Dawn of War 3 sales and recent 4x games

[eRe4s3r]

Agreed, and this is where Stellaris currently suffers the hardest. Tech does almost nothing (baseline corvette spam is still the most mineral efficient way to wage war all the way up until Tier 5 XL weapons on Battleship fleets), the fleet cap is more a "suggestion" than an actual limit, and supply is handled by increased FTL-travel times and you still manually control your fleets. It's ... very less than ideal. There are many ways to make this better. I am looking forward to changes that are coming in the big "combat patch" some time in the future. I just hope they really do something interesting and not just tweak numbers.

Don't even get me started, I modded Stellaris, I know the numbers of weapon research vs damage (DPS) each tier provides (they made me cringe so hard my face dropped to the other end of the planet) But it isn't something you could fix with a tweak.

When you look at the cost increase for a new weapon tier you will notice that
# Damage (DPS) increases by like 2 per level (base is 7) (t5 lasers do 15 due % buffs) that's 3 S sized lasers.
# Power requirements increase, meaning you need more generators (3M vs 1M)
# Build cost nearly doubles for each "total tier upgrade" of all subsystems
# Everything you put extra on a corvette is reducing evasion, the primary stat for a corvette (I run my corvettes without shields or armor, just 3 plasma cannons and generators (max tier subsystems on the right side though) ,p)

The thing is, nothing I could mod would FIX that. If I made corvettes worse the next hull size would gain the spot (destroyer torp spam is VERY viable then.....

if I beefed dmg per weapon tier, then corvettes would become way more awesome. (but so would every other ship, it's a 0-sum change)

If I reduced cost increases for new tiers then you could just cap out faster (since maintenance is bound to build cost)

If I changed evasion chances on ship hulls corvettes or BB's would either benefit most or lose the most. (depending on the direction)

What I could do, is give everyone equal evasion chance of 50% for example... mhh, actually I am gonna try that. I remove all evasions buffs of all hulls and give them fixed evasion changes, and engines lose evasion buff.

[Toranth]

Agreed, and this is where Stellaris currently suffers the hardest. Tech does almost nothing (baseline corvette spam is still the most mineral efficient way to wage war all the way up until Tier 5 XL weapons on Battleship fleets), the fleet cap is more a "suggestion" than an actual limit, and supply is handled by increased FTL-travel times and you still manually control your fleets. It's ... very less than ideal. There are many ways to make this better. I am looking forward to changes that are coming in the big "combat patch" some time in the future. I just hope they really do something interesting and not just tweak numbers.

Don't even get me started, I modded Stellaris, I know the numbers of weapon research vs damage (DPS) each tier provides (they made me cringe so hard my face dropped to the other end of the planet) But it isn't something you could fix with a tweak.
[snip]

One of the few things I think would work to deal with corvette spam is effective AoE weapons.  Guaranteed X damage to everything in a significant area would do a lot against the swarmers, but nothing against tanky BBs.  Unfortunately, the base game had minefields - which do so little damage even corvettes aren't worried.

Fighters/Bombers could have been effective, too, but... strikecraft in Stellaris...

[eRe4s3r]

The way strike-craft work is this (so yeah, they are kinda borked when you face corvette swarms, switch to torpedoes ,p)
1 laser shot, instant, 100% accuracy, ignores shields, 50% armor mitigation
If you shoot at a corvette, with 80% dodge chance, that means your bomber just wasted it's entire attack run (internally, what you +see+ bombers do, is not what they do, they got 1 shot and 1 shot only per strike-craft, then 10s reload (yeah, really) but they also only got 8 hp

There isn't even a concept of damage dispersion or mitigation in this game. (missed shots still doing 30% damage etc.) Big L and XL weapons doing AoE damage around a missed shot, always applying some % of their dmg value to all ships in vicinity etc. You literally can not do this. A shot has no awareness of where it hit. What you see graphically isn't what is simulated.

