After listening to everyone post here's what I come down to :

-1 on tough difficulty the defence ship strategy works well, but then it's also quite easy to simply out-tech AIs

-2 on any difficulty above, the defence ship strategy pales in comparison to the all-attack ship strategy mainly due to tech cost, the fact that AIs tend to out-tech the player, and the miniaturization bonuses AIs get

here's a round for you guys, after all that talk I'm thirsty  

Good summary .  And it's possible I've been too categorical in rejecting defense techs as a valuable option on higher difficulty levels.  I can see where clearing out orbital defenders is a valuable function, and beyond that, I think that the window where Good defenses work may be long enough to use the invincible ship strategy to conquer one, maybe two empires if you really focus on hitting it early.  You've got a lot of well worked out strategies that you're passionate about and that, for you, have clearly worked well and it's been a interesting discussion.  One thing I love about this game is that there are a lot of different viable paths, and while eventually "optimal" usually is discovered, the others still work well enough. 

Oh, one other note:  The way to beat 1,000+ attack value AI fleets is with all attack ships (luck and military resources help also).

JustinSane4:

That's something I don't understand.  I can see where a defense-ship strategy can help you to beat an opponent militarily where you're otherwise behind, but I can't see how an all-attack fleet would have any chance assuming you're behind on all fronts.  Could it be that we are not, after all, postulating a situation where we're behind on all fronts?

I would eliminate the qualifier "Good".   I'm perfectly happy going with regular defenses, since i'm going for Aeron.  The Good stuff is just a distraction.  OTOH, I like Evil not so much for Psyonic, but for the spam, spam, spam, spam, spam....

The way to take out a 1000+ attack fleet is with a 1000+ attack ship. Huge hulls and tie rule beat every other strategy. I have a screenshot of a 1700+ attack ship, and that was from DA, so it didn't have any fleet module bonuses, either.

While I don't play suicidal either, most of my masochistic games end without me ever building a single medium hull. They're just not worth investing in. Use a starbase array with 1/1 tiny hulls under it to intimidate your neighbors until you can get a few huge hulls out, then use one or two ships to walk all over everyone. Yeah, building one ship might cost 20k bc, but you only *need* one.

Defensive ships are viable while the attack to HP ratio is still pretty low - say 4:1. Beyond that, a couple poor defensive rolls will get a ship killed. Since luck doesn't affect defensive rolls, the effect is magnified. A 100 defense ship has a 10% chance of rolling a defense <10 when the first weapon fires, and the odds increase as defenses degrade. A single psyonic beam is likely to degrade defenses by 8 or 9 (assuming 25% luck), so the 100 defense ships has ~11% chance of rolling <10 against the second beam. If the all attack ship had 5 beam modules, the fifth defensive roll has >15% chance of rolling <10.

Cumulatively, this gives approximately 50% odds that one roll in every round will roll below 10 defense, and about 40% odds that when that happens, the beam hitting you will be rolling for more than 10 damage. It doesn't take too many hits at 4-5 damage to destroy a medium hull. 

Ah, but that is the beauty of Reinforced Hull Point and Organic Hull Plating!  They extend the duration for which the attack to HP ratio is 4:1!  I would venture to suppose that if you had more attack than your enemy, then you are, in fact, winning because you had obtained a military advantage.  Do you tech that fast on Maso?  I've played a lot of games on Tough and I've never yet seen a Doom Ray.  The game simply doesn't last long enough to get there.  Once I assimilate another empire or two with Good military advantages, the thing just snowballs into an influence or diplomatic win.

I think I may have been unclear on something - I'm not saying I'm behind in tech at all.  I'm usually in front of the AI by borderline abusing tech trading and playing with a lot of AI opponents.  Many times I'm ahead in every way.  What I'm discussing is a late game situation when both the AI (usually the last one or two remaining) and I have basically reached the end of the tech paths we've focused on.  In this scenario, like WIlly stated, a Massive ship with a huge attack value is the single most efficient way to clear out the 1,000+ attack fleets.  Since I always play on Suicidal and nearly always play on very fast research, and generally with 9 opponents, by the end of the game, assuming a fairly standard approach to the game (not abusing the poor AIs too badly diplomatically, I'll have conquered most of the galaxy, and we'll be in the scenario described above.  Defense ships are a lot less efficient here, since the attack focused fleets of the AI (Drengin, Korath and Yor are worse) will just shred them.  I see Doom Rays fairly commonly.  In Twilight, the Drengin or Korath tend to hit them around the end of year 1 (which is the second year of game play because of year 0).  When you add the native weapons bonuses they've got, you're looking at some insanely high attack values to deal with.  On the other hand, if the AIs are not hitting those tech levels in games you're playing, I can see where defense would work great.

