Playing on default settings and then conquering the galaxy is not a trick or exploit.
Advanced Weapon and Utility technologies are just an inefficient way to increase naval capacity
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Playing on default settings and then conquering the galaxy is not a trick or exploit.
So, it seems like not only is there a deathball problem related to snowballing, but zerg strategies are more cost-effective.
Seems like wide is twice the way to go.
Seems like wide is twice the way to go.
Yes, but my point is that if you don't play for enjoyment, but rather for victory farming, you can always use good old settings.
You're the one assuming that trying to conquer the galaxy as fast as possible isn't "fun" for some people. It's, you know, a challenge? Not one I enjoy, but wow, way to be dismissive.
At first I thought sociology research was least useful of the three for militarist empire, but apparently it is really the most important. After all, it has colonization techs and, most impotantly, a lot of those +10% naval capacity techs. After you have unlocked all ship types, most of engineering research becomes pretty useless - just get your naval capacity higher and build more stuff.
These tests really show that naval capacity is a lot more important factor in a war than research. There's just few big new weapon innovations that actually change anything - like plasma, point defense and kinetic artillery/lances and better drives. All other ship tech can be countered by getting bigger naval capacity and building more stuff. It all returns to the doomstack problem: bigger naval capacity, bigger doomstack. If only there was some penalty for using large masses of ships instead of smaller, more advanced fleet... It's pretty shame how useless science focus tends to be. Better science should just pe spent to naval capacity buffs, and since those boost it certain percentage, it helps to have loads and loads of spaceports to generate that capacity.
These tests really show that naval capacity is a lot more important factor in a war than research. There's just few big new weapon innovations that actually change anything - like plasma, point defense and kinetic artillery/lances and better drives. All other ship tech can be countered by getting bigger naval capacity and building more stuff. It all returns to the doomstack problem: bigger naval capacity, bigger doomstack. If only there was some penalty for using large masses of ships instead of smaller, more advanced fleet... It's pretty shame how useless science focus tends to be. Better science should just pe spent to naval capacity buffs, and since those boost it certain percentage, it helps to have loads and loads of spaceports to generate that capacity.
I did some additional tests with this:
Against this:
Note that the tachyon plasma should be a counter to the mass driver plasma.
At 75 of the earlier vs 92 of the later:
the tachyon lance+plasme loses with 29/92 ships remaining for the other composition, the reason seems to be the tachyon lance underperforming.
And 22 vs 27:
Here the tachyon+plasma wins with 4/22 ships remaining, and the tachyon lance contributes a lot more.
As you can see the tachyon lance performs much better at smaller fleet sizes, which could explain a part of the original results.
Even if you happend to use small battleship fleets the other problems with weapon and utility tech should remain. And a counter that barely beats the thing it is supposed to counter, and only at some fleet sizes, isn't great.
Against this:
Note that the tachyon plasma should be a counter to the mass driver plasma.
At 75 of the earlier vs 92 of the later:
the tachyon lance+plasme loses with 29/92 ships remaining for the other composition, the reason seems to be the tachyon lance underperforming.
And 22 vs 27:
Here the tachyon+plasma wins with 4/22 ships remaining, and the tachyon lance contributes a lot more.
As you can see the tachyon lance performs much better at smaller fleet sizes, which could explain a part of the original results.
Even if you happend to use small battleship fleets the other problems with weapon and utility tech should remain. And a counter that barely beats the thing it is supposed to counter, and only at some fleet sizes, isn't great.
I wonder if this works also with other ship types. A battleship versus battleship's mineral worth of corvettes?
How would battleships with a lot of medium range weapons perform against more traditional long range battleships?
How would battleships with a lot of medium range weapons perform against more traditional long range battleships?
Damn, now i really wanna try a strategy of making just a MASSIVE swarm of corvettes. Or maybe destroyers if Corvettes prove too frail.
Interesting. So, in theory, if our usual expensive fleet gets absolutely wiped and we can build battleships from many different stations, it would be worth our while having cheap knock-off alternative battleship designs to hurl at the enemy?