The best part, minefields work like this
      damage_per_day = {
         accuracy = 0.2 (20%, compound percentage calculations, what happens with a 20% hit-rate that fires at a ship with a 80% dodge chance, 4% chance to hit (per day and ship), basically)
         damage = { min = 5 max = 15 } (You can't put a % value here, and oh yeah, corvettes have max_hitpoints = 300)
         shield_damage = 1.0 (5 to 15 dmg applied to shields, per day)
         shield_penetration = 0.0 (can't penetrate shields, at all)
         armor_penetration = 0.75 Armor mitigates 25% damage if you ever actually had anything without a shield in a minefield, meaning BB's take 3 to 9 damage (yeah, really). (edit: fixed my calculation, BB's with 90% armor take ~30% damage, since that gets into rounding problems 3 to 7 is imo legit ;p That's assuming a BB ever enters a minefield without a shield. And, oh yeah, best part? This doesn't trigger combat mode, meaning if you span the aura system wide, the shield regen does not get disabled, and shields regen way faster than 5 points a day.


So yeah, that is one of the issues with AoE weapons in this game, you can't put % values in the damage field as you see above, it's an integer. The attack is unaware what the HP of the target is. And nothing you do changes that. Stellaris does not know the concept of x% damage per hit or complex damage formulas, that take hullsize into account inversely for example. In fact the entire damage calculation is extremely simple, you can't even do compound calculations in the fields, like a scaling damage curve or any other fancy stuff.

If you didn't get this from my slightly sarcastic tone, the developers at paradox have messed up hard when they coded this minefield, one wonders if they ever did the math. ^^

So yeah, much redesign is needed for this combat to be not just a simple HP vs DPS comparison.

[Toranth]

The way strike-craft work is this (so yeah, they are kinda borked when you face corvette swarms, switch to torpedoes ,p)
1 laser shot, instant, 100% accuracy, ignores shields, 50% armor mitigation
If you shoot at a corvette, with 80% dodge chance, that means your bomber just wasted it's entire attack run (internally, what you +see+ bombers do, is not what they do, they got 1 shot and 1 shot only per strike-craft, then 10s reload (yeah, really) but they also only got 8 hp

There isn't even a concept of damage dispersion or mitigation in this game. (missed shots still doing 30% damage etc.) Big L and XL weapons doing AoE damage around a missed shot, always applying some % of their dmg value to all ships in vicinity etc. You literally can not do this. A shot has no awareness of where it hit. What you see graphically isn't what is simulated.

The best part, minefields work like this
      damage_per_day = {
         accuracy = 0.2 (20%, compound percentage calculations, what happens with a 20% hit-rate that fires at a ship with a 80% dodge chance, 4% chance to hit (per day and ship), basically)
         damage = { min = 5 max = 15 } (You can't put a % value here, and oh yeah, corvettes have max_hitpoints = 300)
         shield_damage = 1.0 (5 to 15 dmg applied to shields, per day)
         shield_penetration = 0.0 (can't penetrate shields, at all)
         armor_penetration = 0.75 Armor mitigates 25% damage if you ever actually had anything without a shield in a minefield, meaning BB's take 3 to 9 damage (yeah, really). (edit: fixed my calculation, BB's with 90% armor take ~30% damage, since that gets into rounding problems 3 to 7 is imo legit ;p That's assuming a BB ever enters a minefield without a shield. And, oh yeah, best part? This doesn't trigger combat mode, meaning if you span the aura system wide, the shield regen does not get disabled, and shields regen way faster than 5 points a day.

So yeah, that is one of the issues with AoE weapons in this game, you can't put % values in the damage field as you see above, it's an integer. The attack is unaware what the HP of the target is. And nothing you do changes that. Stellaris does not know the concept of x% damage per hit or complex damage formulas, that take hullsize into account inversely for example. In fact the entire damage calculation is extremely simple, you can't even do compound calculations in the fields, like a scaling damage curve or any other fancy stuff.

If you didn't get this from my slightly sarcastic tone, the developers at paradox have messed up hard when they coded this minefield, one wonders if they ever did the math. ^^

So yeah, much redesign is needed for this combat to be not just a simple HP vs DPS comparison.

Yeah, the strikecraft rules have long been a disappointment to me.  I wanted so badly to have fighter and bomber swarms tearing apart anything without enough point defense, but alas! it was not to happen.  Especially considering the behavior of carrier ships...
"Captain, we've launched all our bombers, and are now helpless!  What shall we do?"
"We can't get shot from way back here; we'll need to close to point blank.  Full speed ahead!  Death awaits!"
Bah.


