How to balance the big and small ships in 4x game.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

Yes, I've create a thread with the same title in the Predestination forum long time ago. But I want to write it again because today, what I want to say is different than what I wrote some time ago.

in a 4x game where the player is given a power to design their ship, there's always a problem that we face a lot. That's the big ship will always win against the smaller one, making the small boats obsolute and useless at the end game era, and people choose to build only 1 type of design that max the power that given by the game to them.

This problem haunt me when playing 4x Space Game for long time. Because if what you need is a big dreadnout, so why countries in real world (specially the WW2 countries) need many type of warship, from the smallest to the biggest? and how the American Torp boat can become a nightmare the Japanese cruiser at that war?

The Predestination has it's own solution, but making bigger ship to occupy more grid than the smaller one. So even when they are bigger and nastier, they have a weakness. That's they hurt more when attacked by a AOE weapon than a small ship.

Yes, excelent idea to balance big and small.

But I have another idea. So, why do we restraint the players with the limitation of the size? Many 4x Space Game do it. For example, the game limit the size of a frigate to 200 and destroyer to 300 in Space Empire V, and even MOO 2 did that. But, even with the limitation and the many choice of the hulls available, players will always to choose to create the biggest ship available to them. Because it's a fact to a lot of 4x Space Game, that the bigger your ship, the stronger you are. And it is also the fact to the real world situation too. The bigger the ship, the stronger they are.

Some time ago, I blame that problem to the weaponry of choice. Then I blamed the shield. Because shield will always favor to the ship that has more available points. So bigger ship means bigger shield (I blame the shield system in Distant World game because even with that a lot of ship model that we can build at that game, but players will always stick to the biggest nastiest ship they can build)

But now I'm realise that the bigger your ship, the nastier they are. That's simple fact is even true in real world when you fight in 1 dimensional battle like in 4x space game. The problem is not how to balance the biggest, the scariest ship out there with a smaller frigate. But how to force the players from building all dreadnout in their space navy. Having several nastiest things in the universe is ok. But to let the players building an all dreadnout navy is a nay. We must limit the players on how to do that.

And now, I have an idea. That's by limiting the man power that available to the players.

This is the idea. Not everyone in your planet can operate a super duper star ship and fly across the galaxy. They need training, so they need to go to the nearest Space Academy to learn about know how.

The problem is that there will not enough Space Academy on your planet. So there will be always a limited men power for your space navy. And even they (the space academy) always produce fresh astrounouts, there are a lot of astronouts who retired every years too.

So this is my suggestion (and maybe proposal) to the Predestination. Make a new resource called Space Navy Officer or something and limit their number.

To operate a starship and comission them in your space navy, you'll need a number of officers. A Space Academy will give you a 100 officers. Of course you can build several space academy in a colony. But to balance it, the game should limit the number of space officers that a space academy to provide to just a 5% to the number of the citizens in your colony.

There won't be increment of the number of this officers in your pool. So you can only have 100 officers / Space Academy you build.

Then you'll need these officers to manned the starship. The bigger the starship, the more men power that you must provide to that ship. Yes, you can build the biggest, nastiest, frightening warship that need 500 officers to operate, but that's mean, you won't be able to build another ships to cover your other territory.

So in order to cover your space for attack and defend, you will be forced to manage the number of men power that you have in your pool. You will always need the strongest ship of the line that will drain your officer reserve. But you can't build a lot of them just because you'll need another ships to cover other areas. So with this men management in mind, you'll need the biggest battleship, but also need the smaller frigate, destroyer, and cruisers to get a perfect number that you need in the fleet.

And please, don't limit us with the MOO2 or Space Empire V type of ship building limitation. Give us a free choice to build the biggest, meaniest warship from the beginning, just limit our resource to make a ton of them.

