Rare fleet battle

[MichaelJ007]

One of the aspects of the game I've noticed in my playthroughs are that fleet battles are relatively rare. It's usually my fleets versus 1 or 2 or 3 ships, or my fleet besieging a planet with 6 to 8 defense bases.

I have seen two full on fleet battles only, both in early game. Late game it's usually just steamrolling.

Had a nice battle in my current game where my fleet of 5 DD and 10 frigates got ambushed by two fleets of equivalent firepower. All ships with tier 2, 3 techs. It was a very tight victory, and I would have lost some ships near the end if my second fleet hadn't arrived to reinforce the battle. The deciding factor (I think) was that my ships had blasters as secondary weapons, while the AI only had torpedoes and point defense. So once the melee ensued, I had a clear dps advantage.

The AI really should invest more in fleets, rather than single ships, and it seems to over invest in defense bases. This gives the player too much opportunity to concentrate forces and defeat the enemy defense bases in detail.

The game UI should also indicate in the fleet lists which fleets are in combat (a lightning symbol by the fleet name maybe). Its not always obvious when a fleet is in combat, or how the battle is progressing. Individual ship notifications dont quite cut it.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

With the current games state I have to give the AI a pretty stout head start if I want a good challenge mid to late game. I typically give them an excellent starting system with young expansion and tier 2 or 3 tech depending on which races I put in. By the time you meet them they will have well established empires with plenty of ships to fight and can make diplomacy useful again. Also make sure to not oversaturate the galaxy with pirates and space monsters as they really slow down AI expansion to the point if you start them out on prewarp they rarely expand beyond their first system by the time you reach them. Nebula are also an AI expansion killer so turn them down too.

[Scott2933]

The game UI should also indicate in the fleet lists which fleets are in combat (a lightning symbol by the fleet name maybe). Its not always obvious when a fleet is in combat, or how the battle is progressing. Individual ship notifications dont quite cut it.

Good idea. We had suggested some kind of indicator like this late in beta - I think we said flash red also along the bottom icons when in galaxy view.

[Erik Rutins]

The game UI should also indicate in the fleet lists which fleets are in combat (a lightning symbol by the fleet name maybe). Its not always obvious when a fleet is in combat, or how the battle is progressing. Individual ship notifications dont quite cut it.

Good idea. We had suggested some kind of indicator like this late in beta - I think we said flash red also along the bottom icons when in galaxy view.

This has been on our UI wish list for a while. We'll get to it at some point!

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have said this many times... the ground forces and facilities are too expensive for what they do and this lead to the AI building way less ships than what it needs thus less ship battles.

AI builds way too much planetary defences that in general are useless in most cases as fleets is what you need to defend space (and planets). The stations, ground troops and facilities to support it just are too expensive. You only need to defend one or maybe two or three planets tops depending on the size of your empire.

The AI play the game as there is any meaning to defending planets, such as some political reason or something but there are none. The most efficient way is to just counter invade planets if they get invaded. But instead invest in the fleet means you can actually attack or defend where it matters including raiding at the same time. Often offence is the best defence.

Planetary defences needs to be payed by the planets and deducted before you tax them or something, otherwise defences simply is not worth the effort. As long as these facilities and units is used by the planet it should pay for them and be cheaper. Once you take the units off the planet for offensive actions THEN you pay for them and at a much higher price as it is always more expensive with offensive actions than defensive.

The AI also need to handle their research and growth much better and make sure it prioritise that over saving a small sum to it's treasury. Growth equal more income long term which is more important than cash in the treasury.

Another completely unnecessary thing is escorts, escort patrols are a complete waste of resources and I believe the AI does this as well for no particular good reason. The randomness of patrols make them pointless. This also waste resources the AI could use to bolster their fleets too.

Another thing is a fleet that you need... you don't need a humongous standing fleet, that hamper long term growth. You can generally build the fleet when you need it and have a modest defence fleet standing.

When all is said and done, it comes down to economy and what is worth what.

