Hmm... suppose you can attack multiple targets. So what? the damage that you do will be spread out between targets. Wouldn't it be more efficient to focus fire, like in almost every RTS out there? By eliminating ships one by one, you would ultimitely save damage to your own ship.

Hmm... suppose you can attack multiple targets. So what? the damage that you do will be spread out between targets. Wouldn't it be more efficient to focus fire, like in almost every RTS out there? By eliminating ships one by one, you would ultimitely save damage to your own ship

The point is, lets suppose we have one battleship which does 100 damage and has 50 hits. It fights against a fleet of 4 fighters who each do 10 damage for a total of 40 and each have 5 hits.

To keep this simple, let us forget about defense for a moment, which I understand is an integral and important part of the game but is moot for the point I want to make.

The fighters are attacking and would do 40 damage, leaving the battleship with 10 hits. Then the battleship fires and does 100 damage to one fighter, which is taken out. See my point? Fighters in this scenario are vastly superior to battleships.

As for the WW2 example above:

There are many historical examples of small ships and aircraft significantly damaging or destroying capital ships. In fact in the Pacific in WWII a great many ships were sunk solely by relatively flimsy aircraft (compared to the massiveness and firepower of the ships they were attacking).

Sure, but how often did that happen. Those things needed to be incredibly lucky or especially designed to target capital ships (like submarines). The capital ships in WWII took an incredible amount of punishment before breaking. However, if you are lucky one X-Wing can destroy a Super Star Destroyer when hitting it *exactly* where it hurts most. But those parts of the ships usually are those best protected and hardest to hit. Thus the chance to score a one shot kill is slim indeed.

I can buy the argument that fighters loose utility by not having much space in them, so you have to trade range for firepower or defense or the like. However, I guess this disadvantage gets smaller once you advance your tech level I would imagine.

Should fighters really be so restricted spacewise, then it will be very hard to have combined battlefleets with a capital ship and some small ones for protection as then you would limit the range of the whole fleet by adding the small ships.

Thus I am still not sure if I like the system, for I still see a penalty for building large ships. I can only see myself building capital ships *very late* in the game, as the cost is probably prohibitive and one battleship on its own is easy prey for anyone. So as long as you cannot put out a couple of capital ships in a few turns, I guess you should not even bother.

Granted i've never played the beta, but tell me if this would be a prudent strat then:

I have a few heavily armed and heavily defended capitol ships escorted by numerous cheap heavy attack low defence fighters. Since ships attack the highest threat but most easily destroyed target first, would it be safe to say the fighters would be my cannon fodder giving my capitol ships ample time to attack? Granted i would be sacrificing the fighters, but if they are cheap enough it might be worth it in some situations.
just curious.
Forgive me if i have the whole idea about how the AI chooses targets wrong

Since ships attack the highest threat but most easily destroyed target first, would it be safe to say the fighters would be my cannon fodder giving my capitol ships ample time to attack?

Surely. I haven't tried it but it should work that way.

I kinda like Star Trek battles, all the ships are self-sustaining and about the same size, with lots of versatility. I think everybody needs to break out of viewing things in Star Wars terms.

Looking at this ship design i would say the designer is a big trekke aswell.

https://www.galciv2.com/beta/gamma1/Highli90.jpg

Should fighters really be so restricted spacewise, then it will be very hard to have combined battlefleets with a capital ship and some small ones for protection as then you would limit the range of the whole fleet by adding the small ships. Thus I am still not sure if I like the system, for I still see a penalty for building large ships. I can only see myself building capital ships *very late* in the game, as the cost is probably prohibitive and one battleship on its own is easy prey for anyone. So as long as you cannot put out a couple of capital ships in a few turns, I guess you should not even bother.

Well, this is exactly what happens.
Larger ships have more room in them. So you can stick in more weapons, and in the space left over, cram a bit of defense or engine. I always go engine, because I'd rather have the extra move. Smaller ships, crammed equally full of weapons, tend to be slower because they don't have that extra engine. So this means that my quick response forces (max move) are large ships.

Now, it's useful to have a mixed size fleet. They will be slow, but you want as many guns as you can get in your fleet blasting away at the enemy. This means you will need to have a few of the smallest ships around, because of how logisitcis work. In the beginning, you can only stick 3 of the Tiny hulls together, or 2 of the Small hulls together. Or 1 Medium hull and 1 Tiny hull. After that, your military just don't have the tactical skill to coordinate anything larger or more numberous as a combat unit (a fleet). As your logistics goes up, you can coordinate more ships together.

In a battle in GC, the current balance favors the side with the most guns. But, for your example, your battleship is optimized to kill other big ships, and totally defenseless against small ships. If the design was rebalanced to do 50 attack and pack 20 defense, it would be invulnerable to the small ships. But it wouldn't kill other large ships as fast. Just a matter of using the right tool for the right job.