I don't understand why the idea of carriers has to be so complicated.

Add a ship component (I'll call it a "hanger") that does NOTHING more than increase the range\speed of the other ships in the fleet to match that of a "carrier." (the ship holding the "hanger" component).

That's all.

Don't worry about limiting the size of ship it can "carry." Each "hanger" will affect a certain number of logistics points worth of ships. A bunch of tiny, a couple small, a single medium or large, whatever you want. No artificial limits should be needed beyond a maximum number of logistics points that it will affect.

Why should you have to limit the size of ships that can be carried, or the size of hull it can fit into? I could see a "hanger" on a medium ship increasing the speed\range of a large ship. Think of it as a booster engine. Hell, the shuttles today have attachments that do nothing more than provide thrust for a time.

I also don't see why it would effect game balance at all. Sure you can now design ships with limited speed thus fitting more weapons, but your "carrier" now has less weapons cause its using its space for a "hanger". It's all a trade off. The ONLY balance that would take place would be figuring out a good cost and size for the module, and that's true of adding any new ship component.

It honestly does little other than effect the "cool" factor of the game, which is something that can't be underestimated. People like the idea of a big freakin carrier, its a sci-fi staple whether its realistic or not.

This idea is probably too much for a mod (not knowing anything about modding) but I don't see why it would be hard for the developers to add in.

Why's it gotta be a big deal? If people want to add in crazy stuff later like hiding ships or reducing logistics, let em. For now the basic idea is all you need.

*Edit: No offense is intended towards those people with really well thought out plans for carriers. I love all the ideas, I just think that a dirt simple solution is easier to implement. Also, I apologize if this idea has been proposed before.

What will happen if the fleet has more logistics points than the "hanger" can affect?

Aside from that, the idea sounds good.

There are a couple ways to determine what ships in a fleet are affected. The simplest would be a routine that says to carry the slowest ships first, then work up to the fastest until the hanger is full (if ships have the same speed, grab smaller ones first).

At its core I see something like this as one routine with a couple loops, an ordered array, and maybe a temp variable for holding the ships' old speed. I'm sure there would be a more too it than that, but I don't see how it would be out of line for an expansion or even patch. Certainly simpler than most of the changes being proposed for the next expansion.

A more complicated but flexible way is to let players assign ships to be carried.

In both cases, if there are too many ships in the fleet to carry then the fleet is still limited in speed to the slowest ship not being carried.

As I said, probably too much for a mod, but it shouldn't be a big problem for someone with access to the actual code.

Coding some changes in the existing variables is trivial. However, I bet adding new interfaces and AI support is not. What I like about your idea is that it would allow to build bigger carriers by adding extra "hangers".

hey Peskyfly really good ideas on bombardment . I just disagree on having to move population around i think it adds a litte more complication than is nrcessary . How about you just pick the improvement you want bombed if computer rolls sucess its destroyed if missed random amount of population killed in collateral but not enough to make it a" genocide run",maybe like 1 or 2 million .1 or .2. I dont know jus thinking out loud. but still interesting ideas!

Why is this so complicated? Carriers are logistics. They should allow for a greater field of mobility on the map for smaller ships.

Lets make this simple.
Carrier modual can carry ships via logistic points.
you "dock" smaller ships into these carriers


ie, largest single size ship is 1-4. however it can carry 20 points of logistics, that means you have 20 little ships, or 5 more powerful ships docked.

These docked ships will be short ranged but built for combat, they can now gear up on weapons/ defenses rather then life support and larger engines. also they can go X number away from stations. or they are stuck in space.

One thing though, ships dont have to go to a star station to repair/ refuel. I belive they should but whatever. And also, you design ships. there is no dedicated "class" ships. this modual gives you the freedom of making a nice Battle cruiser with a small carrier bay.

Does that make sense?

Also, why isnt there cloaking in this game? or stealth of any kind... Ive always wondered this.

Cool idea allimar it would kinda be nice to have a long range support craft/carrier. To me fightes just dont seem worth it when I can build 1 or 2 large ships to do the job and there faster and stronger. Also cloaking technology would be nice addition. it could open up whole new strategies and then theres the cool factor.  

How can i get my xwing/wing commander fix without carriers??? I want carriers yesterday!!!!!!

Should be more like 10 points for better game balance.

details details but I do like your eye for details.
It has been a while sense anyone has posted on this. I was just wondering if anyone out there still wants carriers.

Me wants carriers. What excites me is the feature list of TotA, with those modules that increase speed, logistics etc of ships in a fleet. Carriers ahoy!

But that still doesn't take care of the fact that, for cost, larger ships are better than smaller ones.

This is funny. I was going to mention capitol ships/carriers in another thread and then I saw this one. I was somehow thinking my idea was unique but I guess not. I certainly don't see these things as unnecessary complexity. Massive carrier ships engaged in battles with other fleets ejecting scads of small fighters would make for a great cinematic. I can see it being complex from the development side but after all that's what devs do... they develop, then we buy, they get paid and then we have fun. I like making large fleets of small fighters. I find it amusing and I am convinced I could use them in battle if I didn't have to put such large engines on them to get them across the known universe. Carriers would be fun if nothing else.

