A modest dead horse proposal:


Carriers and fighters would be cool because:


1. Fighters would have more space for weapons and armor if they didn't have to carry high speed engines, life support, etc...

2. Fighter duels and 'air' patrols would liven up the fleet combat and combat in general (look to the aged VGA Planet 'VCR' for what I mean.

2. *snip* (look to the aged VGA Planet 'VCR' for what I mean

Now that's a great idea from another old time player.
TBS fav link
post #44
For GC3 maybe.

- Long life to carriers.
- Why do ships can upgrade themself, lost in space? They receive lasers from a portable worm hole? Carriers could allow upgrade away from starports and starbases (IF a patch or expansion limit upgrading to starport and starbases, which is logical in my mind)
- Carriers adds a surprise element to battles. You never know what's in this targeted ship!
- Carriers let you concentrate on attack/defense when designing your starfighters instead of Life Support and Speed.

Please review your position!!!!

And Kryo, you could start a thread like this on starbases and spying. Having in mind the thread patch 1.6, this could be interesting!

I think that the main reason that carriers aren't even being considered for Galciv is because what people seem to want from a carrier simply would not fit into the existing game mechanics. It might seem nice to have a ship that extends the range of those around it, but it would really mess up the current life support system; who needs to put life support on their ships if they can just build one carrier and let it have as much support as it can hold?

As for the fighter-carrier, both major ideas would not integrate well into the existing game. Adding a sub-tiny size hull later in the game just for use on carriers would be more trouble than it's worth simply because those things would be a pain to build and en even bigger pain to replace as you begin field dozens of assault carriers. Having fighters as a fourth weapon type would only serve to complicate the current attack model; three diferent forms of attack and defense require a lot of planning already, and a fourth would make the system frustrating rather than adding more strategy.

The only way I can see carriers fitting into Galciv's mechanics is not in the traditional role as an offensive unit, but rather as a ship that plays a supporting role. If the carrier module was a "hangar" (comparable in size to a colony, invasion, constructor, or trade module) that was assumed to always have a full compliment of fighters, the entire carrier concept would be added through a single module (much like colony ships, transports, constructors and freighters). These fighters could provide minimal attack values for the carrier (possibly on the order of 1 damage of each type for a massive, expensive module), as well as a non-stacking fighter support attack bonus of (1,1,1) for either each ship in the same tile (or each ship in the same or an adjacent tile; which one would be the most balanced would require testing). These hangars could also boost the repair rate of ships in the same tile, proportional to both the number of hangars and the size of the ship being repaired; for example, a tiny hull would get the maximum rate bonus from just one hanger, a small would take two to get the full bonus, etc. The main purpose of the carrier would be to provide support for your ships when they are far from any allied planets or starbases, while not affecting the usefulness of either in most situations.

Orbital bombardment is much the same way- what people seem to want would not fit into the style of gameplay found in Galciv. Orbital bombardment in Galciv should not be the method of ececuting the "genocide run" seen in games like MOO2, but instead just another invasion option. Realistically, there is no way to cost effective way to destroy a planet with just the ships in orbit. The ships may be big and powerful, but they couldn't do major damage from orbit armed only with ship-to-ship weapons.

I personally think that Orbital bombardment would best be implemented as an invasion strategy unlocked by a tech in the invasion branch like the other invasion strategies (possibly "orbital targetting", or something to that effect). The bombardment would serve as a cheap invasion strategy that has an effectiveness based on the sum of the attack values of the invader's ships adjacent to the planet. Regardless of everything else, Orbital Bombardment should never be able to exceed other, more expensive invasion tactics in effectiveness. At most, it could function as a cheap way to get a very slight increase to your advantage or decrease to your enemy's advantage with less collateral damage than the more effective methods (simply because the ships would be offering what effectively amounts to heavy artillery support rather than the doomsday scenerios triggered by most other options). It's purpose would be less of a way to slaughter everyone on the planet as much as a way for the warlord on a budget to tip the balance in his favor.