Honestly, the naval cap is a nonexistent limiting factor in the current iteration of the game, especially as you get a larger and larger fleet capacity. It only really gets problematic when your numbers approach double your maximum, which is hard to do in the mid-late game when battleships rule the day.
I have a feeling post-Banks that NOT changing this is a good idea. Why? Because tall empires.Advanced Weapon and Utility technologies are just an inefficient way to increase naval capacity [Battleship analysis, updated]
I saw this thread here on the forum a while ago and it inspired me to do some test. Over there the focus was on finding the best battleship for fighting an equal number of other battleships. Here the focus is on testing the performance of such a battleship versus cheaper, but more numerous battleships.
Warning: The results can be quite demoralizing.
The Cast:
One of the suggested “Best” battleships for fighting other battleships (with a minor alteration):
View attachment 244653
A cheap mass driver and plasma battleship:
View attachment 244654
An even cheaper mass driver only battleship:
View attachment 244655
And the last contender, a laser only battleship (because results might depend too much on mass driver being overpowered):
View attachment 244656
A fleet composed of only the expensive battleship will face a fleet worth an equivalent mineral and maintenance cost, first when engaging at long range and then at very short range.
Additional Details:
No space borne alien or dlc technology were used. No repeatable techs were used. No Leaders, strategic resources or spaceport upgrades were used. All ships used the same high end drives, battle computers and sensors.
And no claim is made on the cost effectiveness of any of those.
Both the research costs of the high-end weapon and utility (shield, armour, reactor etc) tech as well as the costs of acquiring additional naval capacity are not a part of this analysis.
The Results:
A fleet composed of only the expensive battleship will face a fleet worth an equivalent mineral and maintenance cost, first when engaging at long range and then at very short range.
First 49 Expensive face 93 mass driver + plasma (the number of the later ship type is rounded up):
Starting at long range the cheap design wins with 45/93 ships surviving.
Starting at short range the cheap design wins with 84/93 ships surviving.
Then 49 Expensive face 96 mass driver (the number of the later ship type is rounded down):
Starting at long range the cheap design wins with 50/96 ships surviving.
Starting at short range the cheap design wins with 81/96 ships surviving.
Finally, 49 Expensive face 92 laser (the number of the later ship type is rounded down):
Starting at long range the cheap design wins with 38/92 ships surviving.
Starting at short range the cheap design wins with 70/92 ships surviving.
Due to the demoralizing nature of these results, repeated tests of the same setups did not occur.
Conclusions:
The more advanced and much more expensive ships did not perform nearly as well as the cheaper alternatives.
In effect, this means that equipping your ships with the most advanced weapons and utilities is just an expensive way of increasing your effective naval capacity.
If one wants to make advancement in weapon and utility technology more effective, one could increase their potency or reduce the cost of using these options on your ships.
Changing naval maintenance to be the same for all ships in a certain category instead of linearly dependent on the cost could be an interesting way to create a trade-off.
View attachment 244657
Battleship battles do look nice though.
Update:
It seems at least some part of the poor results from above are due to tachyon lances scaling poorly with the size of the fleets.
I did some additional tests with this:
View attachment 244769
Against the plasma+mass driver from above. (Note that the tachyon plasma should be a counter to the mass driver plasma.)
At 75 of the tachyon+plasma vs 92 mass driver+plasma:
View attachment 244770
The tachyon lance+plasme loses with 29/92 ships remaining for the other composition, the reason seems to be the tachyon lance underperforming.
And at 22 of the tachyon+plasma vs 27 mass driver+plasma:
View attachment 244771
Here the tachyon+plasma wins with 4/22 ships remaining, and the tachyon lance contributes a lot more.
As you can see the tachyon lance performs much better at smaller fleet sizes, which could explain a part of the original results.
Even if you happend to use small battleship fleets the other problems with weapon and utility tech should remain. And a counter that barely beats the thing it is supposed to counter, and only at some fleet sizes, isn't great.
