Thesis on why Germak suck

[SmaugTheDragon]

Chapter one
Scout cruisers: absolutely terrible idea?
It is vital that you can pump out 1-2 extra scout ships out as early as possible, making them cost ten times as much severely stunts early expansion and limits profiting from Independents and finding the absurdly good worlds with native populations. As scout ships spend most of their existence in transit putting guns on em is a waste as you don't have a chance to utilize them.

Chapter two
Germak, an evolutionary dead-end
Germak as a race are literally the worst. Yoral and Ashdar +1 production gives them a very strong early game advantage, Orthin + 1 science is also strong before you have the resources to build dedicated university worlds. Humans are meh but can colonize ice and arid. And Phidi extra pop limit is OP. Also they dislike nearly every climate zone further stunting growth and colonization. Habitat Domes are pretty late-game so good luck getting those before every single planet in the game has been already colonized.

Chapter three
Viper torpedoes, obsolete in a point-defense world?
Seriously, every single opponent in the game is loaded with PD so these things only work at point blank range. Also no mid-game upgrade options. To add to the insult they have a tech that increases the range of these things.

Chapter four
On marauders and slaves
Marauders are only good for taking undefended tiny colonies and very early turn obsolete by not getting combat power upgrades and wasting transport space. Also how do you raid for slaves? Also why would you? Slaves are terribly unproductive.

Chapter five
Information technology, kinda useless?
Instead of the 30% research cost reduction they only get 20% (due to being lazy I guess?). Also you access info. tech pretty late due to needing Superconductors to actually get there and most of the techs are both expensive and of limited use. And on top of that of you get no extra research from your head researcher making it even worse.

(just had to vent after a completely disastrous Germak game I had)

[Chasm]

Chapter 1
Use stripped cruisers (Deep space Scanner, warp lane amplifier and Nuclear reactor) for a faster build ship, or even stripped destroyers (warp lane amplifier and Nuclear reactor). All gremak ships are weapon heavy, and so cost more to produce. The stripped hulls can be reifitted to a more combat capable configuration when time permits.
Chapter 2
Habitation domes are unlocked to research through fusion + bionomics both early game techs, you just need to make it a point to get it asap.
In terms of racial ability, they are actually slightly superior to humans once habitat domes are unlocked, due to their ability to get greater use from garden and island worlds.
Chapter 3
Vipers are an additional weapon to most gremak hull, and do not require ammunition to use. Point defense shooting them down is fire not hitting your hulls. Try wolfpacks of gremak destroyers mounting pd coilguns and vipers to see what I mean.
Chapter 4
Since I generally just use up the enfi I get and then exile them to a transport ship, I cannot argue on this one. Personally I think slaves should have reduced growth and food requirements.
Chapter 5
Nanocomputers and self organizing networks or two (for me ) priority techs to get allowing you to quickly upgrade your research labs. I far prefer the gremak bonus to the human one (beam) in terms of usefulness.

The main issue is if you are comparing gremak to the yoral or ashar imperials / colonials they are going to fall short. They are more on the same level as the phidi. Humans are even more of a challenge then the gremak.

[SmaugTheDragon]

These are some good counterpoints, I did not know that they had a bonus on garden worlds. I guess I should see them more as a challenge start similar to humans. Keep forgetting that this is not a competitive multiplayer game and does not necessarily need to be balanced as such.
(Germak still suck hard though)

[Chasm]

Actually they are fun, so long as you realize what their strengths are. Their light cruiser hull makes excellent early game research / combat ships. they can mount 2 science stations (+4 science per turn) AND still be combat capable, although fragile. For a low maintance cost, you can have a homeguard science fleet that will keep your opponents leery enough of you that they wont declare war. Using the homeworld's enfi as forced labor every time they hit population 2 is a good way to boost starting production. And it gets you 1st research lab done in 6 turns. And their ships are, arguably , the strongest designs in the game.

[Chasm]

At the moment both the yoral and the ashdar imperials would be game breaking in a multiplayer version.

[Arioch]

Are the "Germak" some kind of German offshoot of the Gremak?

