Are we talking end-game, or along the game? 'cause for me, 90% of the game is played without any of the ultimate weapons.

Off course, defences are WAY more effective if everybody follows the same line of weaponry (in my actual game, there seems to be a ban on mass drivers... and only the Iconians researched beam weaponry, so everybody is missile attack and defences).

So, before reaching the super-mighty end-game weaponry, defences are WAY worth their cost. At the end, it's obsolete, but you still have to live long ennough to get there!

Except, yhea, in a no-tech trade galaxy... hehe..

In my last game I think I had the ultimate mass driver weapon by the end of 2nd year, plus advanced beam weapons due to extensive tech trading. The game ended Dec. 15, 2227, with just the last few research techs remaining. Playing at the high levels (AI Incredible), the AI makes fast research progress and with extensive tech trading, the AI does much of my research for me.

Veblen and I did some work on the worth of defences. We found that all-attack ship destroyed more manufacturing points than the cost. We found that defences became less useful as the ratio of HP to attack or defence power dropped. Also, defences became less reliable as a whole as power increased. Outliers and fluke rolls could impact the battle heavily while in low-tech battles, the effects were rather small. So, on small ships and with hi-tech games, defences become less useful.

So, why are defences popular with some players? (This is what we found, your own reasons may or may not fall into these categories)

- Micromanagement. When playing all-attack, you're going to lose a lot of ships and these need replacing. But for that, you need to know what fleet lost what number of ships and you need to get replacements over there. This can cause a logistical nightmare. Players may want to sacrifice efficiency over nerves.

- You're not playing a human opponent. A human opponent has better odds at making an all-attack approach work. Regardless of the impressive efforts of the developers, the AI is not advanced enough to know how to counter balanced ships with attack vessels (it is pretty hard).

- Logistics constraint. Sure, all-attack ships are cheap, but they use just as much space as any other ship. It's easier to handle one fleet thant it is handling three fleets, each with their constantly mounting losses. Also, the outnumbering bonus of the cheaper all-attack vessels are limiteed this way, but certainly not negated.

- Experience. Since the player can engage in some subtle techniques the computer can't identify. A player can retreat damaged ships and repair them, building experience and HP. As HP increase, defences become more useful.

- Might makes right. People compensate by adding massive ammounts of defensive systems. This makes the average defense roll higher than the attack roll and adds some security. In effect, extreme solutions work better than balanced ones.

- Technology edge. If you have an edge on the AI, defences become more useful since he just doesn't have the power required to destroy your ships. This means you have (virtually) no losses and can continue to increase your lead.


What solutions did we come up with?
In the financial world, risk is measured in predictability. Why would you invest in defences if they could just as well turn out to be powered by a 4 volt battery? People want some security and predictability, especially when larger ships are involved. So, if the predictability of defences (and offence) increase, defences become more useful. We do this by reducing variance.

- Give each defence and offensive system a minimum and maximum damage. This way, as more systems get added, the variance in itself doesn't increase. This means the risk doesn't increase.

- Use normally distributed randomizers. Now, every result is just as likely to turn up as any other. A normally (bell-curved) randomizer would make rolls more predicatble but would still allow for the odd lucky roll. This approach would leave the designers more freedom to what level of variance is desired.

Micromanagement. When playing all-attack, you're going to lose a lot of ships and these need replacing. But for that, you need to know what fleet lost what number of ships and you need to get replacements over there. This can cause a logistical nightmare. Players may want to sacrifice efficiency over nerves.

I agree. This is why late game I create large and huge ships with ultimate defenses.

You're not playing a human opponent. A human opponent has better odds at making an all-attack approach work. Regardless of the impressive efforts of the developers, the AI is not advanced enough to know how to counter balanced ships with attack vessels (it is pretty hard).

I agree. Each defense only provides optimal protection against one weapon type but each weapon type will tear through two defense types! Ultimate weapons overpower even optimal ultimate defenses! A human player would switch weapons if it had a second advanced weapons type.

Great reply SleekDD!

In 1.31 ships attack at the same time, so the disadvantage of having a ship with no deffense and huge attack getting destroyed before it can return fire is gone. Score one for the all attack.

Personally though I prefer to have deffense. I tend to keep the attack higher than the deffense, but since I am usally far more advanced than the enemy that is all I need.

Still, I like having large ships with great deffense and lots of experice.

I have to agree with the "tech advantage" statements made here. In the main Campaign, you have Dread Lord ships which will demolish anything you put in front of it, thus making an all-out attack ship much more efficent then anything with defenses. In my latest game (tough 9-AI, Large galxay) my colony rush was thwarted by lack of inhabitable planets in my nearest systmes (I like playing like a real galxay...occasional habitable planets), and I started at a major tech disadvantage.

