I agree whole-heartedly.  Rather than limiting the number of modules, the additional slots needed (3 for carrier mods) already recognizes these items use additional space and provides a natural limitation on the smaller hulls.

Full-Blown Fleet carriers that are dedicated platforms SHOULD be able to carry 40 fighters at the expense of their own firepower and defensive capabilities.  Same with sensors, transport mods, etc. 

I would suggest if there is a concern that players get an advantage by creating these dedicated ship-classes, maybe they should be added to the AI classes as well?

Thanks for showing this.  I've been trying to point out that large and huge hulls are useless for awhile, but your analysis really hits home most of the problem.

The only other thing I would point out is that swarms beat large and huge hulls because they can target more than on ship at a time.  Because large and huge hulls only get one shot at a time they really can't deal with swarms 

The 75% damage reduction is something I fully agree with.  I actually suggested something similar awhile back.  It would require a large overhaul of the ship role system, but I think it would make combat so much better.

https://forums.galciv4.com/509104/page/1/#3830841

I get where you're coming from, but the simplest solution would be to prevent module stacking.

The options you gave are nice, but I don't know if they fix the issue.

Option 1 would help but A.I. still struggles to stack large fleets so option one would require a ton of overhaul to the A.I.  On top of that it really means that now the only way to win is to abuse the stacking mechanics.  I really want to have some diversity in fleet styles.

Option 2 doesn't really prevent determined players from stacking modules until they have an unstoppable fleet, but it does slow it down.  Overall though, this is probably the best option you gave if stacking remains in the game.

Option 3 just kicks the problem down to the late game combat which already has so many issues, I'm not sure if this really helps the problem.

I really do think we need a massive balancing overhaul to the combat system.

I would gladly pay for an expansion that provides an improved combat system that has more mechanics.

Yeah, I hope it gets fixed as well.  Balancing it would be a least better if they can't or don't have time to make a better system.

Unfortunately they never fixed the GC III system so I don't know if there's enough incentive or desire to fix the GC 4 system.

I would like to see an official poll asking what improvements players would most like to see added or worked on in the game.

Combat is top on my list, but I'm interested to know if I'm in the minority 

I have not much cared for combat systems in 4X games, with one exception.

The system of designing ships and tactical combat in MOO2 was at once simple and enjoyable. 

No other 4X including this one has had a tactical system that IMHO was worth a gram of sand.

The main strength of MOO2's combat system was you could fire each weapon separately and you were limited only by your brilliance or stupidity in ship designing.

I am aware that an exacted copy of MOOs system may not be possible but a similar one would be welcomed.

If they cannot do this and put in a "user friendly" tactical simulator the other than balancing the current system to me because I would never waste my time on anything other than "do you want to engage in combat?" "Yes." "You won /lost." on to next move.

Ground combat I believe would slow down the game way more than those who would engage in it would think as a true system would need to include the full range of tactics available to Generals to use. This might run the price up to unaffordable levels. 

Perhaps make the weapons systems more specific to the hull types?  Tiny Lasers do 1 damage base, while Massive/Huge Hull is like 10 (Just as an example).  Tiny ships simply don't get to mount the monstrous weapon systems, and the Massives get firepower that can really only be matched by similar class ships.  2 Mediums should not be able to pound a Massive into submission, not without a huge tech discrepancy between races.

Maybe the fleet multipliers need to be removed or nerfed somehow?  I can see how central control could increase Point Defense or Targeting, but never really understood the logic behind one ship supercharging the weapons of ships around it.

I did my own analysis of ship sizes in this thread: Ship Size (Balance) » Forum Post by Stalker0 (galciv4.com)

There are two areas in this thread not accounted for, to create a true argument.

• Cost: At least up to medium, the bigger the ship, the more cost effective it is (I haven't done the math for large ships myself). Aka I can generate a full fleet of small ships faster than I can a full fleet of tiny ones. While a full tiny fleet beats a small fleet, it won't necessary have enough ships to beat the next small fleet I've already produced. This becomes very important in long wars of attrition, which the high level AI is pretty good at.
• Defenses: Realistically big hulls are really about defenses, due to way defenses work in the game. If I have a large ship with a 50 shield defense, every single one of your 15 laser tiny ships is banging against a full 50 shield....aka barely doing any damage. This means a large ship can take many many times more punishment than the equivalent logistics in tiny ships.

The optimum way to use large ships right now is either:

• A fleet of large ships to generate a lot of power for your production (aka I need power fast).
• One large ship with a lot of defenses (assigned as an escort ship role) combined wtih a fleet of small or tiny ships, with all offense, set to capital ship role. This means the large ship will soak all of the damage, while the tiny ships bang away undisturbed.

I wonder how Stardock tests balance.  If you could separate the battle calculations from the game you could feed it hundreds of scenarios and get some good statistics and a better feel for how to make adjustments.

Stalker0, you might be right about the tiny vs huge ships normally.  They might be more balanced than we think.  The larger issue which this thread started with is that fleet amplifiers exist and they can stack.  Because I can have many tiny ships vs only a few large, I can stack amplifiers to get ridiculous damage outputs.

I really would like a combat system that make ships feel more unique.  I think it would add to the role play aspect rather than take from it.

For me a lot of the fun is in building and maintaining fleets.

There is nothing broken about that model, its just that its not intuitive.

The main issue is the role system. A person has to manually assign them for it to work properly (because the auto assigner is terrible), and there is so little info about them (and most of it is confusing) that a regular player would have no idea how it works.

If there were two simple roles, and it just made it that a ship that is mostly defense was always an escort, and a ship with mostly weapons was always a capital ship....it would work very well.

That's the system MoO2 used and it was awesome. IIRC you had Point-Defense, Light and Heavy versions of your guns.

Maybe make the weapon amplifiers exclusive to Large and Huge hulls and increase the limit from one per ship to 4 or so (otherwise no one would bother)?

What about making some of the modules exclusive to certain hull types?