I been playing the game for days now and after many many battles I unfortunately have come to the conclusion that combat needs some severe work. Almost all my battles end in a first or second turn instant kill, I enter a fight, as I have specialized in speed and movement for my ships I always win initiative. Then I click weapon Overheat and almost always one-shot my opponents. Even battleships are usually dropping in a single attack. This needs to be fixed. Either damage needs to be severely nerfed or health needs to be boosted for all ships.
And the opponents are on the same level speaking of weapons and defense systems? If you have a fleet with Disruptors and the shield and armor systems are not capable to defend, it is obviously a short fight. In my first games with ISG, I've put not that interest in missile defense and the AI destroyed my ships easily. Later with ECM Jammer, Point Defense etc. the fights were balanced.
I have been using beams as no one is far enough to unlock the tech to make ships immune to beams. Even then I have just been mostly using lasers. Laser Miniature Level 4 Arc 360 degrees Auto-Fire Heavy Mount Continous No Range Dissipation Engines x3 + Quantum Engines My battleships hold ten of these set up into two groups. I am playing on hard mode as I felt max difficulty might be too much since I am still new to the game. My battleships are so fast and maneuverable they mostly just stay at long range and blast everything else down.
While I've said for a while, (far too long actually), that combat needs work, it isn't a matter of nerfing weapons or increasing ship durability. Once a player gets more proficient and starts experiencing more potent opponents, it becomes obvious that the issue is elsewhere. Combat performance by the AI can get a big initial boost with minor work from the devs. Want initiative to be less predictable? teach the AI how to better use ship leaders. Want to see player losses that aren't on the ratio of 50 to 1 in favor. Rework the base-to-hit numbers which are quite frankly a joke. Let the player see losses, heavy losses without taking his/her ability to score kills. A war of attrition is something that a player will be hard pressed to counter on harder settings. Nerfing weapons means they are nerfed for everyone, I already have a ridiculous kill ratio over the AI, it would make it worse. Durable ships? The problem is my designs are always superior to what the AI puts out. That means Durable ships would favor me even more. I agree that Combat is a weak spot in this game, but the solution (and it does exist) is a non traditional fix, not more of the same. Finally, and this needs to be said (again). A contributing factor is that the battle is lost by the AI before it ever takes place. It's lost at the ship design stage. This fix would be harder, but shouldn't be ignored entirely
-Yes the AI ships are flawed (usually because their weapon techs are shit, sometimes also armor). With a non random tech tree it ought to be possible to give the AI a better order of what to research... -Regarding combat mechanics my suggestion would be to disable any overcharging during the 1st turn. That way the player that moves first will do a bit less damage and the player that went second can offset a bit of his disadvantage by being the first to be able to overcharge his weapons... -and one more plea. Please make the AI fire its weapons before it hits retreat...
Yes, the AI should upgrade the ships. The frequency could be based on the AI level maybe, but it should happen. Ships with Plasma cannons and Class X against Neutron Blasters with Class xyz are an easy win. The game is and always will be work in progress. That's why we are here and discussing the pros and cons and have fun with it.
