Galactic Civilizations IV News

As we’ve seen in the past couple of developer journals, Ship Classes in Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova consist of a Ship Type plus a Doctrine. I’ll summarize it again in case you didn’t read those.


The Ship Type is a kind of model organized around its hull size and suggested combat role: for example, a Cruiser is a medium hull-sized Type and has an inherent bonus of +10% Weapon Range, as opposed to the Destroyer, the new medium hull-sized Type added in Warlords with its -10% Weapon Cooldown bonus.

All else being equal, the Cruiser will generally engage targets more quickly while the Destroyer puts out more firepower over the course of the battle. With the Warlords expansion, each hull size, from Tiny to Huge, now has two Types.

These Ship Type abilities don’t change but further performance of each Ship Class can be customized quite extensively with both its components, a standard feature in most space 4X with few exceptions, and with our new Doctrine system.

A Doctrine has two player-selectable settings: an Operational Ability and a Targeting Priority. With the Warlords expansion, you can change both of these settings on a Class by Class basis, with more options available to each over the base-game too.

Today we’re going to look at a few of the Operational Abilities available in Warlords and suggest some hypothetical scenarios where they might be useful, in tandem with the other mechanics that constitute a Ship Class. To make this clearer, we’ll look at just a single Ship Type the Destroyer, and see how varying its Operational Abilities drastically alter how it performs in a battle.


Here’s our base-line Destroyer Ship Type.

Let’s say we’re being swarmed by lots of small, hi-tech Bombers which are proving difficult to destroy because of their advanced Armour or Shielding components, and are killing a lot of our larger ships. Furthermore, we don’t have a lot of shipyards to justify building a lot of Fighters, which are cheap to build in terms of the Construction Cost but are inefficient in terms of Shipyard turns: with our two Shipyards, we can build two Destroyers over two turns, or four Fighters…


Looking through the Operational Abilities available, there are a few options but the best one for targeting Bombers is Sentinel, with it’s +75% Attack Against Bombers ability. This will help reduce shielding and armour, and do more HP damage once they’ve mitigated those protective measures.

Set an appropriate Targeting Priority and field just enough weaponry to be able to reliably kill even an advanced bomber in a couple of rounds, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide anti-bomber warship. The Destroyer is a reasonable pick for this role as the rapid weapon cooldown rate gives it an edge over the Cruiser (although in some cases the extended weapon range on the Cruiser might work better here, it’d depend on the relative loadouts on each Type in play).

Alternatively, if the civilization fielding these bombers had skipped the Evasion boosting techs, but were instead fielding them as part of very large swarms, Skirmisher might be a better bet: the Destroyer here would be less accurate when it fired, but wield a massive -85% Weapon Cooldown rate, almost doubling its fire output.

Pair this with Kinetic weaponry components and you’re putting out a hell of a lot of firepower very quickly: the -25% Accuracy penalty here will hurt and so it’d be essential to boost it back up with two or three Targeting Computers: at just 2 Mass and 5 Manufacturing Cost each, you’ll kill those Bombers in almost half the rounds any other ship could.


Throw in substantial shielding (hope you’ve found some Elerium!) and an Ion Canon to negate the Bomber’s evasion and now those big swarms of terrifying capital ship killers are going to be easy prey for your deadly Destroyers!


Remember that a Ship Class’s doctrine can be changed at any point during play using the Edit Doctrine button in the ship designer, without the need to redesign the ship itself, meaning you’re free to experiment and repurpose the role of your Classes to adapt to an ever shifting battlefield.

I hope this quick overview gives you some ideas on how Operational Abilities complement your Ship Type’s natural abilities, and use this knowledge to face the various tactical challenges GalCiv IV will throw at you during the course of a game.

Cheers!

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Ship Types are a way of classifying the base model hull that a Ship Class is built upon, and hold their own special bonus too. We took a look at Ship Classes last week, but today we’ll go through the various Ship Types available in Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, including those added in the new Warlords expansion.


While Colony Ships, Constructors and Miners are all technically Ship Types too, we’re just going to focus on combat vessels this time around.

Ship Types can be organized according to their Hull Size, from Tiny up to Huge, and with Warlords you’ll have access to two Types in each Hull Size category. Each type has an inbuilt ability that distinguishes it from the other types.