edit:  And the enemy attack value to your hit point ratio tends to hit 1:1 right around the time they research the end year 1 as well, assuming you're using HP modules (which I love).  The game I'm in right now, I'm in October of year 1, and the Drengin, who I'm at war with, are throwing out waves of 33 attack small fighters (commonly in fleets), while the Korath (my other neighbor) are further advanded and are one tech away from Doom Rays and are currently hostile.  I'm guessing defense isn't going to help me here, though I'm planning on playing it out both ways just to see .  What I'm planning on is trading for Doom Ray as soon as the Korath research it, and relying on 70% luck and +45% weapons (Altarian tech tree rocks) and Xianthium hull plating to ensure that my attack fleets beat theirs.  This is fairly representative of the situations I'm talking about, though in this game I didn't cntrl-n to get a homestar with any bonuses on it, so I'm behind where I ordinarily would be. 

Basically, it seems like we're almost playing two different games.  I know what I do works well in my game, and you know what you do works well in your game, but because each game has the same name we each believe our method should transfer to the other .

So is the idea behind the high-attack ships to make them invulnerable via the tie rule?

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

I actually said that out loud just now.

I'm going to quote the relevant portions of your post, Roxlimn, and explain to you just exactly why you are dead wrong.

If you'll notice, I have not simply divided the attack values by two for ship combat calculations-I have divided the defense values by two as well.  Rolls work both ways-both attack and defense roll from 0 to max.  To effectively take no damage from an 84 attack ship, you need 84 defense.  It's that simple.  The difference in rolls comes from the fact that attack rolls do damage, and when they do damage, they will do on average half of their max.  It is also worth considering that in DA/TA each weapon fires separately, so in actuality we're looking at 7 different rolls of 0-12 here, which are then applied to defense (which is then depleted), but that's making things needlessly complicated.

Although, as Willy has stated, a defense ship, when confronted by higher and higher weapons, has a much larger chance of being destroyed simply by getting a bad defense roll.  While each weapon rolls separately, defenses roll as a whole (with the exception of different types of defenses rolling differently).

[Additionally, and just something that is not relevant to the argument as a whole, your off-type defense is rolled and then square rooted, rather than square rooted and rolled, so doing off-type defense in square numbers is not really necessary, nor as helpful as it might be.]

Your medium hulled dynamic shielding ship maxes out at (at 40% miniaturizatin) 84 (100 with defense bonuses) defense from dynamic shields, with one weapon on it.  If it has no weapons, it's pointless.  See previous post.  This gives an average defense roll of 50, against a two-ship fleet of 84-attack psionic beams which each roll 42.  2v1, you'll lose.  2v2, using both defense ships, you'll still lose, because targeting priority doesn't change until a ship is destroyed.  168 > 100, and 84 > 50.  There's no soloing going on.  On average, you're taking 34 damage in the first round of combat, which means your medium dies while dealing 1 or 2 damage to one of the attack ships.

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Just to get this out of the way-your medium ship rolls from 0 to 100 on defense, while the attack ships are each rolling from 0 to 84.  There are 169 possible values for how much attack the ships can roll in a round, while there are 101 possible values for how much defense you can roll in a round.  Apart from the fact that of the 7,225 possible ways these 169 different damages can be made up, not all of them are the same probability, so it's actually going to average slightly higher, we can see that you have about a 5,151 out of 17,069 chance-of surviving the first round of combat.  This comes to about 30%, by the way.

Again, this is somewhat simplified from how combat actually works, as each weapon will roll against a defense depleted by the last weapon, but it really ought to be close enough.

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I'm honestly surprised that you actually have a point here.  This is not wrong, I just felt it was worth quoting.  You are giving them a chance to level up, but if your defenses are sufficient, then their increased hp is not a concern-it just means battles will take more rounds.

Now if you're looking at fleets of more than two ships, you'll lose more ships by not fleeting (which is contrary to the general belief on fleets in DA/TA, but it may help that we're considering roughly equal techs/cost).  For instance, against a fleet of three 84 attack ships, you'll lose 6 ships by suiciding them one at a time, whereas you'd only lose three if you sent in all six at once.  But you'd need your logistics to be abnormally high (for this stage of the game) for that to happen.

