Single weapon type vs. Multiple weapon types

I tend to use a single weapon, because I play on medium or small galaxies with slow research. If I find myself using developing two types of weapons, I find myself wielding two inferior weapons. At the same time, you have to wonder: does it balance itself out because the AI has to defend against both?

If I had infinite patience and time, I'd play with this, to be sure. As it is, I don't suspect that there is a huge difference. I find that by the time I can field two strong weapons, my ships are almost always completely superior regardless.

Early game, when weapon and defense values are low - max out on a single weapon type, the best you have.

Later on when defenses come into play more and high attack weapons are available - mix them up to get those defenses square rooted!

I always fill my fleet with three missile ships, three gun ships, three beam ships, two ship with both beam and gun, two ships with both gun and missile, two ships with missile and beam and one to head the fleet with the weapons and the defences for that weapon. This when the enemy attacks on of my fleets my ships can take no matter how their fleets are put together.

I do this because the AI often has its ships attack the same ship there trying to takle them out one at a time. With an all defence and all weapon ship at the head. They attack it first and it survives their strike there be protecting my others ships and allowing to finish off the enemy.

the AI also usually only foucses on one weapon type for their ships adding denfences when needed.

*scratches head* Well, I've found that one weapon seems to be the best, even in 1.31. I have mixed and matched, but in the end it seems to me that the 1 weapon solution seems to work best- dealing out more damage on average as long as I'm not running beams agains sheilds or guns vs armor... I normaly have 2 to 3 versions of my fighting line ships that I upgrade to accordingly depending on what I'm about to face. Since it seems that if I run 2+ weapons, I get more low rolls that are beat by my opponents defense. Thou I'd hate to swear by it, because I saw where that thinking got me last time...

This is a tough question. I usually start with one weapon tech but i trade for others just incase the ai counters my weapon tech. So my ships have 1 weapon type but later on others with 2 or 3. but thats for later in the game. I also try to mix those ships together in fleets ie a ship with Beam next with 2 and others with all 3 to keep the ai from having an upper hand in space battles. So i think early on its wise to say with 1 weapon then if you want to try trading and researching others later on knock yourself out.

I don't make ships until necassary for war, then I will choose what weapon is the most effective. So just keep a small army but when it is time for war, boost production in military, redesign as necessary and go to war. When war is over, sell what you don't need (like level 1 ships or damaged ships) and keep high level ships around. Even though you will not be the strongest, you will have the strongest economy by not spending maintance on ships you don't need. And when needed you can usually make a nice 2 or 3 fleets within a month or just purchase enough to do it.

I think I'm really more talking about late game ship design, though there is no reason why it shouldn't apply earlier as well.

It seems with miniaturization fixed it's easy to get late game single weapon type attack values into the high hundreds even thousands. Clearly its one way to go but the need for such high values of attack could only be to counteract correspondingly high values of defense. I thought that perhaps it could be as effective to build a ship with 300 attack in each category that would be pretty much guaranteed to do well against anything except something with pretty decent defense in all areas, and maybe not so bad against that kind of ship as well.

The thing that hasn't changed is the hit points of ships. With all the tech, wonders and trade goods, a new huge hull ship has 75 hit points, there's no real effective difference between a ship of 1000 attack and 1500 attack. Actually I would assume the odds of a single ship killing shot go up, but the point I'm making is once you have enough attack to have reasonable expectation of killing the ship the major benefit of adding more attack is to counteract defense. I think it might be better to counteract the defense by adding the extra attack value in a new catagory.

It's always best to have your ships counteract your opponents ships but what do you do against two opponents each using two different combinations weapons and defense? It gets to be real rock paper sissors. At least if you have all three you won't get caught with your pants down.

What prompted me thinking about this was the noticeable difference (to me anyway) of AI ship building in v1.31 vs. v1.2. It seems to me I'm seeing more multiple attack and multiple defense type ships mid to late game than I ever saw in v1.2. Also I'm seeing better variation in weapon types used by different AI's. In v1.2 I sometimes went whole games never facing anything other than missiles.

The other aspect about using multiple weapons types is that on any one roll you actually are rolling three times, once for each weapon type. Assuming that the odds of a certain amount of damage is independent of weapon type, the expected value (mean) of damage doesn't change, but multiple rolls definitely reduces the standard deviation of the damage. So your more likely to have more consistent damage and less likey to have exceptionally bad (or good) rolls.

. Assuming that the odds of a certain amount of damage is independent of weapon type, the expected value (mean) of damage doesn't change

Pretty big assumption I think. Unless I am mistaken, the damage made by a weapon is:

random(0, attack) - random(0, optimal defense + squareroot(sum(non optimal defense))) if it is positive.