We’ll take a look at each one in ascending order using some of the default Torian hull models for illustrative purposes. I like the Torians, they taste great!

Remember, you can completely change the way these models look with our extensive cosmetic ship designer tools. Also, the suggestions I’ve made for usage are just that: suggestions. In line with the GalCiv series' famous principle of Play Your Way, you can customize your Classes to work pretty much however you want, but each Type does have an immutable characteristic bonus that gives them a very distinct flavor.

The smallest ships in the game are two Ship Types in the Tiny hull category, the Fighter and the Bomber. These smallest of combat vessels have a low mass, so less components, but are relatively fast and cheap to produce compared to larger hull sizes.


Here are the statistics for Tiny hull sized ships: they’re fast, maneuverable and initially don’t have much space for components, at least until the eggheads in your science department figure out military component miniaturization! They’ll not take much punishment, which is why you’ll be fielding them in large numbers.


The Fighter is generally intended to kill other Tiny hull sized ships, but in greater numbers can swarm larger vessels too, and has a +25% Evasion ability, which helps it stay alive since it can’t usually field a lot of defensive components. If you’re fielding Bombers, you’ll often want Fighters to protect them, and they’re just a useful, cheap multipurpose ship right through the game.


The Bomber gets a +10% Damage bonus and is generally intended to take on capital ships of all kinds, which it can be very effective at when used en masse providing their defensive systems aren’t too powerful (although Operational Abilities can compensate for this, particularly its default Giant Slayer).

You’re not restricted to loading it with missile weapons though, and if your idea of “bomber” is massive laser damage, knock yourself out! They’ll need protecting by Fighters and Frigates, as usually you’re going to be top-loading them with weapons and there won’t be much room for shielding or armor. When they’re massed, protected and with a bit of Tech behind them, Bombers can really chew through enemy fleets very quickly.

Next up we’ve got the Small hull sized Ship Types.


More Hull Integrity than Tiny ships but a lot slower, these generalists are designed to hunt anything from Tiny to Medium sized warships, and bigger if you get creative with them. They’ve got room for more weaponry and defensive systems too.


The Frigate comes with a +25% Accuracy bonus and by default is intended on hunting the Tiny types of ship, where that extra accuracy will help reduce enemy evasion down to a manageable level. They’ll then switch up to taking on other Small hull sized ships, and can be well equipped to do so.


The first of the Warlords DLC additions comes next: the Corvette. With a +25% Hit Point bonus to boost its Hull Integrity, it’s well suited for hunting larger ships. These are Cruiser-killers, and while they’ll not intended to go up against larger ships one on one, in wolfpacks of three or four they’ll be a real menace to Medium hull sizes, perhaps those traveling alone to replenish a depleted fleet. Their default Targeting Priority is the very largest of ships, and this highlights that they can even threaten Dreadnaughts and Carriers if properly designed and fielded as part of a well rounded fleet.


Medium hull sized warships show a remarkable increase in both Hull Integrity and the Mass of components that they can field, and are the first of the Ship Types that can comfortably carry the larger components, such as a Slipstream Accelerator (for a +1 Move for the entire fleet), while still holding enough weaponry and armor to remain competitive in a fraught fleet action. They’re also not a whole lot slower than Frigates or Corvettes either. With that extra Equipment Space, you can really go to town with designing interesting ship builds with these guys.


The classic Cruiser has, by default at least and until you mutate it to your whims, taken on an anti-strike craft role. With a +10% Weapon Range boost, it’ll target enemy ships before they get into range and can be an effective way to thin out Fighter swarms before they get in to do damage with Kinetic weaponry. This is just one use though, you’ll figure out dozens of roles for your Cruisers as their vital statistics allow them an incredible flexibility.

I regularly field at least two or three types of Cruisers with doing a different job in my fleets, from screening against Fighters and Bombers or hunting Battleships, to providing extra Sensor packages or the more exotic weaponry added in Warlords recently.


The new Destroyer, added in Warlords, is a different beast. With a -10% Weapons Cooldown for an increase damage output it excels at killing things, especially with its default +10% attack bonus from the Operational Ability Focus Fire, where it’ll rapidly thin out Frigates, Corvettes and pretty much anything else that gets in its way.

I had fun throwing a bunch of Railguns on these monsters early on, and adding Targeting Computer to increase their accuracy, setting them to target Frontline Combatants then watching them chew through anything smaller than a Battleship with relative ease.

