Whats the Official role of the "Battle Hammer" ?

Yep, I rarely bother with frigates.

The short range of Battle Hammers means that they can be useless for attack ... but I rarely bother with attacking at that stage, and wait until I have at least Battle Ships and Combat Transports before trying to invade.

One of the reasons the AI is stupid is that it builds Frigates instead of Battlehammers.

Battlehammers are the mainstay of my military until I get Dreadnaughts.

With their unmodified stats, Battlehammers are useful only as defensive ships... however, after researching a few range and speed upgrades (and getting gravity accelerators) they become the mainstay of m navy until dreadnoughts show up. I have never built frigates, battle cruisers or battleships.

I wonder if the AI assesses a ship's usefulness/role based on its unmodified stats, which is why it underbuilds battlehammers so badly.

IMHO, if a ship's speed or range is 0, it should receive no bonus (or a very small one) from techs that increase them. This will make ships stick to their intended jobs, and dramatically reduce the anomalous nature of battlehammers.

~SDC~

I dunno. You do end up spending a LOT of time and effort in making Battlehammers useful as offensive ships because of their speed limitation. I don't think the solution (if one is needed) is to nerf Battlehammers so much as it is to make Frigates and/or Battle Cruisers more useful. (As it stands now, BCs are almost useless.)

"IMHO, if a ship's speed or range is 0, it should receive no bonus (or a very small one) from techs that increase them. This will make ships stick to their intended jobs, and dramatically reduce the anomalous nature of battlehammers."

This just seems like it would cause unnecessary complications in the game mechanics. It's not like in real life if a country comes up with some alloy or more efficient fuel that it cant' be applied to both "offensive" and "defensive" vehicles.

Using a more efficient fuel in an engine with a speed of 0 would have just the effect I'm asking for... none.

I'm not asking for an artificial distinction between offensive and defensive ships, but it seems to me the ship designs, to some extent anyway, seem to come from a system where speed and range upgrades were a percentage (this is quite clear, IMHO, from the tech descriptions). A percentage system doesn't work very well for low-end ships, which is probably why they changed it. Nevertheless the intended purpose of zero ratings for ship stats is maintained a lot better in a percentage based system. To me, a heavy penalty for boosts to zero rated stats gives you the best of both worlds.

Either Hammers (along with other zero speed or zero range ships) should get a little nerfed, or the AI should (if it's not already) use the modified stats when assessing their usefulness. If the AI *is* using the modified stats, I'd be interested in finding out why it doesn't seem to build nearly as many as it ought to.

~SDC~

BattleHammer's are so clearly superior to anything preceding them, that I never bother building anything else until then. They are the core of my first Fleet.

I too would like to see FF's and BC's improved to be more competitive and a better value.

~SDC~

I only tend to build BH's just as a measure to stop the other civs trying to extort money from me or going to war with me. Don't use them for anything else. Also don't bother building anything before them either.

~SDC~

BH's have a maintenance of 6.

I tend to build frigates as gifts and sales items to the AI. I keep BH's for my own empire's defensive needs, and only gift/sale them to AI that I want to keep in the game.

Frigates are merely a demonstrator for battle ships. They make good ships for popping weaker enemy SB's.

Star Pilot

The developers thought the BH should be lighter on wallet and have tweaked it to 3 in the latest update

Originally, the speed modifier was a %, if I remember correcty. However, since everything was adding 10%, it almost never changed anything.

If they had made everything add 50% instead, the first level still wouldn't help the movement-1 ships, but it would add a point to the movement2/3 ships, so that might have worked better, until you get to the very fast ships like the Excalibur.

Ok. For those of you brave enough to fiddle with the data files in the game, you can change the Battlehammer and Battlecruiser to more reasonable statistics.

The ship definitions are in text format and can be found in CoreShips.SHIP "Extra" ships can be found in shippak1.SHIP - shippak3.SHIP

Battlecruisers are in the CoreShips file while Battlehammers appear in the shippak2.SHIP file. Before making any changes to these files, I would advise making backups somewhere.

Here is how to do it.
1) Open the CoreShips.SHIP file using notepad.
2) Change the Battle Cruisers definition to this.
//------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHIP BattleCruiser
//------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name "Battle Cruiser"
Model "Ship10"
Description "Better than a starfighter but not as good as a Battleship."

HitPoints 20
Attack 5
Defense 3
Speed 2
Cost 150
SensorRange 3
Tech_Requirement "TurboPhasers"
Maintenance 5
Range 2
Weapon "Laser"
ENDSHIP

Notice I simply gave it a few more hitpoints. 5 to be exact. Makes it a bit tougher.

3) Save the file back to the "Data" directory in the GalCiv install directory.

Now change the Battlehammers definition in shippak2.SHIP to the following.
//------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHIP BattleHammer
//------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name "Battle Hammer"
Model "Ship17"
Description "While relatively weak in weapons, it makes up for it in toughness."

HitPoints 75
Attack 2
Defense 6
Speed 0
Cost 200
SensorRange 3
Tech_Requirement "DefensivePhasers"
Maintenance 3
Range 0
Weapon "Photon"
ENDSHIP

Notice that I reduced its hitpoints from 90 to 75.. 90 is just too big a jump over the Battleaxe (40). I changed the Attack Rating to a 2 and the Defense Rating to a 6. Now the ships is DEFINITELY a defensive design. I also reduced its range to 0. NOTE that it appears that the game defaults ALL ranges to 1 if they are below 1. I think having a 0 range will effectively eliminate the first range upgrade though. Thats it. Now the Battlehammer is put in its place.. as a defensive ship. Now early wars will be fought with Battle Cruisers and Frigates.. as they should be.

