Does Supremacy DLC destroy the game?

[jnpoint]

I have now seen several people complaining over the Supremacy DLC, and it is all about behemoths. Are those ships destoying the game?

[Lack of Stuff]

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

Първоначално публикувано от DasaKamov:

I mean, you can freely disagree with them, but surely you understand why people would want to get their rocks off (so to speak) with their very own Death-Star-type doomsday weapons?

Well we already sort of had that, planet destruction has been in the game for a while. Obliterators are just a bit of a step up and ranged, which would be cool I think if they were special and difficult to get. If everyone has a bunch of them though it kind of loses that feeling right?

If every faction that ever existed in Star Wars had 13 death stars and could instantly rebuild them, would anyone consider death stars cool?

The new Star Wars is kinda that already and sales seem to indicate a fair number of ppl like it. I mean a station the size of a moon gets blown up twice and boom somehow a much reduced Empire builds a full planet sized version. After that gets blown up they instantly have a super dreadnaught running around. I'm sure they'll have some kind of Galaxy sized super laser at some point.

[RadCon One]

Първоначално публикувано от Lack of Stuff:

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

Well we already sort of had that, planet destruction has been in the game for a while. Obliterators are just a bit of a step up and ranged, which would be cool I think if they were special and difficult to get. If everyone has a bunch of them though it kind of loses that feeling right?

If every faction that ever existed in Star Wars had 13 death stars and could instantly rebuild them, would anyone consider death stars cool?

The new Star Wars is kinda that already and sales seem to indicate a fair number of ppl like it. I mean a station the size of a moon gets blown up twice and boom somehow a much reduced Empire builds a full planet sized version. After that gets blown up they instantly have a super dreadnaught running around. I'm sure they'll have some kind of Galaxy sized super laser at some point.

The new star wars faced heavy backlash for a number of reasons actually. If it wasn't the already known star wars brand it likely would have tanked itself.

[HTL9000]

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

In early and mid game against small fleets with only one or two lanes, even an autocannon behemoth can dominate every battle with ease. There is no weakness or vulnerability unless the AI is completely ignoring all early and mid game behemoth upgrades, or slotting them poorly with things like early game bombers.

Not to pick on Astasia, but for the benefit of new players I feel compelled, with increasing evidence, to point out that this is completely wrong. What I am about to relate comes from a game that I saved immediately following the battle I am about to describe (actually I should go back and see if I can re-save it from an autosave immediately prior to the battle, so that I can replicate it and provide additional evidence). I do have some screenshots to back up the story I am about to tell, however.

This is a game on Endless difficulty, Endless length. Around turn 85 (definitely early game on Endless length) I ran into the HIssho (real behemoth-lovers). Hostilities almost immediately ensued over one chokepoint system.

After sending forward their small fleets that were handy (all of which were destroyed), they brought up, as expected, a military behemoth. I fell back to meet up with my reinforcements, and by that time could put together a "massive" fleet of six warships, plus the vespa the leader rode in on. Two were patrol boats, one was a protector/siege vessel, and three were attacker/destroyers. The AI behemoth was an upgraded version (listed as v.2), carrying all lasers (hey, that was the AI's decision, not mine). I was able to replicate its stats in my own design screen. My vessels were equipped with missiles and flak.

The battle against the behemoth took place on turn 93. Stats for the battle: behemoth had total firepower of 816, health of 27,224. My fleet had total firepower of 1359 (5% leader bonus) and health of around 19,115.

The behemoth lost, miserably. I don't think it even made it out of the first phase of the battle, so it never had the chance to close the range (so autocannons wouldn't have done it any good). I didn't lose a single vessel (although I had a big repair bill at the body shop later on that turn). I do have the save screen of the battle results and will post it on G2G and link to it here if any one doubts me.

It is also worth pointing out that my advantage would have been larger, except that I detoured my research to get the behemoth tech so I could mess around with designs to see what the stats would be. And an upgraded behemoth costs about as much as three destroyers.