But minefields have accuracy?  Really?!  That's... that's terrible.  Wow.  The descriptive text certainly doesn't say that, which is why I expected minefields (when fixed to do real damage, like 100+) to be useful.  But, dang.  Wow.  We all knew it at launch when you could have invincible corvettes with 100% or more evasion, but someone really didn't think through their combat system.
Lightning weapons, actually, were supposed to be able to hit multiple 'nearby' targets originally, although they never worked when I was playing.  I take it they still don't?  Not that they do anywhere near enough damage, or could even hit corvettes, but still.

Yeah, that's not getting fixed anytime soon.

[eRe4s3r]

ARC weapon probably does something, but that is hardcoded and certainly not visible to me Imo minefield is something they probably planned to remove entirely from the game and simply forgot. I have never ever seen anything die from it. And I am a bit scared to change it, because if the AI used it and it'd be dangerous and deadly, I'd have no way to counter it ~.~

Even if you increased damage to high values, you'd essentially have to balance it against the dumb as brick fleet AI too that gets easily drawn into combat and beelines across the system ;P And with snare + mines, you could create an OP death-zone too, even if the minefield were balanced for an "approach" fight, it could become game-breaking coupled with snare...

Combat in this is just generally weird

And yeah, on release evasion wasn't capped.. that was a big "WHAAAAAAT?" moment for me ;P And it's also weird, because clearly they put a lot of work into combat  (effects/ship models and even a damage state transition that you likely never even noticed)  Evasion is now capped though, still, with admiral skills evasion is one of those skills you really wanna have. In my internal mod, evasion for all ships is 30, and only thing that buffs it is control systems and power surplus. so you can push a corvette to 41% evasion, but a BB (for example) would also be at 34% evasion if it had power surplus.

I wonder if this makes strike craft now way more valuable against corvettes... essentially everything has much lower evasion now. And combat speed for all ships is 4x as fast including strike-craft, all behaviors are "charge up-to-median-range" .. wonder how that plays out. In my test fights, strike-crafts did a ton of damage but they also died quickly. And yeah, my BB's then rushed.. no idea how I would ever fix that ;/

[Mánagarmr]

The reason the increases in damage per tier is so small is because Armor used to be a flat reduction, which meant that if you fired a Red Laser doing, say 24 damage at an Armor protecting 22, you'd be doing 2 damage. If you had a Blue Laser, it would do 27 damage, which would mean you are suddenly dealing 5 damage to the target, and increase of 150%.

In such a world, these "tiny" increases make perfect sense. However, the armor system was changed pretty much right before release, but weapons were not (probably due to lacking time for balancing?). That's why we're stuck in this odd situation. The devs are aware, however, and it's part of the combat overhaul. I just hope it's enough of an overhaul to actually make sense and be fun.

[ricardol]

I personally don't like the armor system at all to be honest. I would prefer how it was before.

[Mánagarmr]

I personally don't like the armor system at all to be honest. I would prefer how it was before.

Neither do I, especially not how useless armor is on small vessels. But combat in this game has bigger problems than armor, as it stands.

[eRe4s3r]

Big problem I have with armor/shield/HP as balancing foundation is that to me, if you approach combat balance from this angle, all you do is make another RTS where it's DPS vs HP

I know it would be a drastic change, but I still think combat (for a system) should be abstracted, and the formulas be deeper connected to battle-plans, fleet layouts, diversions and abilities (of admirals and sub-admirals, generals) as well as ideological focus (preserve lives vs cannon fodder) and so on and on. Basically each race would fight differently, and one combat fleet great against enemy 1 might be barely able to hold the line against enemy 2.

And in such a system, you'd not build 1 corvette, but an entire corvette division with infrastructure, factories and personal to support it, as it would be "realistic" a fleet would consist of hundreds of divisions, each with slightly different values and perks based on their division commander. If division commander is from a certain race and political views match with enemy, he might not be keen on fighting his potential friends. Admirals would be used to manage that, and political ethics and policies would be used to guide your armies too. It would also allow for much more immersion when it comes to what fleet is good against what enemy. It'd eliminate the doomstack problem too, since political views of your soldiers (assuming you don't automate ships with AI) could play a major role. And would not make your stack a good force projection EVERYWHERE, but only maybe somewhere.