Hi!

squareroot(sum(non optimal defense)))

I always thought each non-optimal defense is sqrt-ed before summed. Makes quite a difference: int(sqrt(9+4)) or int(sqrt(9)) + int(sqr(4)).

BR, Iztok

i usually stick with just the missle weapons. I get up to photon and
quantum torpedos before anybody and load as many as i can on my ships.
It's easier to get up to the awesome black hole weapon that way, i think.

Well, I recall bumping into a bit of a snag with using more than one weapon. I'm not exactly what it was, but it led me to believe that each weapon is fired in the same round, yes, but against all the defenses.

I'd have to run a test, but I'm having the impression that the following happens.

Suppose you have a ship that has 1 attack rating in each category, against a ship that has 1 defense in a single category. Each of the weapons fires in the same round, but gets matched against the entirety of the defenses, meaning 1 vs 1 (since sqrt 1 = 1).

As I said, it's an impression I got somehow, and I haven't tested it. I could be wrong about it, although I do recall feeling strongly about it.

Yes Mumblefratz, having 1 and only 1 type of weapon is better than 2 or all 3 put together on 1 ship. The fleet I showed you on the other thread was compsed of 4 ships, 2 of them were beam atck and defence, with the other to being beam defence and missle offence, and beam defence and mass drivers.





The reason I use a lot of Ultimate Invulnerability is because you can put a lot of them on a ship and it blocks out 10 each, so you can have a better defended ship, compared to the aeron Missle defence wich is size 4 and does 10 defence. In my opinion there should be a 2nd generation of Aeron defence to make it size 3, would make it more usefull.

I always make 3 designs of each ship to get the most out of each one. However, sometimes if Im fighting 2 enemies at the same time, wich was the case in the other thread I was fightin 4 races at the same time, I make a special ship with 2 defences, not 3 cuz it would make 2 low defences with a big 1. Like this ships



That 1 is from the yor wars, and it turned out to be very useful against the terrans wich were mostly beam offence and defence.

After invading the yor I got enough techs stolen to make a new generation of ship



That 1 turned out to be such a great design, Im still using it now on the clean up wars.





After a while of playin I tryed a new weapon and defence type, hence 2X for experimental, missles, but it didnt work in practice and expectations were high, but is an obsolete design by now.


So using my experience on the game I thought using 2 defences is better than using 2 weapons, wich turned out to be the greatest design of them all. Bear in mind Im about to make the 4th generation now since Ive conquered so many planets with Hyperion shipyards that my minituarization is incredibly high, now I just need a new design to use it. This is the 3rd experimentl generation.





You need to keep in mind, those are the shipyard "stock" stats, without adding the military resources bonuses, so the atck and defence is much much higher than that.


In conclusion, that gigantic galaxy game I played teached me many new strategies I hadnt considered be4, including the use of 2 DEFENSES, NOT offensive weapons.




Offtopic:

Does any1 know if the Dark Avatar will have support for dualcores, as in faster loading between turns and most importantly faster saves laoding??


Thanks for your attention
[/goes play BF2142/]  

Monc34

Pretty big assumption I think. Unless I am mistaken, the damage made by a weapon is:

Yes, if the opponent has defense in one of the categories then of course that weapon will have lower odds of damage, which is kind of my point about using multiple weapon types in the first place.

What I was saying in the section quoted was that all things being equal (i.e. same values of defense in each area) there was no intrinsic advantage to one weapon type over another. The assumption that a beam attack of 25 and a missile attack of 25, both against no defense, should on average yield the same damage is a reasonable assumption.

i usually stick with just the missle weapons. ... It's easier to get up to the awesome black hole weapon that way

This is a very good point. Though I do believe that the beam 25 and missile 25 are equal in the damage they can cause against equivalent defense, they aren't necessarily equal in damage per cost or damage per hull space. On both damage per cost (not so important) and damage per hull space (more important) the black hole eruptor is the best weapon. It's not orders of magnitude better but it is a bit better.

To a large extent I'm playing devil's advocate here, I've just *always* used single weapon type ships and as I get better and better technology, I've upgraded them for more and more damage in the single category. When I ran across an opponent that had major defense against my weapon then I'd change up to another weapon.

Things have definitely changed due to the miniaturization changes. To continue to use single weapon type ships and cranking their damage into the thousands pretty much just because that's what I've always done is a much bigger assumption than any I've made here. Which is the better way to go, I don't really know, but I've yet to hear any compelling reason why one method is better than another.

It also turned out to be a cheaper design that 3x, about 500 credits less for each one, and about 20 maintenance less, wich in the long term is a tidy amount more per turn, always great to have more money dont you guyz think??  


Monc34

Yes Mumblefratz, having 1 and only 1 type of weapon is better than 2 or all 3 put together on 1 ship.