Perhaps if the concepts of carriers and orbital bombardment were modified from what they typically are in 4X games to something more fittting in the Galciv universe, they could work in some future game/expansion pack- without hurting the gameplay but still appeasing those who want them so badly.

It’s a true amazement that World War 2 was won by carriers. And yet we find no need for them thousands of years from now. But then again have they been involved with other conflicts? I mean aside from providing a core logistics, faster ground support, enhanced communications, and a massive focal point for peace and military applications such as but not limited too, Iraqi freedom, Desert storm, Korean war, Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, and other global conflicts world wide.

I mean really, what good are carriers? Just a waste of money, we would be better off with nothing but Battleships and subs.

Oh wait; there isn’t any cloaking in this? Oh well I guess just Battleships will do... Who needs a layered strategy in troop deployment anyway? Don’t need first strike options, hidden trade rout attacks, in game cold war issues. Just War or no War.

Oh wait, We have spies now! As in we didn’t before?

Anyone ever hear of the Trials of Atlantes expansion for Dark Ages of Camelot? You know, the one they apologized for and removed from their servers because it sucked so bad and killed the game?

i agree with you

becouse the normal idea for a carrier on this thread is not a carrier but a tanker

I guess my idea isn't the "normal" one... for mine, a carrier adds lots of small ships to a fleet for lower logistics. The problem is that it won't work well right now because tiny hulls are at a disadvantage... Working on a mod to "fix" that.

if your idea is just to add range for the tiny hull then yes it is the normal carrier idea

See Kryo's response... I can mod "mini" hulls (in a way), and I can mod weapons and systems that work better for them, but carriers themselves I can't do.




Well, I too would prefer for little ships to not be capable of hyperspace travel. However, my strategy was to come up with a plan that DOESN'T change the rest of the game... Changing the rest of the game means additional playtesting and tweaking over what would already be necessary.




Hence the "mini" fighters... a "mini" fighter would take no logistics points, and (should) be half as powerful. A "tiny" fighter would be as powerful as a regular "tiny" ship with no engine, butyou'd have to pay logistics to put them on a carrier.




That's going to require modifications to the combat system. The good news is that, as of Dark Avatar, combat is by weapon rather than by ship... thus, large ships with large weapons can engage fewer targets. All we need now are bigger weapons. THAT I can mod. It's in the works.




Yeah, THAT's the idea!

Nope... see earlier posts. No range involved. Carriers carry "fighters" at reduced logistics cost, but not all fighters can move on their own. It's not the standard carrier idea.

I don't think thats true. Carriers can really turn the tide of battle, and the devs have also reduced the complexity of the features in Dark Avatar, to make it easier. Frogboy, Please Please Please change your mind! I have a system for how carriers can work! Frogboy, Kryo Private message me if want want to know what it is.

Etrius

If people dont belive in carriers, why not give a race carriers or just the human player, and see how that works out

Heres an idea I came up with, not sure how feasible it would be, but here goes. First of carriers, have a tech that allows mabey 2 or 3 different carrier modules that fit a different number of fighters (like 2, 4, 6). When a ship is equipped with the carrier module it can construct, hold, supply and deploy fighters. Have a fighter design system that lets you create specific fighters that would cause weapon damaged to be reduced by half or so, then once you design the fighter models, you select the carrier (or mabey even a planet with a deployment base) and have them build the fighter. Fighters themselves could serve 3 purposes, 1 missile defense, 2 fighter defense, and of course 3 attack... Fighters can chase down missiles and destroy them before they reach their targets, fighters vs fighters are staple of sci-fi (except in star trek, but even they have ships that deploy shuttles) and of course sending a fleet of carriers to attack enemy ships and possibly even planets, could include fighter support invasion option.

Planetary bombardment, this would be logical, the best way to do it would probably be like in Masters of Orion 2, where you but a ship into orbit, and can drop bombs (or for GalCiv could use missiles or mass drivers) and you can fire single shots to try and diminish enemy forces/buildings before an invasion, or unload massive amounts of ordinance for total planetary destruction which would wipe out all life, buildings and probably reduce planetary quality. Of course would likely require defensive measures such as planetary shields and possibly planet based weapons (like missile batteries, ion cannons and other fun toys).