But that's just it, my combat design would most certainly make it more EU4 but also more Endless Space. Since in combat proper you'd have no ability to give orders, retreat and everything would be a decision by the admiral. BUt what this requires is
1) Major rewrite of the entire game, down to the nitty gritty of solar systems, FTL, combat balance, research....
2) New AI
3) New character system, with family trees, biological mutants and hybrids acting as key connections between races etc.

I think Stellaris 1 is already on the backburner for Paradox.. I am pretty sure Stellaris 2 is already worked on....

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Big problem I have with armor/shield/HP as balancing foundation is that to me, if you approach combat balance from this angle, all you do is make another RTS where it's DPS vs HP

I know it would be a drastic change, but I still think combat (for a system) should be abstracted, and the formulas be deeper connected to battle-plans, fleet layouts, diversions and abilities (of admirals and sub-admirals, generals) as well as ideological focus (preserve lives vs cannon fodder) and so on and on. Basically each race would fight differently, and one combat fleet great against enemy 1 might be barely able to hold the line against enemy 2.

And in such a system, you'd not build 1 corvette, but an entire corvette division with infrastructure, factories and personal to support it, as it would be "realistic" a fleet would consist of hundreds of divisions, each with slightly different values and perks based on their division commander. If division commander is from a certain race and political views match with enemy, he might not be keen on fighting his potential friends. Admirals would be used to manage that, and political ethics and policies would be used to guide your armies too. It would also allow for much more immersion when it comes to what fleet is good against what enemy. It'd eliminate the doomstack problem too, since political views of your soldiers (assuming you don't automate ships with AI) could play a major role. And would not make your stack a good force projection EVERYWHERE, but only maybe somewhere.

But that's just it, my combat design would most certainly make it more EU4 but also more Endless Space. Since in combat proper you'd have no ability to give orders, retreat and everything would be a decision by the admiral. BUt what this requires is
1) Major rewrite of the entire game, down to the nitty gritty of solar systems, FTL, combat balance, research....
2) New AI
3) New character system, with family trees, biological mutants and hybrids acting as key connections between races etc.

I think Stellaris 1 is already on the backburner for Paradox.. I am pretty sure Stellaris 2 is already worked on....

I'd be worried that by doing that, you're going to alienate the casual gamers that don't want to learn the ins and outs of complex systems. Its much easier for someone to pick up a game if it is "Build this. It fights good", rather than "Okay, get a good admiral, have this division set up in this way, make sure your race prefers this ideology,

Plus, if you take away my ability to give orders, I'm going to be SUPER angry. I want to be able to impose my will on the galaxy, not some stupid admiral guy. I'm the all-powerful god dictator. Give me control or give me death!

"Why did this happen?? I was supposed to win that. If I fought it I would win. This game is stupid. I'm leaving a bad review because the combat system is difficult to use and understand" sounds like something a lot of people would say. That being said, I'd love this shift. HOI3 (Yes, I know there is a 4, I just haven't played it) was great because it gave you full control over just about everything. And if you did misclick while unpaused, you weren't brutally slaughtered because you forgot to switch your leader or make sure your soldiers were the right ideology or what have you. You could just run away and most of your army would come back another day.

[Mánagarmr]

I think Stellaris 1 is already on the backburner for Paradox.. I am pretty sure Stellaris 2 is already worked on....

If that's the case, they're making a very convincing cloak and daggers about it. There are almost bi-weekly patches, large expansions are being released, the devs are interacting heavily on the forums and reddit. It hardly looks like "Yawn, just drop it."

[eRe4s3r]

Big problem I have with armor/shield/HP as balancing foundation is that to me, if you approach combat balance from this angle, all you do is make another RTS where it's DPS vs HP

I know it would be a drastic change, but I still think combat (for a system) should be abstracted, and the formulas be deeper connected to battle-plans, fleet layouts, diversions and abilities (of admirals and sub-admirals, generals) as well as ideological focus (preserve lives vs cannon fodder) and so on and on. Basically each race would fight differently, and one combat fleet great against enemy 1 might be barely able to hold the line against enemy 2.

