Hello All, Playing 4x games over the years and quite a lot of Moo2, I wanted to get some feedback on smaller ships. In most games they become pointless to build and we see factions facing off with Fleets of Titans only for example. How do you feel about this? Would you prefer smaller ships stay more relevant throughout a game or is it better to steer the play to larger ships only?
The biggest advantage large ships have over small ones are more hit points before losing firepower. In most games smaller ships are statistically stronger, in MoO 1 & 2 they cost less production points per weapon mount, have more hit points per production point and on top of it all have some evasion bonus. And yet higher HP per unit granularity still trumps that. It's easier to repair few large ships then rebuild and field small ones. What if units didn't got completely destroyed when reaching 0 HP, just knocked out (some sort of overkill would still destroy them) and could be repaired if owner wins a battle (or tugs them out somehow)? Would that level the ground between large and small ships?
You made me think on that, Moo2 did a lot for small ships correctly but failed in one critical area, thus Titans only, Command point ratios were wrong. they went 1,2,3,4 maybe 1,2,4,8, or something similar would have worked better. I could put a well designed FF or DD together late in the game but there was little point. 4 had no chance against a Capital but 12 did and you would lose at least half (barring lop sided tech). The math made it not efficient. I think a starting point should be here then Put this together with an increase in offense over defense. Casualties would come quicker but you could still protect select ships in the long run for experience gain. With build rates pretty high at some point, and the possibility of Mothball fleets present, higher casualties would only make things feel more war-like if you get into a conflict but you could still absorb them, more action. As I said, a starting point, what do you guys think?
Ya, basing SSPs per ship type on how many smaller ships it would take to fight with a larger ship with similar technology with an equal chance of winning could work. It doesn't have to necessarily be logarithmic, though. It'll require balancing everything... chance to hit, damage inflicted, damage reduced, etc. The devs are going to need a combat simulator, anyway, for when AIs fight each other, so that can be used for balancing.
Moo2 also failed because you could only build 1 ship per turn, so it was always more efficient in production to build something that would take about 3 turns. Moo1 allowed small ships to be viable, because you could build 100s per turn. You could build so many they would overwhelm the number of guns on a larger ship (kind of like the swarm ships in Star Trek Beyond). I hope this game allows for more than 1 ship produced per turn.
Thanks for joining in guys, very much appreciated. Nice to see some votes and comments already and I am hoping we hear from both sides. Using a dozen Frigates to defeat a lone Battleship can be fun, but perhaps less so if you are the owner of the Battleship, The idea has to be to give more of a role to smaller classes not have them replace Capitals. 2 FF should be roughly equal to 1DD in size and firepower. In battle, the DD would still have a small edge but the addition of 3rd FF would severely tilt things against the lone DD. If this ratio is then retained right down the line and command points adjusted to reflect this ratio more closely (does not need to be exact) I predict that smaller ships will be used more. Big ships would still be relevant but even more precious. You could still expect a lone titan to really be a force to be reckoned with but the idea of sending one or two out without smaller escorts would not be so beneficial.
Stardrive 2 had MOO2-ish command points, but with the smallest ship size, you were allowed to support X of them for free (after which they'd start deducting CP as usual). Space Sector could perhaps expand on this idea to help keep smaller sizes viable. Perhaps each time you unlock a new ship size (or pass some other threshold), you gain the ability to support X ships of the previous-larger size for free. Combined with the ability to build more than one ship per turn (if production allows), this could go a ways towards making fleets varied and interesting again.
I do not think having the winner of battles be able to repair some of their destroyed ships is a good gameplay idea (makes sense in RL though - the Germans in WW2 were great are repairing their damaged tanks). The reason for this: Death Spiral. If the loser always loses 100% of their ships while the winner loses 50-80%, then this makes it very difficult for the loser to claw their way back and end up winning. And I think given the typical boring 'clean up' phase of 4X games are known for, this type of system would exacerbate it greatly. Just my 2 cents.
I agree with this on multiple levels. Looking at Moo2 as an example we see that technology is available which automatically repairs damaged ships after a battle, if we start treating "kills" as damaged ships then we run into the issues you describe and more. By mid game we are able to produce ships quite effectively and at times do not as we exceed command limits, do we really want these worlds to be more idle? why not take advantage of this inherent flaw instead? I want to see kills made easier not harder and that goes for both sides in a battle. As casualties mount those worlds that are already productive would be churning out replacements instead of sitting idle. I know SEV dealt with this in a different manner and you actually had to move a repair ship to the location of damaged units in order to repair them, failing that, you could withdraw the damaged ships to the nearest world with a shipyard and repair them there. I liked that but there are times when I also like the more abstract version of repair as found in Moo2. For myself, I prefer a higher casualty ratio and a mix of ships in battle. It would be more exciting that way to protect a key unit, sometimes by sacrificing smaller ships in order to do it.