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See above.  Defense rolls from 0 to max just as attack does.

Why would you assume that it didn't?  While I hope that was something akin to a typo or brainfart on your part, I have to question how you were able to complete your post while making that assumption several times (and not questioning it).

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However, as you're in general looking at facing off against ships with phasors or phasors II at this stage of the game (rather than psionics), your opposing attack value is 32 or 36 per ship, so somewhere in between shields III and barriers I you have sufficient defenses on a single-ship basis.  And barriers III, right before dynamic shielding, gives you almost enough for a 2v1 fight.

And that's why we're seeing this differently - the short games you play result in you seeing early to mid-game tech as end-game tech. Play a big map with lots of opponents and you'll see things differently. Even at Maso, seeing end of tree techs at the end of year two is common.

Basically. And even in the battles where you lose an all attack ship, you take out several enemy ships so the NEXT all attack ship wins by the tie rule.

Note that only in attritional situations where you KNOW you're going to lose ships do you use truly all attack. Even a few points in defense reduces the wear on your ships, and is worthwhile if you already have enough overkill. In most situations, 1200 attack is not as effective as 1000 attack and 200 defense.

Connection is too slow to bother trying to edit-my above calculations for your survival rate are stated as for the first round of combat, but I've neglected to consider hp.  When this is taken into account, you're looking at closer to a 7,260 out of 17,069 (or 42.5%) of surviving the first round of combat, assuming you have't yet built Xinathium Hull Plating, and 7,687 out of 17,069 (or 45%) assuming you have.

These numbers also fail to account for the different probabilities of the damage rolled by the attackers, and my estimate is that they are at least 1.5x too high.  I'll be glad to run those numbers as well if you give me a few minutes.

EDIT: Amazingly, I have yet to be auto-signed out.

Oops, now I have, while typing.

Anyway.

I lost track of something at some point and I don't feel like redoing it at the moment so it could be as much as 0.5-1% off, but it looks like around a 4375 in 7395 probability or 59% chance that you'll take damage in the first round of combat.  I also failed to account for another set of numbers which is a smaller subset that has you receiving damage in the first round of combat, so it's actually higher than that-maybe as much as 63%.  I haven't done that because I'm losing my concentration, and although I should really code up a program to do these calculations -for me-, I haven't done so yet.  I haven't computed destruction entirely, but based on the preliminary numbers I have done, it looks to be around 35% for the first round-which is honestly lower than I thought it would be.

In any case, I need food.

http://www.threespursdesign.com/calc.php also does a better job than I can (thank Kryo), not to mention faster-except for not showing round by round statistical combat; just the average result.

Although I don't believe it's been updated for DA.  Still trying to figure that out.

Also, I think it shows just how slow I am at the moment that Willy was able to sneak in a reply between what was supposed to be a double post for lack of quick editing capability.  *sigh*

This is where I diverge from the rest of the crowd.  In attritional situations--namely, very large attritional situations, lots of fleets clumped up together--I've got Military SB's + Tiny hulls doing the heavy duty work.  The cost effectiveness of it , I mean, there is just no comparison.   I still have Capital ships for all those non-epic battles, but they always have more D than Attack. 

If we could drag this topic in a different direction for a moment-in my testing I haven't seen a higher military rating (or ranking, for that matter) that is attributable to the array itself by placing any number of ships under a military starbase array for any period of time, regardless of the original ships' stats.  Since this seems to be a fairly consistent technique that veteran players use to maximize their score when playing MV games, I'm curious what everyone else is seeing, especially since I can't seem to get it to work like this in either DL or DA (haven't tested TA yet).

What am I doing wrong?

Sole Soul:

I realize that Defense rolls also, but for some reason, 60-70% of max attack seems to be sufficient for my ships to take little to no damage.  Occasionally, they'll die in spectacular fashion, but that's uncommon - probably the result of a low defense roll, I surmise.

I wouldn't fleet two such defense ships because it would be pointless!  It makes more sense to fleet several attack ships and a defense ship than to fleet several defense ships together.  Why would you assume that to be good?  Have you had much success fleeting defensive ships?

Perhaps you play using the same settings as JustinSane4?  You seem to be saying that I'm somehow doing something wrong if, having the same resources and choices, I find Good the more powerful option militarily speaking.  Perhaps you can suggest a course of action or strategic application that I can attempt?  I have been successful in conquering the galaxy with both Subspace Rebounder and Psionic Beam, but I did it faster and with greater ease using Subspsace Rebounder, with equivalent and even with inferior levels of tech advantage over the AI.

