IDEA: Special treatment of ships with no offensive capability

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was thinking about ships that have no points in any of the 3 offensive type categories. Here's what was bouncing around inside my head:

NO-OFFENSE SHIP = FREE KILL
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Just based on the descriptions of defenses in GalCiv 2 Beta, it seems clear that they are non-offensive in nature. That is to say, the defenses do not "shoot back". For instance, if a ship has all kinds of Shields, Armor and ECM, but no weapons, it has no way to retaliate against an attacker. Given time, an attacking ship with just one puny Laser should eventually be able to wear them down and destroy them. At the very least, it should end in a draw if the attacker has really inferior weapons, but should not end with the attacker being destroyed.
I am proposing that a ship with no offensive points should be considered automatically killed when attacked by any ship that does have offensive capabilities (similar to the mini-freighters in GalCiv 1).

NO OFFENSE/DEFENSE = LOWER COST/MAINTENANCE
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So why take the unwise move of designing a ship with no offense or defense? Maybe the incentive should be a GREATLY reduced production cost and maintenance cost. If you want a justification, how about this: a ship with no weapons or armor requires less expensive components to produce. No weapons means no weapons or repair crews, which should be less expensive in maintenance costs.
I am proposing that a ship with no offense or defense points should have a GREATLY reduced production and maintenance cost.

NEW SHIP DESIGN OPTION: NON-COMBAT
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In order to make a ship design that falls under the category I mentioned above, the Ship Design screen should have an option to flag the design as "Non-Combat" type. This will give your design the cheaper cost described above, but will also make you a sitting duck for any idiot with a couple Corvettes and a bad attitude. When you set the Non-Combat flag for your design, it should disable the weapon and armor menus on the design screen.


I think this is a good idea, but only the Stardock folks know if this concept would complicate the AI. What do the rest of you think?

- Proud Canadian
ideas
21,637 views 32 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Um, why armor? Even non-combat ships can be heavily armored (transport ships)
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My point was, if you have no weapons at all then armor by itself is useless. You can have all the armor in the world, but if you don't have a single gun to shoot back with, then you can't possibly win the battle.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
True. But there's another problem.

Realistically, non-combat ships would still likely be armored anyway, because there's always the chance they could manage to escape instead.

Just because a ship doesn't have weapons doesn't mean it'll necessarily get blown up. And this may or may not be important for the fleet battles if different ships are targetted.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Another reason why we DON'T need Canada!!! "Lets build ships without guns DUH!!!


Freighters don't need guns. Neither do Colony Ships. If you want a "real world" example, consider a container ship. Those things are massive, but only have a small crew and generally have no guns. Adding guns means extra crew and expense.

By the way, when you make bigoted comments about people from other countries and cultures you only embarrass yourself and show your lack of upbringing.

- Proud Canadian
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For instance, if a ship has all kinds of Shields, Armor and ECM, but no weapons, it has no way to retaliate against an attacker. Given time, an attacking ship with just one puny Laser should eventually be able to wear them down and destroy them. At the very least, it should end in a draw if the attacker has really inferior weapons, but should not end with the attacker being destroyed.


I agree that an unarmed ship shouldn't kill an attacker, but I disagree with insta killing an unarmed ship. If I put enough defenses onto a ship it should be able to absorb a weak attack. Afterall, I've gone to the trouble of heaping defenses onto it!

Another reason why we DON'T need Canada!!! "Lets build ships without guns DUH!!!


Don't be racist.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This seems to bring up the question of whether there should be a disengage tactic. Perhaps unarmed ships should automatically attempt to disengage - ex. (k/(difference in speed)) rounds to beat them, whith k starting at 10 (too lazy to make it ship dependent). The attacking ship does 10 rounds of damage, and the combat ends.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think Tim has the best idea. Non-offensive ships shouldn't be able to destroy their attackers. However, they should also be able to get away if they are sufficiently defensive and fast. Neither ship will be destroyed at the end of the fight. I also think his calculation of 10 rounds is about right, except I think he meant 10 - (difference in speed)... otherwise we'd have division by 0... If the battle has gone on for 10 - (difference in speed) rounds with no clear victor, the defender disengages.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Tim and Aloriel,

I agree with your comments on ships with Defense but no Offense. That would be cool if a battle could end with survivors, and the concept is more "believable".

