND shields... thus, when comparing a group of fighters with one capital ship for the same price, the fighters might be equal under certain conditions, but the capital ships over-all effectiveness in different situations is much higher.

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Ah, Peace Phoenix brought up the same point while I was typing, but he was quicker and not so long-winded as I was. *g*

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Y-Wing could do the trick ..

4 Y-Wings... Hum, they first would have to get through the Star Destroyers Fighter shield (which for discussion purposes should count as a weapon of the Star Destroyer) and that would be rather difficult for the Y-Wings.

I think that sadly there are no carriers in GalCiv2, those would be my favorites

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I would like to clarify a point here on hard points...

There are a few pods and extensions available in Beta 5 that add well, a proverbial metric butt-ton of hard points to your ship.

One of my favorite designs consists of a small fighter with cylon type wings swept backwards and the gull wings coming out on a slight angle ( I will try to save a copy next time I am actually playing) as the cylon wings extend under the gull wings I add a extension pod for mounting my weapons. This leaves alot of free hardpoints on the hull that I like to add ecm, sheilds, life support and sensors.

W/R
Suralle StrayKat

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Another thing to note is that the fighters in GC2 aren't the fighters you have in most SF. These are full starships, just built on the smallest hull practical. In fact, as far as space goes, a tiny hull is more than 1/5 the size of the largest hulls (unless they've changed something in the gamma, I haven't had any games last until huge hulls in the gamma).

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If the dreadnought has strong defenses optimized to the fighter's weapon and the fighters no defenses or defenses which are not optimal to counter the dreadnought's, the dreadnought might destory the fighter fleet before it receives any damage! The choice of weapons and defenses makes a world of difference!

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wow i can't believe a dreadnought can only attack one fighter at a time! I would think something like that would have like 20 spray cannons on there for fighters alone. i guess GC2 weaponry is more akin to Star Trek or something. If so i can dig it.

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after thinking about it for a bit i totally agree with you on your position SD

. It's not like starwars, where a tie fighter is literally 1 millionth the mass of a capital ship. if a fighter is 1/5 the size of a capital ship, it makes a lot more sense to have the game balanced that way.

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Ashbery76

Join Date 02/2002

+36

The fighters in GC2 are really frigate class starships in sci-fi terms.

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I was reading somewhere about military starbases. as long as were on the subject of star wars, are these like death stars?

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i gotta question too, along the line of star wars, will the new ship building allow us to make the ships that we all know and have come to love over the past history of star wars? I mean, my guess is there aren't going to be different shaped hulls (like sphere's for tie-fighters). But anyone could be wrong, and i sure hope i am!

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Now, in this example, the dreadnaught had 40 hits and each of the fighters (4) 12 hits. Thus, 4 fighters can take out a capital ship???? Or at least insanely damage it????

Coincidentially this is pretty accurate to what can happen in RL. Capital ships absolutely need protection from smaller vessels, by smaller vessels. The game mechanics don't model this directly, but obviously in the example you provide a few smaller ships would have ensured the survival of the larger ship, and possibly the whole fleet.

There are many historical examples of small ships and aircraft significantly damaging or destroying capital ships. In fact in the Pacific in WWII a great many ships were sunk solely by relatively flimsy aircraft (compared to the massiveness and firepower of the ships they were attacking). Google it if you're interested.

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O.K. I'm gonna add in my own 2 cents worth of rather uninformed opinion.

This is based on the assumption that combat takes place over turns, which I'm not too sure of as I've not had the privilage of playing.

Legendde, you were saying how it was unfair to have a capitol ship's extra weapons wasted by not being able to kill multiple enemies in a single turn.

However, perhaps I could propose that we look at a 'turn' in another way. Afterall, each turn is basically a set amount of time.

If we view each turn as being x amount of seconds, it makes a little more sense as to why even a battleship couldn't destroy multiple targets over such a small amount of time amount of time. Afterall, those ships turrets have to lock on to a target before firing. If the locked target is destroyed, those turrets have to retrack another target before firing again.

In the time it takes to do that, the remaining fighters get to take their shot at the ship.

Okay, okay, I know in real life battleships can track and destroy multiple targets simultaneously, but lets suspend our belief for a second so we can enjoy the game.

I hope I made even a small amount of sense.

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needystranger, its not about one turret being about to track multiple targets simultaneously, but a captial ship worth hundreds of billions of credits simply having more than one gun. especially given that a giant ship would be ineffectual at maneuvering around trying to hit super-fast fighters flying around it with its one stupid gun.

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if you can shoot a large bulky starship with a weapon (laser/plasma/focused gravity beam/.9c lead slugs/controlled micro-singularities/etc) then there is no such thing as a "super-fast" fighter that you cannot shoot. Your guns already have to move very quickly. In addition, in GC2, the largest ships are just as nimble in combat as the smallest of ships. So a tiny fighter tries to swoop, that huge battleship attacking it goes just as fast and swoops just as easy. So there isn't anywhere for a fighter to quickly dodge out of the way.

This isn't Star Wars. It's more like Star Trek. Its a couple of Enterprise class ships fighting a more numerous fleet of Birds of Prey.

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