It is vital that you can pump out 1-2 extra scout ships out as early as possible, making them cost ten times as much servery stunts early expansion and limits profiting from Independents and finding the absurdly good worlds with native populations.

Gremak scout cruisers cost twice as much as an Ashdar scout cruiser. I agree that this is too expensive, but it's certainly not "ten times" the cost of other scouts. Some of the other factions use destroyer hulls for their scouts, making them correspondingly cheaper, but that's just part of the asymmetry of the different factions. I've found the combat ability of the early Gremak ships very useful for helping to clear out pirates and monsters, but your mileage may vary.

Gremak scout cruiser: 416W, 234M
Ashdar scout cruiser: 207W, 115M
Human scout: 143W, 69M
Phidi scout: 143W, 69M
Yoral scout: 144W, 100M
Orthin scout: 163W, 89M

The Gremak environmental inflexibility is an important characteristic, and part of the impetus to rely on slaves to boost pop caps. I agree that slaves need to be more productive and useful; we have been going slow there to avoid slaves being overpowered. The recent addition of Ocean worlds should help avoid the situation in which the Gremak are surrounded by Arid worlds and can't expand.

Missile balance is currently out of whack, and in particular, energy torpedoes should be much more difficult to intercept than normal missiles. We are also close to adding the Gremak Distortion Field to the game, which should significantly change the combat balance equation. Raider units will need late-game tech upgrades to remain viable.

The research leader bonuses are something Sven threw in a long time ago, and are in need of a balance review. Right now the Gremak have to build Labs early to get any science going, whereas some of the other factions get a big jump-start. Expect this to change. However, the Gremak have to try harder to produce science because a lot of their population will be slaves and unable to generate science.

[bjg]

You just don't know how to cook them.
Gremak starts with few hundreds free wrenches (Enfi).
Properly configured Gremak's Scout Cruiser overpowers Ashdar's Light Cruiser. With two of them you can try to go against minimal pirate's stack (Scout + Light is better though). However, it might make sense to replace one of "Light 2x" of Gremak's Destroyer with "Turret" (and probably introduce Light Scout based on Destroyer hull).
Marauders are your friends, eventually joining you with free developed planets and free fleet. For some reason some of them don't - is there a way to charm/buy them out?
Viper launchers are nice specially because of the long range. If you bring 3-5 ships they usually "deplete" PD weapon, so some of torpedoes are getting through (and even if they don't - weapon fired at a torpedo is a weapon not fired at you). I even hesitate to replace them with bigger torpedoes. Do bigger torpedoes also get long range for Gremak?
Slaves are useful after you liberate them, requiring some planning to don't damage (or even improve) morale.

[Chasm]

I have no issue with gremak ship cost. The design out at the start is admittedly flawed (2 scanners when only 1 does anything) but the fact you can burn slaves to speed production counters it nicely one it is redesigned. And the ship itself requires no orbital yard to build (contrast to human light cruiser requiring an orbital yard and being a weaker design)

[Sarissofoi]

Hello guys. After some intensive use of Gremaks there is my 5 kopenek.
1.
I will agree. They should have destroyer based scout and instead scout cruiser a raiding cruiser that can carry Marauders company for early raiding. It would fit better with the lore and actually add reason to use companies instead of brigades.
2.
Yeah that is the pain. Especially that you can't even use other races - enslaved or not to colonize. Sure it could need some techs to make this possible but it would make Gremaks more flexible and let them expanse more.
Or add outposts that let you exploit planets(some minerals, research or cash) and this could also help humans.
3.
Missile weapons overall I feel are less or more terrible(like fighters).
Short range, vulnerability to PD and normal size weapons and for some limited ammo. Well at last in the old MoO they have great range and solid high damage and could be used decently against planets compared to beam/kinetic weapons.
Overall space battles feel like they are fight on hugging distances.
4.
Yeah slaves are inferior to free population. The only thing is that they work even if unhappy and you can enslave rioting free pops.
Marauders cost nothing to maintain. I think. Good alternative for cheap garrisons and slave suppressors.
5.
Well. I would like to see more leaders for specific races with different bonuses and different AI.