[redwitch]

well, another approach would be the model implemented in other non-space 4x games like eador, when combining a fleet there two kinds of restrictions, one for the fleet size which may depend on a corresponding tech level and/or, like in SOTS2, on available command points. The other restriction would concern not the size of the fleet but its composition: possibly dependent on tech level and/or command capacity also, there would be a limited number of slots for each available ship class, that's i.e. how it works in eador, an excellent fantasy 4x game, where the fleet blueprint takes the form of half a pyramid, so you have more tier I slots at the bottom and for each level above a slot less, at the top you have only one for the strongest unit. Such a model would also have the side effect to make the fleet design much more interesting. Btw it think the fleet design of SOTS2 is excellent, also because the limitations are imposed by the focus on ship roles,, when designing a ship you have to go for a specification, you simply cannot design a leviathan which fulfills all roles. In a fleet you not only need different classes but also different specified ships such as command ships, scouts, support ships, repair ships, tankers and so on. Apart of that the bigger the size the higher are also the financial and logistic constraints. It's impossible, even for the largest empire, to have only leviathans fielding fleets. Too bad the game has been abandoned.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

SOTS2 has a good approach to balance the ship. But that's because they have limiting the number of weapon that you can put to the ship from the beginning. Oh sorry, they are not only limiting the number of weapons that a ship can carry, they restricted and decided the number of weapon that a ship can carry. While the game like Distant Worlds, Galactic Civilizations, and even MOO2 doesn't has restriction like that. Bigger ship means that you can carry more weapon and other stuff. So it is an automatic win against any enemies that has smaller ships. And the worse thing is, that you don't have any limitation to build the ship, so players will always build the biggest ship available at their disposal, rendered the need of big-small ship variation.

Even if the smaller ship has better weapon and other tech, they still have tough fight against the bigger one.

I don't know how will the Ship Designer in Predestination will be implemented. But from what I reading in the game forum some time ago, it will be like Galactic Civilization, except that it is the reactor power that will decide your ship size and strength. I don't know if it's still true or not. That's why I propose this Men Power resource to limit the number of big ship that you can build.

In my idea, even if the biggest ship is the strongest one, but you can't build many of them, because you still need the quantity to cover your vast space empire, and even doing aggression against another race. No single ship can do all the job, But the big, meany, and powerful ship is still needed by your Space Navy.

The example of this in real life is that even when Japan can build one of the strongest, toughest ship in WW2 that we call IJN Musashi, but they can only build 2 of them. The rest will be cruiser, destroyer, Submarine, and even patrol boat.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

Isn't 4x Space Game is also about operating fleet and doing some kind of ship management?

I don't think that Predestination is all about planetary / colony management. It is not a sim city. It has features that even many hardcore 4x space game has. so why not give us a bit deeper of fleet management? I don't think that the officer resource will push you too deep into micro management things. You just can't stick to one kind of design / size. You'll also need smaller ships to do your bidding, that's all.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

It is about operating fleet and doing ship management. I don't care if what you want is all about colony building. But for me 4x space game is also about managing fleet and ships.

I think what you see from the Predestination is different to mine. Predestination is not all about colony building. Right now, it is, because the other features still not implemented yet. That's what I see from this game.

And why it's overcomplicating things? I don't understand you. It's only about number. And you can always build more Space Academies. My idea doesn't limit the number of menpower resource to a certain number from the beginning to the end.

I'm start to thinking that what you said about SOTS 2 was all about you, not the fault of the game itself. In my point of view, SOTS 2 is not overcomplicated or problemsome. In my view, SOTS 2 is not as complicated as the other 4x space game, like Space Empire, etc. So it just the game (SOTS 2) that doesn't fit you.

Ok, I conclude that this discussion won't go anywhere. Because you like simplified game design while I like a more complicated one. So I think that we should agree to disagree. It is pointless to debate it furthermore. I will let the DEV to decide, where the game will be go. Will it satisfy you, or satisfy me. It's up to them.

[mystery]

To add to this discussion, DW had a nice approach to the size issue. In it, they eliminated it completely. Nothing stops you from making escorts, frigates & cruisers the size of battleships/dreadnoughts. However, the larger a ship is, the more mass it had and hence, slower. You could still speed it up with additiobnal powerful engines & reactors, but then they consumed ungodly amounts of fuel.

So in the end, smaller ships had a reason to exist in the game, mainly to hunt pirates & attack small outposts or perform hit & run strikes (fast fleets couldnt' be caught by slower ones)
Note DW (Distant Worlds) is a real-time 4X game, so speed does matter more there.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

Small ships for DW Pirates? that only apply to the early DW game. The pirates in the DW Universe was too nasty that you have to send your best ships of the line to fight them in early game.

But talking about DW feature. I like how the ship designer that they have. It is the freedom of how you make your ship. It is a surely depature from the older 4x Space Game Ship Designer feature that decide to limit the size of the ship (Frigate, Destroyer, etc)

I think there are another game that has a good big - small ship balance. It is Solar War.

