Are defenses simply to expensive?

from GalCiv2 Forums
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?



42,564 views 111 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sorry to say I disagree. How many of your ships, built mostly of attack, will ever reach level 52? Mine have. You pay more, but they take less space, and have higher survivability.

As an example. You take a ship with 30 attack, 0 defence, 12 hp. Sure, it can fire heavily, but it will die quite quick too.

Now try 4 attack, 30 defence (defence is smaller, remember), 12 hp. Might not kill quickly, but it'll kill. And you won't be rush-buying more, since you won't need more. Higher defence ships don't die anywhere near as often, and that is why they cost more. Saving money in the long run, especially on slow tech games.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Now try 4 attack, 30 defence (defence is smaller, remember), 12 hp. Might not kill quickly, but it'll kill. And you won't be rush-buying more, since you won't need more. Higher defence ships don't die anywhere near as often, and that is why they cost more. Saving money in the long run, especially on slow tech games.


That is very true marcanthonas say you put on Arnorian Battle Armor one of the most expensive types of armor avaible but is avaible early so you can use this and put an end to seeing any numbers but Zeros on the combat screen for your attackers. you will still be able to fire it is not going to get him the first time unless you have the doom ray or something like that and your attacking little fighters.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Arnorian Battle Armor


The reason to play the Drath as good. "I have teh nano ripper! Die universe!"
"But I have Arnorian battle armour +50%"
"You guys know we were kidding right?"
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow. That's a lot of numbers and calculations. I like numbers and calculations. However, I just got out of a game. It was a large map, all nine players. I was playing as the humans. The Torians became power hungry, so I had to stop them if I wanted to win. I saw what weapons they were using and researched the counter defenses.
"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."
Because of this, it's almost pointless to research defenses until I am at war or going to war, as in the case above. Anyway, I researched the defenses quickly and outfitted my ships with them. My fleet of three frigates would take on a fleet of their nine small fighters. Yes, they did have a lot of logistics. In that war with the Torians, I only lost a handful of ships. I was completely outnumbered, and yet the Torians lost the war in the end.
Calculations and numbers on paper is good. I like those. They make sense to me.
But when fleets of Torian fighters are wasted due to my defended frigates, it's hard for me to grasp that "ships with heavy defenses still are not as capable as ships with heavy weapons."
Defenses may be extortionately expensive, but I like them and I think they are worth the effort.

But that's just me.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Interesting debate.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
suppose it just depends on your gameplay i do put on def but prefer attk thats just my choice but it works out for me
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Marcathonas,

Go try those ships in the combat simluator.

The defensive ship wins at what appears to be 1 out of every 7 or 8 battles. That's not very good! I didn't do any real calulations because you can go try it for yourself. The problem is that defense doesn't always work. Sometimes the roll completely negates the attack, yes. But when you're talking about the kind of firepower ships can throw around even in the mid-game, one bad roll means a dead ship. Try the simulator. There are many cases where the defensive ship had a bad roll in the first round and boom - it's dead in one shot.

That's pretty bad, considering the defensive ship probably cost 75% more to produce!

I'm starting to wonder if the combat system needs to be revamped. Depending on random rolls of the die may not work so well when the numbers are between 1 and 50. At that point, one bad roll means a ship dies.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I prefer a varied fleet. in most games i standarize my martial ships' movement to two of the best engine i have available. my flagships tend towards heavy defense. my medium sized ships, toward balance, and my fighters toward offense/cost (i use neutrino bullets for my fighters even when i've researched the black hole gun). during peace times, i simply don't build fighters.

here's my reasoning. during times of peace one should be planning for the long term. the real key to using them well is having a strong economy, i think. defense-heavy ships are more costly to build and maintain, but as mentioned they are much more likely to survive in the long run. they also cost more to maintain. personally i think this is a good thing, because loosing one actually frees up more resources, something important in times of war if you'd previously maxed your economy out. you'll have fewer ships, and i don't believe the algorithm that estimates military power adjusts for the lower stats in defenses. what happens is that the AI finds a nasty surprise in the form of a fleet of nigh-invulnerable ships. unless someone really catches me with my pants down (didn't expect a driver-heavy civ to declare war and never built armored ships), i almost never lose more than a few ships during a war.

i haven't really figured out how the game determines the pecking order during combat. it seems like it's the smallest ships first. i lose a lot of them, but they're mostly there to extend the life of my capital ships. i usually play the Yor and don't research ethics until i'm filthy rich and then flip over to good. should that be allowed? i don't see why not: the game is scripted to do it to the AI players from time to time, and i don't think they even have to pay for it! i guess that's the cost of being able to see the future, so to speak. i've started messing around with the drath for their defensive bonus.

but anyway, with the new changes my methods work better than ever. i'm not nearly as afraid of surprise attacks, for one thing.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When playing as good, using the defenses they have early on will help a lot. When playing anyting but good, the best thing to do is to grab as many military resources as possible as early as possible and gaurd them like your life depends on it. They boost your firepower and defense considerably as your industrial tech grows. Put a military starbase and a picket near each one at the very least. They are that valuable!
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
one bad roll means a ship dies


indeed. HP bonuses are nice too. so are repair bonuses.

maybe the game doesn't need to be revamped. maybe the combat simulator does, since "once bad roll" in a spread of "1 to 50" is happening 6-7 out of 8 times.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, defensive systems are too expensive for their benefit. The combat system that depends on a die roll means even a super defense ship might get hit often enough to die. Near invincibible ships are real cool, however, they cost a ton of production to produce.

