So you pretty much HAVE to build ships.

[Tyjenks]

That does it. I am officially either a moron or have lost all gaming acumen. Prolly equal amounts of each.

I played three games of GalCiv II winning one (Influence victory), losing one, and forced into early retirement on the third all the while wondering "What in the hell do I have to research to unlock new ships". I just figured I would get a handle on the finer points of actual ship building after I had a few games under my belt with all the new fancy-shmancy stuff. I looked all over that damn research tree looking for "Enables Ship X" to be built. I found a couple, but those were ships that took a lot of researchin'.

At one point, I thought maybe my copy was missing integral ship technologies. Like they forgot to include some screws in a package for putting together my kid's bike.

I just went back to school after a decade long lay off and made it through 8 classes with flying colors. Why am I a big dummy in the thing I have been doing most of in the intervening ten years?

XXXOOO and LYLAB,
Tyler

[Raife]

You need to start up the Advanced Hulls path, which is after researching Basic Logistics, which is after researching Xeno Engineering.

From there, the Medium Scale Building gets you your first actual hull-type upgrade, although Advanced Hulls does give you a couple of new small hull styles. The rest of them follow the same Hulls->Scale path.

[Lunch of Kong]

Heh. Anyone seen today's penny-arcade write-up (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/03/08)?

Galactic Civilizations 2 might be a very good game, but it has a feature so insidious that I may never find out: in addition to the various interstellar tiddlywinks, it has full ship construction.

[Nellie]

If I didn't have the artistic and creative ability of a housebrick, I might really enjoy the ship constructor. Sadly most of my ships look like someone let the wierd kid loose with the Lego Star Wars/Trek and die just as quickly.

And creating incremental upgrades of your fleet designs is still a right pain in the arse.

Ok I've got three floobles on the MkI, "remove", <clickety> ,"remove" <Clickety> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Why did you put the last piece I took off back on the ship instead of removing the piece I just clicked on? All I want to do is replace the Peashooter MKI with the Still as weedy but you might get some armour on as well now MkII without having to clear the entire ship design and start again while remembering that this game I called it <Small Gun MkI> instead of the <Gun Small MkI> standard that I used last game.

Thank god for my scouts finding rangers, I'd get creamed otherwise.

[MikeJ]

Tyjenks: Yes, you need to design your own ships to be competitive. To be blunt, the core ships are shit. The thing is, any pre-built one is almost certain to be worse because it's not tailored to your current tech or situation. A fake example: say you have Plasma Beams II and ECM I. You could make a nice ship with that, but the core designs require either Laser III and Chaff or Phasors I and Point Defence, or Laser V and Deflectors.

Researching what you want and building what you want is a lot less work than trying to find the magic key to unlock what will inevitably be a totally underwhelming ship anyway.


All I want to do is replace the Peashooter MKI with the Still as weedy but you might get some armour on as well now MkII without having to clear the entire ship design and start again while remembering that this game I called it <Small Gun MkI> instead of the <Gun Small MkI> standard that I used last game.

That recent patch removes functional components when you upgrade a design. So you can keep all the bling and just slap on engines, support and gun, which takes 20 seconds or so. Still, I agree the system needs more work. For instance, put functional components and decorations in different parts lists.

[Nellie]

I think it's partly a result of not spending enough time playing with it yet, nor necessarily being that impressed with the messy looking crap I actually end up designing.

That and my usual plan of playing on a huge map, preferably miles away from anyone else so I have a chance to play catch up with the tech trading so and sos (it's the only reason I can fathom for being 4th in the tech race despite doing 40% of the research between the 5 of us) means that I haven't acutually spent a lot of time sending fleets into battle, those that I have do have a tendency to get murdered pretty sharpish. I think my tactic of assuming that if you can't protect against everything slap some armour on is obviously not that effective.

[JMR]

Check out this thread (http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=104951) for some awesome ship designs. Too bad none of them have been uploaded to the GalCiv library for the rest of us to play with as I too suck at building cool ships :{

[McBain]

I actually really enjoy the ship editor.

But I agree, the tech-tree does seem to need a bit of streamlining...

[Nick Walter]

I actually really enjoy the ship editor.


The ship-editor is a mini game which threatens to eclipse the main game in entertainment value.

Brad should take whichever of his people came up with the ship editor and slap a promotion and raise on them ASAP before they leave to found their own dev studio.