So for new players, again: don't shun the Supremacy DLC just becase you don't want to use behemoths but think you don't have a choice. They are not mandatory. In fact you can get a certain amount of entertainment out of blowing them up with your plucky, rag-tag, scratch-built fleets. And later in the game it gets even better. Obliterators are a challenge, but not a serious problem in a single player game (the AI never pulls the "two shots at once" stunt, so it will almost never destroy a human player's system and by then a 50% system reduction is easily rebuilt almost immediately). That is generally when I start building super-fast fleets just to hunt them down.

[RadCon One]

Първоначално публикувано от HTL9000:

The battle against the behemoth took place on turn 93. Stats for the battle: behemoth had total firepower of 816, health of 27,224. My fleet had total firepower of 1359 (5% leader bonus) and health of around 19,115.

The stats on that behemoth (The hp more specifically) suggest the only upgrade to it was the one that is automatically obtained by researching the 1 cp ships. I'll look into recreating your stats on a behemoth of my own later.

also, you go on to say you could have upgraded your fleet more, but keep in mind the same is true had that AI been human. It obviously didn't research behemoth weaponization, or the x4 slot upgrade (passive from researching a 3 cp ship) on behemoths, as either one would have caused it to have a much higher hp and attack. I also have to wonder if they slotted it for war or not, as even the military behmoths can be outfitted to act as supports.

Edit: I can't get your exact stats, but i can come close by using a fully outfitted behemoth with the x2 slot upgrade but nothing else that affects behemoths, along with the t2 weapon/defence modules (the ones obtained by having your first t1 military tech) I can just barely make it have less by doing lasers as you said, along with hull plating to increase hp (27,088 HP, and 743 firepower). This would seem to imply that either A: the Ai recieved extremely insignificant bonuses to their stats, or B: The Ai had access to higher modules but decided to mix them with t1 and t2, or even outright didnt use some slots to create an intentionally gimped behemoth (using purely tier 2+ modules overshoots your stats significantly).

Would you mind posting a video of the battle if you still have it? sometimes that shows what exactly went wrong too, also the stats on your ships leads me to believe you had access to t3 tech (the 1 cp ship upgrades along with better modules) that you upgraded them with, this would mean you did significantly more to improve your ships' combat potential than the AI did. If that is the case, then had the AI put in equal effort to upgrade their behemoth it would have had AT A MINIMUM 2x the firepower, and 7000 more HP along with more defence. Depending on what all you did it could have actually done more than x4 firepower and 14000 more HP along with more defence.

[HTL9000]

Първоначално публикувано от Entropy:

The stats on that behemoth (The hp more specifically) suggest the only upgrade to it was the one that is automatically obtained by researching the 1 cp ships. I'll look into recreating your stats on a behemoth of my own later.

also, you go on to say you could have upgraded your fleet more, but keep in mind the same is true had that AI been human. It obviously didn't research behemoth weaponization, or the x4 slot upgrade on behemoths, as either one would have caused it to have a higher hp. I also have to wonder if they slotted it for war or not, as even the military behmoths can be outfitted to act as supports.

Edit: I can't get your exact stats, but i can come close by using a fully outfitted behemoth with the x2 slot upgrade but nothing else that affects behemoths, along with the t2 weapon/defence modules (the ones obtained by having your first t1 military tech) I can just barely make it have less by doing lasers as you said, along with hull plating to increase hp (27,088 HP, and 743 firepower). This would seem to imply that either A: the Ai recieved extremely insignificant bonuses to their stats, or B: The Ai had access to t3 modules but decided to mix them with t1 and t2, or even outright didnt use some slots to create an intentionally gimped behemoth (pure t3 modules overshoot your stats significantly).

