Are defenses simply to expensive?

Facelessclock

Join Date 03/2006

Are defenses simply to expensive?

The 'Exploring effects of simultaneous combat' thread by Velben seems to suggest that while there may be some form of shift in the next version of the combat system, ships with heavy defenses still are not as capable as ships with heavy weapons. It even seems that in some cases, the ship with better weapons is flat out better no matter if attacking or defending.

For example, Kanvium, which has an absorption of 4, costs 80mp. By contrast, a Quantum Driver does 4 damage and only costs 37mp.

Or take Ultimate Invulnerabilty, which is a sheild that has an absorption of 9. That costs 140mp. Disruptors III costs 70mp and does 8 damage. And let's not even get started with the Doom Ray. The Disruptor is also slightly smaller.

I've tried repeatedly to make effective defense-based ships, and its always failed. Not because the defenses are ineffective, per say. For most of the game you can put a ton of defenses on a ship, enough to make the ship very nearly invulnerable to a particular damage type. The problem is that those ships are also absurdly expensive. They're simply not worth the cost. Take the Sheilds vs. Beams example above...Disruptors vs. Sheilds, the weapon is half the cost of the defense. Let's say the hull is small (55mp) and has three Hyperdrives (10mp) for a total of 85mp without weapons. A ship with 5 Disruptors costs 435. The ship with five Ultimate Invulnerability sheilds will cost 785. And it can't shoot. Hah!

Every defense line has its cost increase dramatically as they evolve. This is not the case with the weapons systems, which see costs rise far less. Using the beams vs. sheilds example again, Beams, from Particle Beam to Disruptors III, increase in cost 280 percent, fromt 25mp to 70mp. Sheilds increase 466%, from 30mp to 140mp. Again, I'm not using Doom Ray because trying to use ANY defense against it is just about impossible.

It just isn't fesible to build ships with heavy defenses because they cost far to much. Ships with heavy defenses won't be built no matter the system as long as this is true. At its heart, a 4x game is about it's numbers. And these numbers show that weapons easily beat even the defenses that are suppoesd to stop them, in an economic sense.

I'm also very surprised by their cost becaues of this - trying to counter is, in the long run, is always going to be ineffective. Why? Because a defense only defends well against a certain attack. The other two work. That means if any random empire attacks you, there is a 2 in 3 chance that your defenses won't work. However, there is only a 1 in 3 chance that your weapon type won't work. Supposedly this is negated somewhat because if you're smart, you'll be building defenses for those empire you plan to war or which think are going to attack you. Empires don't randomly declare war. Still, it seems odd.

I think that defenses need a cost overall. What do you think?

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Defense is best only for people who are scared that their ships aren't powerful enough. No offense. I put all the weapons I can on my ships and fly them straight into the enemy. I get only minor casualties and have lost only a handful of battles.
As soon as I get myself another computer, I'm going to try this strategy at painful difficulty.

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Sorry, you get 'a handful' of casualties.... on a 'large' map against tough AI, I might lose perhaps four ships in the whole game. FOUR. Defence, properly used, renders your ships almost invincible. Hundreds of turns of constant war, being outnumbered three-to-one, surprise attacks, etc... FOUR ships. Once I only lost one in a game. I never lose a battle, unless it's 1v13 or something.

Not to mention things like defence reducing damage, so you can keep killing longer, lets small groups pwnzor whole enemy stacks, etc.

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Pankotus have you tried using no defenses, but purely using speed and overwhelming first strike to fight battles?

If you pick your battles correctly, and attack only when you have overwhelming force (easy to do with superior speed and all weapon ships) , it's as good if not better than adding defense.

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Another thing about the system is that while it's perfectly viable strategy to focus almost 100% on weapons and ignoring defenses, doing the opposite, with minor research on weapons and mostly on defenses is clearly inferior.

Very true, you could even say usless. But this is obvious because, whats the point of having a really good defence if your attack is non existent. with the opponent doing all the attacking something will get through eventually, which is why I rarely go above 50% defences: It just isn't worth it. Yup Its a wonderfull thing variance...Using defences is just hedging your bets, its not foolproof, but its much better than having nothing

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Very true, you could even say usless. But this is obvious because, whats the point of having a really good defence if your attack is non existent.

Well sure, i did add to my ship one particle beam I or II . Otherwise 0 attack = autoloss lol.

But apparantly there is a very good point in haveing a really good attack, if your defense is literally non existent....

.Using defences is just hedging your bets, its not foolproof, but its much better than having nothing

"Criticals" can blow even the best defenses away.... I notice ships doing more damage their attack rating!

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One cannot state that if one had won a game by using or not using defences this means that strategy is clearly superior. One can say the strategy is sufficient or, in the worst case, not too detrimental to your cause.

I have used both balanced ships as all-out offence and both have suited me well. Will they both work with the new combat system? I'll have a boatload of digital crews ready to find out the hard way. What is certain is that battles will become far bloodier. Some believe this will pan out in favour of the balanced ships while others believe cheap kamikaze ships will be the way to go.

Whatever the case, one should not forget that variance is a measurement of risk (believe me, in the financial sector this measure is very important). As the power of the systems increase, the variance increase and hence, defences become less reliable. I believe a normally distributed random variable would help out a lot (but that's just me

).

But what are we basing the effectiveness of defences on? On manufacturing cost? Extra research effort? Space?
I believe everyone can agree that balanced ships tend to have a larger lifespan but does that lifespan compensate the extra effort? I guess it depends on the tech/manufacturing lead. If you can achieve a critical lead, he can't touch you and defences are worth it.

Veblen ran quite a few insightful tests in his thread. Among other things, they showed that although all-offence ships tend to lose out in some types battles, they seem to cause more manufacturing damage than they take. A Pyrus Victory so to speak. This becomes more important when the opponent is capable of focussing his power.

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SleekDD you'll have to help me here, whatis? a pyrus victory. I think i'm getting what your saying, but it sounds cool and i might have to drop it into a converation somewhere and it would be usefull to know the book def.

Well sure, i did add to my ship one particle beam I or II . Otherwise 0 attack = autoloss lol.

I just didn't want to be rude...

richrf - these criticals don't happen that often, especially for me, I sometimes do get the occasional big hit, but its a real pleasure when my dreadnaughts go up against a massive fleet of high powered ships and all they roll is 0 with the occasional 10 thrown in. They soon die.