[Tyjenks]

Now that I know what the hell is going on, it is pretty damn cool. I think I just assumed all the pre-designed ships from the 1st game would be in there PLUS you could build your own ships. I never read and it never occured to me that you HAD to. It's fine and dandy, I just feel like a big weiner for jumping into the game and not getting it.

[Kalle]

Something I've been wondering about. Are defensive components really worth it? Given the choice between more guns or more defenses I always go for the guns. The exception being space stations who can cram on armor without worrying about space issues.

Also, the Nano Ripper gun seems really overpowered for what it does. Sure, it costs an arm and a leg, but that's only a real deterrent if I'm upgrading or purchasing my ships outright. Getting more than twice the firepower of comparable weapons that far in the tech tree is pretty sick.

[rei]

http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=346&AID=103003

I'm pretty ignorant about ships so far having won only by weaseling and diplomacy, but the above is a good read.

[Raife]

Something I've been wondering about. Are defensive components really worth it? Given the choice between more guns or more defenses I always go for the guns. The exception being space stations who can cram on armor without worrying about space issues.

Yeah, I pack on the guns, then worry about other things. If it's for an attack fleet, I might stick an engine on, but if it's a defensive ship I won't. The best defensive system is extra hit points through experience, and that doesn't take any space.

In my current game, I've got a class of frigate with two ECM II systems and two Stinger IV's. Looking at how they've performed against an almost exclusively missile opponent, I should have replaced the ECM's with either Lasers or Mass Drivers. I'd rather kill the other ships as fast as possible, and since only one of your ships gets targetted at a time, that's wasted space on the rest of the fleet.

Another thing I've been doing lately is packing my trade freighters with sensors. Since all freighters move at a speed of 1 once a route starts, putting engines on them won't do anything but get them to their initial target faster. This is different than GalCiv 1, where freighters would move at a fraction of the initial ship's speed.

So the mini-freighters won't get a speed increase from engines, but they they will have the sensor range of the initial ship. A bunch of route freighters with great sensor range can really help keep track of what's going on, and you'll know right away if anything is gunning for them. I'll stick an engine or two on them, maybe life support, the trade module, and as many sensors as I can.

[Nellie]

Another thing I've been doing lately is packing my trade freighters with sensors. Since all freighters move at a speed of 1 once a route starts, putting engines on them won't do anything but get them to their initial target faster. This is different than GalCiv 1, where freighters would move at a fraction of the initial ship's speed.

Good plan, I hadn't thought of that. I do generally end up with more freighters than I need, and with Eyes of the universe, they do act as pretty handy spies.

Regarding defence systems. I do tend to leave a couple of ships per planet in orbit having been caught out a few times in the early games by troop transports sneaking up on my planets without me noticing. For a ship whose job is to basically protect planets, loading them up with defenses at the expense of a weapon or two might make sense (as they're going to be fired up first).

I'd sort of started down this path before making "interceptors" with high movement/lots of weapons specifically to engage enemy fleets and ships that sacrificed movement for defence to act as a barrier behind them. I think that was the game where I was never attacked before the next patch came out so had no idea how sound a strategy that was.

[Shiroko]

I'd like to see the formula, but right now I believe going for half weapons half defenses gets the best results (Assuming your defense and offence techs are not that far in terms of technological advance).

I almost never build a ship with two engines. So my ships usualt stroll around in 7 moves per turn, which lets me choose any battle I want.

And yes, Nano ripper should be more expensive, last game I discovered them, but having a planet with up to 2000 military production (Never let it get so high, the damn thing was too expensive to support) I found out I can simply build a few ships with these, (my usual engines of course) and some defenses (to cut back on the price) and while making one pre turn just go and ram the idiot torians who thought my weakest military couldn't handle them. They were leading the game, but they just massed with the wrong guy. I think they actually destroyed one of these Nano ripper ships.... granted it wasn't in a fleet but still.... 17bc a turn....

[Brad Wardell]

For designing a ship, at the minimum all you really have to do is literally pick a hull, pick weapons, defenses, propulsion and life support.

You don't even have to do any visual design. Just press the place button and it'll put it on the ship for you.

The pre-canned ships will never be competitive because each game has such different circumstances.

[skedastic]

I would like to see a "upgrade components" button, which would automagically replace all existing components on a design with whatever the latest and greatest in that class is. Generally this would leave some space on the design and I could add new doodads.

I would also like to see someone explain the economy in a manner which actually makes some sense. Listing the equations would do just fine.

[MikeJ]

I'd rather kill the other ships as fast as possible, and since only one of your ships gets targetted at a time, that's wasted space on the rest of the fleet.


