1) Is there a way to respec infrastructure after it's been built? 2) Is the bonus from maxing out a category of infrastructure a one off, or can I stack multiple instances of it by maxing the same category on several worlds? 3) Is there a way to export people from one world to another? 4) The AI I'm at war with has a bunch of single frigate/destroyer fleets that are ping-ponging from one system to the next via retreating because my beam armed cruisers and battleships can't get in range before they flee. Other than building a few less scary looking light ships in the hope of tricking the AI into thinking a fight might be safe, is there any way I can force combat to last long enough to destroy them? 5) Are there modifiers to accuracy based on ship size or weapon type? I've noticed that my Chaos Chain armed ships which had fairly good hit chances killing monsters are frequently missing enemy cruisers and on the rare occasions when I can get them to stay and fight almost never hit enemy destroyers or frigates. At close range the nominally point defense beams I've installed have no trouble hitting enemy ships most of the time. 6) Do difficulty settings affect AI behavior or just relative starting conditions?
Welcome aboard @Summoner No No stacking Afraid not, however, if you attack an inhabited world of theirs (a colony, sometimes even an outpost), they tend to stay and defend, choosing suicide over retreat Yes to both, with smaller ships being harder to hit, check the tool tips on weapons in the tech tree for info on those. Go for enhanced and improved targetting algorithms to help you hit smaller ships. A leader in your fleet with a good attack rating will also help According to the devs, on severe and impossible it is also suppose to affect their behavior and make them more aggressive. I have not noticed this in practise though... perhaps because I am highly aggressive myself?
Thanks for buying the game, and welcome to the forums Summoner! No, not at the moment. You can boost population growth by several means and help develop startup colonies with support ships or by sending asteroid producton their way. You can try the Combat Jump Displacement device, which lets you "teleport" to anywhere in the battlefield. Having the initiative with better leaders is also key. Heavy mount weapons combined with extra manuverability levels, better engines and the engines overload action should get some of your ships in adquate range to fire at enemies, and if you can't destroy them maybe you can disable a few. The Ion Cannon and Ion Discharger can also help with disabling ships. We may have a device that inhibits or delays ships from leaving the map at some point. As suggested by Konstantine, check the Ship Attack and Ship Defense tooltips, both yours and the enemy (after scanning the ships) to know the details on the accuracy involved. Mind that Missiles have an intrinsic +75% Ship Attack bonus, while Beams have +25% and Kinetics have +0% (Kinetics don't see their damage dissipate with range as beams do though). Smaller ships like Destroyers and Frigates get extra defense, that's why you can hit space monsters easily but not destroyers and frigates. Yes, the AIs will act more aggressively in the higher difficulties. They will tend to build more ships, send more ships to battle, trigger wars more easily, that sort of thing. This all depends on the race in question as well. Some are more war-prone than others, but all tend to be more aggressive in the higher difficutly levels.
https://interstellar-space-genesis.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_Design#Hulls lists the defense modifiers for each hull type; https://interstellar-space-genesis.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons lists the effects of weapon mods and the accuracy of various weapons; https://interstellar-space-genesis.fandom.com/wiki/Tactical_Combat#Hit_Change has the formula for chance to hit--I really need to organize that better. So your PD weapons have a +25% chance from being PD; and since the ships are in close range at that point, all your kinetic and beam weapons will have a higher chance to hit as they both drop off in accuracy with range. In the Weapon mods you'll see both Continuous (+25% flat accuracy bonus) and Heavy Mount (indirectly via 50% decrease in accuracy drop off with range) would help you hit, along with the targeting lines Adam mentioned. I should probably add a page in the Tips section focusing just on the factors that increase and decrease hit chances, even though it would repeat some info scattered across other pages.
Great idea! I'm going to cross-post some things I put on the Steam forums a little while ago to try and help people out. You may find this helpful for that page. @Adam Solo , let me know if I'm missing or misreporting anything here. The current to-hit formula is modeled after the one used in Master of Orion II which ranges from 1% chance to hit to 99% chance to hit. Ship Attack Specific Modifiers: 1. Beam Weapons (+25%) 2. Beam Weapons Continuous Modifier (another +25% with this weapon) 3. Missiles (+75%) 4. Missiles ECCM modifier (+50% against ships with ECM jammers) 5. Targeting Algorithms (up to +125% ship attack) 6. Battle Sensors (up to +100% with ultrawave scanners) 7. Race Modifier (-25% to +50%) Ship Defense Specific Modifiers: 1. Ship Class (smaller ships up to +20 SD%, larger ships up to -30 SD%) 2. ECM jammer (+75% ship defense vs. missiles only) 3. EMP defenses (protection against ion weapons only) 4. Race Modifier (-25% to +50%) Modifiers which impact both Ship Attack and Ship Defense: 1. Leaders (+SA and +SD dependent on leader attributes) 2. Crew Experience (+SA and +SD equally) 3. Engine Maneuverability Level (+SA and +SD equally) 4. Airspace Combat Telemetry/Airspace Defense Nexus (More +SD than +SA, only when defending a system) 5. Ship Support Penalties (-SA and -SD equally if too far in excess of your available SSP) If an enemy has a lot more ship defense than you have attack, the current method to combat this is to try and improve your ship attack value via one of the methods listed above. Kinetic weapons for instance should be avoided unless you feel you have enough ship attack to use them effectively. You can also increase the maneuverability level of your ship, in the ship designer, gain bonus +SA and +SD on your designs at the cost of some space.