This changes appears to work ok with current games except for the hitpoint changes.. only NEW built ships will have the new hitpoints. All existing ships will have the original hitpoint values but they will get the new attack / defense / range values.

Happy gaming.. now Im off to try and finish a game.. I keep starting over and over and over and over

Rob

Oops. watch the formating in the *.SHIP files.. the board here ate all the spaces. Just change the numbers and dont mess with the spacing in the files... just in case

PS. By making the Battlehammer a defensive ship and giving it a higher defense value, it makes attacking planets a bit tougher than it is now. (assuming the AI will build them to defend its planets) If its too tough, might have to change the Defense rating to a 5 on the Battlehammer. Have to test it a bit more here.

Rob

I think the reason BH's have a high Attack is because the A.I. only values Attack in it's military calcs.

It's been heavily theorized that your 'military' rating on the graphs and so forth is simply a sum of all your ships' attack values. I think the A.I. mostly builds the cheapest and highest offense ships it can. So giving the the BH a higher Attack then defense makes it an 'offensive' ship that the A.I. will actually build, but it's super high HP and slow speed turns it back into a de facto defensive ship.

This would also explain why there are no late game defensive ships, the A.I. wouldn't use them.

Im not sure thats entirely true. On "Normal" level I see the AI building at least 1 "Defender" class ship per planet. They also build "Battleaxes" when they become available. But the AI will almost NEVER build Battlehammers despite the fact that they are the best offensive ship around until Dreadnoughts appear. I think the AI has two build priorities. It will build the best "Defensive" ship it can for defending planets and the best "Offensive" ship it can for attacking. Thus it will build Battleaxes (defense 5) instead of Battlehammers (defense 4). The AI will build Frigates for attack. Apparently the AI values attack / defense rating over hitpoints so even though the Battlehammer has 2.25x the hitpoints of a Battleaxe, the Battleaxe has 1.2x the defensive rating and its cheaper. Therefore the AI will build them for defense. I think that when it evaluates a ship for the "Attack" role it takes Attack Rating, Speed, and Range into account and doesnt pay much attention to maintenance cost or hitpoints. The Battlehammer has the same attack rating as a Frigate, but its slower and has less range. The fact that it costs less, has 2x more hitpoints, and its maintenance is 30% that of a Frigate doesnt seem to ammount to much to the AI.

Rob

"BattleHammers are so clearly superior to anything preceding them, that I never bother building anything else until then. They are the core of my first Fleet."

Exactly. I tech straight to Battlehammers and use them to subjagate the "intelligent" level AIs. I cut through their militaries like a sword through a watermelon until Dreadnoughts appear.

The Arceans were losing horribly to the Torians in my current game.. so I flew 3 BHs to their homeworld and sold 'em to them. 4 turns later the Torians sued for peace. Their military was in shambles.

Okay.. not 4 turns... but not long anyways.

The official role of the Battle Hammer is "slaughterer of corvettes"

I dont see how anyone can forgo building ships before getting BHs.If I try this every civ tries to extort me and then declares war on me when I refuse.I mean even if I were to shoot straight for BH tech it still takes a long time to get there and then even longer to build a few.The enemy in the meantime builds a boatload of offensive ships and comes at me hard.The only way I can avoid war is to stay ahead militarily the entire game which means building both defenders and then battleaxes.
What am I missing???

I usually get the first war declared on me either right when, or just before, I get tech to build Battle Hammers. I like playing on large and larger maps, so that may have some effect on it. Then again, I'm trading fast and furious from the word go, so I might be getting to Battle Hammers sooner, or I may just be establishing better relations. This is with AIs set to bright, also.

"If I try this every civ tries to extort me and then declares war on me when I refuse...What am I missing???
"

Simple. Don't refuse. Pay them the tribute. You'll get it all back when you hit Battlehammers and all their fancy ships count for jack-shit. And jack left town.

One use for battlecruisers is to wreck havoc amongst enemy freighters and constructors. Now, corvettes are useless especially since the tech is a dead-end.

Kavorkian, are you playing on tiny-medium maps? I play on mostly medium maps, and I agree fully, there is no way to skip building ships until you get to BH's, the AI will slaughter you if you do. But on larger galaxies, it's the best way to go.

It seems to me that many of the ships aren't that useful... Rangers cost more to build and maintain, have slightly higher hitpoints, greater speed and range, butlower defence. They can explore anomolies, but I've normally explored all the anomylies by the point I get them anyway. So I just build more dreadnaughts.

StarFighters, StarHawks, Corvettes, Frigates, Battle Crusiers, Phoenixs ... I just don't build many. Hardly at all.

And my games are normally effectively over by the time I reach Overlord/Excaliber tech.

I wonder if this sort of thing shows up in the Metaverse stats.

If your civ has the production and economy to support them (they cost more to build and maintain then dreads) then I like Rangers just because of the move bonus (I also tend to play in gigantic galaxies where you can't have too many moves). When fighting dreads the key is to attack first, and having more moves means a given size grouped of rangers can kill more ships per turn then the same sized group of dreads. But like I said at the beginning of this post, you'll need the economy and production capability to make that practical, because they aren't that much better, they just have a little edge.