Even if your Psionic Beam/Dynamic Shield combat calculations were accurate, I'm rather unconvinced of applicability since I don't often have that matchup in my games and I don't build ships to kill my own ships.  By JustinSane4's admission, the only way you could win with all-attack ships is if you have military tech advantages in some fashion.  This is obvious.  If both of you and the AI build all-attack fleets, the one with better tech wins.

My question here is, if you require tech advantage to make advantageous use of all-attack ships, how is that better than requiring tech advantage to make devastating use of mostly-defensive ships?

JustineSane4:

I had suspected as much.  End-of-tree defensive technology is severely lacking.  The defenses in the mid game are more than adequate - it's the end-game techs that are lacking.  It's beyond question that once you get to disruptor-level technology, weapons gain the decisive edge.  Even in DA, where defenses are cheaper, there's little point to investing.

For reference, my normal settings are Tough, Large, 8-9 opponents, 4 minor Civs.  Habitable Planets are Common, and Stars are Occasional.  I would have, maybe, 4-8 planets in my name after colony rush, if I do well.  Losers in the rush get 3-5 including the capital.  Tech rate is normal.

Under these settings, you rarely ever get to the end of the tech tree, and I feel that it's a more fun manner to play the game because it makes defense/offense a more considered question, and Good military techs are very strong, to counter early game Evil planetary advantages.

I don't find it fun to always make the same ships under the same paradigm over and over again.  YMMV.  Under these settings I've waged war using, of all things, Enhanced Rail Guns and won because I had superior weapons tech.  I can't imagine having the same experience on faster tech settings.

Perhaps you ought to try it, just for a change. 

If Stardock eliminated that abuse by now, that would be great.   That's pretty much the entire reason why I don't bother with MV:  because it's all scoring cheese.    I just know that it lets me beat stronger opponents and steal their techs.

That would make sense.  If tech rate is Very Fast, the window of usefulness may be too short for it to be worth doing.

B>Fix for multiquoting.

Defenses aren't that much cheaper in DA, it's just that weapons are drastically more expensive, which magnifies the effect.  With the exception of the beam tree in DA, you can just about max out all three weapons techs in Twilight for one weapon tree (mass drivers or missiles) in DA.

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Roxlimn, that's relevant.  Under those settings, you never see a weapon even a non-good defence can't handle.  However, it probably is more interesting to play.

I haven't had a "normal" game in a long time.  The last game I did, I did purely to test something (and still haven't gotten to testing Creativity yet, although Jonnan and others seem to have cleared that up for the most part), and it was only a Maso Medium all-abundant.

My theory for why you would want to fleet two defense ships breaks down when you suicide single attack ships into the opposing fleet, but the reasons are as follows:
-If you fleet a defense ship and an attack ship, the attack ship is targeted first, unless the defense ship has modules, which are at last check not that cheap to research.  This still applies if you fleet multiple attack ships with the defense ship, although in your games the attack ships may not die in the first round, which would make fleeting them a better option.
-If you send your defense ship in solo, it will consistently lose to same-tech cost evil weapons, and even in some cases (which we haven't covered) same-tech cost normal weapons, when facing a fleet.  A single ship it can handle fine.
-However, you are correct in that fleeting defense ships does not solve any of these issues, but creates new ones.

Since I can't find a good reason for having done that in my math, I'll assume I did it for simplicity's sake.

The point stands that if you are seeing a 100 defense ship able to take on 2x 84 attack ships fleeted and win, then you are consistently getting high defense rolls and they are consistently getting low attack rolls.  It's not impossible that you could win such a fight, but considering how many rounds it would take for you to kill the first one and how much damage they both -should- do to you in that time, it's unlikely.  By my own math, you have a greater than 35% chance of being destroyed in the first round of combat alone, and given that another 25 to 30% says that you will indeed take non-fatal damage that round, your chances for dying only go up.

Given that you don't often if ever see those tech levels in your games, it might be better if we could find something to compare that you do see, as that would allow us to agree with your view that defense is best for you, or refute it with actual evidence.  (I'm guessing it's the former based on your settings, but I'm not categorically ruling out the latter.  I'd say it has a somewhat better chance of being true than your 100 defense ship taking on 2x 84 attack ships fleeted and winning, though.)