Michael Dracul

On the matter of "orbital bombardment", hasn't the expansion provided the player with that option? The idea of the spore module, in my opinion, completely answers this demand of a genocide weapon. It doesn't require any troops, cost in invasion tactics, nor a chance for a planet to defend itself (completely negating all planetary defense and soldiering tech). The result being a very dead planet now in your possession.

I like the idea of not having to risk dragging productive population to invade a planet (not always successful). I'd rather just ship them in to settle post-spore attack...cheaper. So the spore module isn't a gun...but it remains true to the idea of dropping something from orbit. Am I not correct?

I think it would add flavour, especially since mods of Star Wars and Babylon 5 would be more "real" with carriers and fighters. Considering that battles are automatically resolved I do understand the designers' decision.



That's the reason? Every invasion is de facto a genocide since you don't only send soldiers (like in MoO2) but you send whole populations to replace the natives. IMO sending soldiers only would make genocide a decision the player has to make if he doesn't want to rule aliens.

Regarding orbital bombardment: A hard coded minimum population after bombardment would take away the ability to destroy planets from orbit. No matter how often or with what you bomb, population will never dorp below say 0.5 or 1b. The player would still have to launch an invasion to go after the survivors who are "hiding in caves and bunkers".

Just my $0.02.

How about a ship that lets us move planets? Or maybe move the star, and the planets move accordingly.

That is only kinda-sorta a carrier.

Thoughts on carriers.

Fighter Bays could work (functionally) rather like the fighters did from MoO2: A single (or maybe two-shot) weapon resisted by point defense as well as shields/armor/point defense is doubly effective against missile fighters, but missile fighters would be more powerful. The weapon would be quite large (big enough so that putting it on tiny ships isn't feasible) but relatively cheap for its firepower, but it's an all or nothing deal: after a couple of rounds, your fighters are out of ammo and useless. So packing a bunch of Fighter Bays on a carrier and no other weapon could work but only if you're sure of killing the enemy within a couple of shots: if they survive, you've got a defenseless carrier and a bunch of pissed off battleships who will cut you to pieces with regular gun batteries.

Of course, killing within a couple of shots is what happens nowadays with the game, so some weapon rebalancing might need to be done too. Visually, though, it could add some drama to the game: your carrier facing off against a couple of fleets of enemy frigates and destroyers. You see your fighter swarms launch. They streak towards the enemy ships and open fire. One destroyer falls. Then a frigate, and another destroyer. Running low on fuel and ammo, they turn towards the next ship, only to discover to their dismay that it is a picket vessel armed with a single phazor and tons of point defense. Point defense antiaircraft beams cut your squadron to pieces, and the ship with its single phasor closes in on the now defenseless carrier, slowly wiping it out with its wimpy peashooter in the death of ten thousand cuts. . .

Just a thought, if you love carriers, lets try to come up with a very eloquent and simplified proposal.

To keep them simple:

1. Make fighters a one shot weapon in themselves. They fire once and are then expended. Perhaps they launch and fire in the first round, or perhaps they launch in the first round, are subject to missile defense fire in the second round (if much greater than ECM III, or something more appropriate), and then get to fire their payload in the third round.

2. Make fighters like a missile. Follows from #1. The fighter could even be a branch of the missile research tree, say a fork at Harpoon III.

3. Only allow one fighter type per empire. Or at least only fighter type per planet or carrier module. So if a planet changes the type that it builds, the stockpiled ones get auto-decommissioned. Optionally, let a planet have a fighter bay improvement that lets them deploy a squadron of attached fighters. In short the fighters exist strictly as module-attached, basically as a mega, one-shot, shotgun blast.

4. If fighters arent destroyed in combat, then they are in the carrier hold for the next combat.

5. For fun, make a hull class smaller than tiny, say micro. Let a fighter be appropriately designed with a weapon, engine, and some type of defense, limited to armor and shields to absorb the point defence hits.

