Combat

How does it work?

from GalCiv2 Forums
If I have a ship with 1 beam attack and attack an enemy ship with 1 beam defense, is it then impossible for me to damage it? I mean, I will 'roll' an attack of 1 while they will 'roll' a defense of 1, cancelling my attack out, correct?

Another case. My ship has 1 beam attack. I'm attacking a ship with 1 gun defense (armor). According to the manual, "non-optimal defenses are also added at a rate of the square root of their value." Is it impossible for me to destroy this ship?

Final case. A 1 beam attack against an unarmed 1 beam defense freighter. Can I destroy this ship?
3,382 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Manual is wrong.

You roll from 0->n (where n is the amount of attack of defense) on attack and defensive rolls. But if you do roll a 0 for attack, it doesn't get shown in the combat viewer.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No, attack is from 1 to ship maximum, while defense is from 0 to ship maximum. Keep in mind that each category is rolled separately, so an *early* distributed defence capability is much better than one focused on one type, excepting of course if you have focused on the type matching your enemy's weapons.

Conversely, attacks should be focused on one type rather than distributed as the defender rolls all his defence versus each attack type. Before anyone has defenses, a distributed attack leaves you with a minimum damage of as many types you have so it is slightly useful, but you're unlikely to have sufficiently small weapons in more than one category anyway. Use starbase bonuses of a different type than your ships are equipped with for this effect.

Defenses are worth their whole value for matching type and the square root for other types. So a defense of 1 is equally good against any weapon, but unmatching defence gets less and less useful as the number gets higher.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You are contradicting each other. Whom of you is correct?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Best strategy:
Wait to build until you have researched enough to build bigger and better than their early ships. They always start building with the minimum, just to get some military. But that is their downfall every time.

A good early research while in the colonization phase is the real key to keeping ahead of them.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

You are contradicting each other. Whom of you is correct?


Unknown, unless you talk with the guy that wrote combat. The defence roll is definately 0..N, not 1..N as stated in the manual, otherwise a 1 attack ship could never kill a 1 defence ship and you'd get a never-ending combat if there were two such ships in play. Since we can run that battle and see that it dosent work that way, we know that defence roll is 0..N. Attack roll is harder to spot. It may be the same as defence, it may not be. We dont know.

For non-optimal defences, the square root of 1 is still 1, so it dosent matter early on. They still cant make a ship invulnerable, but you wont lose anything by having the wrong type installed at this stage.

In your final case - dont build ships with defence but no offence. They cant kill the enemy, so you are just delaying the inevitable. Even if escorted, the targeting algorithm looks for dangerous yet fragile ships first, a defended but unarmed ship will be ignored till last. Dont put any defence or offence on non-combatants, the enemy will ignore them till last in fleet combat and if caught alone they are dead anyway.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Concur with the specific defense strategy only in the early to middle stages of a conquest in that the first race you take on will probably be weak and ineffectual and within your range, your planetary defense force will probably be enough for you to take them over and still have a mediocre military left.

Your next opponent though (2nd or 3rd year) you should have a more balanced defense as them AIs start to get more weapons specific and unless you want to spend alot of money doing upgrades or spend alot of money having dual crafts (2 types of fighters, 2 types of escorts, 2 types of capitals, etc etc) its better to have the balanced defense.

Later though, its a crap shoot, I still place defenses from all three spheres on my ships but I may overload them or bias them a bit more to what the last couple of aliens are offensively placing on their hulls.

So far this seems to work for me. Although, I do not play on suicidal and I typically play with all AI races in the game at first not just one or two.

Good Hunting, 'till we meet that is!

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large