Defences vs. Multiple Ships

It is 3 instances of 1d2 attack against 1d2 defense: each ship fire at its turn.

Fleets are still better than single ships though.

3 attacks vs. 1 attack (fleet), vs. 3 x (1 attack vs. 1 attack)

I guess it would also depend on how the rounds go. The way I had it in my head was every ship on a side performing attacks in order, then the enemy ships each taking a turn and so forth until one side is destroyed.

Also it would probably slow the game down a lot having to account for lost shield/armour points and so forth, but it would be a neat detail, maybe.

I'm just a little bummed there won't be any swarms of fighters or carriers or anything like that, with ships just getting bigger as the tech tree goes along. Oh wait no, unless you can squeeze some of the more advanced weapons into a fighter hull and still have a realistic chance of harming ships of at least one order of size bigger than them (i.e. corvettes, and maybe frigates).

From what I've seen from some of the screenies, a particular weapon mount takes up less room on smaller hulls, yes? No? Maybe?

Well, it's more realistic that way in a sense. 10 normal bullets to your bulletproof vest is not the same as a single bullet 10 times the size ramming through the vest.

On the other hand, 2 lasers on a ship IS 2x more powerful than 1 laser on that ship.

And yes, weapon mounts take a little less space on smaller hulls.

I believe I read that the attack 'dice' are all put together, so if you have three 1d2 fighters, the result of their attack will be a number between 1 and 6. I'm almost certain I read that somewhere on the site or perhaps the manual. I'm fairly sure that will be against only a single enemy ship's defense.

If true, that would be why being the attacker is advantageous, because all things being equal an attack is more likely to succeed han fail. Actually if the difference between attack and defense is the damage, this would be pretty crucial otherwise fights would be a series of weak hits and it would kind of average things out and be a bit boring.

So from my secondhand understanding, if you sent a fleet of three ships with 1d6 Attack against a ship with 1d6 Defense, they might roll at best an 18, and at worst the defender might get a 1; this would result in 17 damage, before the defender even has a chance to defend itself. If both attacker and defender were stacked, or neither were stacked, then you could have a round of combat where there is likely to be little or no damage done. There's still a chance even with 16 vs 6, that they might roll very low and fail to hurt the ship they're going after, but there's also a chance they can do some decisive damage.

You could argue that the combined attack against 1x defense makes sense, in a way.

Overwhelming shield capacitors or something might be the shield version, nanobots or something regenerating armour after the round is over for that, and countermeasure launchers reloading? Or just not having enough launchers to handle all the incoming projectiles.

If any of you have played Battlefleet Gothic (warhammmer 40k fleet battle spinoff kind of thing), that is sort of how it works there, with ships having shields that regenerate at the end each round, and defence turrets that could be overwhelmed by large swarms of bombers.

Then again, for purely practical reasons, it might take up fewer system resources to just abstract it a little and give every ship infinitely regenerating defences, that are fully effective against every one ship attacking. My system is pretty much at the edge of the recommended requirements, with the exception of 256mb of ram, so I'm not complaining if that is indeed the case

I do hope it is possible to overwhelm defences with multiple attacks in the final version, however much my cpu might object to having to do all those extra calculations. *nudges lazy cpu*

Stomko, I don't think that's the way it works, otherwise all your fleet would fire at the same ship every time. I've had times when in a 3 vs 3 fleet engagement, the enemy never got the chance to fire.

Ships fire individually. So three 2-attack fighters versus a 2-defense ship would be calculated as 1d2 vs 1d2, three times.

Actually, most of you are WRONG. Unless the manual changes, here is the way it works (please see the manual which is already posted up in 'draft' form on the boards). Ships fire individually UNLESS combined in a fleet. In that case, their attack value is combined against a SINGLE target (each round of course).

Multiple fighters against a single capital ship WOULD work if the fighters are combined in a fleet. Here is an direct quote from the manual on this exact situation: (quoted page 47)
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Imagine a Dreadnought with five Phasor Cannons (20 beam attack), three Harpoon Missiles (9 missile attack), and one Singularity Driver (4 mass driver attack). This capital ship has 40 hit points. (pretty impressive, but here come the rebel X-wings!)

Now imagine it’s being attacked by a squadron of 4 fighters [as a fleet], each equipped with two Mark III Plasma Cannons (4 beam attack) [Ed- and an R2 unit] . All four of the fighters get to take their shot before the capital ship can respond. So each one rolls between 1 and 4. Since there are 4 of them, that means an attack between 4 and 16 against the Dreadnought. But consider that each fighter only has 12 hit points. Suffice to say it’s going to be a close call.
---

SO - fleet tactics are VERY viable against capital ships, and there is nothing stopping you from creating large fleets of small fighters to take on capital ships, if you want.