What do you guys think about the reduced maintenance Non-Combat ship type? Does that have any merit, or it is not worth considering?
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I never heard of a convoy of unarmed military ships (troop transports) that was not escorted in contested waters by armed ships.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Jack,

At least not intentionally. They tended to end up on the sea floor.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Lucky Jack brings up a good point: What happens when an unarmed ship with an armed escourt gets attacked? If the escourt is destroyed, then does the unarmed ship automatically die?

Could the escourt be considered buying time for the unarmed ship to escape?
Could the attacker want some other outcome besides just destroy everything?
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've got mixed feelings on the idea. I personally feel that it's taking things too literally, though I'm not entirely opposed to seeing something like this. When attacked, a ships attack value doesn't enter into the equation, even when counterattacking. So to me, the defense isn't about how well the ship can shrug off an attack, it's how well it fights a defensive battle. After all, why should a ship with a 60 defense and 1 attack be so much more dangerous to attack than one with 60 and 0? I know, the devices themselves are purely defensive as far as the description goes, but I really think that it's still just a representation of the concept.

Hmmm.... some tradeoffs come to mind. Doing this would force defensive ships to mount some "placed" weaponry just to function as defenders, which also means that we're forcing them to create ships capable of knocking out targets of opportunity. I'd rather think of that as a strategic decision, though there are other things that you'd want to add to such a ship anyway, so there may still be more distinction.

At any rate, starbases would have to be special-cased, since they don't have an attack rating.

Hmmm.... There's an off topic question. Will we be able to customize star bases at all? I really liked playing with Moo3 starbases, though in Moo3, starbases were really just larger, immobile starships, which really doesn't fit GCs model.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think GC2 starbases will run along similar lines to GC1, except that this time you build a type of starbase which you then upgrade as before. I don't think you will design them like ships, which is how I remember the Moo series doing it.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When attacked, a ships attack value doesn't enter into the equation, even when counterattacking.


That's actually not true, if the Beta is using the same logic as was used in GalCiv 1. According to the documentation for GalCiv 1 (I actually read that stuff when I was stuck in an airport once with WAY too much time on my hands) combat between two ships is handled something like this:

Attacker "rolls" his Attack value, which can be anything from 0 to his Attack rating
Defender "rolls" his Defense value, which can be anything from 0 to his Defense rating
Highest number wins. Loser's value is subtracted from winner's value and the loser has the difference subtracted from his hitpoints.

The next round (if both ships are still alive) the original Defender becomes the Attacker and vice-versa. They keep alternating each round until one ship is destroyed.

Anyway, that's how I understood GalCiv 1 to work (please correct me if that wasn't right).

After all, why should a ship with a 60 defense and 1 attack be so much more dangerous to attack than one with 60 and 0? I know, the devices themselves are purely defensive as far as the description goes, but I really think that it's still just a representation of the concept.


In GalCiv 1, that statement is absolutely right. However, since GalCiv 2 specifically maps your defense rating to components that don't "shoot back", it just doesn't make sense anymore. Sure I could ignore that fact, but that would make it harder for me to immerse myself in the game.

- Proud Canadian
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ummmm.... kamakazi's?

I can envision bulding a fleet of uber-cheap unarmed ships. Just enough life support for one or two crew, and no frills but enough hull to hold the air in and a big ass engine for speed. Then you mass produce em, deploy them in fleets (shoals?) and they become manned kinetic missiles. Meet the enemy, and ramming speed!

So, you argument that an unarmed ahip should always die against an armed ship is true... but the armed ship should not get off scott free. In fact, if I was capatain of an unarmed ship and knew I was gonna die, I'd ram, or lay to for boarding and blow my engines up, or do something - anything - to try and take the bastards with me.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's actually not true, if the Beta is using the same logic as was used in GalCiv 1.


I don't think we can use even Beta 2 as a basis for what will be in GC2. After all, a ship with 40 hit points should show some loss of hit points between battles. In beta 2 this is not happening. A ship either wins or looses. Period.

