Some Of The New Ship Values

There needs to be a better defensive ship. Now that the hitpoints on the BattleHammer are = to those of the BattleAxe, and the BattleAxe has a higher defense value, the BattleHammer is utterly useless. But a DEF of 5 still just isn't gonna cut it against Frigates and Battleships and whatnot.

Need some kind of a better system defender...

Right that is bizzare I wonder why Stardock lower the hit points on the Battlehamer. It requires more tech to build than the BattleAxe but if what I an reading is correct there is no point in building them.

It made sense to lower the HP's of the Battlehammer but it might have been wise to up the defence value a bit.

Battlehammer was intented to be a system defense ship I think. Before this patch it was mainly used as an 'el cheapo' attackship. I think Stardock wanted that to change, so they lowered the hp's. A good thing IMHO but since the Battlehammer is next in line after the Battleaxe is should have something like a better defence rating compared to its predecessor. Otherwise it does become obsolete.

40 hitpoints for a Battlehammer would be a disappointment. Why not lower it to a value around 70?

I think the 40HP Battlehammer is a good change. The BH is NOT useless as some claim. It has a purpose and that purpose is to defensively attack enemy ships near your starsystems.

My new defensive strategy is to build BattleAxes AND Battlehammers to defend my planets. The Axes just sit in orbit and defend against any attacks while the Hammers run out and ATTACK the approaching enemy ships if necessary.

Rob

You have a point there Rob. I'll try that out.

Problem is, the new battle hammers have a less than 50% win ratio against even combat transports. Sure, it can still whack the light combat ships, but that's about it.

There will be another update today to enhance balancing further.

+ Defender's hitpoints will be raised
+ Battle Hammer will get higher defense
+ AI will take trade more into account before lowering relations (this needs to be doen because of the aforementioned starfighters early on).

Should be ready in a bit. Optional update.

Sounds good.

People do need to remeber about PLANETARY DEFENSES. If the AI is attacking your planet build these as they give HUGE benefits to defending ships.

Paul.

~SDC~

An addendum to Solitair's point:
Build them only at the planet likely to be attacked, and destroy them when the borders of your empire shift...otherwise you'll be spending more in maintenance than it would cost to simply lose the planet and reconquer it.

Frogboy, then Battle Hammers will become the standard defensive unit later on in the game (until dreadnoughts come along, at least), which is quite reasonable.

Assuming that you raise the defense to be more than the current attack (5), will you be lowering the attack to compensate for the "50% of the defense value when attacked" modifier? I don't think that will be necessary, and it will make the Battle Hammer a little more viable as a defender in the late game, but I'm sure that you have a much better handle on game balance than I do.

Also, don't take this as a criticism, but you do realize that in the span of about 24 hours, you've modified scoring to penalize taking longer, toned down the assault ships, and (now) are beefing up defending ships? I like long games, and I'm not too comptetitive so this doesn't bother me.

Let's not forget that defending ships in orbit get a 60% bonus to attack but nothing to defense. A high defense ship therefore benefits less from staying in orbit, making it undesirable for system defense. This is a fundamental problem with the "half of defense counts as attack when attack is less than defense" rule. To put it simply, given a limited pool of points to distribute among attack and defense, a high attack ship will always perform better than a high defense ship in orbit unless its hit points are severely restricted.

Under the same principle, high defense ships are often the better attackers in GalCiv because they are more likely to survive a counter attack on the next turn. We will need a fundamental change to the game rules if we want high attack ships to actually attack better in space, and high defense ships to defend better in orbit.

I would have preferred the Hammers go down to about 50 or 60 from 90, leave the attack and defense where they are, and up their maintenance a bit but I'll try this out when it comes.

when is this going to happen? I have 1.02 and had a huge fleet of battlehammers taking people out. No point in building anything else.

Actually, I didn't state that bit about "assault ships toned down" very well. I know that the stats have been raised in some cases, but the cost and maintenance has been boosted far more than the stats. 1pt DEF and 15 HP for much more production cost and about twice the maintenance on the Avatar? Doesn't sound like a great tradeoff to me.

So I'm thinking that the game may actually shift to a more defensive game, though I can't be sure till I've had a chance to play it.

Drengkiller - if you use SDC, it's already happened (and actually hammers have been tweaked already since last night), if not, it will happen as soon as 1.03 is released as a standalone.

With the new values, Rangers look better in comparision to dreadnoughts. Now they've got a higher defense rating. Of course, they're 33% more expensive, but I think the defense rating, longer range, faster speed, and better sensors will make up for it unless you're in a war of attrition.

I think the Excalabers are WAY out of balance.
I cant take one out with constant stream of Overlords.
17 movement points! They can't even get close until one starts ripping my defenses to pieses. It attacks untouched against 4 battlehammers in orbit around a planetary defense/system defense/omega defense.

I think the battle system needs to be revised. The result of a battle should affect not only hitpoints but attack, movement and defense ratings that will recover as the HP are restored.

It makes no sense that after an attack by 12 Overlords in a row that the available weapons, engines, shielding are not affected in some minor fashion.

These ships so outclass everything else, I am probably going to have to abandon 100 hours worth of gaming where I was holding my own against the Torians and Altarians until the Altarians started fielding Excalibers. I will probably try and remove them from the directory for my next game.

Anomalyst, don't abandon the game, change every planet to anti-matter missile production and crank them out as fast as possible. This will greatly increase your military rating and give you a chance to sue for peace. Then you can go for Excals/tech victory yourself (they are both along the exact same path).

If you can crank enough a-matter missiles out fast enough you might be able to intimidate the AI into parting with some of that tech when it goes for peace.

And now that starfighters have been upgraded aren't they basicaly the same as a corvette? The corvette just has +2hp and +1 defense. And corvette technology is a dead end tech. What's the point of reseaching it now? Corvettes just don't seem like they're worthwhile anymore.

Yeah, the only reason people built corvettes was to keep their military rating high so they don't get attacked early. Now that starfighers do the same thing I don't see any reason to bother with corvettes.

Excaliburs are supposed to be overkill. They come almost at the end of the tech tree, and if you've let the AI get that far without you, then you've blown the game anyway, especially if the game's changed to allow the AI to obtain a tech win.

And when will have a good attack ship OTHER than the Dread; ie when will the Phoenix be made worthwhile ?

The 1 Defense and 20 HP really hurt them, it takes 3 or 4 of them to kill a Dread, but they cost 60% of a Dread ! :((
As for attacking SBs, AMM are 500% better also.

They should be stg like A14/D3/HP40 to be efficient at their current tech req, price and maintenance..

The Phoenix will be made worthwhile when cloaking is implemented (hopefully).