Warfare suggestion: could all the ship sizes be unlocked by default?

[B1ackw01f]

Sorry if this has been sugested before but is there any chances to have ALL ship sizes up to cruisers unlocked by default (like you did in 1.5 or something like that when you made all the weapons aviable to all empires by default).

I always wondered why any spacefaring civilization has to spend the first 30-50 years using corvettes while they can already built HUMONGOUS ships with the capacity to carry at least one million individuals(colony ship carry 1 pop right?).



Having all the sizes at start would help having variety in fleet composition since the begining, also would help making all "weapon sizes" useful outside specific niches (first years building anything aside 3s corvettes is kinda a waste, the same with defense plataforms, using anything aside S-slots or hangars is a waste) (besides i really wish to use carries as my centerpiece of fleets, but having to wait 30+ years to unlock it its a bummer) .



Aside this opens a lot of early choices and strategies that would make the game more interesting imho (should i spent 2 years building a CL making it a big investment, or instead build 1 DD and 3 corvettes as raiding fleet?. should i build some early CL to defend my choke points and use them purely defensely?. my neighbour got a CL from the event of the gas giant, the good news is that i can build a cruiser too and therefore i shouldnt fall behind THAT MUCH).



IA could personalities could be designed around this: a slaving IA empire could rely on small corvettes fleet to raid and aquire pops meanwhile a pacifift empire should just build a few CL to defend its territory insteas , they wont be attacking that much so they dont care a lot about speed



Maybe in order to feel you are advacing in desings, when you research a "destroyer" tech you'll unlock ExTRA modules ? Something like an armored corvrette, with 1M weapons and 1M1S1A, a ship jaeger corvette with a L-slot weapon slot but only a S component, a dedicsted carrier cruiser with more Hangars but very few componet slots to armor and shields, etc and your edge will be the Battleship so there will be some slight advantage anyways

I cant think in any negative or bad point regarding doing this . Of course this would require some balance but tbh, the warfare still need a lot of balance and the fact that all ships would start with tier 1 weapons should help with this. Besides IMHO this would help a lot with tech rush, im not a very competent player but after i manage to unlock destroyers before my neighbours, the resulting power spike its so hars the warfares feel uninteresting and they never really seems to catch up.



What other people think about this tho?

Its a bad idea, and unreasonable one?

 

[Ludaire]

I think you'd have to change a lot to make the different hull types more competitive with each other, but I think making all hull types available much, much sooner is probably the first step towards more interesting fleet compositions.

As long as there's a clear progression from corvette to battleship through the tech tree, it's not going to feel great if battleships aren't on the whole better than cruisers, which are better than destroyers, etc. However, if you had the first three hull types out the gate and battleships were a T1 tech, there would be little reason for these not to be balanced against each other, which means your choice of ship build and fleet composition can be more meaningful than just "what stage of the tech tree are you at?"

I think the examples you point to of macro level advantages/disadvantages like speed are a good way to differentiate ship types, too. Something like corvettes being the best rapid response defenses because they're fast, cheap, and easy to reinforce, but not so great at offense while destroyers are a bit slower and don't have the easier reinforcing advantage but instead deal extra damage to star bases so they're great at raiding and forming the tip of the spear for an offensive push.

I think on the tactical ship v ship combat once you've engaged, there's already decent ways to differentiate. I just think there should be more done to increase that, like the suggestions of making tracking increases multiplicative so it won't make large weapons efficient against smaller ships.

There are also other things like reducing the power of alpha strikes so that long range isn't such an enormous advantage and adjusting damage numbers and fire rate so that larger weapons don't nullify disengagement as much as they do now.

I think having most of the military tech progression be based on weapons and defenses with XL weapons, titans, and juggernauts being the big thing that differentiates end game would be a solid tech progression. I don't think you need to scatter the hull types through the tech tree the way it's done now.

 

[Pancakelord]

Agreed. It would shake up earlygame warfare a lot to bring some ships forward in the timeline.

I think you'd have to change a lot to make the different hull types more competitive with each other, but I think making all hull types available much, much sooner is probably the first step towards more interesting fleet compositions.

As long as there's a clear progression from corvette to battleship through the tech tree, it's not going to feel great if battleships aren't on the whole better than cruisers, which are better than destroyers, etc. However, if you had the first three hull types out the gate and battleships were a T1 tech, there would be little reason for these not to be balanced against each other, which means your choice of ship build and fleet composition can be more meaningful than just "what stage of the tech tree are you at?"