And the way I understand it, the capital ship can only return fire against one enemy ship per round (no matter what its weapon systems are), so the fighters have 4 rounds to attack.

Actually, most of you are WRONG

well, people with the rank of diplomat or amabassor are gamma testers. So they should know how the battle works.

But reading the various posts, one must be careful about where the combat takes place:
- if you are on the galactic map, ships and fleet are stacked. So only one component of the stack (a ship or a fleet) attack or is attacked .
- if you are looking the combat with the combat viewer, the side that is composed of fleet is detaille by the ships that compose it. And all ships in a side fire before the other side return fire. when doing so, each ship of a fleet fires individually against the same target, until it is destroyed. If the target is destroyed ands some ships may still fire before the other side return fire, they fire at a new target

I hope it is clearer

well, people with the rank of diplomat or amabassor are gamma testers. So they should know how the battle work

Hehe.. true.. they SHOULD

But people should also read the current draft of the manual As it addresses that exact question. Again, please refer to page 47 and see my above post. Someone above stated that the ships in a fleet fire individually at the enemy first.. when the manual states their attack is combined into one attack. Maybe it only LOOKS like individual attacks on the combat viewer ?

There's still a conflict apparently about what happens to the 'overflow' (if they enemy is killed by the first 2 ships out of 4 in the fleet). If their attack is combined into a single value then there should be no overflow.

Actually, most of you are WRONG. Unless the manual changes, here is the way it works

The manual is misleading.

While a fleet of four fighters could indeed attack for 4d4 damage per turn, they still fire one by one for 1d4, with all available defense of the targeted ship brought to bear against each individual roll. This in fact continues on an even smaller level as well. If a ship has multiple attack types (say, both beams and missiles), each attack type is rolled separately against all available defenses of the targeted ship.

For example:
Attacking ships: 2x frigates with 4 beams and 4 shields.
Defending ship: 1x cruiser with 4 missile, 4 beams, and 2 shields.

Attacking frigate A rolls 1d4 beam attack versus defender's 1d2 defense.
Attacking frigate B rolls 1d4 beam attack versus defender's 1d2 defense.

Defending cruiser rolls 1d4 beam attack versus Attacker A's 1d4 defense.
Defending cruiser rolls 1d4 missile attack versus Attacker A's 1d2 defense (shields are not optimal, so sqrt(4)).

Note also that even if a ship has multiple weapon types, it will still only target one enemy per round (normally if you have two ships in your fleet and the first destroys its target, the next will attack a different one). The multiple rolls will however be combined as one line in the battle viewer, but they are resolved internally as two or three different opposed rolls.

Believe me, I've examined the in-game workings of the battle system at length, and discussed the behavior of multiple weapon types on one ship specifically on at least one occasion with GC2's lead developer (Cari).

It's worth noting also that if it worked any other way than as I describe, defenses would be completely and utterly useless once fleets came into play.

I guess that answers that. Thanks for your replies, people!

The way it is now, as I understand it from your posts, is that defences are much more effective than they would be if you could overwhelm them. I imagine the AI would build nothing but tiny fighters packed with the most advanced weapons, forcing you to abandon all those cruiser and frigate designs you had been working on until 4am if it were otherwise.


I'm still going to try to use fighters, but when it gets to the point they are impractical, I'll just fire up Homeworld again

Fighters are far from useless, even with the way the battle system is. One of my favorite tactics in the early game (or any time versus a weak enemy/low difficulty AI) is to crank out swarms of the cheapest fighters available (a tiny hull with the earliest available weapon that will fit on it, a range extender, and not much else), and plant military starbases near my objective to greatly amplify the fighters' power. Military starbases can add tremendous amounts to each nearby friendly ship's attack power.

For example, I recall one game where I had two or three fleets of up to eleven of these cheap fighters based at my enemy's border. With a military starbase holding five or so attack bost modules nearby, Each fighter was boosted from having a 1-point attack to having 10+ attack. With a fleet of eleven of them, that meant I could deal out up to 110 damage per combat round. Great for obliterating enemy fighter fleets and poorly defended ships, but they're easily wiped out if they get out of range of their starbase or if the enemy fleets up ships with enough HP to withstand my fighters' attacks (since the fighters go down with one hit).

As you can see, there's quite a bit of depth in what sort of ships you can design, and how effective they will be. Rest assured, it's pretty well balanced so that no particular ship types will ever dominate--your effectiveness is directly based on how well you counter your enemy's weaknesses.