Tall empires should have better tech, so they should have a bigger naval capacity and better weapons. Wide empires should be able to more easily replace lost ships, but have a smaller naval capacity and less effective weapons. Assuming both empires hit their naval limit, then tall empires easily early space battles in the late game, as they should. Meanwhile, the wide empire can more easily replace lost ships, eventually winning wars of attrition, which is the point. Thus, this system works very well post-Banks. You have tall empires that get a lot more bang for their buck, so to speak, while wide empires can replace ships more quickly and cheaply. This tailors to their specific warfare styles. Tall empires fight defensive wars, wide empires fight offensive wars. Tall empires try to win a quick war and force a 10 year truce, giving them 10 years of safety while wide empires try to wear down a tall empire until it no longer has the resources to sustain itself and collapses because of a war of attrition.
The gap between high tech weapons and low tech ones should be increased slightly, but this off-balance is ironically good for overall game balance.
I'm afraid I don't quite follow, as it is right now having end game weapons/utilities on your ships is actively harmfull with regards to mineral, energy and reasearch efficiency. But it helps compensate for having fewer naval bases, which seems to be the opposite of what you are saying.
In additon the efficeincy gap between high and low tech wapons/utilities is in the wrong direction, having more advanced tech should (in my opinion) give you a more dagerous fleet in relation to it's other costs, in order to compensate for the research cost. While at the moment it is an expensive way to pretend you have more navalbases.
unles you get boxed in. be it trough bad luck, jsut playing with many empires, or something else.
You can get 50% more naval capacity from tech, but a wide empire will have no trouble picking up at least the first 20% as well, since those bonuses are additive, that means tall is only getting a 25% advantage over wide. So unless you think the difference between wide and tall is a matter of 25% more systems under your command, then tall will have substantially less naval capacity. From a science perspective, the spaceport techs are heavily regulated, so until a certain number of years have passed they get a heavily suppressed chance of spawning (90% reduced), and once one of your neighbours have them, you get a massive boost to getting them (10x base chance).
If nothing changes in the fleet combat side of things, you will still have that getting higher tech tiers only allow you to turn minerals into fleet power with less starport build-time, which is definately a good point if you have an excess of minerals but lack enough starports to build with. For every other scenario, it's hurtful to field high tech fleets. At least until you get to the repeatable techs. Even then, you are only gaining something from your science investment, but you are still left better off building the cheap low tech ships in abundance for your fleet
Finally, an empire going tall, is essentially prioritizing express-maturing existing colonies over founding new ones, possibly with a much higher focus on getting science buildings online over more mineral and energy. This can give a higher initial effective science. That advantage doesn't last, the wide empire can just as well mature it's colonies and while they will pay a higher total science penalty, that is an additive bonus. So having 5 planets and 70 pop will cause your techs to double in base science price, Next time it doubles again, you can have 13 planets with a total of 190 pop working. 2½ times the number of planets will produce 2½ times the science, 2½ the minerals and 2½ times the energy, which leaves science 25% ahead, while getting everything else massively in the lead. This is of course assuming a balanced planetary focus. A tall empire is pretty much forced to have that. A wide empire can have all the big planets going pure science with just enough food to go around, a science governor and a research assist, while leaving the smaller systems to produce the energy and minerals needed. On top of that, they can simply devote more systems to producing science, since mineral and energy production scales linearly with no deductions for size.
True, but the naval cap will always just be a penalty on maintenance costs, which is based on your initial fleet maintenance, having cheaper fleets will allow you to field more firepower by going over the cap, and getting the same maintenance.
Am I the only one that doesn't find the fact that a fleet can defeat another fleet half its size (And in some cases losing half its own ships in the process.) that demoralizing?
I do however agree that it feels wrong that a high tech fleet is twice as expensive as a low tech one without even being close to twice as good.
I do however agree that it feels wrong that a high tech fleet is twice as expensive as a low tech one without even being close to twice as good.
It's not demoralizing at all. If anything, it's really informative for dealing with stuff like Unbidden incursions and recovering from losses during wars.
and that is jsut why i think that fleet maintainance should just be based per ship type, not cost, and going over the naval cap should be be extremly punishing (not if you go over the naval cap with a litle tho)
Forcing yourself over fleet cap is the only real way to "punch up" against larger or more militant empires, though.