Three Serious Needs of SoaSE

Why would you want a cap? Big space battles are good, its your fault if you keep making to many ships.

Okay, 300+ ships? You must be playing on high resources? If you are having an issue with economies being boosted artificially, then don't select to boost them artificially in the game setup.

I wouldn't know about this problems as I've been playing all my games with low resources. Hmmm, I guess I should try out high resource games before I comment on them any further.

How the heck are you guys having battles with so many ships, my average game has a max of 60-70 ships...

use LOTS and LOTS of traders and resource traders

well this could be avioded if they were to implement formations in the game.

I'm sorry, how can you have TOO many ships. When does it become too much?

In my opinion shipcaps are bad, but, options are never bad. Maybe an option could be added later on for the people who want to limit the number of units. I myself dont see the need for it, with later tuning of the economy/AI such large fleets might even not be possible and the problem solves its self.

That and this is beta-1, performance is one of the things being tested right now.. and thus, you cant have enough ships on your screen.

off with his head! (hey, I'm just joining the witch hunt   )
just looking at the game (and watching multi play) here I have to agree. either that or the AI needs a natural boost.
of course the third option is just to slow ship speeds down (which I personally might be in favor of) but I know that certain people would be upset by the slowdown this would apply to the overall game...

First let me say that this map was played under:
20 planets
5 solar systems (altered the gameplay file slightly)
MEDIUM resources
6 races total (incl me)
AI on Hard
9 Artifacts

This is equivalent to a Small Galaxy (just with more solar systems - I like the slowdown in jumping that Long Distance causes as it makes tech tree and colnization pattern more strategic)



I can understand those of you who refuse to consider a cap, in most games I argue that way. TH eproblem is this, with enough traders and refinery ships, you can literally build an infinite amount of ships. And the AI loves to do so. I cant even post a screenshot of the full fleet as my system simply cant handle it, I play from a top down zoomed out empire view that breaks it all down into squigly lines.

Also, lacking formations and Target Prioities, let me explain what the end game consists of: constantly clicking around your production colonies (in the left hand side of the screen, the lil blue dots cna be clicked and ordered directly) and jumping them to the combat zone. With construction speeds as theya re, by the end of the tech tree if you have 8-9 colonies churning out ships, this can be a full time job.

You have no effective way of controlling 300 ships in an 300on300 engagement. Capital ships flame out very quickly in the face of even 30 Kodiak Frigates. Abilities (except for Armistice which is mega pwoerful ) are by and large not all that effective agsint this number of targets.

Your screen is bombarded and spammed with messages you do not ahve time to read;

I AM ALL FOR 1000 ship engagements IF you give me controls to manage them. If you make the software Ill buy thye hardware. But if I dont have a control system that can macromanage, and I am FORCED to build fleets that large on a small galaxy, that = sucky gameplay. I know its beta1, eg, its not too late to introduce some UI and Formation/Targeting Objective options. Once the game is released = WAY too late. Heck this might well be too late to intro some kind of UI managerial interface if they dont alreayd have one planned.

Now I did say make it a toggleable option; I dont think many of you arguing against some kind of cap have played this thru. Try it out see where I came to, then come back and post. Normally I hate unit caps; its ony of my biggest beefs in the Total War series is that I want 20k troops on the field not 2k.But that game has controls (not always that effective but its something), this game does not yet (or might not never) have said controls.

If that is the case, I want the option to put either a Hard cap or a soft cap. Realize that at 25 ships per planet in a Small galaxy that 26 (each race gets its homeworld sep from planet cap) x 25 = 650 ships. In a Large Galaxy with 50 planets and 9 nine races thats = 59x25= 1475 ships. Make it 50 ships per planet;

but in my current game, where the AI can support 300-400+ ships with 3 planets, this is ludicrous. DO you have any idea how long I have to sit and wait for my factories to churn out enough ships to match, then overpower their fleet? It literally takes hours to amass that kind of metal, crystal, and credits. Its not fun. It should be improved somehow.