My 2c Varying ship sizes can imply varying tactical roles. Smaller manoeuvrable ships can evade a blockade easier than large ungainly ones. Larger ships can mount larger weapons: turret, hard-point, bay, spinal and so forth Some weapons (or defences) may require a group of ships operating in concert. Larger ships might not necessarily have larger command point cost however, these command costs can be derived from the components and crew training, so a large ship with a single weapon suite is easier to command and supply than a multi function stealth fighter bomber. Automation and robotic control might make it cheaper in terms of command points but ah, Saberhagen's Berserkers. Perhaps we want to keep control. Anyway, I'd like to see tactical choice in fleet management for special missions. Repetitive clean-up battles are a complete bore.
Final Frontier, a Civilization 4 mod had admittedly shoehorned but functional ship roles: Destroyer, cheap, fast, medium direct combat strength and strong active defense vs squadrons (small spacecrafts like fighters and bombers) Battleship, pricey, slow, high combat strength and strong vs planets Carrier, most expensive, slow and weak in direct combat but can carry squadrons which can wreck a havoc from a distance It's literately rock-paper-scissors. Carrier beats battleship, destroyer beats carrier and battleship beats destroyer.
I never played that but it seems they have managed to give ships similar roles to what they have had in recent history. Carriers do lack main armament to a degree and are vulnerable by themselves, which is why they do not go out alone. Battleships are obsolete these days but that is misleading. The Arleigh Burke class destroyers used by the USN are the size of the Admiral Graf Spee, this was considered a "pocket battleship" in its day. We here have a tremendous advantage in that we can be flexible with our hulls and sizes, a combination of different capabilities as referenced above by Ivan K should not be difficult to implement. Attention must be paid to balance so that no ship class becomes the only thing you will ever need but I do not see that as an insurmountable problem.
MoO2 combat (no stacks) vs MoO1 combat (stacks) drives the push towards larger ships. As long as there are no stacks and ships are moved individually then the game MUST reward larger ships through better firepower and less maintenance. MoO2 combat dragged on painfully long and 'bringing back' smalls as an option would only make it worse. MoO1 style does not need any more than the existing SMLH and it is possible to make small's interesting without dragging down late game combat (due to stacking). However MoO2 combat I would suggest even higher tiers of ship size in order to keep the number of ships in a battle low and late game combat still moving.
That is an interesting perspective and true to a degree. I have played both and my own personal view is extremely negative towards stacks, the question then becomes how to avoid the issues you described. Ships being quite limited in number throughout the game could partially address the problem, perhaps even increasing the rate of ship casualties could help. We have all played games where our ships would pound away at the enemy for many turns, energy weapons and missiles slowly bringing down shields and armour. This is reminiscent of naval warfare during the age of sail where your ships would pound away at each other, today it is very different. A single missile hit can sink a Frigate or Destroyer and cripple anything larger. Perhaps if there were a mechanic that made space combat seem less like the battle between the Monitor and Merrimack and more like the engagements during the Falkland war we could have a system that doesn't drag out combat or favour one size class over the other.
I think/thought PSS combat was more or less set to be like MoO2? Although I prefer stacks because of the smooth scaling, I posit that early MoO2 combat > all MoO1 combat > late MoO2 combat I don't think we need to change combat mechanics of MoO2. Rather change the macro influences going on outside of combat so that we don't end up with 2 dozen ships a side. Letting additional size of ships come in to the game (each one doubling size of previous but with command points flattening out) will ensure that competitive fleets must keep using the larger ships. This will then decrease the overall number of ships in combat and hopefully PSS can hang on to that "early MoO2" combat that felt so great before the slog fest kicks in. If you really want ship variety based on size (and I do!), I'm pretty sure you are looking at ship stacks such as MoO1 where the advantage of smalls comes from them in the 1000's.
Very perceptive Reformations, PSS features combat similar to Moo2 (mid game) with some interesting options. It does feel like it was designed for half a dozen ships as a fleet as I'm not sure how comfortable it will get past that. The pacing of the game means even that half dozen will be a substantial accomplishment, you won't be doing it early. Your ships matter here, I don't see any indication that you will be able to spam them and the Devs are paying a great deal of attention to making sure it's not easy to do. Already some work was done on smaller ships to increase their value since the first Pre-Alpha but I wouldn't be surprised to see more adjustments There have been no indications however that stacks were being considered once the VIP sessions began, at least nothing came up in any of the posts there.