My experiments yielded the same results as your own. Three lasers and 1 beam, with hull plating in all available slots. Hey, it's the AI. But early on in this discussion, I made the point that my comments are directed to the single player gamers, since that constitutes the vast majority of the people in this community. And the AI is gonna do what the AI does, which is rely on its resource advantage and middle-of-the-road designs (which will, honestly, serve it well against other AI players, just not so much against humans). Basically using the same tech level as my own ships, just putting the resources into a behemoth instead of a fleet and, more crucially, +3CP. The x4 behemoth slot upgrades you mention are simply not feasible within the timeframe of this encounter, adn by the time the AI has that I will have upgraded my weapons (and have a larger fleet as well), so that's an arms and research race that will always be ongoing, although from my experience the advantage is always with fleet and weapons upgrades, as opposed to behemoths.

My comment about being able to upgrade my fleet further was only to point out that resources are finite, especially in the early game, and I sacrificed something to make a quick detour in order to be able to research the behemoth stats and thus gave up something else. The last time I ran into a behemoth this early I already had five destroyers and two patrol craft, plus fusion torpedoes, so my advantage was larger...I feel like I'm in an interstellar version of "name that tune" where the game is to find out the absolute minimum number of ships required to win the battle. But remember that I am just countering the statement made above that "a behemoth can dominate every battle with ease", and the way that others are interpreting this to mean that they shouldn't get the Supremacy DLC because it's "all behemoths all the time".

Since there's no way to tell the AI how to adjust its designs, I'm probably never going to be able to tell if tweaking the behemoth design within the limitations of the early game tech limitations would yield a better result. I suppose someone with more spare time than I have could set up a multiplayer "sandbox" game with a couple of human positions and have them run the same battle multiple times, but I've made (and documented) my point, which is that AI behemoths are easy to counter in the early game (and even more so later on).

[patrick]

in the last pvp game i had where i actively used combat behemoths i beat a single fleet of 3 cp ships (3 of them) both times i met them with my millitary behemoth, and both times they put me below 60% HP making a retreat inpossible.

In that game i was semi focused on behemoths while the other player went for millitary techs mostly. The problem with reproducing this is that i don‘t remember what exactly their techs were and what mine were, i do remember going for 4x tech and the large weapon module bfore the 2nd fight, not sure whether i have it in the first.

The first few behemoths are relatively cheap so they are more industry efficient than the respective fleets required to destroy them. They require quite a few techs to keep up with your enemies, but most of them you want to get anyways, especially the ship hull techs for higher multipliers.

Since they have very high HP pools and the antimatter repair system scales with max HP i find them to be very powerful at defeating enemies weaker than them and repairing the damage away afterwards.

So instead of sending the behemoth alone i would try to either pick a fleet to take on with the behemoth and then retreat for repairs covered by my other units or i would try to engage fleets where i feel unsure about my behemoths victory alone with normal fleets and pick off any survivors with my behemoth once they appear less dangerous (like when the „tank“ vessel is down but the damage dealers survived).

I haven‘t tried fighting with the behemoth against a bigger fleet than 9 yet but i guess once you have the +2 per hull tech your enemeys will need juggernauts + fleet the be able to face you.

Anyways, in multiplayer i would assume it takes at least 2 fleets to take down a behemoth, but once you get them below 60% they can‘t flee from battles. I think it should be doable to take down lone behemoths but i wouldn‘t be confident against a player with a behemoth and a fleet against me using fleets all by myself.

[Astasia]

Първоначално публикувано от HTL9000:

Not to pick on Astasia, but for the benefit of new players I feel compelled, with increasing evidence, to point out that this is completely wrong.

"Hey guys, I played one game where I had one battle with a behemoth and I won. So obviously they are really bad and everyone else is wrong. Ignore the fact the AI lacked any behemoth upgrades and hadn't put any decent equipment on it, it's fine because it was on endless difficulty and happened once. I totally have a screenshot."

Thanks for your input.

[adder007usa]

Първоначално публикувано от Demiurge:

I would like to get the dlc cause I like the new race, but I don’t like the behemoth thing. Is there any way to opt out if the behemoths in so?

Problem is that hissho specialize in behemoths. Like, a core racial ability depends on them. It's part of what makes them so cool, honestly.

