Defensive Ships

Survey Ships can get defense upgrades from anomolies, as could whatever higher class ships that can investigate anomolies.

Also, I think some mention of combat worthy defensive ships being 'slated for future implementation' came up a few days back.

(And incidentally, I've been using defenders for attack as well as defense, and once they gain some levels they can get rather impressive defence scores. I have at least one that can deal with battleships on attack, and can defend against avatars in a system with only Planetary Defenses built.)

Defensive ships in systems with defenses built are quite powerful!

Perhaps ONLY defensive ships should get the system defense bonuses. This would enhance their usage. An advanced defensive ship is required for later game though.

Paul.

Survey Ships are very expensive to build and are not good purpose defensive ships.

Using defenders for attack as well as defense is fine on small size galaxies but on large maps by the time you are ready for combat most races will have at least battle ships and the speed of defenders is slow, it would take a lot of turns to get even a few defenders in position. It is this situation that if you want to be non-agressive you have to match with like ships, defenders get beaten 4 or 5 at a time even with planetary defenses and defensive lasers.

I really like paul's idea.. Seems like later in the game I am using battleships for defense and really that's just a waste. how about this idea, what do you guys think of giving you the option of researching defensive "ship type" or offensive "ship type" but once you make that choice you are stuck with that type of ship? or how about this instead after you build the ship two research options would appear.. You would then have to make a choice of what ship fills your needs most at that point in time but of course you could only research one type.. Seems like that would add a bit more strategy.

Not sure about being stuck with only offensive or defensive. My main thought is you could have technology (seperate from the current tech tree for offensive ships) that you could research for ships better than a defender. You could always research both branches but it would take a lot of time.

I don't like the idea of being stuck with only defensive or offensive ships, but doubling up the ship techs so that every time they come up two techs would appear, one offensive and one defensive, then pruning off the other and its advanced forms, if any, once on of the two have been completely researched (or alternatly, once one has been built, to give an opportunity for technologists and/or militants an advantage in the form of greater variety).

Alex,
limiting to ONLY defensive or offensive would not be good. A few 'either ... or' on particular ships would be good for strategy though. Imagine the choice between 'advanced defender' or 'dreadnought'. Do you choose an excellent defensive ship, or a better attack vessel capable of defeating battleships. Yes you can later research avatars, but that could still be 300 turns away.
Couple that with only defenders gaining a benefit from planetary defense and it should be very interesting.


Paul.

ps. The current defender should have a higher defense rating. 3 is a bit low. perhaps 4 or 5?

Paul,

Why should only defenders get the benefit of planet defenses? It seems any ship with attack and/or defense capabilities would have to benefit from a planet being able to shield it.

Cheers,
Jack

You could first research a defensive Battle Cruiser early in the game then research an offensive Battle Ship if you wanted to attack later in the game. You would do this to fortify your star systems so you wouldn't have to worry about an invasion. Basically the idea is you would put more research into shields and armor for that ship instead of weapons. I guess there is no difference if we just create a new ship class, but I like having to make difficult decisions and think ahead in strategy games. IMHO

Alex,
I agree with you. I like difficult either or decisions. Especially if I'm forced by circumstances to make different decisions in different games. It makes for much higher replayability.

Jack,
The reason (gamewise) only a defensive ship would get defensive bonuses is to allow for non war mongering races to have a defensive strategy which doesn't involve having to build offensive ships. You want the best defense, it's a bit strange if the best defensive ship required you to build the best offensive ship.
As to reality reasons, that's much easier to explain. Many types of weapons or tactics require particular combinations of abilities (speed, sensors, defenses, armour, long range weapons, short range weapons, etc.). A large offensive ship (battleship+) is designed to seek and destroy self sufficiently. It may not be able to work in close proximity with a planet efficiently. It wasn't designed to! A defensive ship was designed to defend a planet. It is designed to use the covering fire / shields / atmosphere / space of a planet to it's advantage.

Paul.

silly question - but I have been looking for this for a while - where and how are my researched ship upgrades shown in the ship display? They all seem to stay the same as the initial design. sorry if this is obvious but could someone point it out to me.

I think but am not sure that there is currently no dreadnought, excalibur, or other upgraded versions of the battleship or avatar.

One thing that would be nice is if there could be a ship that didn't have a star drive. It would be forever stuck in the system that built it, but would be a sort of super-defender. If you took the warp drive out -- there would be more space for the shields.