6. Optionally, make some ship weapons dual-configuration so they can hit the fighter squadron.

So in short, a fighter would be a module-dependent, one shot, shotgun-blast, and have a limited time frame to get swatted, after which it disappears until the end of the battle. Not ultra realistic, but then doesnt add a ton more graphical or numerical complexity to the battle scenes.

A hanger module for starships (Not A Carrier)

This would not allow you to move smaller ships into larger ships for transport to battles!

The hanger will be a new module that can be added to large, huge, and possibly medium size vessels. A player cannot dock ships in these for transport but instead they would act as a purely offensive weapon system that would deploy small drones or fighters or heavy fighters as you progress through the research tree branch. A new branch in the research tree would need to be added “hangers”. As you research hangers they would become larger and supply more fighters during battle (more powerful).

Pros and Cons of hangers

Pros for adding hangers to your ships:
They add a lot of firepower to larger ships
This would also add a new type of strategy to space battles. Sometimes better to attack than to defend if you have a ship with hangers in you military convoy.
Nice visual effects in battles could be added
Would add fighter to the Space Battlefield in later battles where you use only larger more powerful ships.

Cons for adding hangers to your ships:
They can only be deployed if you are the attacking force, not if you were attacked.
This adds a risk to paying so much for more fire power you may not get to use it in your battle. Since using a hanger will take up a lot of room on your ship they will probably need to be part of some sort of military convoy due to a weakened defensive ability.
They will take up a lot of room.


The fighters and or drones that would be deployed would be a standard looking fighter that was computer generated (Stardock designed), but would use the colors of your civilization.


This is just a thought. I think we need more modules anyway.
I hope Frogboy and Kryo actually still check this thread.

I don't think carriers make sense for galciv2.

Ship combat is the star trek kind (approximating napoleonic sea battles between ships of the line, or the first world war between battle ships)... not the star wars kind (modeled after ww2 carrier battles).


But not having orbital bombardment seems forced. I can't see why it isn't there (how about adding planetary defences if it causes gameplay issues?).

That is kind of my point. In WW2 Battleship such as the Bismarck would have reigned supreme if it were not for torpedo planes that slowed it down long enough for smaller cruisers to attack.

Also in GalCiv2 the Huge Battleship will win every encounter unless we have some sort of vessel that has sacrificed armour and weapons in order to have smaller harder to hit attack craft. That can sometimes take out a larger craft.

In the sixth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the Federation even started using fighters in their fleet combat against the Dominion in episode "Sacrifice of Angels"

Maybe it should win every encounter.

You couldn't defeat a ship of the line with a flotilla of rowboats carrying muskets.

I disagree with the Star Trek is anti-fighter arguement. Check out Star Fleet Battles for tons of Trek races with fighters. Most of the sci-fi fluff for fighters in a warpspeed Trek background has already been invented decades ago by Task Force Games's Star Fleet Battles board game.

Carrier based aircraft not only weakened battleships, they sunk them completely.
The only arguement against fighters would be:
1. they make the game too complex.
2. they require too many hardware resources.
3. mental challenges at imagining warp engines, warp booster, life support, tender craft etc..

That is right "in WW2". This is not WW2. WW2 would be ancient times compared to the time inwhich GC2 takes place. Carriers are preferrable on earth in the medium of water where they offer the advantage over battleships of being able to send their firepower over the (beyone the range of battleship guns) horizon via planes travleing in the medium of air. In the medium of space battleship weapons and carrier weapons operate and fight in the same medium (there are not two separate mediums up there ie air and water) Therefore there is no advantage what so ever to using carriers. In fact in the future when we really do have space navies and such, carriers will not even be considered and the only familiarity we will have of them will be in ancient history books.

here is the advantage of the fighter in space.

a carrier has enough fire power to take out your combat ship. the fighters it carriers has enough fire power to take out your combat ship. which do you take out. which do you allow to take you out.


now i just thought about this. a carrier in gc2 would fill the role of a command ship that allows all ships in the formation to combine their attack into one attack.

ie those 20 tiny ships instead of making 20 attacks. you are making one attack.