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tetlytea, I do not believe the abuse to have been eliminated, as I'm certain people would have talked about it.  Further, I am unable to see this present in DL 1.5, which is rather old, and my understanding was that most of the MVers, Mumble aside, used DA, so my assumption is simply that I am looking in the wrong place.  I have not checked whether my endgame score from military is higher with it, but I doubt that it's that complicated to see the result of it.

Well...  ...since you asked so nicely...

In general, when I see a matchup where I'm pitting 100 defense against 168 offense (a less than 100% max attack coverage), I'm also usually putting in at least 2 relevant weapons modules of the same tech level.  I can do this early because I don't generally put a lot of research into Logistics.  You normally need Advanced Logistics to fleet two Mediums together, or else it would be a Medium and several Smalls.

Once I catch up in Logistics, if I'm playing as Terrain, I also usually also catch up in tech for Warp Bubbles.  In terms of cost, they're a little bit more in terms of tech, but the fact that you can put one in a ship instead of regular Impulse or Warp engines at much the same space and max out the weapons of the rest of your fleet makes defenses significantly more valuable.

It's not that my Def = 70% max attack ships don't lose.  They do.  But they often either win decisively or lose decisively, and they win decisively more than they lose, though I can't tell what the exact ratio would be since I don't know the mechanics of it.  It's probably because I don't only use minimal weapons in tandem with my 70% max attack rule.  I use at least 2 of something like Particle Beams, so that translates to about 5 rounds of attacking to kill the first ship in a 2-ship fleet, after which victory is almost always assured.  That said, my defense Mediums rarely ever attack Evil-aligned and Psionic Beam-equipped double Medium fleets, at least not without damage.

My entire ship roster doesn't consist of Defense Ships.  Some of them are Small orbital patrols - all attack ships with occasional Sensor modules.  Some of them are all-attack max-logistics Medium/Smalls - the norm for that period.  When my Defense Medium finally gets in front of such a fleet, it's likely that it's gotten something like 5-10 damage from a previous battle (with a cheaper fleet).

That's when I'm using Defense to eat up a more powerful foe in a solo war when I'm under technological and industrial disadvantage.  I can still win using Good Defenses under those conditions, but most of the time, I don't instigate war when I'm on the losing end of it, or I at least try to get allies to declare war as well.

As with most players, I prefer to arrange for a technological edge, and then use that edge to gain planets to secure my advantage.  This is not a nontrivial feat, and it's not a foregone conclusion.  Even with Psionic Beam, taking out early game Torians or Drengin can prove to be difficult, because Dominator Corvettes, while individually weak, will eventually wear out even the most powerful Psionic Beam fleet on the attack - and then you'll need 5-10 rounds of nonaction while that fleet goes to a friendly planet for repairing, or else 3 weeks to get to place where upgrading is speedy and then upgrade to regain HP.

These are not nontrivial costs.  A Medium Defense ship armed with Arnorian Battle Armor will make mincemeat of Dominator Corvettes without rest and go on to strip the orbital defenses of every planet the Drengin have.  In terms of speed and efficiency in hammering down a tech lead, the Good defense techs are with few equals.

I can't remember the last time I lost a ship to a dominator corvette-but it was probably a cargo hull on the wrong side of the galaxy when war broke out.  Even on my "all attack" ships I tend to put token defenses on them, and since the corvettes have not seen any sort of upgrade throughout GC2's various updates and incarnations, which is a shame by the way, this is more than sufficient.

I don't personally find Torians difficult-this may be because I haven't played much TA.  It may also be because my current favorite SA is Breeder (on a custom-I still play against the Torians), though I didn't have much more trouble with them as Hive a few months back when I used it primarily.

Somehow your post fails to describe to me your general fleet composition that I'm expected to consider.  You state you take about 5 rounds to kill an enemy ship, implying but not stating that it is a medium.  If it's a small, you should take 4 rounds to kill it with 4 attack, on average, whereas if it's a medium, it should be 10 rounds on average.  However, if you have a small/tiny filled to the brim with particle beams assisting, that's an extra 2 or 3 weapons per round at low or nonexistent miniaturization, which would give about the numbers you stated.  You don't mention what you have in your fleet other than your defense medium, but you imply that other ships are present by mentioning, among other things, a warp bubble.

If this is the case, i.e. you are using additional ship(s) in tandem with your defense ship, then two things could be happening.  The first, which is somewhat preferable, is that your defense ship still manages to be the targeting priority.  This would only seem remotely possible if it is the ship fielding the warp bubble in addition to at least one weapon.  The second is that your defense ship is not the first priority, in which case your attack ship incurs minimal damage per round.  I would bet on the former as your attack ship would be destroyed by the time you took out the first of the enemy ships, or close to it.  When a second enemy ship is present, even if you had two supporting smalls present, they would both die due to being priority targets, in the absence of a combat module (or in this case warp bubble).