Excellent fun! But they’re also there to complement your Cruisers too: have the Cruisers equipped to kill Tiny ships, and the Destroyers kitted out to kill whatever is hunting those Cruisers, and you’ve got a strong two-ship combo right there!


The Large hull sized ships are next, and you’ll note they’re tougher, hold more gear and are slower in combat, but not by a whole lot. Be warned, these are deadly ships and not to be underestimated by their bulk. They’ll take tons of weaponry, shielding and armor, and pretty much anything else you care to load onto them. This makes them versatile and formidable in a battle.


The Battleship is your tank: with +10% Armor it excels at soaking up damage and smaller ships will have trouble doing lasting damage to it unless they’re either very technologically advanced or they’re specifically fitted to take out Battleships and other very large Types. It can also throw out an unbelievable amount of damage very quickly, with the potential to load enough weaponry to take down the very largest and best armored Ship Classes in the game.


The Warlords expansion now adds the Command Ship, which is one of the more unusual Types in the game right now. Although as large as a Battleship it’s not designed for front line brawling, instead sitting in the back providing support to the rest of the fleet with its Command Ship ability of 10% Weapon Cooldown to all allied ships in battle. Now think how fast those Railgun Destroyers you built are going to be firing? There’s a cost though: the Command Ship has 50% less Hull Integrity than a Battleship, so it’s defaulted to not engage enemy ships unless you change its Targeting Priority manually.

Get creative with this thing! It’s a good chassis for any fleetwide-buff components you’ve got, or if scripted away from Return Fire Only, would be a good housing for special effects such as the Time Dilator, Shield Bubble and so forth.


Almost twice as large as the Large hull sized ships, the Huge Types are monsters designed for one purpose only: crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of… alright pipe down Conan, we get the idea!

With that much equipment space, a Huge hull is a one ship army, and can probably be used that way still if you so desire, although be aware that v2.5 and Warlords has added a lot of mechanics now to make hunting these intergalactic leviathans a little easier (swarms of high tech Bombers with Giant Slayer might do it, especially if it’s not well kitted out to deal with that many ships all at once).


When a Dreadnaught looms into view, the battlefield goes silent, pretending for a moment that sound is possible in space of course. Its only real downside is its speed, and the fact that it can get swarmed by a lot of smaller ships, but with +10% Shield Strength as its ability, it’ll take a lot of punishment before you even get to its armor or HP.

Even more so than the Battleship, the Dreadnaught can field so many components that your only really limited by your imagination when it comes to designing and planning its role in your fleet. Whether you go all in on firepower, tank damage from other large ships or field a whole host of fleet boosting abilities, the Dreadnaught is the centerpiece of your navy.


The Carrier is our final Ship Type, added to the game for free in the v2.5 Ares update, and has a very special ability. As expected, it delivers Fighters and Bombers into battle but comes with no Operational Ability as standard.

You can kit it out like a Dreadnaught if you want but you’re likely building this thing for those strike-craft it brings to a fleet action, providing an important screen for the rest of your fleet and perhaps overwhelming your enemy with their superior numbers. The Carrier is a terrifying element to add to your armed forces and will fill your rivals with fear!

Well, that was a lot of Ships Types! I hope this developer journal whet your appetite and planted some ideas into your mind about some of the cool stuff you can do with ship and fleet design in Supernova.

The free major Ares update introduced a host of new features and changes revolving warfare as the primary focus.

[h2]2.5 Major Updates[/h2]

• Battle Viewer
  
• Trade Route Screen
  
• Fleet Wide Commands Screen
  
• Tech Tree Update
  
• Ship Components
  
• Invasion Tactics
  
• Ship Types
  
• Operational Abilities
  
• Targeting Priorities
  

Excluding more abstract notions of war (such as dominating the economy, culture flipping planets with Influence and so on), when the protagonists of Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova engage in kinetic warfare, there are two main theatres: planetary invasions and fleet battles, the latter of which we’re going to cover today by examining how we now approach ship design.


The core of the new and improved fleet combat mechanics, added in v2.5, is the introduction of the Ship Class, replacing the older system of thinking of military ships purely in terms of a hull size with a fancy navy name attached to it.