After conquering my two nearest neighbors with heavy all-attack fighters, I fianlly gained enough planets to press a tech advantage. My Aereon Missle Defenses on my Huge Battlecruisers shrugged off the hits by the Quantum Torpedos of the Enemy AI. Having two fully mined Military resources also helped. My superfleets of Battlecruisers crushed everything the AI threw at it, and it was much easier to manage then hundreds of fighters. I've beaten the AI before they get the ultimate weapons each time I've played (normal tech), maybe when I up the difficulty my strategy will have to change, but for now, Defense is worth the cost so long as you have a decent tech advantage.

I've beaten the AI before they get the ultimate weapons each time I've played (normal tech), maybe when I up the difficulty my strategy will have to change, but for now, Defense is worth the cost so long as you have a decent tech advantage.

Try playing "very fast research" against "Incredible AI" opponents; on these settings the AI progresses very quickly through the weapons tech tree! I completed a game with these settings on a gigantic map (everthing abundant 283 planets), against 9 majors (2 minors) on Dec. 15 2227. In 2227 it came down to me against the Drengin armed with Black Hole Gun, and the Altarians and Arceans armed with the Doom Ray!

I've seen even a Bright AI rip through weapons trees. The Drengin in my games ALWAYS go missile, and the Yor tend towards beams or railguns. It depends on how pressured they are militarily. The one time I saw the Yor go ripping up the beam tree, they ended up surrendering (thankfully, they also tend to be extremely easy to maneuver out of their techs when they're under the gun from someone else.)

The Drengin are just mean cusses, and they'll do it for kicks. Everyone else seems to keep things on an even keel techwise until someone picks a fight.

For myself, I tend to go weapons first, at least one tree, then I'll go back and work up the defenses. By the time I'm reaching the upper tier of defenses, I'm also hitting my Good alignment, and I grab Telepathic Defense, Adaptive Shields and Arnorian Armor, which buys me a LOT of time to develop the rest. The only one of these I feel is weaksauce is the Telepathic Defense. But even then, on a huge hull, you can put a few high powered weapons a bit of range, two engines, a sensor suite, and slap a buttload of defense onboard. You can usually mount up enough of one kind of defense that the squareroot for non-optimized defenses will still amount to a reasonably decent level of protection with just a token optimized defense mount of the other two types.

Excellent replies by Infoceptor and SleekDD.

Have Stardock any info on sorting out the combat as per the above posts? Is the expansion going to sort it out?

From what I've seen in the developer journals, the combat system will see some changes although I'm not completely clear what kind of changes they will be. The problem is that they have two kinds of balance they intend to maintain: offence/defence and small/large. If they make defences worth more, they are likely to debalance the size-issues with capital ships becoming untouchable.

Whereas the balance between offence/defence suffers from variance (in my humble opinion anyway), the balance between sizes thrives on them: the little guys get a chance to hit the big guys. Reducing variance might make fighters worthless against larger ships.

I fear the system for space combat is a bit too simple to cater for both types of balance. I believe that the system will need to become more involved (more rules or abilities) or changed at some of its basics if this is going to be addressed.

Anyway, those involved in the beta-testing might be persuaded to divulge how the combat system has evolved.

It does seem from the journal entries that Brad is seeking to make the large / small ship size decision much more strategic in DA implying that researching both ultimate logistics and the largest hulls won't be feasible in a game.

He does mention that he plans to keep the issue where a large ship wastes all its massive firepower to take out one tiny fighter. He doesn't seem to be considering having each weapon pick a target sequentially to minimise firepower wastage.

To my mind that will mean the tiny hull fighter strat will beat the few huge hull battleships everytime as it does now. By beat I mean be more resource or production efficient so that all things being equal with two equally powerful civs the one which goes down the road of huge fleets of tiny hull fighters will win the war.

What do you think SleekDD? Btw I agree on your comments on variance with regard to defences. Until thats sorted out using defences mid to late game is a pointless waste of resources (all things being equal).

-Sithuk

Well, Stardock has re-worked the combat system and it looks like it was done in a pretty fundamental way. It looks like larger ships will be able to take on several smaller ships at once. How the offence/defence balance and the size balance will work out is something we can't comment on until the new system is comepleted and tweaked.

The one issue I do find worth pointing out now is that the relatively high variance, especially later in the game, is making defences worth less while it does help the size balance. That's the catch with reducing variance: you fix (or change if you think it's fine ) one balance but you also change the other one. With the multiple targets aspect, things will look very differently.

Seems like having assigned armor slots would have fixed this balance problem. It appears that this problem is stemming from every system fighting for the same space in the ship.

Hummmm...

I think defenses are a bit of a long range view approach. As defenses get better with experience, investing on good defenses for larger ships seem worth it to me.

I also use combined fleets. I'll have a Huge ship centerpiece that will have sizeable attack and defense numbers, escorted by 1 large or 2 mediums that have more weight on attack but still have good defenses (enough to take a hit or two from an AI Large or Huge ship of the time), along with corvettes/heavy fighters that only mount light defenses in all 3 areas, or heavier defenses in 1 or 2 areas, with the rest of the focus on weapons, speed and range.