And in such a system, you'd not build 1 corvette, but an entire corvette division with infrastructure, factories and personal to support it, as it would be "realistic" a fleet would consist of hundreds of divisions, each with slightly different values and perks based on their division commander. If division commander is from a certain race and political views match with enemy, he might not be keen on fighting his potential friends. Admirals would be used to manage that, and political ethics and policies would be used to guide your armies too. It would also allow for much more immersion when it comes to what fleet is good against what enemy. It'd eliminate the doomstack problem too, since political views of your soldiers (assuming you don't automate ships with AI) could play a major role. And would not make your stack a good force projection EVERYWHERE, but only maybe somewhere.

But that's just it, my combat design would most certainly make it more EU4 but also more Endless Space. Since in combat proper you'd have no ability to give orders, retreat and everything would be a decision by the admiral. BUt what this requires is
1) Major rewrite of the entire game, down to the nitty gritty of solar systems, FTL, combat balance, research....
2) New AI
3) New character system, with family trees, biological mutants and hybrids acting as key connections between races etc.

I think Stellaris 1 is already on the backburner for Paradox.. I am pretty sure Stellaris 2 is already worked on....

I'd be worried that by doing that, you're going to alienate the casual gamers that don't want to learn the ins and outs of complex systems. Its much easier for someone to pick up a game if it is "Build this. It fights good", rather than "Okay, get a good admiral, have this division set up in this way, make sure your race prefers this ideology,

Plus, if you take away my ability to give orders, I'm going to be SUPER angry. I want to be able to impose my will on the galaxy, not some stupid admiral guy. I'm the all-powerful god dictator. Give me control or give me death!

"Why did this happen?? I was supposed to win that. If I fought it I would win. This game is stupid. I'm leaving a bad review because the combat system is difficult to use and understand" sounds like something a lot of people would say. That being said, I'd love this shift. HOI3 (Yes, I know there is a 4, I just haven't played it) was great because it gave you full control over just about everything. And if you did misclick while unpaused, you weren't brutally slaughtered because you forgot to switch your leader or make sure your soldiers were the right ideology or what have you. You could just run away and most of your army would come back another day.

Control as in orders, formations, attacks in waves? Sure, why not if you enter the battle yourself in a flagship (and why wouldn't you, as immortal god emperor) ;P But if you look at Stellaris combat, you will notice you already have ZERO control ;P Apart from retreat, which is more like a "commit suicide right now" button, enemy fleets are drawn into long range combat engagements and beeline to their doom, your orders are "ignore, fast foward, or retreat"

At least with my system, the game would be honest about it. ;P

And hey, if you wanna go all out, HOI4 system (it had battleplans...) or HOI3 system would be fine too, as long as we remove the stupid  fleet ship "AI" from the equation.

If that's the case, they're making a very convincing cloak and daggers about it. There are almost bi-weekly patches, large expansions are being released, the devs are interacting heavily on the forums and reddit. It hardly looks like "Yawn, just drop it."

We get bi-weekly patches because every major patch they release has game-breaking issues they need to hotfix ;P And I don't mean Paradox intends to drop this right now, but I am certain they work on Stellaris 2 already with the big team and Stellaris 1 still will get DLC's till the end of (digital shelf) life. That's the only explanation why there haven't been major lay-offs at Paradox after the Stellaris 1 release. All those artists, sound designers, writers, they are not working on DLC. You can tell by the massive quality drop in the super structure models and textures (for example) which aren't even adhering to the ship layout you pick, they are the same for all races.

Maybe I am totally wrong and they will release a bombast patch with 1.7.0 that fixes AI and combat totally and makes the game fun to play BEYOND the mid-game ;P

[Mánagarmr]

You can tell by the massive quality drop in the super structure models and textures (for example) which aren't even adhering to the ship layout you pick, they are the same for all races.

They do vary actually. It's just not that obvious. They differ in color shade, surface texture and details. It's more obvious on the plantoid megastructures due to the "leaves" all over. Granted, I'd expect more than just a texture change and some minor details that you'll never see unless you are fully zoomed in.

Maybe I am totally wrong and they will release a bombast patch with 1.7.0 that fixes AI and combat totally and makes the game fun to play BEYOND the mid-game ;P

I certainly hope so.

[eRe4s3r]

Woah... you.. you are right  Can you believe I was modding this and didn't notice that?  ^^

[Mánagarmr]

Woah... you.. you are right  Can you believe I was modding this and didn't notice that?  ^^

Just goes to say how tiny the variations are.