The Fleet Size Question

[Centurian128]

I have nothing against the 7 (8 with DLC) ship limit in this game. I quite like it actually. Real world carrier strike groups aren't much bigger than 8 ships and I think those would be the closest analogy to a battlestar group.

But to those that have a problem with it: Why? Why is having only 8 ships in your battlegroup such a big deal?

I genuinely don't understand. IF a higher ship limit was implemented then the Cylons would need a higher ship limit as well to match. Considering they can already go beyond Colonial limits that would make battles drag on and on for hours removing any fun from the game.

If the discrepancy between Colonial and Cylon numbers is the problem, then I really don't know what to tell you. The Cylons are supposed to have the advantage at this stage in the war. The main campaign ends with 10 years still left in the First Cylon war after all. Colonial offensives are yet to really begin.

Colonial Fleet is a new entity, it's not going to have the same numbers as the Cylons, and thus you're supposed to play defensively and thus the Cylons get a higher fleet cap. However, it's never unmanageable. The highest I've seen is 12 maybe 14 ships to your 8, I can't really remember. Certainly difficult but not unbeatable, if you play defensively.

If it's an aversion to down to lack of player agency and artificial restrictions, then I can understand that. I left Stellaris behind because of the artificial restrictions imposed by 2.0 that weren't there in the beginning.

Sorry for venting, but I've seen to many decrying this mechanic as BS or leaving a negative review with this aspect being such a big issue for them.

[Sovereign246]

People want to control large fleets. Or they want a fleet size large enough that they can create the battlegroups that they want. Its why one of battlefleet gothic 2's selling points is the increased fleet size which was one of the most requested features from one. That said i dont think having more then 7 ships here would be ideal (or much more than that. 10 maybe?) turns already take a few minutes with maneuvers alone. Not counting focus fire, squadren orders and ordance targets. So i agree having much more in terms of number would be a slog.

[mattleec]

ive had up to 9 cylon ships at once against me before i added the dlc. i think the colonial cap is fine though.

[dv]

Campaign and Anabasis are balanced with the cap of 7 (or 8) ships per fleet. Changing the number of ships requires rebalancing. And modification of most pre-defined Cylon fleets. Which is a lot of work.

In skirmish there is nothing wrong with 20 player ships against 20 AI ships.

[Sasuga]

When you have a ship limit of 8 ships, and you can have 8 huge ships, then all you do is play with 8 huge ships.

Having a higher ship limit would make having a bunch of smaller ships viable. Like the zerg, or whatever.

In Battlefleet Gothic, for example, there are missions where you can take one really large ship and one medium ship, or two medium ships and a bunch of small ships. In in Battlefleet Gothic, since the escort ships don't count towards your losses, they are the expendable grunts.

When you fight every battle with 8 ships, over and over, even though the enemy is throwing more stuff at you, your tactics become pretty much the same thing over and over and things become stale. Being able to choose between a few large ships or a massive swarm of little ships, even if those little ships cost you resources to build... If you can build them cheaply and quickly enough, it can be a lot of fun to zerg an enemy from time to time.

When a game limits the number of units you can control (to such a relatively small amount) the only option is quality of quantity: There's really only one true-good choice, which means there's not really any choice.

[konzacelt]

@Sasuga

I kind of like your idea of having limits be on the size of the ships themselves. Like only allowing 2-3 large (Battlestars, Atlas, etc.), 2-3 medium (Adamant, Ranger, etc.) and the rest small (Manticore, Orion, etc.)

It would require reclassifying the ships into their respective sizes though (capitals/carriers, cruisers, frigates/corvettes). But I wouldn't think that would be too hard to do.

[RedPine]

In the base game, 8 ships for Colonial is a nice sweet spot.

In vanilla XCOM2:WOTC, 6 soldiers is a nice sweet spot.
In XCOM2:Long War 2, you can go stealthy with 4-6 soldiers, and face fewer enemies... or you can bring 12 soldiers for some truly spectacular battles against overwhelming odds.

So, to answer the question: Base game is fine. But it's not amazing. To be amazing, you need full mod support... sadly, this franchise chose to make mods illegal. If I had to guess, they (the franchise, not the devs) are greedy and thought mods would infringe on sequel opportunities.

No sequels are in sight.

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Specific examples: I can bring 3 Jupiters and 1 Artemis, or 2 Jupiters and 2 Minerva, but I can't bring 4 Jupiters or 6 Artemis. This is due to the 8000 point hardcap.

I can't reach 8000 fleet points without using battlestars. The fastest battlestar is the Artemis at 120 M/S. If I want an 8000 FP fleet, it can't get any faster than that.

I can't do 16x Manticore suicide fleets. I can't do 12x Berzerk fleets (can you imagine a twin 6x berzerk pincer?). I can't have a fast fleet (Adamant, Berzerk, Manticore) working alongside a slow fleet (Jupiter, Atlas, Minotaur) in the same battle.

I made an excel calculator to help me find 8000 FP combinations, and I have to say, having even one more ship slot (replace Celestra support slot with regular ship slot) or +1000 more fleet cap would have added exponentially more possibilities.