I'm not sure what the fix is. Lowering the production costs a flat 20% might be a start. Do too much and the balance would swing the other way. Defense is very useful early, because a defense of 1 will make your ships a lot more survivable when the average attack is 1, 2, or 3.

Late in the game, defensive ships just cost too much. Usually a player is better off with a bigger hull and lower defense at about the same costs. More hitpoints means about the same survivability. It is usually better to have a large ship with defense of 5 than a medium ship with a defense of 12. If building huge ships it is usually better to have 3 cheaper versions than 2 more expensive with the best defense.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Put a military starbase and a picket near each one at the very least. They are that valuable!


the only ones i don't guard like that are usually influence resources. the morale and economic boosts are equally important to your military power in terms of numbers you can support. and the use of the research resources is obvious as well.

typically, i guard the military resources first.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Defenses are a lot better if you've already got a huge advantage because it makes the damage you take a lot smaller when victory is already assured. A fleet of defensive ships facing a fleet of offensive ships will get wasted on a consistent basis, unless the defensive fleet is composed of very large ships and the attacker is just a swarm of fighters without military starbase support. Anyone who thinks that defense beats offense needs to spend some time with the fleet combat simulator. Even when using the optimal defenses, the defensive ships lose against offensive ones, even though they cost more and the effectiveness of defenses is greatly reduced against the non-optimal weapon type.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The combat system that depends on a die roll means even a super defense ship might get hit often enough to die


does it roll for the sum total or your defense, or for each module installed?

if it rolled for each module (this could apply to weapons as well), you'd have a much more center-heavy curve for the spread of your rolls.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Defenses are a lot better if you've already got a huge advantage


researching high-end defenses is much easier than researching high-end offenses.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, I admit having the same attack to defence is stretching it. But add Drath multipliers so you get 45 defence, and you can see the results improve. The ship I was talking about (level 52) was a huge hull, in 1.0x (before level hp reduction, which was a great idea) and had something like 90 defence versus and average 30 attack (and that's optimised defence, I always get to the top of defence tech trees) and you can see that yes it cost me 1000bc to build, but I only needed one. It destroyed an entire navy single handed, and they had something like 7 times my military rating before the war (killed off most of my ships). It had obscene hitpoints, and never took more than 5 damage in battle, which was often healed.

I'd have estimated the value of the ships it destroyed would have been about 15,000bc. Not bad for a 1000bc investment.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It rolls the sum total, so instead of a curve you have an equal probability of all possible results.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
researching high-end defenses is much easier than researching high-end offenses.

Even so, the additional cost of building and maintaining defense modules makes their use a bad idea, even when you have a technological advantage. Using higher tech weapons is almost always a good idea, because cost increase is smaller than the performance increase, except in a few rare cases like Subspace Blasters. Higher tech defenses increase in cost much more dramatically, so using the higher tech defenses isn't always an efficient use of resources.

The ship I was talking about (level 52) was a huge hull, in 1.0x (before level hp reduction, which was a great idea) and had something like 90 defence versus and average 30 attack (and that's optimised defence, I always get to the top of defence tech trees) and you can see that yes it cost me 1000bc to build, but I only needed one.

What a tremendously poor argument. Anecdotal evidence is worthless to begin with because it doesn't compare the effectiveness of the chosen strategy to alternative uses of those same resources. In this case, we see a tremendously defensive racial bonus combined with a broken HP adjustment and the top level defense tech resulting in a very powerful ship. Wow, sign me up. Give me a similar pile of resources with bonuses and it's easy to make offensive ships that would have no problem wasting it.

I'd have estimated the value of the ships it destroyed would have been about 15,000bc. Not bad for a 1000bc investment.

The AI is dumb when it comes to ship combat. I get similar rates of return on my offensive fleets without any trouble because the AI can't handle overwhelming force focused on specific points. It spreads its ships out and then gets picked off a piece at a time.

Calculate the cost of a defensive fleet, then create an offensive fleet that costs the same. Send them at each other in the combat simulator and see which side wins almost every single time. If you want to more accurately recreate the conditions in which the game takes place, don't assign all of your defenses to match the enemy offenses, since perfect defensive optimization is not usually the case in game. The defensive fleet gets slaughtered by an even wider margin than before.

Defenses cost too much. They make your ships take longer to build, cost more to maintain, and still lose a straight up fight against an evenly matched fleet. Defense is only good when you already have such an advantage that your enemies would be defeated anyway, because going for a lot of defense is absolutely a sub-optimal strategy in almost all cases.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm sorry empyrean, but you're just wrong. The fleet calculators don't work on the coming model, so they won't allow shots to be fired by the defending fleet. Defences work out to be more efficient because they're smaller. If you want pure statistics:

First 1.1 games I played: Used attack strategy. Lost, lost, lost, won, lost.

