Best and worst kinds of weapons

Full analysis

from GalCiv2 Forums
I have done an analysis of the three categories of weapons as presented in the 1.0X version of GalCiv2. And I have come to a conclusion: the developers made some significant mistakes.

First, missiles are a waste of time. Period. I don't care if your enemy has ships with shields and armor; never even consider investing in missile tech. I will proceed to prove why a bit further down.

Second, beam weapons are the best weapon. Period. Once again, I don't care if the enemy has tons of shields; beams will win out in the end.

Well, here's why.

There are several important statistics for weapons. The damage a weapon does is pretty significant, but more importantly are is size, the damage-to-size ratio, and the cost in terms of technology to get to that particular weapon.

Missiles are crappy weapons because they have an incredibly low damage-to-size ratio compard to the others. They are also extremely big weapons, which has inherient problems. If you've got a ship that has 7 or less empty space on it, you're screwed if you've only got missiles. Every missile requires 8 or more space, so you can't fit even a lower-grade missile weapon onto that ship. Meanwhile, there's a "low-end" laser weapon that goes down to 4 in size, so you can almost always patch up any holes in your ship designs. Ships not using missiles will slightly out-damage ships using missiles.

I examined 4 separate arbitrary epochs of weapon tech. I found the following:

3:1 size:damage ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 3325. Size is 6.
Missile: Tech cost is 4650. Size is 9.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 5475. Size is 6.


2:1 size:damage ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 7725. Size is 6.
Missile: Tech cost is 9850. Size is 9.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 11375. Size is 6.


3:2 size:damage ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 9525. Size is 5.
Missile: Tech cost is 15650. Size is 9.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 15975. Size is 4.


1:1 size:damage ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 22225. Size is 6.
Missile: Tech cost is 31250. Size is 8.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 38775. Size is 4.


Notice how, for each ratio, beam weapons cost less in tech points, and tend to be comperable in size to ballistic weapons. Ballistic weapons are very expensive tech-wise, and missile weapons are incredibly bulky compared to the other two.

If you have two people in an arms race, and they have equal research, the guy researcing beam weapons will win. He will have the more powerful weapons sooner. Or, he can adjust his sliders a bit, and get more production out of his worlds, thus providing him more ships of equal strength to the other guy.

Now, of course, weapons are thwarted by defenses. So, in theory, if sheilds were less expensive tech-wise than the other weapons, this would all balance out. I performed an analysis on defenses as well. Looking at 4 similar epochs, I discovered this:

2:1 size:defense ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 2750. Size is 4.
Missile: Tech cost is 2570. Size is 4.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 3500. Size is 6.


1:1 size:defense ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 7150. Size is 3.
Missile: Tech cost is 6270. Size is 3.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 5900. Size is 5.


2:3 size:damage ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 16650. Size is 4.
Missile: Tech cost is 10470. Size is 3.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 15200. Size is 4.


1:2 size:damage ratio:

Beam: Tech cost is 19650. Size is 3.
Missile: Tech cost is 19970. Size is 4.
Ballistic: Tech cost is 20200. Size is 3.


Beam defenses are often more expensive than other defenses in terms of tech costs. Ballistic defenses are actually worse overall (there are even some bugs where the next defense is actually worse than the previous one, thus making things harder), so choosing ballistic weapons has the advantage of being countered by a poor defense. However, missile defenses are actually quite good, compared to the other two. So, not only do missiles suck in their own right, but they go up against the worst of the three defenses.

So, in short. Get your opponent to use missiles (or only attack people that do). And use lasers. Always. Never research anything else. It's better to put your research into beams and get further down the tech tree than to bother to research one of the other two. And never, ever use missiles.

Perhaps the developers should consider truly balancing the weapons and defenses by making them all identicle. I don't think there's an easy way to balance the 3 primary factors (damage:size ratio, ) sufficiently without creating one clearly superior choice. At the very least, a modder should consider doing that. If so, I would suggest simply copying the beam and point-defense trees, as they are the best in each category.