In regards to behemoths in general...I've found mine really can get picked apart easily if they run into two 4/4 fleets, at the beginning, I've had to restart a hissho game because my neighbors were cravers and they got rid of the thing right away. They CAN be jumped, and dealt with...don't underestimate the fact that their slots are extremely weak at the beginning, it isn't until you get the slot multiplies that they become truly nasty.

In regards to obliterators....I do see there is a little bit of cheese that could be dealt with. My suggestion. The goal is to avoid double missile spam, and maybe a few pages from the books of other strategy games.

1. Obliterator missile blast radius. When a missile hits, it would destroy any other missile targeted at the same system IF the missle is within 1-2 turns of hitting. This would allow somebody with sufficient economic might to possibly rebuild the shield, and survive. This would obviously mean that two missiles targetted to arrive on the same turn would count as only one, since the first would clearly destroy the second.

2. Obliterators should require anchoring, like arks. They shouldn't charge on the move, and they should require a full charge (or the same resources to fire a shot, depending on the current charge) in order to un-anchor. If you want your starkiller base, you should have to defend it, not have it be a freaking nuke ninja.

3. Once a shot has reached visual range, the obliterator should become visible on the map to whoever spots the missile. This is similar to other games like the old red alert RTS games, where when a superweapon is built, the fog of war around it is removed. Players should be entitled ot that first surprise shot by their obliterator, but once a planet killer has fired, it should be visible until it moves into another system that is unrevealed. This does mean that eventually, you're going to run out of hiding places.

4. Being targetted by an obliterator shot should allow immediate free war declaration on whoever fired the shot, by the victim. Maybe this is already the case, I don't know, but with all the ways that opponents can mess with your influence, I've seen situations where war declaration is blocked because you can't afford it. This should not be one of those cases.

Those would be my suggestions.

[RadCon One]

Първоначално публикувано от adder007usa:

1. Obliterator missile blast radius. When a missile hits, it would destroy any other missile targeted at the same system IF the missle is within 1-2 turns of hitting. This would allow somebody with sufficient economic might to possibly rebuild the shield, and survive. This would obviously mean that two missiles targetted to arrive on the same turn would count as only one, since the first would clearly destroy the second.

In regards to the one to two turn blast radius, although this would certainly help, each turn on an obliterator missile is a collosal distance travelled (more than the diameter of a solar system at least), so although it would help from a balance perspective It may require a bit of forced suspension of disbelief.

[HTL9000]

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

Първоначално публикувано от HTL9000:

Not to pick on Astasia, but for the benefit of new players I feel compelled, with increasing evidence, to point out that this is completely wrong.

"Hey guys, I played one game where I had one battle with a behemoth and I won. So obviously they are really bad and everyone else is wrong. Ignore the fact the AI lacked any behemoth upgrades and hadn't put any decent equipment on it, it's fine because it was on endless difficulty and happened once. I totally have a screenshot."

Thanks for your input.

Not one battle. Over the space of four games since I downloaded Supremacy, probably twenty early game battles, and I never lost one. And in the most recent examples where I took the time to take notes, the AI did upgrade its behemoth to the best weapons technology available at the time, as the stats showed. Changing the weapons mix probably wouldn't have helped, either, given that the behemoth died in the first round before it would have had the chance to close the range.

It was only when you started with your unsubstantiated assertions that I took the time to report the results of two recent recent battles, citing the statistics and then doing the additoinal research to see what I was facing. And, by the way, they do in fact refute your statement that behemoths totally dominate the early game, since if you were correct they would never have hapopened. The facts simply do not back up your assertions. Maybe you can't defeat a behemoth, but that's your problem, not mine and certainly not Supremacy's.

A behemoth can be defeated by a combination of patrol boats and destroyers. Some domination. Next up: rowboats and kayaks.

[patrick]

On your 4 points on the obliterator balance, i tend to agree, although all 4 in combination might be a bit tough.

1.
I think it would be fair enough if you can't fire shots in such a way that they hit the same turn or in quick succession (in the same system). If a shot would be nullified it's only fair to warn the attacker or just make sure they can't waste their ressources like that.