If it's your five ships verus his one, that's correct. On 5 vs 5 though, the number of activations is the same. Your ships get five weapon shots, then the defences on the ship that's being targeted roll 5 times. So it balances out there. If you turn the tables around, your one ship versus his 5, then your defences are 'firing' 5 times for each time your weapons fire.

A policy of no defences and always striking first can work but it limits your options. If you are in a situation where you have larger, higher-tech ships, putting on defences can result in truly sickening exchange ratios, and you can hold your ground.

Since attack capability tends to increase a lot faster than initial hitpoints, going without defences basically gaurantees you're going to take significant losses if the enemy ever gets the initiative. If you want a ship that can survive a hit, you have to make a large commitment to defences.

Basically, I think defences are:

-more usefull on larger ships than smaller ships
-more usefull when your ships are larger than your opponent's
-more usefull when you have a tech lead
-more usefull if you can't assure first strike



Another way to look at it: if you have defences effectively equal to your opponent's attack, you reduce his expected damage by a factor between 2 and 3 (depending on absolute scale). That means you survive 2-3x as long, which is equavalent to multiplying your expected damage 2-3 (in the long run).

So say you have a choice between a 8-4 ship and a 12-0 ship. If you are facing 4-0 opponents, you expect the 8-4 ship to last about 2.5x as long, so if it fought to the death, it would be equivalent to about a 20-0 ship in terms of expected damage (assuming 20-0 wouldn't be overkill).

On the other hand, if you are facing say 12-6 opponents, your 4 defence is going to do squat, and 12 attack is going to be much stronger than 8 attack against that defence.

Edit: The Dreadlords are a perfect illustration of the drawbacks of the all-weapon design. They are on the wrong side of everything. They have a crushing tech advantage and build large, expensive ships. If their dreadnaughts were say, 20-40 instead of 60-0, they'd be completely unstoppable. Yet as it is, it's pretty simple to build small or tiny, all-weapon fleets that can take out their ships in an extremely cost-effective ratio, whether they get the first attack or not.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

On large maps or bigger (which is what I usually play) engines are priority number one. On small ships I have two, on medium or larger I have three. While you lose some amount of firepower, you can always choose your battles and you can get reinforcements to where the fighting is in a timely manner even though your production planets are far away from the front. This also allows you to go to war with a relatively small fleet, since you can take the fight to the enemy early, concentrate your forces where you need them, overwhelm the AI at one point, and then get reinforcements faster than the AI, whose ships are always excruciatingly slow.

Reinforcements are crucial, because a fleet containing nothing but the maximum allowed amount of undamaged ships is not fighting at full efficiency. In any sort of meaningful campaign I have at least as many ships in reserve as in my battle fleets, allowing me to replace losses and rotate out damaged ships and keep my fleets fighting at maximum efficiency. These reserves are in turn kept supplied by repaired and newly produced ships.




Basically, I think defences are:


-more usefull on larger ships than smaller ships

-more usefull when your ships are larger than your opponent's

-more usefull when you have a tech lead

-more usefull if you can't assure first strike

I more or less agree with this. I haven't done any hard number crunching on it, bit I've found defences are most useful for keeping your losses down when you're grinding down a numerically superior but technologically inferior opponent.


Also, the Nano Ripper gun seems really overpowered for what it does. Sure, it costs an arm and a leg, but that's only a real deterrent if I'm upgrading or purchasing my ships outright. Getting more than twice the firepower of comparable weapons that far in the tech tree is pretty sick.

Well, first, it balances out the general crapness of Mass Drivers; Beam Weapons are generally a bit more expensive but take less space, and are thus better, but don't have the super guns the Mass Driver tech branch has. But anything you choose to stick more than one Nano Ripper on is going to become target #1, and will pretty quickly get killed if you don't rotate it out and replace it with another one. In my last game, I was always able to keep my squadrons of basic Medium-hulled ships at full strength, while my Large ships with Nano Rippers mainly sat around waiting for enough of them to get repaired so they could form an effective fleet.

[Kalle]

Idar, when I got Nano Rippers I put as many of them on my ships as I could fit and switched production to nothing but Nano Ripper ships. It was the first time in the game my fleets had a combined attack that went into the triple digits. My opponents started stacking up armor, but I didn't care because even with their ships all armored up Nano Rippers are two to three times as effective for the space they use than any comparable armor. My ships tore through my enemies like paper. And after a couple of fights they had so many HP I no longer had to worry about replacing them.