Essentially this strategy is a hybrid of the small swarm vs. huge dominator. I find it works very well as my larger ships gain alot of XP while the smaller ships take losses but are easier to replace.

I have also heard that ships can target more than one opponent in DA; I think this will make a huge difference in small swarm tactics, as a couple of large ships will mount enough weapons to take out several smaller ships each turn. I hope they move in that direction, or revamp the combat system as I outlined here:

https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=346&aid=133866#1066039 (post #24)

You need 2 kinds of fleets.

You need a general fleet which consists of several large ships with mainly firepower but enough defence to ensure the smaller escort ships are always fired on first. This fleet can be used in all battles and will always take casualties.

The second kind of fleet consists of all large ships with mainly one type of specialised defence and low firepower. Very good for picking off lone ships or weak fleets and does not typically take any casualties. This kind of fleet is vunerable to powerful fleets or ships with weapons other than its defence specialisation and needs protection with the general fleet for this reason.

However on more than one occasion i have found myself in a position where my specialised defensive ships are virtually indestructable. This is on level 'painful' as well, so it is definately worth looking at using ship defenses.

There's a thread on the new combat system in the DA forum. From what I understood from the explanation, defences get drained by attacks during a round. This is how it appears to work:

1) Targets are selected using the same method as in DL (attack/(defence + HP))

2) The attackers determines the most optimal weapon to fire with, meaning the one the defender has least defences against.

3) Weapons are fired one by one, targetting new opponents if the first target is destroyed.

4) The rolled attack is substracted from the defences, starting from the optimal ones first (so beams weaken shields first). This is done regardless of whether the defences where effective so damage to HP also reduces defences. Once these are down, the attack is substracted from the squareroot of the other defences. This means a missile defence of 4 would be cancelled if a beam weapon rolled 2 for damage (provided no other defences are present).

5) After each round, defences are restored. This means several ships can work together to take down a single ship.

6) Luck improves weapons by improving minimal damage by using max damage times Luck. So a luck percentage of 100% has you scoring max damage every time.

***

If this is correct, I would venture a guess that fights are going to get a lot bloodier. Sizeable fleets will cause casualties as a certainty because, in order to keep a ship safe from harm, it needs to be strong enough to handle the attacks of all attacking ships combined. This will make production cost of ships weight more since the fortress ships become less of an 'investment' that lasts a whole game.

4) The rolled attack is substracted from the defences, starting from the optimal ones first (so beams weaken shields first). This is done regardless of whether the defences where effective so damage to HP also reduces defences. Once these are down, the attack is substracted from the squareroot of the other defences. This means a missile defence of 4 would be cancelled if a beam weapon rolled 2 for damage (provided no other defences are present).

The defense roll just adds the direct defense and the square root of the others, and that´s it, it doesn´t recognize where each "defense point" came from. Once it is drained, defense vs that weapon type is gone for the round.

The defense roll just adds the direct defense and the square root of the others, and that´s it, it doesn´t recognize where each "defense point" came from. Once it is drained, defense vs that weapon type is gone for the round.

Does this mean that, if you switch weapon types, you need to drain the defences again? Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

I don't think it changes all that much regarding the new combat system, however. It's still going to get a lot bloodier out there. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is up to personal preference but I wonder what place defences will have in combat in this new system. Some of the reasons for taking defences are reduced in meaning or disappear completely.

- Building experienced fleets will become harder as fleet engagement will almost certainly bring casualties. If you can provide enough fresh reinforcements, it is possible you can form a core of tougher ships inside a fleet but I don't know how manageable this will be.

- Your technology edge will mean less. Whereas in DL, you could build nigh-invincible ships and hence, make the large production investment pay off in time, these ships will succumb to cheaper vessels faster because of outnumbering. Basically, throwing enough mud at a wall works too.

- The micromanagement-aspect will pop up, regardless of whether you use defences or not. Building huge fortress-ships will not save you the trouble of replenishing your fleet regularly anymore.


Obviously, this is all theory-speak. The combat system could be tweaked further, costs, hull HP and power could change or I could just be plain wrong. (gasp)

Does this mean that, if you switch weapon types, you need to drain the defences again? Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

Yep, but with different a value most probably. For example, if you have 4 defense in each type, that's basically a defense roll of 1-8 for each weapon type. When one is drained, the others are still up. The square root dependency is somewhat weird, since the lowest value is the one that provides better defense - all 1s means you actually triple defense potential for each defense type.

in DA i'm using a custom race with +40 def, +20 weapons, and +50% luck.

with the race/party bonuses, an old def roll of 1-10 becomes a roll of 7-14. paired with the superwarrior ability i'm really looking forward to large fleet battles, and trying to guide this game along into some major confrontations.

however, i just downloaded the expansion and haven't played past the opening yet, so it will be fun to see how the AI messes with my evil plan...