BTW, I am aware that I did not include an analysis of the actual cost of a weapon in this. It is possible that beam weapons are basically more expensive than others. However, as I pointed out, you can offset cost by simply taking some of that research and funneling it into military production.
26,141 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Did you take the "nano ripper" into account? That baby appears about halfway through the mass driver tech tree and is at least twice as good as anything available at the same time in the other trees. I agree with you about missiles though. I usually go with mass drivers up until the nano ripper and then tech up the beam tree, usually I can trade or steal a high level beam tech off the AI so I don't have to research all the beam weapons from scratch. Usually my high level beams arrive just in time to counter the masses of armor the AI puts on its ships to try and counter the nano ripper

Missiles might be good if the computer researched Xeno ethics and used the "good" defences, since they give you unbelievably good armor and shield, but only a so-so anti missile defence.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the few games I've played, always seems that beam weapons have the best power to size ratios not taking into account building cost.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
do your calculation take into account the total tech cost from the very beginning or are they simply for that particular tech?
Also any weapon can be effective if the AI's haven't researched any of the defence tech's for it, so it doesn't really matter if they are perfectly balanced.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well cost of weapons is a little more complex then making a ship take longer to build, the maintance cost of a ship is based on its initial cost 2.5% of it to be exact and simply changing the sliders around won't change that. Personally I'm a mass drivers man, I like huge low maintance fleets, last game I had top military and a surplus of 25000bc a turn
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Post deleted - would help if I read the whole of the first post before replying!
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think this could be fixed by adding some variety in the weapons. Rather than making each weapon path strictly linear, have some techs where the weapon uses 1-2 less points of space, but takes 10x-20x the production cost to build. That would make for interesting tradeoffs. (Or make the research cost higher for the extra-miniaturized weapons.)

Regarding armor, I found that balanced spending is best. 1-1-1 is 3 points of defense against any attack.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Cost analysis at very endgame (http://miscfile.alienharmony.com/galciv2/ship-weapons.htm):
I'm don't understand this data perfectly, esp. size mod, and I'm guessing that certain techs go with certain alignments, since I don't have the game to hand.
Name- Damage- Size- Size Mod- Cost
Disruptor III 8-5-4-70
Positronic Torpedo II 15-11-2-70
HD Spike Driver IV 5-4-4-42

I remember that different weapons had different strengths at different points in the game. The devs had a chart in one of their journals, I believe.

Take into consideration that one late game missile has about the same damage and size as two beam weapons, but costs 70 to the beam weapon pair price of 140. Quite a big markup, twice as much for near the same effect? Still don't play well well with smaller hulls, but if I try missiles I go Drengin, weapon bonus, ship bonus, war party, bigger is better. Not that horrible a combination.

I tend to go mass driver with swarms and a heavy military starbase assistance strategy. At the end, the cost-damage ratio is fairly similar to that of the beam weapons, but the size-damage ratio is in favor of the beams. However, if you are not going for equivalent firepower (for whatever crazy reason), the mass driver is superior at this stage. Since I tend to have more constructors on hand than I can actually hope to use, I tend to perfer the mass drivers, though I haven't gotten as much gameplay in as I'd hoped on the larger maps and later techs. One guess to consider, though: these are probably much less expensive to upgrade than other weapon techs, simply because the cost difference between one model and the next is so much less.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Which file are you using to get this data? I was looking for a list of the costs and such earlier in order to do some data parsing of my own, but I couldn't find the right info and gave up. Is there an xml file in the directory that I should be looking at?

Also, what size hull are you basing the data on? Since the size is not a constant, that might throw off your calculations a bit (though probably not by enough to affect your results).