I think we need to wait until the developers get some of the more detailed battle support into the code and delevered to us to see what this is really going to be like.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In fact, if I was capatain of an unarmed ship and knew I was gonna die, I'd ram, or lay to for boarding and blow my engines up, or do something - anything - to try and take the bastards with me.


What's funny about this is, its been done before in Master of Orion 2. Ahhh yes, I have fond memories of clustering my obsolete ships around the enemy's state-of-the-art ones and hitting the ol' SELF DESTRUCT!

Kamakaze sounds really cool, but in MOO2 it was less "strategy" and more desperation. Fun on the odd occasion when you actually manage to take someone down with you.

Pilot: "We can't take out their command ship sir. They have Commander Sparky the Cybernaut on board, and their shields are recharging faster than we can take them down!"
Lord Admiral Loknar: "Damn you Sparky! You shall feel the white hot wrath of my Quantum Detonator! ARRGGHH!!!"
*blam*



(for those of you who never obsessively played MOO2 in the past, feel free to ignore all that...)

- Proud Canadian
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Expanding on this option- how about having both ships still in engagement at the end of the turn, if a sufficient number of rounds of combat didn't destory either ship?

That way the ship with 0 offense is damaged some, and the other ship is still there. Yes, that means 2 empires ships in the same square, but that's doable...
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A simple solution would be having the minimal attack value for military ships with any armor. Simply you should not be able to design a ship with armor and without weapons. Also you should not be able to design ship with weapons and without minimal armor, similar like it was in SMAC. If the ship is non-military, then it does not have armor and weapons at all, and will be destroyed if attacked unsupported.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm pretty sure that both 0 armour and 0 attack are valid under the galciv approach.
A disengage tactic could not precipitate a division by zero error, since a ship can only disengage if it is faster than the attacking ship.
Actually, in galciv, a ship could make a number of attacks equal to it's remaining move, so perhaps 5 instead of 10.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A simple solution would be having the minimal attack value for military ships with any armor. Simply you should not be able to design a ship with armor and without weapons. Also you should not be able to design ship with weapons and without minimal armor, similar like it was in SMAC. If the ship is non-military, then it does not have armor and weapons at all, and will be destroyed if attacked unsupported.


That might be a problem early in the game. You may start off with 1 weapon tech, but not have any of the defense techs yet. You could make an argument that the hull of the ship itself is "weak armor", but then what about Shields and ECM?
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually, ProudCanadian, no, in GC1, the defender always uses its defensive value to roll (I'm not sure of the attacker, but I believe it always uses its attack value as well). Otherwise, you'd never take damage attacking starbases or constructors, and the game I've got going on right now, the Yor are loosing tons of corvettes while attacking my starbases and constructors. Changing it so that ships without an attack value would be free kills would have profound effects on that type of game game (though admittedlly, that particular game is a CG1 game, so won't be affected by GC2 changes).

I'm not strongly opposed to this, but I prefer having more options, and that includes strong defensive ships that can't go on the offensive. This isn't that different from GC1 really. Think about starbases. The only offensive weaponry they mount only supports starships, can't be used to attack by itself, and the only defensive module that sounds like it would inflict damage to attackers is the lightning shield. And yet it's easy to lose ships while attacking starbases. The same is true of constructors, unless you're arguing that constructors have enough weaponry to defend themselves but not to attack anything, including minifreighters.

The issue is the same in GC2, just more noticable, because in GC2, it's easier to say that ship X has no weapons, since you placed everything on that hull. Well, it can still move even if you don't place any engines in the hull, so maybe the same is true for minimal defensive weaponry. It's not too hard to conceive of a weapon that is useless for attacking starships (think something that limits the mobility of the ship that is preparing to use it. if the target doesn't want to fight, it moves outside the range of the weapon while you're preparing to fire).
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Good feedback Popup. Here's my thoughts:

Think about starbases. The only offensive weaponry they mount only supports starships, can't be used to attack by itself


True in GC1. Not necessarily true for GC2, since we haven't seen what Stardock has in mind for starbases yet. They may have offensive weapons in GC2, but just not be able to move (that is, they won't be able to initiate combat). Maybe we will get to make our own Starbase designs (on a Starbase hull-type) just like we can design ships? But that's a whole separate topic...