I assume the presence of the warp bubbles means you are playing, primarily at least, TA.  I welcome you to attempt these same tactics in DA or even DL, as you will find your supporting weaponized ships are the primary targets, and wind up being destroyed (in approximately equal numbers as your opponents'), while your defense ship sits around and does nothing to justify its existence.  Targeting priority has been stated a few times in a few different places to be Attack / (Defense + HP), which means a medium with 50 defense needs 14x as much attack as a tiny ship or 9x as much attack as a small ship to be the priority target, assuming no hp, attack, or defense bonuses.  Even with 20 defense, we're looking at 8x as much as a tiny and 5x as much as a small.  It might also help to put a token defense on the tiny/small assisting ship(s), to bring their priority down somewhat.

Note: Although your medium defense ship in the above scenario will indeed fire upon the enemy ships, that does not justify its existence-it can do that just as well and in fact better by being an attack ship.  By virtue of not being fired upon, its defenses are useless.

Why would you put sensor modules on a ship when you can build Eyes of the Universe?  I can understand that having only 5 to 8 planets you may be suffering for a lack of tiles, but to me it's worth it's weight in gold.

I would suggest modifying your rule of thumb to 80% max attack, if possible, and seeing how many less ships you lose.  Also: Don't fight the Altarians, if at all possible.  Their SA can be rather painful, and if memory serves they get a decent luck bonus as well.

I've played DA, too, and the cheaper defenses there meant that invulnerable ships made even more sense, rather than less.  What didn't always make sense was fleeting attack ships with them, particularly when the advantages you gained would be marginal at best.  That still makes more sense than just throwing away Defense ships against targets that don't suit them.

Of course, I always try to get 100% max attack coverage with Defense when I can, but that isn't always possible.  Due to the timing window, You gotta exploit the defensive advantage you get as soon as you can get them, meaning that by the time you get your 1700 in additional defense spending, I could have already finished annexing another empire to mine.

Dominator Corvettes aren't a huge deal when you're constantly speeding away at ridiculous tech rates.  Not so when you're struggling to get even TriStrontium Armor.  I'm thinking that the normal settings make the Dominator Corvettes make more sense, as well.

I don't have a general fleet composition that I can name because I always vary my defenses to match the enemy's fleets - meaning that I have a reasonable amount of information on their existing ships.

I could have one Medium, one Large, or even Smalls taking on other Smalls.  As Terran, I do Warp Bubble Fleets with two weapons and otherwise all defenses on a Medium, then fill the remaining Logistics with all-weapon Smalls and Tinies, which is more efficient per weapon for the logistics space, I noticed.

I don't normally fleet Defense Ships with other ship, but I did so several times in DA for an obscure reason I can no longer recall.  Certainly, they sported more than one weapon, as I recall.  Generally, I only fleet Defense Ships with modules on them, so that they take targeting priority.

Eyes of the Universe takes research and IP I don't always have.  Most of the time, by the time I can afford them, the question of whether I'm going to win or not has been settled.  Modest Sensor modules on orbital defense Smalls in the odd spaces that get left behind offer me sight when I would otherwise have none.  This is equivalent to your question:

"Why would you bother with Dynamic Shielding when you can just use Doom Ray?"

The answer is I don't always have access to Doom Ray.

Except that the cost difference between Eyes vs. sensor modules as opposed to Doom Ray vs. Dynamic Shielding is...not anywhere near the same scale.

Small hull is 40, toss a weapon on it (maybe, I don't know) for another 30-50, and add in a sensor module or three at 10 a piece.  The result is anywhere from 70 to 120 per ship.  Eyes costs 500, which is roughly 7 small sensor ships, perhaps as low as 4.

Doom Ray will wind up costing you almost 32k RP, whereas Dynamic Shielding only takes 6400.  While this is somewhat close to the same ratio, I would imagine that in your games an extra 25k research is far more difficult to come by than an extra 400 production.

Even if you're running an all-military strategy, or close to it, focusing on social will move 50% of your base military (no bonus) to social (at which point it gets social's bonus), so at worst it'd take you 10 turns on a planet where you kick out a sensor ship in a single turn while military is funded and social is focused.

It may be worth noting that Eyes requires Sensors IV, which is an additional ~1100 research if you weren't going to do the sensors tree-less if you're picking up the sensor array for your purposes.

