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[Dunamisdeos]

I don't integrate any spacefaring races, unless you technically consider "consume as sustenance" integration.

[Greenbane]

The caps make sense, if you look at it from how the rest of paradox's games have armies:

1. There is a force limit based on how big you are (in this case how many spaceports you have)
2. The ships cost maintenance anyway.
3. There is a problem with doomstacks
4. Sieges takes ages to finish and don't actually claim the territory for you until the end of the war.

The Hearts of Iron games have capped unit groups according to the commander's rank (Major General = 3 divisions, Lt. General = 6 divisions, etc.), so there is precedent, if that means anything to begin with.

That said, considering how combat works, and that massing forces is the way to go, there wouldn't be any difference between concentrating your 50 ships in a single fleet, or five 10-ship fleets, if you're going to focus them all in the same place when war breaks out. Unless, again taking a page from HoI or even EU4, either there's a cap on how many ships can fight at the same time, or the leading officer's rank (highest of all the characters in the battle) imposes a similar cap and all extras fight with increasing penalties.

[Cruxador]

Honestly, combat does its job. I like it better than the 4x games where you have to cut away to a tactical minigame for every fight, or rely on an autocalc that has generally much worse outcomes, if you can't be bothered.

The only strategy games I can think of with fun tactical combat are Dominions, where you set up tactics ahead of time and from there on don't have to bother unless you're specifically doing something important, and Lords of Magic, which is almost on par with dedicated tactical games (e.g. shadowrun, fire emblem) but also seasoned by good magic and kidnapping mechanics, and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

And if you don't have tactical control, then who cares, really? It's just a black box. As long as strong things are strong, it's fine.

That is a pretty niche bug, though.

That's a classic kind of Paradox bug. I think all their games have weird conditions under which loading something will go horribly wrong.

Its still very niche, tho. Why would you play a game with no sound at all?

More to the point, why would you have a computer without any kind of audio output device? Even if you rarely or never use your main box for audio purposes, so much shit comes with built in speakers, particularly TVs which are often the most cost-effective displays you can get.

[Kanil]

More to the point, why would you have a computer without any kind of audio output device? Even if you rarely or never use your main box for audio purposes, so much shit comes with built in speakers, particularly TVs which are often the most cost-effective displays you can get.

When I'm watching TV, my headphones are plugged into my TV, and not my computer. In that situation, my computer doesn't have an audio output device. Owning another pair of headphones or a set of speakers would be redundant.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

2 cents: I quite enjoy large fleet battles, there should be pros and cons to using large fleets and different A.I. should use different fleet sizes. Honestly, it's really satisfying to witness those massive set-piece battles that determine the strategies for the next decade of war. I'm at its best it gets truly apocalyptic. It's almost Halo-esque when it's really good.

[Dunamisdeos]

Am I silly or did you used to be able to assign a ship design any role? Why did that change?

[IronyOwl]

I... think I might remember that back in the very earliest days. If so, the pick-arbitrary-number-of-sections thing was scrapped in favor of trying to differentiate ship classes more, so a destroyer wasn't literally two corvettes glued together.

[Cruxador]

Am I silly or did you used to be able to assign a ship design any role? Why did that change?

Used to be that you could choose any combat computer and there were a lot more designs for each ship type (Corvettes had three, I remember).

Changed that to make it a bit more of a tactical rock-paper-scissors thing, rather than just loading up your fleet with corvettes, corvettes, and more corvettes.

Incidentally, what's the idea fleet composition does anyone know? I tend to do a ratio of 1:2:4:8 for battleships, cruisers, destroyers, corvettes respectively.

It depends on what you're up against, but the ratio I found most effective against most AI was 1:2:2:2. I suspect that if I had gone to the bother of building and testing more battleships, I may well have found the ideal to be 1:1:1:1. Note, however, that corvettes are pretty much just ablative armor for the real fleet, so it's a good idea to have more if you expect more than a single doomstack, or at least have replacements already under construction before a major battle happens.