No offence Monc, but why? I'm still waiting for a reason other than this is just the way I've always done it.

Well, cuz most of the time when im fightin powerful enemies, they will have very very VERY high defences, the only way to get around them is to either, have very high tech on 1 of the weapons, or try to get around them by researching a new type of weapon, wich is very time consuming and by the time ur done ur going to probably die,so either trade a powerful weapon and then use only that new weapon on a ship, or put that new weapon with the high tech old weapon, wich is BAD cuz of their high defences. Why bad u ask??? Cuz when you fire it will be sqred root like u alrdy know, and it wont do more than 4-10 damage, and thats only if I get lucky and that doesnt happen too often. So just concentrate on 1 weapon, like the new 1 u just trade for exmaple, and you will do more damage even if it is sqred rooted, so instead of less than 10, you could do 15 or 20, and with about 2 shots you will kill the ship. The problem is that the computer uses lots of small and medium ships to defend their capital ships, and by the time ur done killing the 8-10 small ships, the capital ships are still INTACT, and will owne u. SO either use huge ships to be able to take out many small ships and survive to get to the capital ships, or use many many medium ships, wich is not good cuz if you loose youll take a long time to get them back, since medium ships cost close to the same as huge ships if they have the same weaponry, itll take you forever. It is much more efficient to use the different weapons on different ships, but make ur ships defendable against the 2 most used weapons in the galaxy and focus on 1 weapon.

But I dont know, this is just my opinion and it has worked great for me, maybe u dont pay much attention to losing lots of ships. I also got to tell u that just cuz u got 2 or 3 weapons on 1 ship it will only fire to 1 ship, not 2 or 3, so I dont think is an effiecient way of killing enemies, only IF you have all 3, doomray, black hole eruptor, and black hole guns, and ONLY then will u be able to use all 3, or 2 if you like, cuz thats when youll be able to put lots of the 3 weapons, and thats sacrifizing defences.

Is a different game for everybody, with many different strategies to win the same game. Sounds contradictory?? Well it is, but it works your way, and it works my way, so congrats
      


Monc34

Its a different game for everybody, with many different strategies to win the same game.

Absolutely correct. I'm not trying to pick on you and in fact I've always done exactly as you describe. It's just that I don't have a good reason as to why other than that's what I've done in the past and it's always worked.

Actually, I don't think this is a game breaking decision one way or another. I mean has anyone ever lost the game once they've gotten any one of the top end weapons? So all I'm really questioning is what's more efficient.

I am mainly talking about late game ships where the tech tree is pretty much done and I do have all three top weapons.

But I'm just thinking back to my last v1.2 game where at the end of the game I had a dreadnought (actually I had over a thousand of them) that had a 1300 missile attack once you included all my military resource mining bonuses. And this was v1.2, with the new miniaturization in v1.31 this could be closer to 2000. Who really needs 1300 missile attack ships other than to pump up the military component of your metaverse score. Wouldn't a more balanced ship with 500 attack in each category be effective against any ship that you could come across?

I'm not saying that sticking with one weapon type is in any way wrong or stupid. It's what I've always done as well. I'm just saying that it might not be the only way and perhaps with the v1.31 changes it might not even be the best way.

You know, if you do have the time to research all of those techs and keep playin, just give it a shot and Im pretty sure it will work, cuz the top 3 weapons are small enough to fit many of them on the ship with a little space left to put in the necessary defence at the time. But when your just in mid phase of the game, its most definatly not the most efficient way at all. And just to clarify, I didnt feel u were picking on me mate, so dont worry about that!  

And can u tell me, what score did you get on that game u played and at what year did u end it??, cuz Im still playing that game from the other thread but Im not going to finish it till last week of december 2234 to get the best score, and I still think it wont be a big score at all, Im only getting 7000 of profit a month, compared to some other post I saw on the forums 1 time about a guy that did 500,000. I have no frakking idea how the hell did he manage that, but I only have 190 planets now, and that guy had 400+, so its no wonder he had so much money, he couldve filled the planets with stock markets and buy everything by then, no problem at all...



Monc34

I don't make ships until necassary for war, then I will choose what weapon is the most effective. So just keep a small army but when it is time for war, boost production in military, redesign as necessary and go to war. When war is over, sell what you don't need (like level 1 ships or damaged ships) and keep high level ships around. Even though you will not be the strongest, you will have the strongest economy by not spending maintance on ships you don't need. And when needed you can usually make a nice 2 or 3 fleets within a month or just purchase enough to do it.

Exactly my method.

Thats not necessary for large ,huge and gigantic maps, where you have tons of money, and dont have to worry about income at all. If you dont have a military for a too much time on a gigantic galaxy, I can assure you, you wont reach the year 2229.