I think the examples you point to of macro level advantages/disadvantages like speed are a good way to differentiate ship types, too. Something like corvettes being the best rapid response defenses because they're fast, cheap, and easy to reinforce, but not so great at offense while destroyers are a bit slower and don't have the easier reinforcing advantage but instead deal extra damage to star bases so they're great at raiding and forming the tip of the spear for an offensive push.

I'd personally keep Battleships as something you do unlock a bit later, as they would cost a lot for any early nations to field. And, an XL-gun early on is just going to be a big waste.

• I'd completely ruin Battleship tracking, increase upkeep costs and give them big buffs vs starbases, so they become more of a niche thing for cracking big targets - Capital ships like Titans [which Imo need more sections and general buffs to be hard to kill] and heavily fortified starbases that would appear later in the game.

This lets the game be focussed around the first 3 ship classes more tightly in a rock-paper scissors fashion:

• Corvettes - high evasion lets them close on cruisers and overwhelm them at close range
• Destroyers - bristling with armor slots, PD and S-guns they can kill corvettes easily, but are weak to cruisers large-bore guns.
• Cruisers - Higher amounts of M-guns + 1-2 L guns make them a good choice for wiping out Destroyers, but reduced/no S-slots make them weak to corvettes.
  • Their bombers could make short work of Battleships
  • Alternative Missile-heavy loadouts could be good for hitting stations in the "pre-battleship" era. Or if you dont want to use strike-craft/bombers.
• Battleships - fight other battleships (ideally not, use a strikecraft/bomber or corvette swarm instead), hunt capital ships (which should take a lot of fire to go down - as much as a citadel possibly, and easily wipe the floor with anything that gets too close -making XL/Kinetic artillery spam necessary) or upgraded Stations.

 

[Franton]

I'd move all of the hull techs one tier down: Destroyers tech available from the start, Cruisers at tier 2, Battleships at tier 3. Improved hull techs can stay where they are, so while you're at tier 2, you can choose between reinforcing your destroyer hulls or learning to build cruisers.

That would give us a longer window for using Destroyers and Cruisers (basically from the first war up to the point when you've researched battleship hull improvements at tier 4)

IMHO it would be bad to make ship types available any sooner than that.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'm not sure. Like right now you can spam corvettes in the early game because they're pretty cheap and their defensive option (evasion) has more ways to scale it than tracking (traits + afterburners + computers + engines) whereas tracking only has computers + sensors.

So right now if I had destroyers and cruisers available day one I'd just spam corvettes anyway (and I've started playing at 2.5x tech costs where there is a longer window for other hulls before battleships).

Fiddling around the edges of the problem doesn't really do anything, you need to make destroyers and cruisers have a job even when you do have battleships.

 

[B1ackw01f]

I think you'd have to change a lot to make the different hull types more competitive with each other, but I think making all hull types available much, much sooner is probably the first step towards more interesting fleet compositions.

Indeed, my english is not good enough to translate all the possible ideas i have to make my argument more appealing without being reduced to a sea of mumble gramatical and symtax errors tbh, i hope the main idea went out and others more coherent make better examples of what i intended

 

[OnyxAbussos]

We have the technology to build shuttles, rockets, and mini space stations. We think those stations are huge.

To build bigger space ships and stations, we'd need to do something... like we'd need a whole lot of scientists and engineers to do a LOT of calculations and experiments and testing and...

I wish there was a name for that.
That thing where all your scientists and engineers get together and work all day for several years so they can figure out how to build bigger ships than we currently know how to build...

Or I wish there was a mechanic in the game that could simulate all that effort and work.

 

[Losttruppen]

A big problem with the AI right now is how dependent it is on a few key techs to make the necessary leaps in power that the player is capable of.

Players know to seek engineering research, voidcraft scientists, and pick the right techs to advance through the tech card deck where the AI are picking at random while being behind in tech to begin with. I'm in favour of anything that helps lessen this disparity which would allow a more even footing and a smother difficulty curve without all the plateaus.

Cruisers are a game changer and an AI without them has next to no chance in a war with an empire that does. Burying their tech deep in the tree also means the AI will spend exorbitant amounts of alloys on corvettes and destroyers while filling their limited ship/fleet capacity which need to be destroyed and replaced before the AI can rebuild which usually means they will lose their first war, which tends to be the only one they get against a competent player.

