GalCiv II: Size Matters

Part 1

Published on March 22, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

When it comes to battles, size matters. To balance that, Galactic Civilizations II introduces the logistics concept.

The logistics concept was designed to prevent the age-old strategy game issue where each side just builds a single mongo fleet/army/whatever and wipes out everything in its path. The number of ships you can put into a fleet is hence limited by your logistics ability which you can research to improve. How many logistics a ship uses is based on hull size.

In Galactic Civilizations II v1.0 that was:

Tiny: 2 points of logistics
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 5
Large: 5
Huge: 6

It was done this way to keep it simple for players. But here's the problem -- ship sizes. A tiny hulled ship has 16 space. A large hull has 55 space. That's over 3X as much space but the large only uses up 2.5X in logistics. Advantage: Large hulled ships. There are other factors involved too such as hit points and cost -- which are well balanced. But logistics are out of whack in our view.

So in v1.1, it's going to be this:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 4
Large: 7
Huge: 9

The various logistics techs will be pumped up too. The fact is, we want people to be able to build swarms of ships as a viable strategy. We also want people to be able to fixate on building huge capital ships as well. Now, the current system isn't horribly imbalanced by any means, the guy researching the larger hulls isn't able to put in time researching some mongo weapons.

If you go strictly by a spreadsheet, you can see plenty of imbalances depending on how you want to look at it and how nit-picky you want to be.

But I want to stress - the guy who's building huge ships had to go and research (or trade some equally valuable) technology to those huge hulls. They also had to put together the manufacturing capacity to create them and make the sacrifice of putting their marbles into a single ship rather than a bunch. In addition, there are various "round off" things that they have to deal with as well and many components, particularly defenses, take size into account when determining how much size they use.

Update:

After play testing during the evening and taking more into account things like starbase bonuses and the cost of getting those large hulled ships I made a minor tweak:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 5
Large: 6
Huge: 8

The Cargo hulls didn't need to come down because the new logistics abilities increase your logistics quite a bit. Before you would have 12 logistics after researching enhanced logistics. Now you'd have 15. You could hence fit 3 transports into a fleet at that stage versus 2 previously.

Comments (Page 1)

Simplicity2

on Mar 22, 2006

I'll say it again. Small ships are grossly more powerful due to the way military starbases work.

Would you rather have a fleet of two large ships with +2 to attack, or a fleet of 7 tiny ships with +2 to attack
from a military starbase? The fleet of seven gets a total of +14 more damage each "round" from that starbase.
The fleet of two large only gets +2.

If military starbases increased the percentage of damage that a ship did, THEN it'd be different. Capital ships would have an advantage then because they'd typically do more damage per ship.

Baleur

on Mar 22, 2006

OR, the military starbases effect could count on the individual weapons on the ships instead on a ship as a whole..
Example:

Light Fighter with 1 Laser + Starbase with +2 Laser = 3 Laser attack strength.
And the very same applies to the heavier ships, so as you said more smaller ships would end up getting a higher attack rating than fewer larger ships, due to the bonus being given on a per-ship basis.

Now imagine if the bonus was given according to the number of weapons on the ship..
Corvette with 4 Lasers + Starbase with +2 Laser = 4+2+2+2+2=12

The current way it is..
Corvette with 4 Lasers + Starbase with +2 Laser = 4+2=6

Alstein

on Mar 22, 2006

Yeah, but all those starbases have to be guarded, and all the constructors do add up production/cost-wise...

I find military starbases only useful in siege or defensive situations- not good for fast warfare, which is what I prefer.

Jimb0v

on Mar 22, 2006

arstal, the thing is its not a preference thing. Eventually overtime the military starbase will be exploited and that will be the only way to do battle. If simplicity is correct in his accessment of how starbases work based on hull size then it is grossly imbalanced.

Enigmatical

on Mar 22, 2006

Just looking at the "rate of increase" between sizes of ships.... there are some interesting differences:

Size
Tiny -> Small = 1.5
Small -> Medium = 1.5
Medium -> Large = 1.78
Large -> Huge = 1.72

Thus I would probably increase the size of Huge to 114 at least to indicate a 1.78 increase, or find a better scheme that allows for a more linear progression in size (ie where the increase in size capacity increases between sizes like 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8). This would yield sizes of 16, 24, 38, 65, and 118 respectively.

Cost
The rate of increase between Small -> Medium is off... Tiny -> Small is 1.6, but Small -> Medium is only 1.38... then jumps to a whopping 1.82 before going back down to 1.6 to reach Huge. I would probably use a rate of increase of about 0.05 which would give a cost range of 25, 40, 66, 112, and 196 respectively.