Of course, I'm under the impression that there isn't going to be a shipyards as part of the initial gold release of GalCiv windows -- but I'd love to be wrong about that.

Frank

You mean like the towers from Warcraft .. hmm... Maybe we should make planetary defensives a military project..

How about starbases.........several stages of starbases would be useful. A low end starbase would be able to fend off attacks from battleship pretty well.

The starbase could increase sensor range of the planet, increase shipbuilding rate, create wormholes(at later stages), sentry a sector with range weapons perhaps......

It would add several more stages of techs in the tree, and especially in the early game that is really needed because people get to battleships wayyy to quickly. The escalation of power needs to start slowly and speed up as the game goes on.

Starbases could be a pre-requisite for building ships as well. The first planet could start with a starbase.

I like the fact that all ships get a defensive bonus. Home field advantage is always a factor, no matter what you're flying. Perhaps defensive ships could receive a further bonus for being purpose built for the job. Double, maybe?

It should be adjusted so that it can survive two or three attacks from a battleship, when it is at full strength stationed at one of the planets when that planet has the first 1 or 2 levels of planetary defense. Without it it should last at least 1 attack, unless it is a dreadnought or higher.
In essence the planetary defense HAS to compliment and increase the ships ability to defend itself, which is probably already part of the overall plan.
If both are implemented, it will take 3 or 4 battleships to make a planet defenseless. Which means the operations on a planet have to be focused, not just battleships wandering around attacking at random.

I do like the idea of star bases being required for some of the larger battle ships but I think building small ships like star fighters and defenders and less techno-intensive ships like transports and colony ships should be buildable without star bases.

Cheers,
Jack

Since this is the only thread that I found searching for defensive ships, going ahead and posting here. Now that the game is out, and I have played through around 10 games total, I think this is an area that could be addressed, either in an official patch or a player mod.

Right now, the best defender that I seem to get is the BattleAxe, which is the 2nd, IIRC, military ship that I can normally build (right after Defenders). In the beginning of the game they do a decent job defending, by the end of the game 10-20 of these on a planet is normally enough to level up the attacking ship, but do nothing for defense.

Are there better defending ships out there in the tech tree? I don't like the idea of building battleships and overlords for defense; I think it would be great if there were advanced defenders as technology rises.

What do you think?

The Battle Axe is a better defender than the Defender and the Battle Hammer is a better defender than the Battle Axe.

The Battle Hammer can already kick the shit out of Battleships if it is on defense (and still does decent damage but dies when on offence). In a system with substantial military upgrades from a starbase, a handfull of battle hammers can wipe the floor with Battle ships and Dreadnaughts. If you combine that with weapon upgrade techs and a military starbase, the battle hammer is easily the best ship in the game pre Overlord...although it is pretty slow for offensive use on larger maps.

What exactly is the question regarding building defensive ships about? I don't get.

The defender, battle axe, battle hammer is the defensive ship equivelant to corvette, frigate, battleship.

BTW: you need to research shields to get the BHammer.

That BHammer is useful for far longer than any other ship in the game. Even well after Battleships have been obsoletized by Overlords and such, the Bhammer makes a perfect garrison ship.

In the midgame when mobility is a concern, a LOT can be bought by just using starbase catapults. You can add a HUGE amount of MP's with Stellar Wake and Inverse Tractor beams if you stack the starbases in a sector. The incremental difference in MP's between the Bhammer and the Bship then is statistically insignificant.

Actually I think battleaxes and battlehammers are (at least supposed) to be kind of defenders (since they are not allowed go out attacking outside a limited range) but for some strange, strange reason they have been given unbalanceinly high attack values also.

in a straight up fight, a BattleAxe will wipe out a BattleCruiser...but a BattleHammer will take down a BattleAxe....

My question is: What is the purpose of a Phoenix? base values....

HP 10, ATT 9, DEF 1

????? And this is a fairly high level ship, right?

Phoenix is a 'cheap' high level attack craft. It is basically an super upgraded star figther.

What I don't understand, is if the BattleHammer is meant to defend, why is it's attack higher then its defense rating? Just so you have a tough system defender that can wipe the floor of battleships and dreadnaughts? (That's my game experience, so far, but I tend to maintain a serious tech edge, and do believe in building up military resources to help presuade the AI to leave me be.)