Understanding Ship Classes are key to understanding how a player can influence the outcome of a fleet action beyond just bringing bigger, more technologically advanced fleets than your enemy does.

We’ve discussed what Ship Classes are in last weeks developer journal, but here’s a quick recap: a Ship Class is a Ship Type plus a Doctrine, and a Doctrine is an Operational Ability plus a Targeting Priority.

Let’s say we’re facing an opponent who’s fielding some very dangerous, and numerous, small hull ships like Frigates and Corvettes, and we want something that’s suited to destroying them efficiently.

We could make a Ship Class called the Deathmaster, constituting the medium hull size Ship Type known as a Cruiser, granting a +10 Weapons Range, and then adding a Doctrine to that.


Here, the Operational Ability is Hunter, for a +25% attack and +25% Accuracy against small hull ships, Frigates and Corvettes specifically. To capitalize on this, the Targeting Priority is set to Frontline Combatants and will target Frigates and Corvettes first.


Now onto the ship designer to add some ship components.

Our rather evil-looking Deathmaster Cruiser is kitted out with enough Beam weapons that it can rapidly bypass any targeted ships' shields and armor. It’s shielded itself, and then we’ve added a couple of components that increase its threat against ships fielding high Evasion (whether through Doctrine or component).


First up is the Warlords expansion exclusive Ion Cannon to strip Evasion away from targets.


Next is a Targeting Computer to further increase Accuracy, because our enemy seems to be using Evasion increasing Doctrines like Ghost.

The Deathmaster is now kitted out to aggressively target enemy small ships boasting high Evasion scores in an efficient way.

However, the Deathmaster itself is rather vulnerable to anything that is kitted out to rapidly deplete shielded ships. Our enemy is also fielding a small number of rather powerful, rapid firing Battleships that seem to be set to target Cruisers and Destroyers first. Our Deathmaster is going to be an easy target for these, but we’ve identified that the threat from those Frigates and Corvettes is too high to ignore.

Let’s design a new Ship Class to cover for the Deathmaster and draw the fire of those deadly Battleships.

We’ll pick a Destroyer this time (although another Cruiser would work just as well), remembering that this new medium hull Ship Type is another addition from the Warlords expansion. Since the enemy Battleships field shorter ranged, less accurate but rapid firing Kinetic Attack weapons, deadly for our shielded Deathmaster, we’re going to want to build something that is better suited to dodging or absorbing that particular flavor of punishment.


Here’s the Kingslayer, a Destroyer with a Doctrine designed to complement our Deathmaster’s role of hunting Frigates by directly taking on the enemy Battleships guarding them. Killing them won’t be easy but the intention here is to have a fairly dangerous ship that will rush into range of the Battleship early and draw its fire away from our slower moving Deathmasters, allowing those to complete their mission.

The Kingslayer will need to be fielded in small groups of two or three if they’re to have much hope of surviving an encounter with a Battleship and still be in one piece afterwards.

Let’s pick some components that help this Ship Class perform this supporting role properly.



Despite my silly name, the Kingslayer is more of a tank: we’ve put a massive amount of armor on this thing, some extra hull points, plenty of shielding and some fancy Kinetic weapon protection courtesy of the E-Web component.


It’s got enough firepower to do some damage but it probably won’t be enough to be able to take on a Battleship even in pairs. But our strategy is to rush in, draw as much fire from the Battleships as possible while the Deathmasters in our fleet destroy those large numbers of deadly Frigates, and chip away at the Battleships' defenses until the rest of the fleet is freed up from their own targeting priorities to turn on the Battleships and help bring them down.

Remember, the Battleships were themselves custom designed to take out our Cruisers, and are equipped to kill that specific Ship Class. We’ve now designed a support Ship Class to counter it, and directly assist the others in the fleet.

I hope this demonstrates some of the thought process that goes into designing Ship Classes and their composition within a fleet.

Remember, you can build general purpose Classes, and those that are custom-made to take out specific Classes or roles they encounter in the enemy’s formations too. This kind of gameplay is a lot of fun, and it can be critical if you’re facing overwhelming numbers: smaller well designed fleets with complementary Ship Classes, each with their own dedicated mission within combat, will be able to take down less well specialised fleets that rely purely on numbers.

That’s all for this time! Let us know what you think about the Ship Class system in the comments section below.

Cheers!