2.
Would be tolerable, but i'm not sure that's so neccercary. Obliterators can't be part of a fleet, meanwhile, units designed to hunt them can be part of a fleet with fleet speed modules. Plus, at a best, the obliterator has 2 engines. I agree that they shouldn't be allowed to charge while moving, but i think it's ok if they charge unanchored. As long as they orbit a node at the end of a turn instead of moving somewhere. Although, given that in the last (ai) game i played the vaulters obliterator jumped around like crazy, i can see how this could be a bit of a problem if a vaulter player does some tricks with the obliterator. A really nasty combination: Use the argosy to create a portal right next to a system, get the obliterator in, fire. Your shot will probably hit the turn after. Not like i fear much from AI, but vaulters can be really mean with those guys so i can understand where this is coming from. My alternative suggestion would be that the obliterator can move during the charge period (10 rounds to be anchored is quite alot) but it has to remain stationary before or after firing for a few turns.

3.
I don't quite see why there should be vision on the obliterator even if it moved afterwards. I think giving vision on the system the shot came from would be more reasonable. Although i don't think either is neccercary.

4.
I agree on that one. If making an outpost near me is giving me a 50% off on declaring war on someone, attempted genocide should be a reason for 100% off. Maybe i'd even get a bonus/penalty from my own population for doing that, because thye're out for blood when it's suddenly civilian lives on the line and not just chain ganged aliens!

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Първоначално публикувано от HTL9000:

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

In early and mid game against small fleets with only one or two lanes, even an autocannon behemoth can dominate every battle with ease. There is no weakness or vulnerability unless the AI is completely ignoring all early and mid game behemoth upgrades, or slotting them poorly with things like early game bombers.

Not to pick on Astasia, but for the benefit of new players I feel compelled, with increasing evidence, to point out that this is completely wrong. What I am about to relate comes from a game that I saved immediately following the battle I am about to describe (actually I should go back and see if I can re-save it from an autosave immediately prior to the battle, so that I can replicate it and provide additional evidence). I do have some screenshots to back up the story I am about to tell, however.

This is a game on Endless difficulty, Endless length. Around turn 85 (definitely early game on Endless length) I ran into the HIssho (real behemoth-lovers). Hostilities almost immediately ensued over one chokepoint system.

After sending forward their small fleets that were handy (all of which were destroyed), they brought up, as expected, a military behemoth. I fell back to meet up with my reinforcements, and by that time could put together a "massive" fleet of six warships, plus the vespa the leader rode in on. Two were patrol boats, one was a protector/siege vessel, and three were attacker/destroyers. The AI behemoth was an upgraded version (listed as v.2), carrying all lasers (hey, that was the AI's decision, not mine). I was able to replicate its stats in my own design screen. My vessels were equipped with missiles and flak.

The battle against the behemoth took place on turn 93. Stats for the battle: behemoth had total firepower of 816, health of 27,224. My fleet had total firepower of 1359 (5% leader bonus) and health of around 19,115.

The behemoth lost, miserably. I don't think it even made it out of the first phase of the battle, so it never had the chance to close the range (so autocannons wouldn't have done it any good). I didn't lose a single vessel (although I had a big repair bill at the body shop later on that turn). I do have the save screen of the battle results and will post it on G2G and link to it here if any one doubts me.

It is also worth pointing out that my advantage would have been larger, except that I detoured my research to get the behemoth tech so I could mess around with designs to see what the stats would be. And an upgraded behemoth costs about as much as three destroyers.

So for new players, again: don't shun the Supremacy DLC just becase you don't want to use behemoths but think you don't have a choice. They are not mandatory. In fact you can get a certain amount of entertainment out of blowing them up with your plucky, rag-tag, scratch-built fleets. And later in the game it gets even better. Obliterators are a challenge, but not a serious problem in a single player game (the AI never pulls the "two shots at once" stunt, so it will almost never destroy a human player's system and by then a 50% system reduction is easily rebuilt almost immediately). That is generally when I start building super-fast fleets just to hunt them down.