Orbital bombardment is also a neat idea. I'm not too sure how fun it would be if it was used against me in a game and I was methodically ground down and destroyed like I do to the AI, but it is a neat idea and the rules posted earlier seem very logical and forgiving to the point where one should be able to at least survive it given they would have so much time to react before the planet was useless.

as has been talked about carriers on here. we now have in ta.

Since this game does not have tactical combat for human playrs the whole idea of carriers is really unneccessary. I mean how will it really differ from how the game currently is? I know with TA coming out with some addition ship/fleet modules, some fleets may behave as if there were carriers, ie. the mocve faster as a group than alone.

I mean if all you want is carries, cant it be just a huge hull module that shows some drone shipps attacking an ememy? It would be no different than if you had missle of lasers on you hip exceoty when you watch the battle you see ome small ships fltying around.

I would add that planetary bombardment should not be possible with standard weapons, instead the weapon tech trees should have mid level branches specificly for planetary bombardment weapons. Yes you could fire your lasers at a planet but the amount of damage they did would not be on a scale that did a lot of real damage globally.

Weapons for planetary bombardment should be bigger, more expensive and specificly designed for that task. Also Mass Driver and Missile technologies are much better suited for planetary bombardment than beams, I would think.

Of course if they did add this then they should also add type specific defenses like planetary shields and also planetary weapon instalations

It is a pity their so against this actually I think it would add a lot to the game. Carriers are less important to me.

Woo there actually is a thread for this!

Guess I will try to make my point in here as well!

While I can understand why some might dislike the ideas of orbital bombardment with the reasoning that in the late game it will get out of control, and genocide tactics are posible. After all in most space civ sim´s I have played this is normally the easiest way to win in the late game. Personally I always thought that the main reason why this happens is because in most other games in the genre, defensive posibilities are always lacking behind offensive ones, especially in the late game.

What I would suggest for Galciv 2 is the following:

Upon reaching say tier 2 weapon techs, it will be posible to research into orbital weapons specialised for orbital bombardment. These weapons will be larger and more expensive then their normal equivalent, and cannot be used to shoot at ships. With Larger I mean that even the first one you get wont be able to fit on anything smaller then a medium class ship, unless you got a lot of minitauization. This would solve both the "realism" bit and the gameplay bit since afterall siege engines require an escort or they are easy pickings.

To counteract these offensive weapons it should also be possible to build defensive structures and systems attached to the planet. Just to keep it simple, in the start space cannon networks/grids that would take up one tile on the planet pr. piece. These would then give the planet an attack value. For defensive values, there will of course be Shield Generators that also take up one tile. These would in turn give the planet defensive values to resist orbital bombardment weapons.

The Shield technologies could come as a by product of the already existing shield tech tree. The orbital bombartment tech could also include the space cannon as well since effectively its the same weapon!

Now some will of course say, that eventually in the late game, you dont want to build 10 space guns and shield generators on a planet to defend it! To counteract this I would suggest that the planetary bits get say.. 50% more attack and defence then the same orbital equivalent. And to further improve this Powerplants could help increase defence (since effectively the main limitation to a shield is how much power you put into it). And the existing planetary defence structures and orbital fleet command structures, would increase orbital attack strenght to help defending fleets better! All in all a planet is way larger then a ship, even a fleet of ships, so it makes sense that it should be possible to place more and larger guns that pack a bigger punch down there.

This way some civilizations could also get special stuctures to give extra bonuses, and you could even make a new set of trade goods. All in all, it is not nessesary to alter the game radically since most of the stuff is already there. While there might be some balance issues in a first release of this, then I think it can be implemented and fixed rather quickly.

Thank you for reading all of this, and I look foreward to peoples comments!

I can't believe people are still stumbling upon this post. Personally, I think stardock is just a bunch of lazy bums who don't listen to peoples good ideas, and listen to themselves.   You can't have good space combat without carriers. I also wish stardock would stop obsessing about GCII's AI. Yes it is good. You don't need to say any more.

Etrius

I have been hoping for carriers also. I know that there have been several posts about this, the most simple solution would be to have hangar bays that cost additional logistical points that would have a mini shipyard for small, and medium fighters. The small fighters would be roughly equivalent to tiny craft, and the mediums roughly equivalent to small craft. These fighters would be connected to the hangar so that if the carrier were destroyed these fighters would also be destroyed because of lack of support. This would not affect the total logistical points but would allow small and tiny craft to be more effective in the end game. Since the hangar takes logistics points, it can support only a certain amount of fighters, but the cost would still be less to have these tiny and small ships logistics wise than the standard cost which would allow for larger fleets. ie a hangar would cost 4 logistics points but would support six small fighters which would in the official game cost around 6 logistics points so. I am not sure about these numbers, but you get the idea. To build these fighters would be very similar to upgrading the carrier. There could even be a hangar that can only be used on massive ships that could potentially support heavy fighters/corvettes that are roughly equivelant to mediums and cut down on their logistics cost. Again these ships would be connected to the hangar and if the carrier were destroyed, they would also be destroyed. This is just an idea, but to me this would make the most sense in how to incorporate carriers into the game.