@aReclusiveMind thanks, that's a great summary. I kind of think the whole "Ship Attack" thing may be more confusing then helpful. I get it's trying to give players a rough idea, but a ship with 1 missile and 1 kinetic with a base attack of 50% shows "Ship Attack 88%". Of course it's really 125% and 50%, so the 88% isn't very useful. It might be better to just show "Base Attack: 50%" with a tooltip saying before weapon bonuses or penalties, then mousing over the weapons shows the actual attack value for that weapon? Some graphs might also be useful. @Adam Solo, do I have the accuracy drop offs right?
Great summary @aReclusiveMind. That's correct. Here's a few more: Battlestations add +20% SA to the defending fleet and Starfortresses add +40% SA and +20% SD ECM Jammer is +70% SD (not 75%) PD weapons enjoy from +25% SA Auto-fire weapon modification -20% SA Weapon range penalty to SA (-1% SA per grid square separating the ships) Some weapons have double range penalties others halve it. Yes. It's a tricky one. If you show the minimum or maximum number it may be misleading for the set of weapons you have. We opted for the average so the player could have a general idea of what they get when they fire a full salvo of all weapons at once. So, a 88% SA is the average SA when firing everything (missiles, beams, kinetics). Then, when you pick individual weapons, or switch-off all or some of them, you will see the updated SA value reflecting the new average. If you pick just a kinetic weapon it will show the SA of the kinetic alone. Actually, this SA refresh was in the game at some point but got disabled along the way, so the SA value is not refreshing when you select weapons in 1.0.4, but it will refresh in 1.0.5. I think this SA refresh with the tooltip will help players understand the accuracy mechanics better. The Chance to Hit is exactly that sigmoid graph. As you can see, you will start to get in real trouble, and can't hit anything, if you get below the -70% SA-SD difference. -80% difference gives you the dreaded 3%. So, if a particular attack of yours (with a particular weapon) has 100% SA and your opponent has 180% SD, then you will get 3% chance to hit (at point blank range for beams and kinetics). Good job on the Weapon Accuracy graph, I believe that's correct. That presents the general accuracy profile for the different weapon types with respect to range without the other accuracy modifiers on top (presented in the posts above). Of course, we have to keep in mind that some weapons have double accuracy penalties while others have only half. By the way, just for the sake of completeness, the accuracy formula (chance to hit) is the following (also provided in-game in the SA and SD tooltips): Chance to hit = 100 / (1 + 2^E) with: E = - (SA - SD) / 16 SA = Ship Attack SD = Ship Defense
I put an equivalent formula on the Wiki, 100% / ( 1 + 2 ^ ( ( Ship Defense - Ship Attack ) / 16 ) ), and of course used it to generate the graph--I think visualizing it drives home how important accuracy and defense can be. I originally underestimated them assuming it was proportional like many games until I saw the formula--i.e., Attack / (Attack + Defense), where 50 attack vs 150 defense would give you a 25% chance to hit instead of ~1%.
@Adam Solo I've got the damage dissipation formulas for normal and heavy beam weapons, but for PD I'm going by every weapon seems to be reduced to 1 for it's min damage in ship design--so for phasors that's at least a drop to 10% by 10 units. What is the actual PD drop off? This also shows the value of heavy mounts over 2 non-heavy of the same dissipating weapon--in addition to the better accuracy at anything past point blank, it does more damage than the 2 non-heavies combined past 11 grid units, and you're only paying the cost of any other mods you're adding once instead of twice. And of course they reach twice as far....
In the ship designer could you have the tooltip break it down by individual weapon types? ex Code: +15 From engine maneuverability level +75 From Weapon (Nuclear Missile) or +50 From Weapon (Fusion point defence) or +25 From Weapon (Chaos chain) +0 From ... If I'm understanding the implications of the hit formula correctly, unless I can be confident of a large net SA-SD advantage it makes sense to go for higher accuracy over a higher total weapon count because the increased accuracy will give a larger return when the base chances of getting a hit are low while being near break even in the near linear -25 to +25 range. With multiple weapons in a single group is hit/miss calculated once for the entire set so either all or none of them hit? If so, can I smooth the damage rate out by installing them in several groups to have them hit/miss individually? ex at 50% to hit and and 2 weapons instead of a 50% chance for both to hit and 50% for both to miss firing together, a 25% chance for both to hit, a 50% chance for 1 to hit and the second to miss, and a 25% chance for both to hit.