Defensive ships: won, won won, lost, won, lost, lost, won.

True, not much to go by, but I win more playing with ships that can take a beating. All out offense ships WILL start to die, while high defence ships will gain an advantage.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, that huge hull with 90 def, 30 atk won the game. Another player could have won 20 turns earlier with 20 atk, 5 def ships in fleets, or even 20 atk, 1 def ships. Just retreat or replace the damaged ships and a player will rarely lose any of them if they keep attacking.

I'm not sure what the bias is on the design team against defenses, with the high costs, the inane devices such as Orbital Fleet manager, and the like, seem contrived to me, to make defending a lot more difficult than attacking. It is very hard for a player to dig in and defend. In player vs. player it would be so much clearer.

In my opinion, a 20% reduction in defensive module costs would be a good idea for the next release.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Defenses cost too much


i've been playing devil's advocate to an extent. i don't think the problem is as severe as it might seem. however, in the past i've gone through GC2Types.xml and adjusted some of the stats. actually i found the most interesting thing to change was the size modifier.

but i had also reduced the costs of the components. first i reduced the cost of defenses:
very early techs, no reduction
low-end comps, 5%
mid-range, 10%
good: 15%
high-end: 20%
next-to-last: 25%
ultimate: 20%

that was a very rough overview. the reduction was highest for the last models of all defenses (in other words, the cost of shields III was reduced more than the cost of shields II).

good-specific defenses also received reduced sizes.
defense techs were made about 15% more expensive and the AI value by 20% or so

lately i've also been experimenting with creating more difference between the weapon/defnese techs, though focusing on roughly matching them. for example, zero-point armor seems to be the most expensive defense for what it offers, but neutrino bullets are an increadibly cheap offenese.

but still, what do you think about making the roll per component? i'm no programmer, but it doesn't seem like such simple caculations would eat up that much more of your system's processing power.

that's the major reason i don't play metaverse: i'd rather balance the game to my personal tastes and whims more than have a few graphics below my posts - which isn't meant to say i won't go for it sooner or later
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
switching from devil's advocate to peace maker:

let's remember there are a lot of styles of play, and a lot of ways of enjoying gameplay. the real goal should be making sure people who enjoy metaverse games and also prefer defenses aren't disfavored in the socring system.

along those lines, i wonder if it'd be possible and desireable to develop a method of certifying mods for metaverse play, especially in light of the next planned update...
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm sorry empyrean, but you're just wrong. The fleet calculators don't work on the coming model, so they won't allow shots to be fired by the defending fleet.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Even with the defensive fleet attacking first, they still lose consistently. Defensive fleets can't take as much advantage of a first strike, and even with the first strike advantage they usually lose. Making both sides fire at the same time is an improvement for defensive fleets as it negates their inability to capitalize on a first strike, but if they couldn't win even with the first strike advantage before then simultaneous firing isn't going to change that.

If you want pure statistics:

First 1.1 games I played: Used attack strategy. Lost, lost, lost, won, lost.

Defensive ships: won, won won, lost, won, lost, lost, won.

Do you know what anecdotal evidence is? You just gave me more of it. All I'm seeing is that you either have no idea how to play with heavily offensive ships or you're playing a race with huge defensive bonuses. Drath, almost certainly. The question of defense vs offense is a much more interesting one if your race starts with a +50% defense bonus, but since we're talking about offense and defense on their own merits your experience is worthless. Playing a race with a huge racial defense bonus and extra defense bonuses from researching good exclusive defense tech doesn't teach us anything about offense vs defense on their own merits. You might as well claim that influence victories are a million times easier than conquest victories because the Terrans are so much better at them. Try it with the Drengin and see which is easier then. Point is, racial bonuses towards a particular style of play make anecdotal evidence gathered by playing a race with a strong tendency towards a particular playstyle meaningless.

True, not much to go by, but I win more playing with ships that can take a beating. All out offense ships WILL start to die, while high defence ships will gain an advantage.

Nothing to go by, more like. My offensive ships almost never take damage either, and they're a whole lot cheaper than any defensive fleet that has any hope of success against them. Not to mention the additional research costs of developing an advanced offense and defense instead of just offense.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It rolls the sum total, so instead of a curve you have an equal probability of all possible results.


okay, well i've gotten into tweaking the game myself from time to time, as you can see above. would you happen to know how i might be able to change the way combat rolls are calculated myself?
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Defensive fleets can't take as much advantage of a first strike, and even with the first strike advantage they usually lose


they scrapped first strike in 1.1 my bad i'm dyslexic



Do you know what anecdotal evidence is? You just gave me more of it. All I'm seeing is that you either have no idea how to play with heavily offensive ships or you're playing a race with huge defensive bonuses. Drath, almost certainly. The question of defense vs offense is a much more interesting one if your race starts with a +50% defense bonus, but since we're talking about offense and defense on their own merits your experience is worthless.




actually, that's marginally valid and uncrolled statistical evidence. adnvanced inference algorithms could be applied to it with enough collateral understanding.