Your analysis strikes me as a bit simplistic, but probably not greatly flawed. There are other factors to consider (cost, ease of the comparable devense, etc.) but they probably aren't terribly important if the main issue is this large.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You have to look at defenses though- the high end shield techs are also very space-efficient, which means while you may get more AV, the opponent can easily grab DV. Missile defenses are pretty big as well. IN general, I think big ships do better with missiles, a fighter heavy army does better with beams. Mass drivers stink though- while they are hard to get armor far, it's real hard to do good damage with mass drivers- even the nano ripper isn't that efficient compared to lasers, and it's ultra-expensive to boot. Perhaps there should be more nano driver type weapons in the mass driver tech tree (ultra-expensive, but superior to what's out there for others)
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
do your calculation take into account the total tech cost from the very beginning or are they simply for that particular tech?


Yes. The costs listed are the total cost in research to get to that weapon/defense.

Also any weapon can be effective if the AI's haven't researched any of the defence tech's for it, so it doesn't really matter if they are perfectly balanced.


Nonsense. It's about research time.

Defenses research faster than weapons. So you have to expect anything you research to be countered. The principle way around that is to just out-power them in that area of tech. Get large hulls/miniturization techs, and put so many weapons on your ships that it doesn't matter how much defenses they bring to bear.

If you have 30,000 research points, and want to spend 20,000 on weapons, it is obvious that the right answer is beam technology. You'll get very close to the sweet spot of 1:1 weapon damage vs size. And you'll have small guns. Plus, you still get 10,000 left to spend on defenses.

Had I gone for missile weapons or ballistic weapons instead, I would have gotten a ratio much closer to 3:2 than 1:1 (excepting the Nano Ripper. I thought this was one of those Evil-exclusive weapons when I made my chart. However, it's huge expense does make it prohibitive to use in quantity). My ships would have been under-powered compared to what they could have been. To get equivalent power to a beam-equipped ship, I would have had to spend 30,000+ research. The only way for me to match him is to be out-researching him. And if you're significantly out-researching someone, you shouldn't be trying to match them; you should be beating them.

You have to look at defenses though


I did. See the part of the analysis at the bottom?

Sheilds may be space-efficient, but they are the hardest to research, particularly early on. They get better, and eventually even things up at the 1:2 ratio, but at 1:1 and 2:3, other techs are clearly superior research-time wise. Missile defenses get to 2:3 much faster, and even there they are more space efficient. Shield defenses are actually the worst of the 3 defenses because of how long it takes to research them.

Which file are you using to get this data? I was looking for a list of the costs and such earlier in order to do some data parsing of my own, but I couldn't find the right info and gave up. Is there an xml file in the directory that I should be looking at?


I got it from Link here. I extracted the XML files into a readable HTML form.

However, the source XML file is GC2Types.xml in the data/english directory. That file contains ALL ship parts. The tech tree (which you have to use to go from one weapon to the next) is in TechTree.xml.

Also, what size hull are you basing the data on? Since the size is not a constant, that might throw off your calculations a bit (though probably not by enough to affect your results).


The formula for size adjustment for hulls is not know (well, not to me). If someone does, I'd be willing to incorporate it into my analysis. Everything I've done is built from a spreadsheet, so it wouldn't be hard to add a few more columns.

Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Um, so I'm looking at this analysis again.....did you take into account that missiles do more damage at every tech level after the initial one, cause it looks like you just compared sizes while ignoring the higher dmg missiles do (even lowly stingers do 2 dmg). Check out the very last techs you'll see that a massive hull filled with missiles has a max dmg 30 to 40 points greater then one filled with the best beam weapons
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Um, so I'm looking at this analysis again.....did you take into account that missiles do more damage at every tech level after the initial one


You seem to have missed the substance of the analysis.

It does take into account damage, but the damage is mated (as properly) to the size of the weapon.

A 2 damage missile weapon that takes up 8 space is no different from a 1 damage laser that takes up 4 space (in terms of overall damage output. There are inhierent advantages to having a small weapon). It's not the raw damage per weapon that matters; its the ratio of damage to size.