[Chiefwaffles]

My fleets have way too many battleships for one reason:
Spinal guns are just so cool. At some point I want to try the tachyon lance, but even the gigacannon is a magnificent weapon. Just seeing my battleships lob huge shells from across the system inspires me in a way lesser weapons cannot.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

My fleets have way too many battleships for one reason:
Spinal guns are just so cool. At some point I want to try the tachyon lance, but even the gigacannon is a magnificent weapon. Just seeing my battleships lob huge shells from across the system inspires me in a way lesser weapons cannot.

This is actually how I stayed afloat in my old Star Ruler game. My ships were literally just giant cannons. While I got outpaced by other empires, my ships which were secretly giant cannons just wrecked most attacks before they could get their alpha off. That combined with my insidious system-harvesting superships that auto-produced dozens of fighters per second held the cruel galaxy at bay. Or perhaps it was the noble galaxy and I was the horrifying threat. Ah, Star Ruler, good times.

[Shadowlord]

A fun thing in star ruler 2 is to build a ship out of explodium*, jump it into an enemy fleet, and detonate. Wipe out all their support ships, and if the flagship is poorly armored and you brought enough TNT, you can take that out too.

* the self-destruct system

[Majestic7]

Space Jihadist 2: Exploding Suns.

I haven't tried making multiple designs of the same ship class yet. Does the game still make all your ships the same when you update a fleet? So if I have, say, a battleship design with a giga cannon and another with the lightning energy weapon thing. Then I upgrade the giga cannon design and click update for the fleet, does it replace the lightning energy battleships with the new giga cannon too? Even if they are different designs?

I remember it used to do that in the past.

Regarding fleet sizes, I think some kind of supply limit would be good way to deter doomstacks. So yeah, you could bring lots of force to a pivotal battle, but it would be very difficult to run supplies to them for an extended period of time. I don't know how to do that without miring the game down in the same kind of way as HOI3 supply simulator, but...it would add a layer of strategy. Especially if you could build supply depot stations and stuff in strategic places. Then go blow them up to damage enemy supply.

[Mini]

Space Jihadist 2: Exploding Suns.

I haven't tried making multiple designs of the same ship class yet. Does the game still make all your ships the same when you update a fleet? So if I have, say, a battleship design with a giga cannon and another with the lightning energy weapon thing. Then I upgrade the giga cannon design and click update for the fleet, does it replace the lightning energy battleships with the new giga cannon too? Even if they are different designs?

If there's a design with the same name as the design of the ship being upgraded it will get upgraded to that (or not upgraded if it's the same design), otherwise it will get upgraded to the most recently saved design. So if you're changing the names of your designs between iterations then you'll have problems.

[GiglameshDespair]

More to the point, why would you have a computer without any kind of audio output device? Even if you rarely or never use your main box for audio purposes, so much shit comes with built in speakers, particularly TVs which are often the most cost-effective displays you can get.

Deaf people, perhaps. My desktop monitor doesn't have sound so usb speakers are necessary.

[Retropunch]

More to the point, why would you have a computer without any kind of audio output device? Even if you rarely or never use your main box for audio purposes, so much shit comes with built in speakers, particularly TVs which are often the most cost-effective displays you can get.

Deaf people, perhaps. My desktop monitor doesn't have sound so usb speakers are necessary.

Yeah there are a lot of deaf and hard of hearing people that find this kinda stuff useful.

Re: combat overhaul,
I've always thought it weird that 4x games (with the sort of exception of SoaSE) don't put more emphasis on having ships that actually matter rather than tons of just disposable rubbish. I don't feel anything at all about throwing in my 50 battleships in Stellaris, as they're basically just moving automated gun platforms.

 If it was instead duked out between 3-4 battleships and a handful of other stuff - all of which I had tweaked, picked staff for etc. I could get much more attached to stuff and it'd allow battles to have some real meaning behind them. It's not like the battles in stellaris are impressive on a scale factor either - I could understand if they were trying to do a 1000v1000 style AI war battle spectacle, but it's just 'pump out as many ships as I can till the force number is bigger than their force number, sometimes taking into account my enemies main weapons'.