 

[Tacticus101]

I think its a decent idea, assuming there was replacement tech progression to upgrade the slots/hull/cost/etc of the ships over time to give a sense of size increase.

But there would need to be a major rework to give each ship an actual niche and unique role or it wouldnt add anything meaningful to the game.

 

[Cordane]

Sorry if this has been sugested before but is there any chances to have ALL ship sizes up to cruisers unlocked by default (like you did in 1.5 or something like that when you made all the weapons aviable to all empires by default).

I always wondered why any spacefaring civilization has to spend the first 30-50 years using corvettes while they can already built HUMONGOUS ships with the capacity to carry at least one million individuals(colony ship carry 1 pop right?).



Having all the sizes at start would help having variety in fleet composition since the begining, also would help making all "weapon sizes" useful outside specific niches (first years building anything aside 3s corvettes is kinda a waste, the same with defense plataforms, using anything aside S-slots or hangars is a waste) (besides i really wish to use carries as my centerpiece of fleets, but having to wait 30+ years to unlock it its a bummer) .



Aside this opens a lot of early choices and strategies that would make the game more interesting imho (should i spent 2 years building a CL making it a big investment, or instead build 1 DD and 3 corvettes as raiding fleet?. should i build some early CL to defend my choke points and use them purely defensely?. my neighbour got a CL from the event of the gas giant, the good news is that i can build a cruiser too and therefore i shouldnt fall behind THAT MUCH).



IA could personalities could be designed around this: a slaving IA empire could rely on small corvettes fleet to raid and aquire pops meanwhile a pacifift empire should just build a few CL to defend its territory insteas , they wont be attacking that much so they dont care a lot about speed



Maybe in order to feel you are advacing in desings, when you research a "destroyer" tech you'll unlock ExTRA modules ? Something like an armored corvrette, with 1M weapons and 1M1S1A, a ship jaeger corvette with a L-slot weapon slot but only a S component, a dedicsted carrier cruiser with more Hangars but very few componet slots to armor and shields, etc and your edge will be the Battleship so there will be some slight advantage anyways

I cant think in any negative or bad point regarding doing this . Of course this would require some balance but tbh, the warfare still need a lot of balance and the fact that all ships would start with tier 1 weapons should help with this. Besides IMHO this would help a lot with tech rush, im not a very competent player but after i manage to unlock destroyers before my neighbours, the resulting power spike its so hars the warfares feel uninteresting and they never really seems to catch up.



What other people think about this tho?

Its a bad idea, and unreasonable one?

Yes, this has been talked about a time or two dozen.

Probably the biggest issue with unlocking most/all hull sizes from the start is the poor execution on having workable power dynamics where all unlocked hull sizes have close to proportionate usefulness (i.e., 8 Corvettes are roughly as useful as 4 Destroyers, which are roughly as useful as 2 Cruisers, which are roughly as useful as 1 Battleship). That might actually be easier to achieve closer to the beginning of the game, before X-slots and particle launchers come in and overbalance toward BBs, but I think you're still going to have many issues that need to be addressed before that's an implementable option. I'd love to see it, though...

 

[Cordane]

I'm not sure. Like right now you can spam corvettes in the early game because they're pretty cheap and their defensive option (evasion) has more ways to scale it than tracking (traits + afterburners + computers + engines) whereas tracking only has computers + sensors.

Evasion's bonuses are either percentile multiplications over base or stepped increments by hull size, while Tracking's bonuses are mostly/all flat. This allows, e.g., an L-slot weapon with base 0-5% Tracking on a Destroyer to gain 30-40 points of Tracking just with a Sapient/Autonomous or Precognitive Picket Computer, another 15 points with Tachyon Sensors, another 5 points from an Enigmatic Decoder, and another 10 points from the Targeting Grid aura from a Titan - meaning Tracking 60-75% on an L-slot weapon. The Destroyer could improve from its base Evasion of 35%, by a flat 16 points from Dark Matter thrusters, and then getting into the +XX% bonuses, which I'm not sure if they're added together and then multiplied, or just multiplied over each other, compound interest style. Those could include +10% from the Sapient/Autonomous Picket computer, a +10% from Advanced Afterburners OR +20% from Enigmatic Encoder (only one Aux slot on a DD), and then Admiral traits ranging from +5% for Gale Speed or Brain Slug Host, and on up to +30% for The Great Khan or CHOSEN ONE! (waach).