So I guess the question becomes how many of these guys do you build, and how much do they cost you?

Right-I wasn't suggesting that defenses were worse in DA, simply that fleeting with attack ships to support would not work, and as such you'd need both defenses and weapons (and I don't mean one or two) on your defense ship, which given DA's tech values means that while the weapon will be somewhat difficult for you to get to, you've maxed the defense tree in about or under the time it takes someone to get psionic, well, anythings.

Which further reinforces my point that good defense techs are neither necessary nor, well, good.

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Also, for the record, doom ray is only a good idea in DL/DA, where it is by far the cheapest end of tree weapon, and is complimented by psionic beam.  Even though psionic beam is arguably better in TA, by virtue of being cheaper, it's much, much better to go missiles, as psionic missile is unlocked much sooner than psionic beam, and more to the point, nightmare torpedo, which happens to be the end-all, be-all as far as weapons is concerned, is now in the majority of trees the cheapest end-tree weapon, in TA.

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Dominator Corvettes aren't a huge deal when you have any of the following to place on a medium hull, or a small hull with 25% miniaturization:
Best bets: Superior Duranthium from Duranthium III (!), Point Defense or PD Combo III, Shields I or Advanced Force Fields
Acceptable Substitutes: Titanium Armor I, ECM I, Advanced Deflectors

This is in virtually all games that I've played, where I see the corvettes at 2-3 attack (I think one game they were at 6 but the AI must have had a killer military bonus), but then again I rarely see them fleeted (and even when they are it's like fleets of two), so that makes a difference with the DA/TA combat model.

That is exactly what I wanted.  Well, not quite.

We're talking at least medium hulls, possibly even large hulls, I'd say at least 25% maybe even 40% miniaturization, presumably warp bubbles III, most likely enhanced logistics, I would hope impulse drive for the passive speed boost, and the aforementioned Point Defense, Superior Duranthium, or Shields, along with say Particle Beams I.

This is getting expensive-and I haven't even counted the good defenses (although their tech cost is somewhat minimal) or xeno ethics.

Mind helping me nail it down a bit more?

Regarding Eyes:

I usually research up to about Sensors 2 and then start putting an odd Sensor on my Small ships when the space warrants it - odd little spaces that don't get used anyway.  I need Sensors 2 to get Survey Ships up and running, so that's little cost as well.

Eyes is significantly further down the Sensors line and requires significant resources to acquire.  I would perhaps build about 10 or so of the Smalls in the relevant time frame.  The added IP cost is negligble and spread out in the empire.  I imagine the rounding off from overflow I would not have benefited from lowers the production cost even more, and the maintenance costing is rarely affected significantly.

Regarding DA:

I beg to differ.  The fact that Defense is that cheap means that I nearly always can get the appropriate Defenses post-haste with very little investment comparatively speaking.  Again, I would suppose that you don't really see it that way because you tech faster so the window of applicability is negligible.  Teching to the end of the Defense techs takes less than the weapons line, significantly so, but that doesn't mean I can do it easily.

Regarding Dominator Corvettes:

I see them in fleets with about 6 mass driver attack.  They are usually found in fleets of three.  Superior Duranthium could work, but you would have a ship that's mostly just defenses.   That's not a very useful ship in general.  If you have Arnorian Battle Armor, you would have more space for other things.

Regarding techs and fleet makeup:

As I said, it's not a constant thing.  Sometime I have Impulse Drive, sometimes not.  Sometimes I have Warp Bubble 3 - sometimes just Warp Bubble 1.  If I have Enhanced Logistics, I do fleets, otherwise not.  If I have Medium Scale Building, I do Mediums, but Smalls can work, too.  Rarely, I do Large but that's the exception, not the rule.  By the time I acquire Large Defense Ships, I've usually already used Defense Ships to secure a lead.

Point Defense and such techs are researched shortly before the relevant time (or when I find the Drengin have become Hostile), to ensure that they're relevant.  We don't always research them ourselves.  Minors and even major Civs are much more likely to give you defense techs in trade, if they have them, rather than weapons tech.  Therefore, we get significant savings on basement techs like ECM and Chaff where they would otherwise require a turn or two of research.

Put in that one extra turn and get Sensors 3.  That gives you Nano Recorders.  That costs a whopping 100ip to builid (the same as an Advanced Xeno Factory).

