Game has a lot of issues.

What you say may be true but it deserves more specificity.

My starting surveyor is substantially stronger than a typical pirate fleet and it will always win an encounter, but it will not win without taking damage to hit points. This seems to disprove your generalized comment.

What exactly are you sending and what/who are you going against. 

Mind posting your save? I would like to try your super fleet. 

This is especially true if you have a couple of carriers in the fleet who through a few assault ships in front who soak damage. These assault ships are then available again in the next fight.

It is pretty easy to focus on things such as logistics, capacity and miniaturization to get fleets that simply can't loose and take more or less no damage. I have experienced this a few times.

I also never use the battle viewer when in combat with stations that has defenses any more, those become very one sided affairs since defending ships always rush out in front of the station and is killed before the fleet can attack the base itself. That does not happen when you auto resolve.

Try the first scenario of the campaign to get a feel for this. The initial fleet you get can simply stomp through the map completely unharmed.

This is all against the AI though... in multi-player things would be different. Especially if you have a rule to always auto resolve battles with stations. A single strong fleet can be outmaneuvered and cut of from supply sources (forward bases), invasion fleets can be intercepted and military stations can swing a battle in the defenders advantage. Many smaller fleets can also attack more targets more quickly.

What you are both saying is you've found one strategy the AI needs to counter? (Starbases aside)


I am not sure how you'd address it but logistics, capacity and miniaturization vs the AI is very effective then? Perhaps the AI can try to move around your fleet more and strike in multiple places if you build one super fleet? I haven't tried this strategy but I expect others will or have to come up with some counter ideas.

Don't you just love coming in to a thread titled "Game has a lot of issues" in which the OP describes exactly ONE issue 

People really need to dial down the drama.

Try carriers, they skew the number balance since they add +5 ships per module

Quoting Asmodean_dk, reply 5

Don't you just love coming in to a thread titled "Game has a lot of issues" in which the OP describes exactly ONE issue 

 

People really need to dial down the drama.

Indeed, its an overstatement, Carriers are OP as hell though

Well personally, my only issue with GC3 is its still a MASSIVE resource hog.  Which, given its a TBS game it doesn't need to be. 

I was around day 1 of GC2 and that was exactly the same a MASSIVE resource hog but with patches became very streamlined and took less and less resources up to run.

I hope they do the same with GC3 and optimise it more.

The game is designed to not be limited in the same way 4x games used to be. This is why a 64bit system is required. 

Well I built a doom fleet of constructors with 4 high density carrier modules each that only cost just over $500 each .. they never took a hit and hosed all opposition..

Ah, the carriers are likely going to have a nerf. The devs state they may be too powerful. 

Having a cool down to replace their small craft would be a start. I noticed this in the first campaign battle. I had 9 ships, but 14 would popup in battle, then it would go back to 9. My fleet never lost a hit point. It was very anti-climatic as far as gaming goes. I just go around, blow up all there stuff and build transports to take their colonies with no dear at all. Hopefully they will figure out something soon.

Just created a fleet with 50 logistics, Went from planet to planet, conquered every planet of 3 factions in 5 minutes.  Game over.  Didn't even lose one unit.  All I had to do was keep building transports and sending them to rejoin the fleet.  I could do this without carriers too, even just from the default design ships...no custom design whatsoever.  Just building any of the large hull ships like destroyer and cruiser and putting them in a fleet together.

Also didn't really have much invested in weapons or armor or shields.  spent majority of the games research in colonization tech tree.  So enemies even had plenty of time to invest in other stuff before me, and I even gave enemies every resource they ever demand, whether it be tech or credits!  

I think it's kind of silly how planets are captured basically instantly.    I'm not even sure if military starbases are useful because I have yet to see them do anything.  

So to win basically any game, start off buying colony ships with the starting credits.  Colonize as many of the best worlds you can, Keep them afloat when it comes to income, and make sure to have decent production/research where applicable, then funnel all of the highest production planets into sponsoring a single shipyard, build a couple of mining rigs, up your logistics to 30-50, with maybe some minor warfare researches here and there, unlock and build a couple of transports for on standby, in the meantime research any more warfare stuff that you can, boom...go from planet to planet conquering....game over.  

I used the default shipyard, and it was building the largest ships in about 3-4 turns at that point.  At about 5-7 logistics per vessel, it would take about 15-25 turns to have a single full fleet that was unbeatable on its own.  I actually took the time to make 3 of these fleets, and only ever used one.  

This is not only a matter of logistics but the overall power balance in a battle. Once you gain a certain amount of advantage you practically destroy the enemy so fast you don't receive any losses, or extremely few losses,

Sometimes it seem this threshold is reached rather abruptly... you can go from a rather even battle to a clear win with a few changes.

I'm not sure how this problem could be addressed though outside of a better and more observant AI.

A better AI wouldn't hurt, but I think the main problem is ships do end up with basically zero damage taken.  You'd expect that one large fleet vs another large fleet, would at least have the winner not win soo decisively.  This works both ways too.  The AI can absolutely pound you to death if you let them get any kind of sizable fleet, or if they by chance decide to invest in logistics.  You won't even be able to rebuild quick enough to counter their single fleet either.  So either way, one side, in one foul swoop, ends up defenseless and helpless as their worlds are quickly taken.  

Like in sins of a solar empire, you actually needed to take time to capture a world, and the enemy could potentially get reinforcements or mount a defense in the meantime.   Starbases were utilitarian and epic.

 And you also have to have a fleet guarding a planet at all times to keep it from being taken, and not only that, a fleet large enough to counter the other fleet in a single battle, which is virtually impossible because by the time you get any sizeable fleet you'll want to be attacking with it, not defending, and even if you do defend, you can only defend that one single planet at once, making the fleet almost as good as if it never existed in the first place if the enemy decides to attack elsewhere -- and they will.

It just feels like this game gets a lot of stuff wrong, that other games like CIV and SINS got soo right already long ago.    

I do all of the above.  If you're playing on a larger map, get a race with prolific so you can send your colony ships out with 1.2 pop each and still get 2.4 on each planet you settle.  This means you can make a bunch of research planets without losing more than half your home world population.  This is still plenty to spam combat ships in 2-4 turns with whatever you research.

The best part is that you can fill all your transports with .5 population from your home planet and it's level-5 neighbor planet and then take those empty transports to the last planet you conquered, taking the "citizens" you conquered 5 minutes ago, arming them with free weapons and armor, and using them to conquer the next planet in their former empire.  That's like conquering New York, arming the new Yorkers, and then using them to conquer boston.  Because they wouldn't just turn around and shoot you.

By the time you hit the age of warfare where you can build transports, you can have a 35 logistics fleet with disruptors, shields, and ion engines, make one transport with 6 people, and then spam .5 pop transports till the game is over.