Hi all and thank you for taking part in this thread. Normally I would consider so few votes as a non-factor but the 90% in favor of giving smaller ships a role is hard to ignore, unfortunately this then becomes a can of worms. There is a reason why most games fail here, or rather reasons. These reasons can include anything from sheer lazyness to outright difficulty in striking the right balance. After all, just as I do not want to see a game dominated by stacks of titans, I also do not wish to see a game dominated by swarms of corvettes. The goal then would be to have a game where a player could take the direction he/she prefers and not be penalized by it. In other words all ships must be viable and all strategies as well. For the player wanting to field Titans only, it should be allowed but without conferring any blatant advantage or dis-advantage in doing so. The same would then hold true for a player taking the opposite approach or even a player that decides to balance the two. The problem then becomes one of how to execute this. I am no expert on this but I think two key issues would be the balance and cost of ships in relation to one another and specialization of roles. Specialization should not be restricted to large or small hull sizes meaning that a Battleship should be able to do something a Destroyer can’t and vice a versa. If this specialization could avoid the rock paper scissors concept so much the better, I find that mechanic somewhat lacking and would really prefer something better.
I havent read everything sorry guys. Just wanted to respond to the first few comments who commented on: A- Bigger ships = less power overall but easier to repair/rebuild B- Smaller ships = more power per production point/SSP but a pain in the ass to rebuild and micromanage I think the solution would be quite simple: Make it possible to save a particular fleet layout with automatic ship building from your choice of dedicate shipyards. So let's examine a hypothetical scenario: FLeet A of 15 Destroyers/10 Cruisers/5 Battleships faces of a Fleet B of 15 Battleships. Fleet A wins with a net loss of 12 destroyers/6 Cruisers and 1 Battleship. Fleet A had its layout saved. Instantly Planet A queues up 12 destroyers (X production cost), PLanet B queues up 4 Cruisers (1/2X production cost as Planet B only has 1/2 production points compared to Planet A), Planet C queues up a Battleship and 2 Cruisers (2X production as Planet C has twice the production output than Planet A). That would make balance between smaller ships and bigger ships easier as you would only have to deal with gameplay values and not gameplay experience. Then other solutions could be implemented: - Ship hull specializations (as some have pointed out). For example Destroyers could have longer range weapons compared to Frigates but Frigates would be nimbler. - SSP dependent of the ship size. I'm not a huge fan of SSP and would rather have a maintenance fee for ships increasing with each new ship built. But you could make it so this maintenance cost scales up with the number of ship of the same size only. For example: - Battleship 1= 1BC per turn. 2=2.1BC per turn. 3=3.4BC per turn. Etc. A single destroyer would cost 0.2BC per turn, two 0.5BC, and ten 3BC. So a fleet of 10 Destroyers and 2 Battleships would cost 5.1BC/turn. Dunno if that's clear, tell me if it isn't so I can explain in more details. -Ship hull influences speed. Both in combat and out of combat maybe. In combat it would make sense as it would allow for flanking maneuvers with nimbler ships. If you make it so ships have much more armor in the front then those flanking maneuvers become almost mandatory. Out of combat it could make sense so you could have small patrol fleets of small hull sized ships protecting the core of your empires and being able to cover more ground compared to bulkier ships. However it would discourage the use of balanced fleets or at the very least it wouldn't promote it. In the end I think we should have a look at what's happening in real life. In the navy each size of ships (corvettes, frigates, destroyers, carriers, etc) has a different role to play in a battle. It could providing air support (carrier), air defense screening (frigates and destroyers), ship to ship combat (destroyers), search and rescue (corvettes), etc. In modern warfare the use of the cruiser has dwindled as it couldn't fit its role (I think mainly ship to ship combat while being able to soak up a lot of punishment) properly (more armor no longer means more survivability as speed is more important) or its role is no longer useful (cruisers mostly had short range weapons and nowadays battle are fought over very long distances). Hopefully I've provided some relevant feedback.
I have nightmares of tactical combat with 30 ships. That type of combat drags on too long. If the devs are going with command points/SSP approach to maintenance then the game needs to scale in such a way that larger and larger ships become more efficient of their SSP usage. This is the best way to keep the number of ships at a reasonable size on each side. I think the OP is implying smaller = faster. Now that I'm ok with. I love ship diversity and there is a role for a FAST ships in combat. Higher combat movement speed can and should be rewarded as a different tactic than lumbering doomstar. However, without stacks, I doubt you will get much interest in dozens of smaller ships as an alternative to a larger one. The combat pacing just falls apart.
Wait! How about we fight doomstacks with.... stacks! So you could stack 6 destroyers so they behave like one unit instead of having 6 destroyers acting like 6 units. In combat it would make it so a stack of 6 destroyers act as one unit (with proper graphical representation) and it would ease micromanagement. You will still have tactical flexibility and maybe it could be possible in combat to split a stack into two if possible (costing action points or something).