I don't want to see a cap,the economy just needs tweaking a bit.I can agree with the lack of battle tactics in the game, although the scale is too big for individual ship micromanagement.I would like to see tactical options at the fleet level,at the moment the game plays itself in battle..

then just build a larger infinite.

besides, by the sounds of it the AI is outmanouvering you, if you engage a hard cap, then you will simply lose.

it won't work. that is simply too large of a gameplay issue. the game is designed to be a soft cap, if you even attempt to make it work for both it'll fail for both.

that'll ruin race dynamics.

admitably there should be some sort of change that takes care of that.

Wouldnt be a large infinity. And anyways, why is this a problematic game concept, I odnt even think any game engine could suppport an infinite amount, so no problem.

I dont think limits on how many ships you can have on a planet is a good idea for this game, cause its supposed to be EPIC.

Dude, 300 frigates and cap ships in a battle (per side) is pretty damn epic.

Get to that point, play it, then repost. Or if you like I can upload a save game sometime in shortly in the future (my old saves were broken by the patch) and you can simply try it out.

Also, making it so that the defining limit of ships is caused by computer hardware is not a great way to cap the number of ships.
While it may be mildly entertaining to watch that number of ships on the screen, the TIME to build up such a fleet is crazy, you can sit there for 6 hours doing nothing but building one giant fleet while you try to outproduce the AI. Simply put in a toggle option to limit it to a soft or hard cap of some kind, a soft cap (defined as Ship Limit+25 per planet, or more) will make it so that you need large numbers of planets to ahve fleets this large. You should not have a fleet my equal in size at full dev when I ahve 6 times the numbers of resources fully developed.

Re: the soft cap killing me, I do not see how, unless I had fewer planets. Understand, I am not talking about a handful of ships, this will not limit you early or even mid game - its an end game dynamic, I am talking about hundreds of of ships per fleet, assuming you play with the min 20 planets.


Finally regarding the AI outmenuvering me, please read the full post: I ahve all but 3 planets (killed off all the other AIs) that are in a line. And yes I tried the Scout fleet option to get behind their lines, doesnt work with the degree of defenses they have built up and they have multiple shield gens and warp inhibitors around their first planet. ATM, it is clearly possible to bottleneck to an extreme degree.

Somehow, the AI is getting some kind of artifical bonus that allows it to keep pace with my construction and the degree of that bonus is extraordinary large, in the scale of 600-700%. Taking away pure credits and income, it must also be cheating on metals and crystal as their local roids are all tapped out and they dont have that many refineries for artifical resource income.
The AI is not following the rules somehow, altho this was pre-patch; I ahve to wait and see if the same issue exists post patch.

Sounds to me like you may be targeting the ships yourself... I tried this in a few of the games I've played, and have found that for the larger battles, that I create one small strike force to directly control, and allow the majority of my forces to police themselves. I usually like to use my strike force to concentrate on enemy carriers/flak frigates, which vastly cuts into their chances of winning battles againt me...

SLAY THE NON-EPICINATOR!!!

again, the game is not designed for that system, and even if the Devs did put it in, I am fully trusting that they wont attempt to even compromise the gameplay for that toggling. if they do try it will destroy the game from both ends. yes they can put it in, will it be worth it? no.

yes, but quite obviously the smarter AI with the equal production capacity will kick your ass in a tactical battle. esp. on 300+ unit scales, theres no way that you can have a hard cap and expect to win. soft cap is different.

regardless of whether or not this is true, I really dont think you want to post this sort of thing. "the computer is cheating" is usually not recieved all that well. perhaps they just have a nicer economy, focus on attacking their buildings, not their units.

I don't think the AI could possibly have built up that many ships with just those colonies. They must largely be remnants that you didnt kill while blowing up planets.

Perhaps the AI had the top level expenditure-steal research.