The biggest thing to remember, though, is that the most a Destroyer can improve from its base Evasion of 35% is 55 points (hitting the Evasion cap), regardless of how many bonuses could be applied, while the Tracking on its L-slot weapon can go up 60-70 points with just the four bonuses I listed above. Cruisers might be able add another Aux Slot bonus on either side, meaning its L-slot weapons could be +65-75 points with another Enigmatic Decoder, while the lower base Evasion of 10% would keep it from ever getting to the Evasion cap (only with "compound interest" bonuses and GK/CO above), even with another Enigmatic Encoder. Corvettes get no room to improve their Evasion to anywhere near the same extent that any of the other hulls are able to improve their Tracking (hell, Corvette Evasion can easily hit cap with just DM Thrusters and a Sapient/Autonomous Swarm Computer).

The Battleship has a weird situation compared to the other three, in that its base Evasion is 0% (I don't know if its one flat bonus (thrusters) gets added to the base before that's multiplied by the percentile bonuses or not) and it doesn't have access to the Picket Computers (it loses out on 20-30 points of Tracking there), although it can apply its Tracking bonuses to both L-slots and X-slots.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Evasion's bonuses are either percentile multiplications over base or stepped increments by hull size, while Tracking's bonuses are mostly/all flat. This allows, e.g., an L-slot weapon with base 0-5% Tracking on a Destroyer to gain 30-40 points of Tracking just with a Sapient/Autonomous or Precognitive Picket Computer, another 15 points with Tachyon Sensors, another 5 points from an Enigmatic Decoder, and another 10 points from the Targeting Grid aura from a Titan - meaning Tracking 60-75% on an L-slot weapon.

Relevant in the later game, not so much in the early game.

In the early game with the tier 2 equipment Destroyer gets to add 15 tracking from computer and sensors, whereas a corvette gets to add 18 from engines, computer, afterburners, and gale speed (21.25 if they also get the amoeba project done).

With all tech and options available things tip in favour of tracking, but early on they remain in favour of evasion.

 

[Cordane]

T1 tech

Relevant in the later game, not so much in the early game.

In the early game with the tier 2 equipment Destroyer gets to add 15 tracking from computer and sensors, whereas a corvette gets to add 18 from engines, computer, afterburners, and gale speed (21.25 if they also get the amoeba project done).

With all tech and options available things tip in favour of tracking, but early on they remain in favour of evasion.

T1 technologies (per the Wiki, where starter techs are T0) include Specialized Computers (either +5% Evasion or flat +10 Tracking), Ion Thrusters (flat +5 Evasion), and Afterburners (+5% Evasion). T2 technologies include Gravitic Sensors (flat +5 Tracking). Gale Speed (+5% Tracking) and Amoeba research (+5% Tracking) are both random pickups available pretty much from the beginning, although Gale Speed only applies to the one Fleet and only for as long as that Admiral is its Leader.

It sounds like you're adding the base value and the flat bonuses before then multiplying them out (e.g., you specify that adding Amoeba research increases the total bonus from 18 to 21.25 (3.25 greater or 5% of 65)) and adding in each separately (i.e., not compound increases). So the Corvette's Evasion would increase by 5 base points, and then 65 times 20% (4 @ +5%) for 13 points, or 18 in total including Amoeba. If the point is to stop after T1 techs, the Corvette would gain 18 points after 5 different bonuses, while the Destroyer is at 10 points after just 1 bonus; considering there are no other T2 technologies affecting Evasion or Tracking, we can probably accept the Gravitic Sensors to bump Tracking up to 15 points.

Considering that the Corvette's Evasion went up 30% from its base of 60 points and the Tracking went up 30% from its typical base of 50 points for an S-slot weapon, I would say those are in line with each other. If you want to grab other T2 technologies, a Disruptor Cannon would only be up 25% over its 60-point base, but would be at Tracking 75 vs. Evasion 78, and an Autocannon would only be up 20% over its 75-point base, but would already match the 90-point Evasion cap. Tracking, with fewer bonus sources, early game or late game, holds its own pretty well to very well.

 

[methegrate]

Sorry if this has been sugested before but is there any chances to have ALL ship sizes up to cruisers unlocked by default (like you did in 1.5 or something like that when you made all the weapons aviable to all empires by default).