[Avendt]

I see good arguments in all the postings. Yes, I see your point of view hsj_adv! I also see good argument in others. Therefore, I propose that what hsj_adv proposes should be an option to choose at the beginning of a game!!! However, considering that this game has only ONE programmer and a very small team, and also has a small budget, ALL these good ideas will have to be considered very carefully. A lot has been done already in this game but some components are not yet included in current edition of the game. Changing them would require a lot of work for one person! Now, if they had like, 3 programmers, who would be able to work on different componnents of the game, I would expect them to be able to make changes without much trouble.
If anyone has been critical of devs, it is me! You can check original forum under Advent and see how unhappy I am! Maybe it is my age or just coincidence, but I came to realise that despite me having best intentions for the game and that been a reason for my criticism, I have to be a realist! Small indie team cannot be as flexible as bigger Dev teams ( indie or not)...I came to a conclusion that this game will not be what I would like it to be! I am a Kickstarter backer and have spent a lot of money compared to what the game is asking on Steam! Reason for my backing because I had a vision what this game can be...I forgot that Devs also have a vision of what this game is going to be! So, finally I made a peace with this fact. In turn, I stopped supporting any games on Kickstarter, because none of those games will be what I want them to be so whay spend so much money.
PS:I supported 13 games of which only 6 made it through...Out of 6 none of the games came close to my expectations. A lesson well learned.

[Nyphur]

Some really interesting thoughts in this thread! The current plan for keeping small ships viable involves a few different strategies:

• Miss chance: A large ship firing beam or projectile weapons at a smaller ship gets a 5% miss chance for every size class the defender is smaller than it.
  
  
• Area Effect: Some weapons will be area-effect weapons, and some missiles will have area-effect explosions. Larger ships cover multiple map hexes, so they can get hit multiple times by a single shot.
  
  
• Speed: Small ships automatically have a higher base combat speed than larger ones. In such a tactical game, that can make a lot of difference.
  
  
• Command Points: We have a command point system like MOO2, and we have severe exponential penalties for going over your limit. So you may need to build a small ship or two if you don't have enough command points to build something bigger.
  
  
• Tactics: Due to how the fleet combat works, having multiple small ships can give a tactical advantage over a smaller number of larger ships.
  
  
• Cost: Like in most space 4X games, small ships in Predestination are cheap and disposable.
  
  
  The reasons to build larger ships in Predestination are:
  
  
• Power: Larger ships have bigger power cores and so can fit more weapons/modules/shields/armour etc. Power grid is our equivalent of Master of Orion II's "space" limitation for ships, and like in MOO2 larger ships will be able to fit a lot more. There may also be some modules/weapons that are so large they must be built on a Battleship or Dreadnought as Predestination has no miniaturisation.
  
  
• Efficient: Larger ships are more expensive in terms of money, metal and build time, but they're more efficient in terms of command points. The combined powergrid output of a 6 command point Battleship will be more than the combined powergrid of two 3 command point cruisers.
  
  
• Hitpoints: Larger ships have higher base hitpoints. As above, a battleship would have more hitpoints than the combined HP of two cruisers.
  
  
• Crew: The larger the ship, the larger the crew. Each crew member has an XP rating (not currently displayed, but it's in there!) which contributes a little to combat.
  
  
• Captains: Once we add ship captains, you'll see greatest benefit from putting them onto one of your biggest ships, because you can't split one captain among multiple ships.
  
  
  I hope that the balance will turn out fine using this approach, and we can of course balance things as we go. We also plan to have some racial traits that will affect this, such as increasing ship speed, and a Fighter Pilot trait that increases power grid output on small ships while penalising larger ones. Everything I wrote here is obviously subject to change, and I'd love to have your feedback on it since we're all discussing it now.
  
  Cheers,
  -- Brendan, Lead Developer

[Nyphur]

Segmented shields are possible (tested and working) in my engine. I'm still working out the best way to implement it, but was thinking of making ship modules that do it, or we could make it so you can click on a shield segment to transfer some power from all other segments to it. Or we could make the shield segmented based on where the generator is physically placed/oriented in the 3D ship designer.

Segmented armour isn't in right now, but it's definitely possible if we wanted to spend some time adding that.

Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

I like that Brendan. Yes, CP is almost the same as what I propose here :D Thanks

And I love the multiple hex and AOE weapon :D great feature, Brendan. That's what I love and make me decide to buy this game from long time ago

@faijeya : It's okay even without segmentation. Just say that there are 3 hexex of the ship get AOE weapon fire. It will make the ship get hit 3 times. If you say that the big ship will get disadvantage, then yes, it is a disadvantage for a big size guy. But you still can balance it by adjust the number of HP or the capability to put more defence to it. And you can always put escort to protect the blind spot for her.

Btw, Brendan. I have a question regarding of the ship designer. Can we decide the number of hex that the big ship occupy, or the game will decide it for us? Well, if the game give us freedom, Like if you let us choose the number of hex that the ship size is. it will be better, that if the game has decide that a Battleship will occupy 6 hex while cruiser occupy 3 hex, it's okay too. Hopefully we can decide the position of the hex. But if not, it's okay too.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

@faijeya : You're right. If the small ship doesn't possess AOE weaponry, it will just about big ship vs big ship.

[Nyphur]

There are two ways I can think of to tackle this. As faijeya suggested, we could limit the range of directed AOE weapons or increase the range of non-AOE weapons so that you'll need a small fast ship to get into range to use it. And to cover AOE missiles, we could make a technology that automatically gives all small ships Reactive Strike on their beam and projectile weapons, so that they can be used to defend against incoming missiles.

Reactive Strike is a property that point defense weapons have where they automatically get a free shot against one ship or missile that comes into range each turn. The idea is that you could use a few cheap point defense frigates as a screen against missiles and drones.

To answer your ship size question, hsj_adv, each size class has a specific grid layout and it'll be the same as it currently is in-game, so frigates are one hex, cruisers have four, and battleships have six. This does make cruisers more vulnerable to AOE weapons for their size class, but we're thinking that's a good thing as it incentivises people to build battleships and use frigates for their small defense.

Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer

[Serneth]

One thing that jumped out at me that has always been a pet peeve of mine:

"Miss chance: A large ship firing beam or projectile weapons at a smaller ship gets a 5% miss chance for every size class the defender is smaller than it."

While it might work as a mechanic, it's very hard to accept as intuitive.

First, it's very hard to have a reasonable explanation for why beam weapons are missing at all. Unless combat distances are measured in light seconds/minutes. In which case projectiles as weapons become laughable.

Second, you would need to come up with an explanation for why your bigger ships (which presumably have more sensor equipment and computing power) are less accurate than their smaller counterparts.

Small destroyers being harder to hit than your hulking capital ships? Sure, that makes perfect sense.
Those same destroyers being able to hit each other while the capital ships are doing their storm trooper impersonation? It doesn't really follow.

[G-Solo (Indonesia)]

Hi Brendan, for the balance sake, what if the small ship is given the capability to pinpoint the target for the bigger ship? It just like they fly close to the enemy, target the enemy, and the big ship will fire their big weapon from a very long range (perhap more than the weapon standard range)

It just like a Japanese Tactical RPG game called SD Gundam Generation Series, where the commander unit of the Mobile Suit can target the enemy for his / her carrier.

[Serneth]

Beam weapons will be missing and missing much because of errors made in calculating your own position and the targets, calculating target speed and direction (while light travels with the speed of light, turrets do not traverse instantly), achieving the needed precision in aiming a multiple-ton laser aperture.

It's like shooting a target with a handgun from 20m distance and telling you can't miss, because the bullet needs 1/15 second max to reach the target. [/quote]

This make sense, I and I could accept that. But I think we might have different interpretations of what a beam weapon would be.
In my mind a beam weapon is something that maintains it's attack for a prolonged period of time (Think flamethrower, only lasers). As opposed to a starwars style laser blaster.

Ofcourse, if you said it could still be off target when the weapon first fired, but took time adjust, I'd agree.

It could even be turned into a game mechanic of some sort. Increased accuracy the longer the beam duration, with a trade of of a longer cycle time? Or even a simple "Beam weapons always hit, but have damaged multiplied buy your % accuracy"
Or it simply ticks for damage every X seconds, with a roll for accuracy.

But to use your analogy of the tin can, it would be like saying you couldn't point at it with a laser pointer. You might not be pointing at it the instant you turn it on, but not being able to hit it at all would be ridiculous.