Try turning auto attack off. Jump in your whole fleet, wax them when they come to you.

fin

The degree to which AIs get a bonus is a serious balance question imo and not simply an AI cheated issue; wont matter much how you play with the tech trees if they are getting a huge % bonus over the player. Your arguemnt doesnt work b/c this is not a compeleted game and as such, the AI has not been balanced yet. Lest you forget we are here ot test out the game to work out bugs and help balance it. Ive played numerous games in beta that had overpowered AIs b/c the AI was getting too much of a bonus on different settings (most games use AI settings of Easy, Normal, Hard, etc. by adjusting production,aggression level %, and a few otehr things); on Normal I ahve yet to see the AI do this to me, on Hard its fairly common to see the AI turtle up like this.

Im fairly certain the AI did ahve the top leel research, we were both teched out. Mind you Im sure it stole my income but I dont think that applies to metal and crystal.

Hehe with that many ships they do not all jump at same time on the inbound side. The AI has their chokepoint loaded with their fleet, they tear apart my ships as they jump in to the planet.

There are no other remnants left (in fact I ahve every asteroid and planet colonized outside of their sphere at last check), I fully explored all systems (I used Scouts to get thru their warp inhibitors to explore their systems and check out their defenses).

Not only did the AI build it with just those oclonies, they continued to build more ships. Interestinly enough, I think 75% is the max cap on maintenance; my empire was at 75% at 100 ships and at 300 its still 75%.

So yes, it can continue in income. I have no clue how they are getting metal/crystal to build new ships.

If you can build a fleet of 300 ships you either are a great strategist (i.e. Outsmarting and dodging AI) or you are extremely patient (i.e. Sitting for hours upon hours until the fleet is built).

Personally I prefer
Early Game:
Flagship Class Kol Battleship, Akkan Class Cruiser, 25-35 Arcorva Frigates
Late Game:
Flagship Class Kol Battleship, Akkan Class Cruiser, TEC Carrier, 20-30 Kodiak Frigates

I also have to say that the Akkan ability Armistice is the coolest. And that it doesn't need tweaking.

well, armistice could use a much longer recharge.

It already has a long recharge, long enough that when escaping into phase space by the time you reach the next system the effect is usually gone and needs about 2:30 minutes to recharge.

i was basing that on my impressions, but i check the data files, its only got a 3 minute recharge (and it starts recharging immediately) and it lasts for 1 minute. two high level akkans is totally rediculous. 3 offering perma armistice is beyond silly. you could theoretically never lose a game just by cycling 3 akkans with armistice at your last planet to prevent bombing. bad idea for MP we all know there's asswipes out there that would do that.

which is why armistice needs to have more than just a shitlong recharge, it also needs to counter other crafts with the same ability, either that or simply lowering the effectiveness of craft over dissabling them.

Armistice is perfect as it is now. You have to realize we have only seen one factions abilities. And the fact that their are things the TEC are missing in the beta speaks volumes as well. I am sure some of the other races abilities are more powerful. I don't want to play the Advent and Vasari as the TEC. Equality sucks in multiplayer games.

Its more fun to create unique strategies rather then use the same one over and over. So if people want to use the Akkan to protect their last colony they should have every right. But most of the time when it comes down to your last stand with your last world, you don't have much in the warship category.

I wouldnt touch Armistice or any otehr dmg/ability aspect until we see other races abilities.

Mind you I find armistice annoying altho virtually everytime its been used agasint me was caused by one of my own ships being on auto lol.

Re: patient, it wasnt by choice; thats exactly why I started this thread and made this argument about soft caps; I ceased enjoying the game when I was forced into building a 300 fleet to win and it still wasnt enough. Actually worse than an MMO grind, all I do is si thtere and queue up huge amounts of ships. Anyhow, there has been some talk of other ways to get thru the Phase Highway issue which would 9imp[act this issue somewhat, so Im waiting to see where that ends up.

ever heard the saying "two wrongs doesnt equal a right"? something shouldn't be shitload powerful just because something else is shitload powerful, the two should just both be diminished in power.

are you missing the issue? the reason we dont like armistice is that someone with one homeplanet can make themselves COMPLETELY invincible, that isn't "fair" thats downright rediculous.