I always wondered why any spacefaring civilization has to spend the first 30-50 years using corvettes while they can already built HUMONGOUS ships with the capacity to carry at least one million individuals(colony ship carry 1 pop right?).



Having all the sizes at start would help having variety in fleet composition since the begining, also would help making all "weapon sizes" useful outside specific niches (first years building anything aside 3s corvettes is kinda a waste, the same with defense plataforms, using anything aside S-slots or hangars is a waste) (besides i really wish to use carries as my centerpiece of fleets, but having to wait 30+ years to unlock it its a bummer) .



Aside this opens a lot of early choices and strategies that would make the game more interesting imho (should i spent 2 years building a CL making it a big investment, or instead build 1 DD and 3 corvettes as raiding fleet?. should i build some early CL to defend my choke points and use them purely defensely?. my neighbour got a CL from the event of the gas giant, the good news is that i can build a cruiser too and therefore i shouldnt fall behind THAT MUCH).



IA could personalities could be designed around this: a slaving IA empire could rely on small corvettes fleet to raid and aquire pops meanwhile a pacifift empire should just build a few CL to defend its territory insteas , they wont be attacking that much so they dont care a lot about speed



Maybe in order to feel you are advacing in desings, when you research a "destroyer" tech you'll unlock ExTRA modules ? Something like an armored corvrette, with 1M weapons and 1M1S1A, a ship jaeger corvette with a L-slot weapon slot but only a S component, a dedicsted carrier cruiser with more Hangars but very few componet slots to armor and shields, etc and your edge will be the Battleship so there will be some slight advantage anyways

I cant think in any negative or bad point regarding doing this . Of course this would require some balance but tbh, the warfare still need a lot of balance and the fact that all ships would start with tier 1 weapons should help with this. Besides IMHO this would help a lot with tech rush, im not a very competent player but after i manage to unlock destroyers before my neighbours, the resulting power spike its so hars the warfares feel uninteresting and they never really seems to catch up.



What other people think about this tho?

Its a bad idea, and unreasonable one?

There is something to be said for this idea. The game is balanced around having each class of ships counter the last one (Cv<D<Cr<B<Cv), but that doesn't work until you have all four ship types researched. Up until that point you have a situation where each new hull is linearly better (by design) than the last one.

I mean, there's an open question of whether it would matter. In the early game it's expensive enough to build a few corvettes. Would players really try to build a battleship or cruiser in the era where +15 alloys is a big deal? But in theory, it might help open up some early game options.

 

[Millbot]

They'd still need to fix the ship meta.

I'd agree that'd they need to do it up to at least cruiser. I'm not against the idea of being up to battleships, but that's about where I'd agree there are valid arguments both for it and against it, that could be coached terms of engineering limits.

Honestly, would be a good excuse for also going through the tech bloat in both the engineering and physics trees. Tech tree is probably the worst here because there is just too much in there and in theory most of the bloat is sadly useful techs. I think there is an argument to be made that the missile tech is worthless, but that's mostly in how it has been implemented, rather than the concept being bad. Physics just has a number of energy weapon components that are garbage. Players that know better will never actually use them. Sure they get researched, but that more of to get them out of the way.

I'd even go further and say that any sort of overhaul should either rework or boot techs that ignore armor and shields. It's not that these techs are worthless, far from it. The issue is they pretty much make it much harder to sell other techs as being viable options because being able to ignore shields, armor or both is pretty freaking huge. To the point where it's too powerful and it's partly to blame for the current meta.

I personally would love to see the rock paper scissors setup of missiles vs energy vs kinetic go. One it really isn't panning out well. Two, if those were made comparable, so that it was a preference thing. Then that opens the fun option of letting players pick whether their empire went all in on missile, kinetic or energy laser tech at empire creation. Thus and empire that went missile focused would see different techs in their tech tree than a empire that focuses on energy based weapons. For specialization against end game crisis or how players choose to keep their ships alive, each branch could easily have techs that let them lean more into being effective against shields or armor. Nothing says, there can't be a tech that gives your ship bullets that are more effective against shields, but have it come at the expense of punching throw armor. Now someone might ask how this makes things more fun if overall missiles, energy and kinetic are equally powerful and I'll mention it means empires will actually feel different because even if the techs have the same power, they are going to be using different techs and it'll have different graphics. It might be an illusion because the numbers might be the same, but IMO it'll be a useful illusion that gets away from all the empires feeling the same.