Ok cakewalk games is my primary concern in games. Please lets not make the Ai easier, but I am in support of Ai using player ships. I would like to see the computer making better ships.I think that the Ai being dummied down is a good idea.

There is an option to upgrade your ships.

What is the problem with the Ai having lots of ships. A few good huge hull ships can handle a lot of smaller ships.

If you can't fight the Ai what is the point of when the Ai's don't like you. Are you saying that you don't want games where the Ai don't like you enough to go to war against you when the game is really about that.

This post is about ship spamming with an idea of logistics limiting how many total ships you can have like sins of a solar empire.

There's a difference between wanting a cakewalk (no challenge) and wanting a meaningful challenge (aka more than a speedbump).

Speedbumps aren't really a challenge, they're a nuisance.  We want something better than that.

Hence my question. There are a lot of replies here that are complaining about the difficulty of dealing with "ship spam". I see that as one of the challenges (yes, I think of it as a meaningful one) of the game. I am wondering why they don't want the challenge.

Can you be specific on how you want this implemented because I would not want a challenge feature removed without a better one in place. I would definatly would want a challenge over no challenge. I wouldn't want to see this feature removed without something more challenging in place of it. No feature is better than a more challenging game. 

I am currently playing a game with super modified DLs. With nine civs including the thalan, krynn and torian, and others on crippling difficulty. the ship spam wasn't disorienting for me. If I wanted a fleet gone I would just blast it. I haven't seen any number of ships I couldn't keep track of as of yet.

I am actually under the impression that the AI will be to smart. It might very well start calling it sell Skynet and calling it's ships terminators.

and I am tempted to make a AAR or AA on my game as DLs are on nine worlds and have destroyed most of my decked out starbases with nothing more than fleets of two medium hull ships! One space station killed 6 or more before it succumbed to its fate. When I got bigger ships the tode turned. I couldn't have do it without the large/huge hulls.

As for the ultimate tiny/smaly hull ships the DLs made with maximum miniaturization and weapons. They were obliterated by a few mediums. Small/tiny hulls are slow and weak and fragile in comparison to other sizes. and the cheap cost dose not IMO make them good enough to be the pride of my Navy. Just defenders confined to a sector.

DARCA

Sounds like a good challenging game! have fun!

Only if I get my way. Wouldn't it be awesome if down the road in history class to read that after decades of research on artificial intelligence if instead a game designer made an intelligent machine for a better game. Wouldn't that be awesome. Imagine that all sky net was a game not a military defence program.

and I am tempted to make a AAR or AA on my game as DLs are on nine worlds and have destroyed most of my decked out starbases with nothing more than fleets of two medium hull ships! One space station killed 6 or more before it succumbed to its fate. When I got bigger ships the tode turned. I couldn't have do it without the large/huge hulls.


DARCA[/quote]

Ok it sounds like the right strategy you are just taking to long to invade the Dread lords planets.

I have indeed found that in almost any circumstances in GalCiv2, larger hull ships are always preferable to smaller ones.

Not only do they have better HP/cost ratio but also more weapon space/BC.

But that is not all, since attack/defense during combat is calculated on a per ship basis and not on a per fleet basis, larger ships will always be better at negating enemy attacks when using armor and better at overcoming enemy defense when using attack.  Even at a similar technology level, a heavily armored battleship might be able to dispatch a very large amount of small ships, that cost a lot more in total, without even barely suffering any damage. 

So despite being longer to build, they are more cost effective.

I agree Mr. war.

As for the DLs they started the game with me and were on the other side of a gigantic galaxy. (they can go anywhere since I gave them 200% range bonus) I currently am sending forces along with the rest of the galaxy to wipe them out in the form of terror stars and my custom Mk.V Dreadnoughts.

if you want to make "super DLs" I made a forum on it. Gaunathor helped me do it so it works. (half of it might be insane babble. But I wasn't...thinking clearly when I wrote some of it tho.)

DARCA

Define "ship spam".

If you define ship spam as "the enemy is smart at having lots of ships in various places so you get punished for just having one super fleet", then it's probably fine.

If you define ship spam as "there's ten thousand ships on the map and each turn takes 20 minutes of tedious moving things around that don't particularly matter", then it's not a challenge. It's tedious.

Endless Space could suffer from it in the late game, where production got so out of hand that the AI could build fleets a turn. Without a hero most of those fleets were totally oblitterated when my level 20 admiral's fleet showed up. Next turn they'd make more, and I'd wipe those out too. Repeat ad nauseum until I could take the system. At some point autoresolving all the meaningless combats (I wasn't taking damage) stopped being challenging and just became "click the same button sequence 15 times at the start of every turn until the AI's useless fleets go away".

That's a brand of ship spam I can do without.

I'm referring to the latter, which is a common problem with the AI in Stardock games (maybe new things in GC3 will help solve that)

That is a very astonishing statement. Stardock has said it doesn't want thousands of ships, and long time consuming battles that aren't fun. And you say all stardock games are like just like that! I think you might be the first. Of course I didn't know what settings you play on. That may mean something.

Combat will likely be prettier  this time and more complex. The AI can't even build ships! That's how good it's going to be.

DARCA

Well here's an idea the Ai could make ships based on your ship stats. When you change stats the Ai will change its stats to fit. One way the Ai can fix this if they can afford this they can upgrade their ships to fit this. The Korath was fitted for this in Dark avatar. Some reason they took this out for Twilight of the Arnor. Something I would like to see them bring back is the Krynn and Iconians actually being good at sabotage. I would like to see the Ai make better ships to. Not just ships, but ships that could actually counter my ships. Not less ships, but better ships.

Really? In today's world there are many ways to sink a carrier, or a carrier fleet. While air superiority is a must, anyone that ignores other threats is not certain of survival. Isn't that is what screening ships are for?

Those ships tend to be smaller ships like destroyers, or subs, or other utility ships. Big hulking battleships aren't being made anymore, and haven't been for a while. They're sitting ducks against too many things to be particularly useful.