On carrier ships; I think it would be a great idea to create a hanger bay that could house and produce replacements for a certain number of user designed tiny ships, just as if they where mobile ship yards. The number of fighters would depend upon the bay module and how large/advanced it was. The ship would automatically start producing replacements if the ships are lost. The number of production points used for this per turn would also depend how advanced the hanger module was. I really wish Stardock would listen here clearly these are some of the most desired additions.

Exactly what I said. Brad Wardell only cares about the AI.

If anyone wants to see the effects that Space Carriers and thier fighter complement have, read "The Shiva Option" by David Weber. For me adding carriers adds a whole level of nuance to the space battles. As far as Stardock saying no way too including them, I think it just because they are too lazy to try and implement them. I have played other computer games that included carriers and fighters, and they worked quite well. An example was the Star Wars game that was basically strategic in nature from back in the late 90's. Watching my squadrons tear through the Empires TIE fighters and take down a Star Destoyer was awesome! PLEASE PLEASE RECONSIDER!!! :CONGRAT:  :LOL: 

It's a moot point, guys. The TA expansion is the last update for GalCiv2 and the major features are locked down. Stardock is already working on their upcoming fantasy TBS game, and they've said that GalCiv3 is probably two or three years away, after the fantasy game and whatever expansions are released for it. Stardock knows that some people want carriers, as well as other things like player-controlled tactical combat and full multiplayer. But not everyone wants those things (I don't). And like all developers they have their own ideas about what makes the perfect game.

FWIW, and to keep beating this dead horse, I don't think carriers make sense within the current space combat engine. The classical idea of a "carrier" is that it's a mobile airbase that depends mainly on its fighters and accompanying fleet ships for defense. Ideally you want your fighter screen to engage the enemy before the enemy can engage the carrier, because it's basically a sitting duck.

That can't happen in the current game engine. All ships enter combat at the same time, with no way to position fighters out ahead of the carriers. There is also no AI for the fighters (or any other ships in the fleet) to know that they should defend the carrier. If the carrier is beefed up with defensive and offensive power to survive Galciv2's instant engagements, then what you have isn't a carrier, it's a battleship. And the current combat engine favors battleships over fighter swarms anyway.

So it isn't a question of the Stardock devs being lazy, it's that the game was never designed around the concept, and it would be very difficult to shove the idea in through the back door.

Note: some people, like me, actually like this current model for space combat, where battleships rule and fighter swarms are only effective in the early game, before everyone can research the larger hulls. I always thought the way "carriers" are represented in sci-fi movies and TV shows was basically WWII nostalgia, and not the way future space wars are likely to be fought. I doubt that even present-day carrier battle groups will survive for more than another 50 years, at best. Military technology is moving in a different direction with increasing emphasis on unmanned vehicles, super-speed weapons, and increasingly stealthy subs. Carriers are already almost an obsolete idea, and they only work so well for the U.S. Navy because there is no serious opposition (at the moment).

Anyway, it's fun to argue the pros and cons, but it's just way too early to know if carriers will make it into GalCiv3.

just one point, how would carriers be any different to having ships in a fleet? I mean it all sounds good but I just dont see how it works, and as for orbital bombardment, thats good but needs to have a high risk factor (ie easier or less risky to do do a normal invasion).

Plantery damage could also be dealt another way, say if you have a high culture value on a alien planet, you could use espionage to attack/destroy planetary improvements, if the percentage you have is low, the improvement that is attakced is random, but if its high you may be able to select individual buildings, but the risk would be a inter-galactic incedent, resulting maybe all current trade to be cancelled either pernamently or for X amount of turns.

Maybe a further idea is to have extreme sabotage/terrorism, where the risk is extreme, like being kicked from UP?

Using the Fleet Warp Bubble on the Terran Tech Tree wouldn't it make it feasible to have a large carrier/support ship traveling with tiny spacefighters? They wouldn't be docked but it would give you a nice carrier wing to deploy into battle with a little imagination. Also since you only see 3 ships in a fleet it would look like your carrier and 2 fighters flying escort. When the battle begins the whole wing of ships would launch.

This is assuming that your fighters won't have engines added so if you lose your "carrier" you then lose your warp bubble thus those poor fighters are now stranded in deep space with a simple speed of 1.

But for me that solves the Carrier issue.


As for Orbital Bombardment. I WANT I WANT I WANT.

I'm not for genocide but it is useful to bombard my enemies into submission. -- This worked very nicely in MOO2.

I like the idea of a carrier, but if it isn't possible, I'd be happy with some kind of roaming platform that a squadron of fighters can use to make repairs and refuel. They don't need to actually land inside the ship if that makes it too complicated. Basically all it would be is a module that increases a fleet's range and makes repairs to small and tiny ships each month. Call it a "hangar module" or whatever, but I like using small fighters and this makes them more feasible to use later in the game.