The chance to hit for multiple weapons in a group is calculated individually. So, if you have 4 weapons in a single group, some may miss and some may hit.
I'm going to explain the different weapon types accuracy and damage considerations in the ship design screen (in a broad sense), on the weapon title, weapon graphic and weapon type filter when selecting a weapon. Hopefuly, this will make more clear the differences between the weapon types until we have a full proper manual of the game. This will be available in the 1.0.5 patch.
Ok, here's everything I know about hitting, with tables in the tool tips of things like algorithms, scanners, and hulls. Let me know if I got anything wrong or missed anything. https://interstellar-space-genesis.fandom.com/wiki/Hitting_In_Combat
@Konstantine, you answered no to this, but they are stacking for me. I currently have 5 maxed AeroSpace Engineering, each saying it gives 750 production to ships / 9 colonies = 83.3. When I go to build a ship, it lists "+417 from Empire Bonus (Infrastructure)" in all colonies--83.3 * 5 ~= 417. Same with Infrastruce--2 maxed out, 83.3 each, +167 Empire Bonus (infrastructure) in all colonies building buildings. I'm even seeing the -15% maintenance per maxed out stacking--all my colonies are already at -100% from the right side of civil engineering but list a -130% building maintenance (though it still only cancels out 100%, fortunately I'm not now earning a profit from maintenance).
I'll need input from the devs, I was under the impression that they do not stack. @aReclusiveMind can you check into this when you have the time?
I can take this one @aReclusiveMind. When unlocking all infrastructure perks of a given category, you always gain some empire-wide bonus that stacks the more of these full specialization unlocks you can achieve in different colonies. For the planetary engineering empire bonuses you just need 3 infrastructure perks, but for Aerospace and Civil Engineering you need 6 perks for each of the categories, so you have to have at least infrastructure level 6 in that colony and only pick infrastructure perks of that particular category in order to max it out. So, picking up the maintenance reduction case (-15% maintenance in empire per full specialization on Civil Engineering), it will be -30% maintenance if you do full Civil on 2 colonies, -45% on 3, etc. Now, looking back at the -15% number it can be a bit too much. True, achieving infrastructure level 6 in many colonies and only specializing in one type of infrastructure is not something you tend to do, however -15% can be a bit too much, I'll think about it. Hope this answers your doubts on this matter.
@Adam Solo I don't think the 15% maintenance reduction is too much, or at least not the the main imbalance--it never actually affects me because the +3 building slots from Civil Planners are the first things I take, and they come with a 100% maintenance reduction already. After that, there's very little incentive to complete the Civil Engineering tree--+60% production to buildings is nice, but once the colony is developed it's wasted. Meanwhile both branches of the Aerospace Engineering tree provide bonuses all game. If there's a balance issue, I'd say it's with Civil Planners reducing maintenance to 0%--really the +3 building slots alone already makes it the best branch. If you completely removed the maintenance reduction from it, or at least severely reduced it, then the 15% reduction from completing both branches would be worth completing the tree for--and to get to 0% maintenance in every colony, instead of just the 3 perks for the 3 buildings I take in every colony before anything else anyway, I'd have to complete the tree in 7 colonies--which means I can't just do what I do now--complete civil planners, then ship support, then ship craftsmen, for massive Aerospace completion bonuses, +3 buildings, and 0% maintenance in all colonies. As it is, the -15% would really only benefit me if you had a bug where I could get below 0% maintenance and start actually gaining income from buildings instead of just not losing it. And I doubt I'm alone--I think most players are going to go for those 3 bonus slots first, the limited slots is one of the first things you run into playing the game the first time, and the 0% maintenance is nice icing. Personally I also find the Planetary Engineering tree too weak to ever take, even with it only taking one branch to complete. A very minor form of Planetary Consciousness would make it much more attractive--something like +1%/+2%/+3% morale per Ecological level (only on that planet), so at most at tier 3 on an Eco 3 planet it would be +9% morale--but that would be a lasting benefit to the colony beyond any planetary engineering it needed, and would be something to take on colonies not specializing in ship construction.
I also prioritize Civil Planning followed by Ship Support for most of my colonies. The exception being medium/large rich worlds where I'd rather max out both ship building columns even at the cost of the system becoming a money pit. I agree on the combination of extra buildings and reduced expenses making Civil Planners the best infrastructure by a long shot. Moving one of its bonuses to Civil Developers would help the balance between the two a lot. It'd have some major repercussions on overall balance though. Early on the reduced expenses really helps balance your budget; having to choose between a higher building cap and not going broke would slow the early game down. Longer term, especially in bigger games it'd make maxing out the civil infrastructure bonus worthwhile because getting it maxed 3/5/7 times effectively gives all your colonies a free infrastructure point buy not having to buy it. Planetary engineering only seems to make sense on larger but otherwise useless poor/ultrapoor worlds. Building production boosting buildings on them is somewhat pointless so except on tiny/small worlds the extra building slots are rather meh, while the global planetary engineering bonuses will help new colonies ramp faster.