Darth Kyro, you are WRONG. Just kidding

Awesome post. Thanks for the clarification. I understand the different weapon types being separate rolls against separate defenses.. but you're right the manual is unclear on how it calculates fleet attacks. Can you suggest to the developers to include something like your post in the 'More detailed info' section of the manual, or in the readme? Or at least on an FAQ on here? As it changes the way I would design my fleets and attack strategy.

But doesn't it still stand that 20 fighters with 1 HP vs a single dreadnought will survive 20 rounds ?

Without getting into attack/defense/HP values, the Dreadnought would obliterate one fighter each round until they're gone, unless the fighters are able to nickel-and-dime the Dreadnought to death (if it has poor defenses or if the fighters have a military starbase nearby to give them the edge).

Of course, if your enemy fields Dreadnoughts, fighters may or may not be your best choice. As said previously, it all depends on what sort of weapons and defenses the enemy puts on his ships, and which ones you have available to put on yours. If he uses lots of defense and you only have the weapon type it directly counters, you're best off going for heavy hitters. If it has poor or no defenses, fighters would be a viable option. Or, depending on how heavily the game weighs each stat in the targeting algorithm, a mixed fleet may be the best choice.

There are so many factors that come into play in fleet battles, that you can't say whether a fleet of a few large ships or a fleet of many tiny ships is better.

Just some of the factors:
1. Who is attacking and who is defending (the attacker has the advantage as many times the defender (or one of the defenders) is destroyed before he can fire back)
2. Is fleet #1's weapons optimal against fleet #2's defenses; is fleet #2's weapons optimal against fleet #1's defenses.
3. Luck: you might have a high effective(i.e., after calculating true value) attack strength and high effective defense strength but still may roll low numbers
4. Bonuses: many things will boost your attack strength, defense strength, and hit points (e.g., star bases mining military resources, nearby military star bases, whether the ships were built on a planet with an advanced shipyard, super projects and galactic wonders, etc.)
5. Including engines and life support to extend a ship's range takes up space; a slow short range ship can pack more attack/defense than the same sized fast long range ship
6. Weapons take up less space in smaller ships but I think defenses take up the same amount of room; tiny ships normally just have weapons
7. If a ship is damaged in battle but survives, when it repairs itself it usually has more hit points

The fact that the number of ships you can include in a fleet defends on your logistic ability and larger ships require more points provides a good balance.

Ships fire individually UNLESS combined in a fleet. In that case, their attack value is combined against a SINGLE target (each round of course).

Well, it should be understood the following way:
On the galactic map, the ships engage combat separately UNLESS combined in a fleet. In that case, during the combat, they concentrate their fire on a single target.

6. Weapons take up less space in smaller ships but I think defenses take up the same amount of room; tiny ships normally just have weapons

That's strange. I would have thought that it was weapons that take up the same amount of room but defences that take up less, simply because there is less to defend. Oh, well.

Thanks for the starbase tip, I had forgotten about them completely! I wanted to ask this in a separate thread, but since your brought it up... Is the weapon bonus from starbases active within a sector no matter where it is built, or is it a certain number of tiles around the starbase? Off topic, but does this apply to economic starbases as well?

Either way, I'm already planning a squadron of 6 or so fighters called [planet name] Patrol or something, for border systems. You *can* name your fleets, right? (off topic all around )

Area-effect modules on starbases (i.e., most non-mining, non-starbase-only modules) give benefits within a fixed radius around the starbase (I believe it is 9 or 10 tiles on the map).

Quote from the Manual - Draft 3 : These Starbases can extend bonuses to ships or colonies up to eight parsecs away.

Edit : Off course, the manual already has some erroneous statements so I wouldn't bet on it

Starbases indeed to have an 8 parsec range.. I counted. (turn the grid on!) That's something you also need to take into account when setting up your economy base infrastructure with production boosting modules.... you want to get as many starbases overlapping the same area so placement is key!

so let's suppose that there are a fleet of 3 corvette attackers against 1 dreadnought in defense how the battle will develop? 3 corvettes will do 3 different attacks but dreadnought can attack all ships in a single turn or to attack all 3 corvettes will have to wait 3 different attack turns?

dreadnought can attack all ships in a single turn or to attack all 3 corvettes will have to wait 3 different attack turns?

The dreadnought can only fire on one corvette per turn, so even if it can kill a corvette in one shot, it will still take at least three turns.

No kidding, combining lots of small ships with starbase bonuses can be vicious, because every ship in the fleet gets the bonus.

As for fighters vs a dreadnaught at an equal tech level, if the dreadnaught has appropriate defenses the fighters are probably going to be toast. Sans defenses, the dreadnaught is going to be in trouble.