I just don't want to deal with something where I can get a system shot from across the map. This is going from where it takes getting to a high level tech to get a weapon that ONLY allows you to slot that one otherwise useless deathstar weapon on a capital ship, then leave it sitting in that system for 8 turns before destroying a single planet. I wouldn't mind either weapons on one or a shorter time for the core cracker, but having to put up with any player trying to obliterate whole systems of mine from long range would annoy the ♥♥♥♥ out of me and completely unbalance the game. I wouldn't mind simply being able to turn Behemoths on or off as an optional feature.

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

I don't think anyone is saying behemoths don't lose most of their combat advantage at that point in the game. It's early and mid game that they completely dominate battles.

In early and mid game against small fleets with only one or two lanes, even an autocannon behemoth can dominate every battle with ease.

See that's the problem though, is the early to mid game is really the only challenging part, due largely to reasons I mentioned which you also noted regarding poor slot utilization/bombers. Hell I wouldn't even mind a non-system destroying supership every once in awhile fielded by an opponent late game just so I have something worthy for my carriers to shoot out. By the time you have carriers on vanilla, the game is effectively over.

[Bozobub]

Once again: I have had *zero* trouble negating any AI behemoths with standard fleets. And yes, that includes military behemoths and yes, that includes both early- and late-game. Quite frankly, by the time strong behemoths start to appear frequently, the game is nearly decided anyway.

Anyone stating definite general claims that are easily shown to be false by others' empirical results probably should...reassess, let's say? Personally, I'm not a huge fan of behemoths, but *shrug* whatever. OFC, I wasn't the one who paid for the DLC =/.

[Skalea]

Първоначално публикувано от adder007usa:

Първоначално публикувано от Demiurge:

I would like to get the dlc cause I like the new race, but I don’t like the behemoth thing. Is there any way to opt out if the behemoths in so?

[...]

2. Obliterators should require anchoring, like arks. They shouldn't charge on the move, and they should require a full charge (or the same resources to fire a shot, depending on the current charge) in order to un-anchor. If you want your starkiller base, you should have to defend it, not have it be a freaking nuke ninja.

3. Once a shot has reached visual range, the obliterator should become visible on the map to whoever spots the missile. This is similar to other games like the old red alert RTS games, where when a superweapon is built, the fog of war around it is removed. Players should be entitled ot that first surprise shot by their obliterator, but once a planet killer has fired, it should be visible until it moves into another system that is unrevealed. This does mean that eventually, you're going to run out of hiding places.

I like the Hissho and changes brought in by Supremacy, except for the current state of balance between Obliterators / Citadels. I think the above two suggestiond would be a good direction for the game, with the addition of a reworked upkeep cost on citadels.

Only speaking in terms of design and not balance, I find obliterators not fun to play with or against, a frustating mechanic that is much too impactful on how a late game is played.

I understand most arguments that both sides of the obliterator debate have put forward, and only wanted to post an opinion for the devs to consider.

Also this is my first post ever on Steam, which I mention to show you how much I care about changes being made to the current system.

Thanks for a fun patch overall.

[RadCon One]

Първоначално публикувано от Bozobub:

Once again: I have had *zero* trouble negating any AI behemoths with standard fleets. And yes, that includes military behemoths and yes, that includes both early- and late-game. Quite frankly, by the time strong behemoths start to appear frequently, the game is nearly decided anyway.

Anyone stating definite general claims that are easily shown to be false by others' empirical results probably should...reassess, let's say? Personally, I'm not a huge fan of behemoths, but *shrug* whatever. OFC, I wasn't the one who paid for the DLC =/.

Except noone has submitted empirical results, only made claims of such, and the claim with the must hard numbers that they are easy to defeat in this thread was one where the behemoths were significantly behind and the behemoth was controlled by an AI. If that is all you are going off of then I can submit my "empirical results", and assure you behemoths are op as I beat AI fleets with them all the time with the behemoth coming out on top by a mile. See the problem there?