Combat-Mechanics

Actually as was shown in the last dev stream, armor does indeed provide some protection against both missile and beam weapons also.  Not as much as shields or ecm, but some.  I'm not sure I agree that shields should stop bullets, but hey it is all fantasy anyways (atm ) so I could see where you might think shields should provide some protection against bullets.

But continue to give feedback, I also think the combat mechanics need some improvement from where we are in the beta we testers have to play with right now.  I loved seeing that armor is providing some protection against all attack types in beta 5.  Hopefully it will be ready for us to test out soon

Oh good, so they had already changed the armorpart by themselves, guess it's good to see that I'm not the only one that thought this way . Regariding the shieldpart, I just thought along the old Star Wars movies (Episode 6), where the rebels notice a bit too late that the death stars shield is still up. The small fighters that were too close to the shield couldnt evade anymore and simply burned up in it. And fighter are, if you dumb it down a little bit, basically large projectiles. They also used something similar in the beginning of Stargate Atlantis season 2, where the Wraithdarts tried so kamikaze Atlantis, so I just kept thinking along that line.

Oh ya I get what you mean comparing shields to like Star Wars and other shows.  The impression I got from the shield descriptions in the GalCiv tech trees is that their shields are more "realistic" versions of shields.  They are basically just enhanced energy dissipating/redirecting fields.  Kind of like how Earth's magnetic field protects us from solar radiation, but doesn't really do anything to stop big rocks from hitting us; shields in GalCiv just effect energy waves, but really don't effect big chunks of mass flying at super velocities.

But it is all open to interpretation

I think it should be like this:

Shields are good against laser weapons. But bad against missiles and bullets.

Armor is good against bullets and missiles. But not good against laser weapons.

Missiles should do a lot of damage but could be distracted fast by ECM. So it would make sence to build a full ECM support ship.

Kinetic weapons should be more like close combat weapons.

Lasers would be the long range weapons.

The problem about the thing with the shield blocking projectile is this: Players would ONLY build shields on their ships. Why should i build armor when i know the shields could block everything.

I think the system paper, stone, and scissors is the best.

Well, shields should only offer some protection against projectiles, not as effectively as armor. The problem with the rock, paper, scissors is, if you play against the ai, you might as well build only rock. Because even if you have some losses, eventually the ai's rockdefences are depleted and you can entirely ignore the paper and scissors defences. Now set rock as lasers, and throw a few ECM supports in there. The missiles won't hit anymore, the kinetics won't even get in range. Of course you could build instead a lot of shields a small amount of all defences on your ship, but since the ai builds only the rock, paper, scissors variants, your own defences will be depleted very quickly and your ships will be toasted.

I believe in GCII, both armor and shields gave you some degree of overall protection against all weapons, without quantifying how much.

Shields is a broad term and there can be various types. The GCIII type appears to be a polarization field that dissipates lasers exclusively. Other fictional shields are much more effective. The Star Trek Shields seem to work against anything. In fact I have never heard the term armor used in Star Trek.

I got a kick out of the personal shields used in Dune (and some others) that reacted proportionately against force and could be pierced only by blade weapons.

I am happy with the defensive systems as they are projected for B5.

Voyager introduced a deployable ablative armor in one of the last episodes. It was one of the toys that future-Janeway brought back to help present-Janeway take a shortcut home through the Borg transwarp system. I think USS Defiant was also said to be armored in at least one of the DS9 episodes.

I was pretty sure I would be wrong.

Yes, "Ablative Armor" was introduced in DS9, midway through season 3.

But, then again, if ANY starship in Starfleet would have actual honest-to-goodness armor, it would be the Defiant, now wouldn't it?

This is how I build yes, and how I will build my AI's also so they have an advantage, though I'll probably pick 2 types.

Why? Because on higher difficulties the AI counters this, by building more defense of that type but by then you are at war, so you're already winning. On normal difficulties it doesn't, (or won't) apparently. If you just stick with 1 you are easily countered, 2 gives you a lot more freedom while still focusing firepower.
 

What does this mean in game terms. Well drop my dual weapon designed tech tree into a tri weapon designed tech tree game, in a game with let's say 20 races. Some of those races are at war, some allied, the usual. Statistically that dual weapon AI (still using all defenses), will be at a fairly big advantage in a long term game, in battles, until their opponent adapts. Even if they do adapt in a long war, they may have an ally in the war with them, or their enemy may be involved in more than one war, all these things are likely in a larger map size, and either would mean the tri weapon race couldn't just cater their ships to the dual designed race. The dual race, also have less techs to research, so they can focus on the ones they need only and go further in them.

This would make them weaker against a human player, but by then I hope they are already running an advantage. Stuff like this will be fun to experiment with.

In reality shields are very effective against bullets even at high velocity, but not these kinds of fake Star Trek electromagnetic or whatever-force shields (who would be useless against non-ionized matter or neutral radiation or most radiation at all anyway...) but stuff like multilayered plates/screens that are designed to prevent debris or space-junk to destroy a satellite. Every shield splits the impactor into several smaller ones, also reducing their speed until finally they come to stop or miss at the sides.

And yeah, armour should always be effective against anything, esp. beam weapons loose alot of their energy if going through matter. That's why most of these weapons would be totally ineffecient inside an atmosphere, so planetary defense ships should see a big boost against these kinds of weapons.

In reallity you would have mostly cinetic weapons.

If you would have laser weapons on your ship, the enemy only need to put glass on his ships and the lasers would be completely inefficient.

I think railguns would be the most realistic thing as a space battle weapon. They fire fast and they do not need any gas or powder.

+ In space you have no air, so the railgun round would not even loose speed.

A small round would hit like the hammer of god. 

The most realistic "shield" would be two magnet plates, placed on each other with the + poles, taking the hits from incoming rounds.

But anyway this is a game. We have laser and all the other stuff.

We have to balance this. It is like ying and yang. When something is to strong the other thing is to weak.

As I recall, in GC2 shields defended at full strength against beam weapons, but only the square root of their value against missiles and guns.  Similarly for ECMs and armor.

Edit: Which is not to say that's how it works in GC3.