Another trick you can do, if Sensors w/o the Eyes is what you want, is build the Galactic Guide Book.   Tiny Hulls can house about 4 free sensors, at a cost of 25bc for the entire ship.   Spamming those everywhere is like, nothing.  And hey...as a bonus, they survey!

First, we're talking 5-8 planets here, so it's not one extra turn.  Secondly, it's an extra 300 for III and 500 for IV.  I would even suggest not wasting the extra 200 on II.  Nano Recorders may be worthwhile, but in this type of game I wouldn't bet on it, particularly since Eyes wouldn't seem to make much difference.

Galactic Guide Book has changed once or twice-it used to have the survey module take up 0 space, and now it's 0 cost, which means, yes, you can have a tiny hull with a survey module and nothing else on it cost 25BC and have 4 sensors (since the hull itself has 2).  But the GGB costs 400, which is nearly as much as Eyes.  If Eyes isn't worthwhile, how much do you want to bet the Book isn't?

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Roxlimn, I have a long post for you that I'm posting separate, as I've been typing it up in another window.

I'm not seeing smalls working.  Warp bubble takes up 17 space on a small hull (15+10% of 24), which leaves you either 7 or 9 space left for defenses (probably, because it's the priority target) depending on whether or not you have basic miniaturization, which you should.  If you have enhanced as well then you're looking at 13 space left over.  This looks like about 2 or 3 defense modules, and no room for a weapon-which you need on it for attack priority.  Alternatively, with a particle beam II, you're left with 5 space at enhanced miniaturization, which is enough for one defense of whatever type you choose.  In this instance, I can see how you might justify good defenses to yourself, but you'd be better off by getting to mediums first.

While it's true that arnorian battle armor is superior (get it?) to superior duranthium, superior duranthium should not even exist, as it is unlocked by the same tech as duranthium III (it even costs the same!)  Even against a fleet of 3x2 attack mass driver corvettes, two superior duranthiums at 5 space each on any hull up to medium should be worthwhile, and it happens to be 1100 research less than arnorian battle armor.

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Assuming mediums, enhanced miniaturization, basic logistics, superior duranthium, warp bubbles I, Laser V:

1 attack/21 (23) defense WB medium, 2x 5 attack/0 defense tinies, or alternatively 1x 6 attack/0 defense small.  Even if the AI is fielding graviton drivers you have a decent chance of winning, or actually not even taking any damage-and we didn't even bother to count good defenses.  However, you might have difficulty up against a fleet of two mediums or more.  (Relevant to the section below, your defenses here cost you 140BC alone.)

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Shields II and PD III, which are roughly the same tech cost as Duranthium III, will give you 14 (15) and 24 (26) defense in the same space, at 133BC/240BC respectively.  For the record, Duranthium III, which we've chosen not to use, would also give you 14 (15), at 140BC.  Subspace rebounder gives you 30 (34) at 300BC, while telepathic defense gives you 27 (31) at 360BC, and arnorian battle armor gives you 54 (59), which also costs you 360BC.

While subspace rebounder is far superior to shields II, it's more about shields II being shitty than subspace rebounder being good.  There isn't a good option in shields early on, though.  Telepathic defense grants you an extra 5 defense, after bonuses are accounted for, for an extra 120BC-not a great tradeoff but situationally worthwhile.  Arnorian battle armor is the only real winner here, as it isn't really even contested until Kanvium III 4100 research later (3600 if you don't get the battle armor) and even then it still beats it for defense, albeit not cost.

Dynamic shielding is a different story than subspace rebounder-it isn't defeated until invulnerability field, and actually slightly surpasses it in defense thanks to good's defense bonuses, although it does so at a higher cost (about 1.4x as much).  However, as that's 6500 research down the line and if you're going that far you may as well max it, dynamic shielding can be said to be good.

As soon as you hit PD Combo I, telepathic defense loses its usefulness.  It does grant a 5% additional defense bonus, but it does so at 33% more cost.  It is marginally saved by the fact that PD Combo I is 1700 more research than telepathic defense, if you don't even research telepathic, but PD Combo II and III are the final nails in its coffin.  If you ever need more than about 45 missile defense, I can't recommend it.

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To recap:
Dynamic shielding is very good for where it sits in the tree, but subspace rebounder isn't worth your time other than as a stopgap measure.  Telepathic defense is not bad, but it's not significantly better in defense/space and worse in defense/cost than PD II, which is roughly the same tech cost.  PD Combo eats it for breakfast.

However, if you're up against mass drivers, arnorian battle armor reigns supreme for virtually the entire game.