Still Gremaks have sexy space ships and look cool.

On the side Slaves breed to fast. There should be some options for limiting their grows. Maybe their population could be build/breed cheap instead?
Simialr complain on the natives - as they always boom in numbers after colonization.
I would like too see some options to control population grows.
Also AI need help or option to enforce order by use of military units as I seen enemy empires easily crippled by few bombardment and social unrest.

[zolobolo]

Are the "Germak" some kind of German offshoot of the Gremak?

The Gremak environmental inflexibility is an important characteristic, and part of the impetus to rely on slaves to boost pop caps. I agree that slaves need to be more productive and useful; we have been going slow there to avoid slaves being overpowered.

How about giving slaves the highest mineral production value in the game, but still zero everything else + make their population static.
If they cannot increase population, the player/AI needs to "import" them. That would be the only way, and it would make raids or buying them from marauders a necessary activity if you want to benefit from their superb production, which would be especially beneficial during wartime.

BTW: Forced labor does not seem to do anything yet - I guess this would also dramatically increase their production value, though it seems like a micromanagement heavy option to have

[Arioch]

On the side Slaves breed to fast. There should be some options for limiting their grows. Maybe their population could be build/breed cheap instead?

I don't see why slaves breeding would be a bad thing. You can spend them for production boosts with Forced Labor at any time.

I don't see any plausible mechanism that could be used to limit native population growth. Even the most oppressive governments have failed in their attempts to control reproductive rates -- just ask the Chinese.

[Sarissofoi]

On the side Slaves breed to fast. There should be some options for limiting their grows. Maybe their population could be build/breed cheap instead?

I don't see why slaves breeding would be a bad thing. You can spend them for production boosts with Forced Labor at any time.

I don't see any plausible mechanism that could be used to limit native population growth. Even the most oppressive governments have failed in their attempts to control reproductive rates -- just ask the Chinese.

I ask them and they told me that they are doing good replacing natives and colonized originally non Han provinces with Han.
I will point you at USA where natives were just displaced and less or more restricted or outright eliminated.
Surprisingly it wasn't the most oppressive government.
Also their experiment with slavery shown that slaves didn't grow much and one need outside source of slaves to increasingly grow them numbers.
The natives population growth can be explained by them coming into industrial age but there is also totally lack of tension between colonist and natives. In some causes it make sense - Humans and Threshers on Island world can coexist well but not whey they compete for similar ecological niche.

Considering that slaves are usually less productive than non slaves and not produce science they are not exactly ones I would want for majority of my population. And expending them for production can cause unhappiness and well is tiresome. Some planetary options to limit their growth on specific chosen by player planets would be good.

But actually it would be good to have some options to purge local foreign, native population or slaves. Or maybe even sell them or exile them to their own nations.

On the other hand more classes of the population in specific race would be great(sorry for throwing random ideas here). Like there are already human refuges.
It would be make sense to have human-human refuges(or liberated slaves)-human slaves process steps for other races.
Like citizens-free non citizen-non free non citizen

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Currently I find slaves to be mostly a stopgap measure until I have more Gremak, at which point its forcedlabor time. There's also several world types where Gremak are in the best pop categories - you arn't encouraged to have a slave based society at all in this case. Curiously, this includes Gremal itself, where the Enfi are just soaking resources better used for cannibal snake men. Slaves really need that third wrench imo so they are on par. Or perhaps there could be a synergy-tech or synergy-effect where the Gremak are more productive when they have slaves to order around.

[zolobolo]

Slaves really need that third wrench imo so they are on par. Or perhaps there could be a synergy-tech or synergy-effect where the Gremak are more productive when they have slaves to order around.

Agreed with first one. Third or fourth wrench to compensate for the moral and science/money penalty
Synergy effect would be cool but would still not solve the issue that slaves would not be useful for other races. They are too cool a concept in the game to be solely useful for the Gremak

[Captainspire]

I haven't lost a game yet when playing the Germak.