HP
This one is really skewed. The greatest rate of increase is to Large (1.75) but it drops down to (1.71) to go to huge. Again I would probably use a rate of increase of about 0.05 and end up with a HP of: 6, 10, 17, 30, 56 respectively.

The additional hit points and size for larger ships would compensate for the starbases granting multiple bonuses to the smaller ships (ie 5x +2 beam = 10 as opposed to 2x +2 beam = 4)

Logistics
This one is a little hard considering there are so few numbers but I think you pretty much have it set correctly.

Big Picture
I think those numbers might even out some of the smaller discrepancies, but the logicstics one is still an issue. Don't forget.... its not just the difference in size/logicstics that matters... but in the rate of increase between the size of hulls as well. It should always be bigger and better by at least the same factor as the previous level if not a little bit more. Try adding the rate of change between attributes to see this.

Takari

on Mar 22, 2006

I think the starbase issue is at least partly countered by the fact that small ships are limited in speed+defense. I like having 2 engines per ship, it lets me run circles (at the moment) around the AI. But then I need larger hulls since the engines take up lots of space.
Faster ships have a significant advantage, since a squad of 4 big ships getting first strike vs like 10 small ones kills 3-4 right away (mid-late game), the counterattack wont even hurt much if the larger hulls have defenses. Also, I dont play too defensivelly myself, so speed >> mil starbases for my priorities.
I think especially once the AI starts focusing on speed a bit more, the hulls will balance out a lot more, I'll probably stick to my big fat capital ships though

Simplicity2

on Mar 22, 2006

I don't like using military starbases on the offense all that much either. But the AI does, and I have done it. It's pretty effective. It's not that tough to have two or three fast constructors around under your fleet. As for speed, the bases can actually INCREASE your speed (you wanted fast warfare) with speed bonuses. Building a highway of military starbases to the frontlines is something a lot of people do already anyways if only for the starbase-highway effect.

Regardless of whether we're talking about offense or defense though, the argument is the same. Why should small ship users get a big bonus to defense while large ship users do not? What do big ship users get to compensate the fact that they got some expensive tech, spent a lot of production, and probably had to specialize a planet to get their warhulks out?

Featauril

on Mar 22, 2006

What's the point of bothering with military starbases except in key sectors? They only cover a tiny area of space. Clearly more of a hassle if anything if you're going to go on the offensive.

Besides, all that time wasted making constructors could be spend making ships that don't suck and winning a war.

Safari Joe

on Mar 22, 2006

Well on large and smaller maps if you build a military starbase which covers important planets you can draw most of the enemy fleets into it. Basically if you place the starbase right all the important battles can be fought within its area of effect, once its time to move on the enemies back is broken and there is little resistance left.

Haasen

on Mar 22, 2006

For tough fights, I queue up several constructors (cheap to make) and build a starbase on the spot. Well defended home worlds that also give me the smaller sister planet are ripe for that.

Fly in, drop a base, add some +attack modules, declare war, kick butt, take planets, wait for the enemy to come to you since you're now deep in their territory in a well defended area (thanks to the starbase and new planets).

Plus I don't think you're giving enough benefit in 1.1 to all the research and construction that goes into those larger ships.

Achillus

on Mar 22, 2006

thanks for theinfo

Francis Deschenes

on Mar 22, 2006

Building constructers in short amount of time is not a problem for me 1 week on my most productive planet well almost all up to medium hull in 1 week, but you pay the ship full price per round and that's not cheap.

Anyone here changing his spending slider to 100% if he can?

Safari Joe

on Mar 22, 2006

That's over 3X as much space but the large only uses up 2.5X in logistics. Advantage: Large hulled ships.

Don't ship components also get slightly bigger for the larger ships, not so much as to cancel out the extra space but is it really 3X bigger as far as fitting components is concerned.....or have I forgotten something?

aeternali

on Mar 22, 2006

This post is the first change i have seen that i think is totally wrong.

If you put this in the v1.1 patch then i will choose not to download it and i will be stuck using the old version.

Why?

This change does not make sense. The fact is that the old way was more balanced. Someone already stated the effects that starbases have. The larger ships are in fact much more costly to produce.

Also, you are forcing this playstyle change through game mechanics. Never forget that i am playing the machine here and not other players. With this change you have effectively put fewer ships in each of my fleets.

Honestly, what i would like to see is this set as an option.

BladeVenom

on Mar 22, 2006

I don't get why anyone thinks they should be balanced out. Bigger ships are a higher tech; they should be better. Why not balance out lasers and doom rays while you're at it.

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