[MichaelJ007]

Troop maintenance is fine. I do NOT want it reduced. Cheap garrisons will just lead to more garrison spam and longer bombardments without adding anything.

I would rather buff militia (they cost nothing) and will serve to make invasions harder. This will reduce the need to put in place large expensive garrisons.

Also, bonuses from orbital and planetary buildings can rather be improved. Bastions can give a +5% retrenchment bonus every 1 year, capped at some arbitrary value.

Orbital infrastructure like space stations should count way more to 'space control' bonuses. Like 100% or more.

You can have buildings such as 'Civil Defense Base' which boosts the amount of militia spawned to counter invasions.

Ultimately a planet with a large population and the right buildings should have a very significant militia with 300% to 400% defensive bonuses. You can bombard the population to make it easier to invade, but this is counterproductive in the long run. (Diplomatic penalty, loss of income).

Changes like the above can make planetary invasions harder, while reducing the need for garrison spam. Any garrisons on top of that should be for the players full expense.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The problem IS the cost of planetary defences because they are ridiculously expensive for basically no use. You only want one or two planets really defended and most of that defence will be reaction forces anyway.

This is one big reason why you don't see large AI fleets, the AI spend WAY too much resources on ground forces and defensive bases for no good reason.

I also think that forcing long bombardment of well defended planets IS a good thing because that make defences more strategically sound as they can hold until a relief fleet can arrive to engage the enemy for a reasonable cost.
If you don't want long bombardment times because you are impatient it would not seem like a good argument to me.

Increasing the strength of militia would basically have the same effect, and in my opinion, it just interact with bombardment pretty bad. It also would make defensive units completely pointless other than for pacifying hostile planets. It also would make purely offensive units even more broken.
Currently you only want offensive units as defending planets is pointless rather than counter invading them. If you have a dozen planets in reach of an enemy you can defend them all for a reasonable cost. You just need one invasion army and move the to wherever you need them to be and they can all be Armour and Special Forces, you only need infantry if you invade enemy planets for garrison duty until unrest subside and not a huge amount.

In the two campaign I played so far I literally had zero defensive units in my game (aside from the start of the game), but I was not very aggressive and invaded enemy planets all that much at all. I also built zero defensive bases aside from my capital planets, they are just too expensive and too inflexible. I don't even arm my space stations unless there are some odd space over and then mostly point defence weapons for self defence.

If there was some political or other social reason for defending planets then I would do it. The only reason I would build defensive troops or defensive bases would be role-play, nothing else.

So, the whole reason why we see so little fleet battles is that the AI spend huge part of the economy on immobile defences... it needs to be balanced much better.

If you ever played a game called Aurora 4X you would see a way better balance of fleet versus ground defence cost/benefit calculations. In that game the cost of invading a planet is huge if it is well defended. It also take agest to build up large ground forces and will be costly... it also will be costly to supply them in battle on planets. You can on the other hand choose to simply nuke the planet with missiles, but then you can't use it for a few hundred or thousands of years.

[DasTactic]

Troop maintenance is fine. I do NOT want it reduced. Cheap garrisons will just lead to more garrison spam and longer bombardments without adding anything.

I would rather buff militia (they cost nothing) and will serve to make invasions harder. This will reduce the need to put in place large expensive garrisons.

Also, bonuses from orbital and planetary buildings can rather be improved. Bastions can give a +5% retrenchment bonus every 1 year, capped at some arbitrary value.

Orbital infrastructure like space stations should count way more to 'space control' bonuses. Like 100% or more.

You can have buildings such as 'Civil Defense Base' which boosts the amount of militia spawned to counter invasions.

Ultimately a planet with a large population and the right buildings should have a very significant militia with 300% to 400% defensive bonuses. You can bombard the population to make it easier to invade, but this is counterproductive in the long run. (Diplomatic penalty, loss of income).

Changes like the above can make planetary invasions harder, while reducing the need for garrison spam. Any garrisons on top of that should be for the players full expense.

+1. This is a great list.