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It isn't just Colonial Fleet that's limited, same goes for the Cylons.

The Cylons can bring a team of Torpedo Nemesi, Jump Phobos, and Cerastes fast enough to chase down my Berzerk Monofleet, or they can wreck my fighters by bringing Cerberus x4, but they can't do both.

If they try to do both, they split their fleet between two few fast ships to matter, and too few heavy ships to hold their ground, resulting in being defeated in detail.

They can try to throw in Revenants as a middle ground between speed and power, but they don't have reach, are helpless against fighters and missiles alike, and aren't fast enough to get a good angle on my Berzerk stacks.

To truly threaten Colonial fleet they would need to outnumber me by more than just 1 or two extra ships, and they'd need to drop in additional fleets mid battle to cut off my escape routes. The current game isn't balanced around long, multi-phase, consecutive engagements. You can't fit the numbers and types of ships into a single fleet to pull that off effectively.

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Yes, I realize there's Anabasis, but the rules for that gamemode are extremely meta-gamey. You don't even have to win. You can survive most "fights" simply by fleeing for a few turns. That's not a proper battle.

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Now, to cap things off... do I actually enjoy Long War 2? No. No, i do not. It's too grindy. But I do like the mods that give me a midway point between vanilla XCOM's 6 soldiers and WOTC's 12 soldier (~8 is my personal sweet spot), and I absolutely adore the Long War playlists a variety of youtubers have made.

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TLDR, the problem isn't the game balance, the problem is that altering the game balance via mods is literally illegal.

[Finarfin]

Originally posted by RedPine:

TLDR, the problem isn't the game balance, the problem is that altering the game balance via mods is literally illegal.

Is it possible to make mods? If not, it's not illegal. What law actually prohibits it?

[RedPine]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

Originally posted by RedPine:

TLDR, the problem isn't the game balance, the problem is that altering the game balance via mods is literally illegal.

Is it possible to make mods? If not, it's not illegal. What law actually prohibits it?

Quoting form an older thread:

Xautos has Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Oct 5, 2020 @ 7:16am

In the EULA, under "Grant" 3.4 and probably "Interpretations & Definitions" 2.1.2.

The publisher knows their limits and has no choice but to remove the offending mod because of the IP and the user creating the mod will have violated the end user agreement doing it.

Modding is not allowed on BSGD.

Chatting with the guys on discord confirmed that we don't really talk about mods, and we don't really talk about how we can edit TXT files in the base game. So yeah, you can technically do little stuff, but if you make an overhaul and post it on a website, you'll get sued and/or a cease and desist.

[Finarfin]

Wow, that is hardcore. User communities can make some awesome mods for games. I suspect there's probably a BSG mod for Star Wars Empires At War (or whatever it's called).

[konzacelt]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

Wow, that is hardcore. User communities can make some awesome mods for games. I suspect there's probably a BSG mod for Star Wars Empires At War (or whatever it's called).

Some studios just hate the idea of mods for whatever reason. Not sure why, the benefits far outweigh any issues they cause.

[konzacelt]

Originally posted by RedPine:

I made an excel calculator to help me find 8000 FP combinations, and I have to say, having even one more ship slot (replace Celestra support slot with regular ship slot) or +1000 more fleet cap would have added exponentially more possibilities.

I've long suspected this because of the wonky totals for ship fleet points. Like why is an Artemis simply 1500 instead of 1550? I think the devs did what you did and realized they might want to inflate a lot of the fleet point values for ships so that it wouldn't too easy.

It seems to me that, say, increasing the max fleet point total to 9000 instead of 8000 would open up a ton of better fleet comps. Almost as if every great combo is barely over the max on purpose.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Finarfin:

Originally posted by RedPine:

TLDR, the problem isn't the game balance, the problem is that altering the game balance via mods is literally illegal.

Is it possible to make mods? If not, it's not illegal. What law actually prohibits it?

Making mods isn't. Distributing mods publicly is with this game. Its a copyright issue from my understanding.

Which really sucks because this game type has so much potential...

[Abaçı]

I believe the current fleet size is ideal, perhaps increasing it by 1 would be good but no more. What I find lacking is the fleet points being so low and the number of squadrons being low. One of the selling point of this game for me was that I enjoyed the show as a child(the remake, of course, not the original one) and it had plenty of fighter actions. Adding one more fighter slot to each colonial carrier or increasing the number of fighters per squadron is a must I believe.

Originally posted by predator246:

People want to control large fleets. Or they want a fleet size large enough that they can create the battlegroups that they want. Its why one of battlefleet gothic 2's selling points is the increased fleet size which was one of the most requested features from one. That said i dont think having more then 7 ships here would be ideal (or much more than that. 10 maybe?) turns already take a few minutes with maneuvers alone. Not counting focus fire, squadren orders and ordance targets. So i agree having much more in terms of number would be a slog.

Would you recommend that game to someone who really enjoyed this one?

[Sabaithal]

Personally I didn't like Gothic 2 very much, but its solely a matter of taste. There's nothing wrong with the game, the tactical combat just felt kind...I dunno, not satisfying.

And the campaign maintanence costs made it bloody impossible to build fleets at the beginning.