Check out the very last techs you'll see that a massive hull filled with missiles has a max dmg 30 to 40 points greater then one filled with the best beam weapons


OK, let's look at the last weapons then:

DoomRay: Tech cost is 49125. Ratio of size to damage is 5:11, or 1:2.2. Size is 10.
BlackHole Eruptor: Tech cost is 74250. Ratio of size to damage is 11:25, or 1:2 and 3/11. Size is 11.
Black Hole Gun: Tech cost is 65875. Ratio of size to damage is 3:8 or 1:2 and 2/3. Size is 6.

Overall, the BlackHole Gun is better than either. However, let's forget that for a moment and focus on lasers vs. missiles.

So you spend 74250 research on your precious BlackHole Eruptor. Meanwhile, since we're even (if you have a research advantage, I should lose regardless, right?) I spend the same quantity of research. However, I only need to drop 49125 to get my DoomRay. That leaves me with 25125 to spend on infrastructure. Or, maybe for a gag, I spend that on missile defense. And the final missile defense tech only costs 19970, so I still have 5155 research left to spend, perhaps on miniturization techs. I have my most powerful weapon of my class, the best defense against your weapon, and some other techs. Maybe I invest in manufacturing, so I have more ships than you. Maybe I invest in logistics, so my fleets are bigger than yours.

The minor difference in the size:damage ratios between the Doom Ray and the BlackHole Eruptor is negligable compared to the fact that it took you almost 50% more research to get it. In fact, I imagine that in such a game, you've already lost long before you even see BlackHole Eruptors.

The other thing is that I don't even need my biggest laser. The next-biggest laser, the Subspace Blaster is actually weaker than the weapon before it, so I would only research it as a stepping stone to the Doom Ray. If I don't bother with either of them, and stop at the 3rd best laser, I only need to spend 28925. That gives me a size:damage ratio of 1:1 and 3/5, or 5:8, which is good enough. The size of that gun is 5, so it's pretty tiny. And I save over 20,000 research that can be more wisely invested (in, say, missile defense). You'll be dead long before you see the BHE.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok now I see the factor you missed: beam weapons scale the worst while missiles scale the best. Check out these weapons at different hull sizes you'll see that your damage to size ratios are messed up when you consider the scaling that occurs as you move up in hull sizes.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ok now I see the factor you missed: beam weapons scale the worst while missiles scale the best.


Even if that is the case (and nobody has a specific formula for it, so I can't test anything), it does nothing to deal with the fact that someone going for lasers has an effective technological advantage to someone going for missiles. The guy going for missiles is going to be dead because he couldn't keep up tech-wise with the laser guy. He had to spend too much tech to get equivalently powerful weapons.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
All I know is that I play Nano Rippers, and they own. I don't care that much about the cost because: a) the cost of a str-6 nano ripper is on par with three str-2 singularity drivers, b) I'm not constantly replacing dead Nano Ripper ships because they don't die, and c) I have far more military production capacity than I have research capacity. It's the research cost that's expensive.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
Even if that is the case

It is the case just start up a battle of the gods match and check it out. I can't help but feel your overestimating the effect of tech cost since A) tech trading with the AI can give a huge jump in any weapon tech line B) weapon techs are only part of the total techs you need to build a ship, meaning if 25% more reasearch to get the next weapon version does not directly translate into 25% extra reasearch to get the next version of your missile frigate (whatever you chose to make it) since the other techs involved dilute the research advantage.

Finally as I pointed out in an earlier post extra cost can't be simply cancelled out by increasing militrary production since overall cost of a ship effects its maintance cost.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
All I know is that I play Nano Rippers, and they own.


I've actually been wondering if Nano Rippers aren't some kind of tech-tree bug. Or maybe the developers didn't realize how unimportant cost can be compared with how overpowering Nano Rippers are (1:1.125 size to damage. Nothing anywhere close to it for 50000+ tech cost). It just seems rather unintended and unlike anything else in any other tree.