Well, it can still move even if you don't place any engines in the hull, so maybe the same is true for minimal defensive weaponry.


OK, I'd be willing to buy that argument. If that were the case, it would bring me back to the idea of classifying a ship design as Non-Combat vs. Combat. A Non-Combat ship would not have any of the minimal offensive/defense equipment, and would be completely defenseless unless escorted by one or more combat ships. The benefit would be lower cost and maintenance.

unless you're arguing that constructors have enough weaponry to defend themselves but not to attack anything, including minifreighters


And this is where things don't totally add up. If a ship does have "basic defensive weaponry" that is potent enough to kill an attacker, it doesn't make sense that you couldn't use it to blow up a mini-freighter. In fact, I think that ANY ship in GC1 should have been able to blow up mini-freighters, but that's a moot point now.

- Proud Canadian
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Impression I got is that we won't be designing our own starbases. I liked doing it in Moo3, but in Moo3 starbases were just big, immobile ships, they couldn't do anything that a starship couldn't. The same isn't true for GC1, and probably not GC2. I'm not sure I can see add-a-constructor SB expansion co-existing with design and upgrade SB expansion.

I think the real problem is that CG is extending civ-like offensive/defensive attributes to a situation that I don't think they apply as well. In most military SF I've read, there isn't much of a difference in defensive/offensive combat capabilities. There's stealth/ecm, but that can be as much an advantage to the defender as the aggressor. The real differences between an offensive/defensive ship would be, in my opinion:

1) Supplies: Defensively deployed ships are usually deployed somewhere where they can be readily resupplied. Offensively deployed ships tend to need to take enough supplies with them to last longer. This could mean extra storage aboard the ship itself, or if a fleet is deploying, having a support train hanging back a bit. GC2 has this to a degree in that you can stuff more life support into a ship to get longer range.

2) FTL travel speeds: Defensive ships might need to deploy rapidly, though you'd hardly need your entire home fleet capable of rapid deployment. Offensive ships would be more likely to need rapid deployment. GC2 has this, as you can devote more ship volume to drives to go faster.

3) Mine Laying: While it can be used in offensive situations, you need stealth in order to do so. GC1 had something like this in the Planetary Defenses line of social projects, but it's a social project, not something a ship can do.

4) Repair: Closely tied to supplies, again, a defensively deployed ship can rely more on the system it's deployed in for repair, whereas a deployed ship needs to either deploy with support, or be able to repair itself at least enough to limp home. GC1 didn't have this, and so far GC2 doesn't either, though the idea of repair bay modules so that ships can have higher repair rates would fit in nicely. In order for this to really diferentiate between an offensively designed ship and a defensively designed ship, however, the bonus for being stationed around a planet needs to increase, at least towards the endgame. In GC1, by late game, the bonus to the repair rate for orbiting a system is lost in the noise compared to the bonuses for all the different repair techs. This could also seperate "shock" type attack ships from the main line. The shock ships won't be expected to survive long enough to repair between combats, but the main line needs to be able to repair in order to sustain an offensive.

5) on-station ability: I'm not sure how this would break down, though in my gut I know that at least some ships could be designed differently based on this. A defensive unit has to be ready to go live at almost any time. An offensive unit, on the other hand, usually knows in advance when it will be called upon. Flip side of the coin is that same as supplies and repair, rotating out a quarter of a fleet for maintenance is less costly for a fleet stationed around a friendly planet. I can see ways to simulate this, but I think that they'd add too much complexity to the game.

I'm sure there are other properties that could differentiate a defensive fleet from an offensive one, but the amount of defenses and firepower just aren't it in space combat, as both are important to everything but a phoenix-type ship, and even then, defenses are important if you don't get in a perfect killing blow.

The concept of differentiating between defensive and offensive units made sense in a historical perspective. Offensive units needed mobility, defensive units needed low maintenance costs and the ability to "dig in". However, even the US Army now considers mobility vital for defensive units, really blurring the distinction (both for mobility and maintenance costs). It is still true that it takes infantry to hold ground, but I don't see a parallel there that applies to starships, unless you want to start having marine contingents on board ships.