Lasers and missiles don't get an equivalent to it.

Maybe it was a holdover from some of the older versions of the game.

A) tech trading with the AI can give a huge jump in any weapon tech line


Only if you have good enough diplomacy. And the AI's are always getting smarter about that sort of thing; I haven't been able to get any decent weapons tech from anyone I didn't have a close relationship with.

B) weapon techs are only part of the total techs you need to build a ship, meaning if 25% more reasearch to get the next weapon version does not directly translate into 25% extra reasearch to get the next version of your missile frigate (whatever you chose to make it) since the other techs involved dilute the research advantage.


You're right, in that for each tech you research, the others become a little harder. But let's be honest: does that matter that much?

We're talking about the laser guy getting literally 33% more techs points to spend than the missile guy. Even if the extra cost for getting more techs knocks this down from ~25,000 to even ~15,000 (and I haven't seen any evidence of such a dramatic drop), 15,000 tech points is a lot. Everything miniaturization tech except the lastcosts only 14,200. Do you want to go up against someone with those kinds of hulls, with 75% more firepower (and defenses) than your best stuff?

Or, maybe the guy invests some of those 15,000 tech points into more advanced research centers, thus counterbalancing the effects of having researched more techs.

But, I also did point out that you'd still be dead long before the laser guy maxed out the beam tree. I'd say that the optimal size for beams is probably the 3:2 ratio, which only costs you 9525 tech points. Getting the equivalent damage ratio requires spending 15,650 tech points off the missile tree.

Finally as I pointed out in an earlier post extra cost can't be simply cancelled out by increasing militrary production since overall cost of a ship effects its maintance cost.


Raising taxes can and does. Which becomes more reasonable when you have better morale buildings, and those require technology. Or you use those tech points to buy better economy buildings. Or you use the manufacturing bonus to build more constructors for econ starbases. Or whatever.

There's any number of ways to turn extra tech into manufacturing, money, etc. The guy with more tech points is better off categorically than the guy without.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The first thing I will say is this: this is why there's no multiplayer... because all you'll ever hear is people yelling "nerf!!!". For god sakes man, I had enough of that with the MMORPG. It's a single player game, if people are playing fine with guns, then let them enjoy it.


With that said, all I know is, I research up the beam tree until Disruptors III, and then I turn around and research up the missile tree, because I KNOW that I want Blackhole Erruptors as my main weapon, Subspace Blaster is a joke of a weapon that was meant to be between Phasor and Disruptors (it's even called Phasor7 internally), then there's no sign of the Subspace Annihilator that was suppose to be there, and Doom ray is actually bigger than Blackhole Erruptors while doing less damage. Don't want to believe me? Fire up "Battle of the Gods" and check the stats on a huge hull yourself.

So yes, your analysis of everything upto Disruptor is pretty much correct (at least for smaller hulls), because you can get that pretty fast, but if you start using large and huge hulls, you want to be using missiles (positronic torps will make Disruptors look silly). Plus, you don't want the very end of the laser tree, 'cause that's just worthless. But atleast it's better than the whole mass driver line, which just seems to be to get to nano-ripper (which has been nerfed anyways, so bleh) and the rest also worthless. The way it was designed, it's basically an early rush for Mass Drivers (for Nano-Rippers), then rush to Beams (for Disruptors, cheapest for its power, and a lot quicker to research than the other techs), then the final game is all about missiles. It's possible to go to Doom Ray of course, but that'll probably be the biggest waste of RP you can spend for the last 3 beam techs.

So, are beams good? Yeah, until you get Disruptors III. Are guns any good? Yeah, until you get Nano-Rippers. Are missiles good? Not until Blackhole Erruptors, or atleast Positronic Torps.


If you haven't realized yet, the reason beams are strong at the beginning, and works best for smaller hulls is also why the Dregins (who like smaller hulls) are said to like lasers in the game (at least from the tech descriptions). Which makes a lot of sense.

Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm glad there's no multiplayer. A game should either be 99% multiplayer (like Battlefield2) or 99% singleplayer, like GalCiv2.
When a game tries to be all things to all people, it never turns out good.

I'm glad SD concentrated on making GC2 a GREAT SP game rathe than being a mediocre SP or MP game.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The first thing I will say is this: this is why there's no multiplayer... because all you'll ever hear is people yelling "nerf!!!". For god sakes man, I had enough of that with the MMORPG. It's a single player game, if people are playing fine with guns, then let them enjoy it.


Multiplayer, single player, it doesn't matter. AI's that happen to pick beam weapons have an inherient advantage against ones that don't. The notion of the game randomly deciding to take a path that is absolutely wrong is not good.

Plus, the game is supposed to have, as part of its design ethic, 3 balanced paths for weapons, such that any path is no better or worse than any other, primarily because the differentiation between the 3 is supposed to be defined by the enemy's reaction to your weapon choice. That's not what we have here.

And it doesn't have to be fixed with "nerfing"; all I'm asking for is balance. Indeed, once modding gets online, I'm going to rebalance the weapons to make them actually balanced.

With that said, all I know is, I research up the beam tree until Disruptors III, and then I turn around and research up the missile tree, because I KNOW that I want Blackhole Erruptors as my main weapon


Have you actually played games where researching down a 70,000+ point tree in addition to a ~20,000 point tree is a viable option? And that doesn't even count defenses. I've never played on huge maps, but I can't imagine how much time it would take to make that a viable strategy. My large-scale map games last long enough for my tastes (too long), and I haven't even seen Disrupter I, let alone Blackhole Eruptors (or large hulls, for that matter).

The viability of such a strategy aside, that doesn't change the fact that weapons are broken. You may not care about that, and are just willing to accept/work around the game as is, but I disagree. The weapon trees are not balanced, but the game doesn't treat missiles any differently from lasers. The fact that you have this pattern you have for large games proves this.

The design of the system is that the best weapon for you to use is the one that is not being defended by the opponent. That's the reason why they have different weapon types to begin with. Otherwise, there should only be one weapon type and one defense. If some weapons are preferrentially selected by being simply superior to others, or being cheaper to research than others, then you create an imbalance in the system. A smart player goes for lasers. Maybe in the long game, he can dive for BHEs, but even that choice is an imbalance, because it doesn't take into account what the enemy is doing. The design is not served by this imbalance, becuase you're not making choices based on what your enemy is doing.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Interesting, I did my own analysis on weapons ONLY.

Even if that is the case (and nobody has a specific formula for it, so I can't test anything),


The formula for mininuraziation is well known now ,it's just makes the hull bigger new hull size= (1+ bonus/100) * hull space. And the info about size scaling with hull is available in the xml files

it does nothing to deal with the fact that someone going for lasers has an effective technological advantage to someone going for missiles. The guy going for missiles is going to be dead because he couldn't keep up tech-wise with the laser guy. He had to spend too much tech to get equivalently powerful weapons.


Not true, I did my own analysis, at various points,

Say When you get Phasesr IV (18,225 RP), some guy researching missile would have Photon torpedo III (15,650), I'm choosing this point to give the advantage to the lasers sides of course.

In terms of damage/size, at the point of large hulls they are almost equal 0.61 vs 0.59 (Lasers vs missile) and at huge, it becomes 0.54 vs 0.57

If we consider miniturization at 40%, Missiles start over taking lasers when you start using large hulls

If we consider miniturzation at 110%(max without hyper shrinkers), missiles dominate from medium hulls onwards.

Of course, I bent over backwards to give lasers the advantage and even then with larger hulls missiles are superior. So I don't think lasers are automatically better.