Monc34

And can u tell me, what score did you get on that game u played and at what year did u end it??, cuz Im still playing that game from the other thread but Im not going to finish it till last week of december 2234 to get the best score, and I still think it wont be a big score at all, Im only getting 7000 of profit a month, compared to some other post I saw on the forums 1 time about a guy that did 500,000. I have no frakking idea how the hell did he manage that, but I only have 190 planets now, and that guy had 400+, so its no wonder he had so much money, he couldve filled the planets with stock markets and buy everything by then, no problem at all...

I am that guy, and that game I eventually got my income up to 900K bc per week. It's the same game that I had over 1000 black hole eruptor ships with an attack value of 1300. I ended up getting a MV score of 189K. I ended the game in Dec and it counted as 8 years so it must have been 2233. I had 496 planets for a while at the end and yes all but 50 of them had nothing but stock exchanges and a farm. The thing about the MV scoring is that you need to have high levels of income, military rating, tech spending or population over time. Just having a tremendous income right at the end doesn't really help all that much. One problem, if you can call it that, is if your treasury is above 20K your income drops by about 30%. It get's to be pretty tedious spending all that cash. At some point I gave up trying to spend it and ended the game with over 50,000,000 bc in cash and because of this my 900K income was "only" 550K.

A single weapon type on a ship is better than multiple types because defense is rolled against each type of attack. So when a ship with two weapon types fires on a ship with defenses, the defenses count twice.

When you're faced with an enemy that has high defenses against your best weapon, there's only two good options. First, just use as much of your best weapon as possible. With enough attack power, you can still take out the enemy in fewer shots than he needs to kill you. Second, switch to a weapon he isn't defending against. Then you'll be using weaker, cheaper weapons, and he'll only be using the square root of his defenses. Any combination of two weapon types will be worse than these options. For example, if you use both weapon types that your enemy is weak against, he'll roll the square root of his defense twice. You'd be better off just choosing one weapon he is weak against because then he'd only roll the square root of his defense once.

If you want to mix weapon types because you don't know what type of defense your enemy will use, then build some ships with one type of weapon, and other ships with the other type of weapon.

A single weapon type on a ship is better than multiple types because defense is rolled against each type of attack. So when a ship with two weapon types fires on a ship with defenses, the defenses count twice.

I had to think about this but, yes, this is the reason it's not good to use multiple weapons types on a single ship. There are situations in which two weapons are better than one but they all involve combat against a ship that has defense for the single ships weapon but not defense for all of the multiple ships weapons. The case of the defending ship having all three defense types is particularily bad for the multiple attack ship. Thanks for the answer.

Hey Mumblefratz- how would you suggest we go about testing your hypothesis? I'm more intrested in the Multi-defense theroy myself- which I can test at the same time. Figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

Hey Mumblefratz- how would you suggest we go about testing your hypothesis? I'm more intrested in the Multi-defense theroy myself- which I can test at the same time. Figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

Just to make it clear, nullspaces post convinced me that more than one weapon is *not* a good idea. Multiple defense, I think and conventional wisdom states, is a good idea but that's a different topic.

I don't think it needs testing, it can be explained without too much difficulty. There are a lot of different cases, but you really don't have to examine all that many of them before you get the picture.

As long as I've been playing (actually only three months) the conventional wisdom has been that you only used one weapon type on a ship. Early on I just followed along because I didn't know any better. After awhile, I just did it because that's what I always did. At some point I realized I really had no reason as to why I did it and I questioned the theory. It took nullspaces post and a bit of thought to convince me that the conventional wisdom was indeed correct and now I understand the reason for it.

The simple statement of the reason is just as nullspace said

So when a ship with two weapon types fires on a ship with defenses, the defenses count twice.

Your multiple weapons allows the defender to use *all* of his defenses multiple times.

Let's take a few examples. Some reasonable assumptions are necessary. One is that equal values of different weapons do equal damage (on average) to ships with no or equivilient defense. I'll also assume that you can have any random attack value that you want and that all weapons types take up the same space. I'll also assume that all possible attack results are equally likey. This would mean that if you have an attack value of 100 the average or expected value of damage is 50. Actually with an attack of 100 the results range from 1 to 100 (assuming no defense) and so the average is really 50 and a half but I'm going to ignore the half.

With these assumptions you could have a ship with say 600 attack in one category, 300 attack in two different catagories or 200 attack in three catagories. There are certainly many different combinations you'd have to consider to understand what's going on but let's first take the case where the defending ship has all three defense types. Let's assume the defender has 100 points of defense in each category (you could chose any number you like here it really doesn't matter.

The 600 attack would average 300 damage and the defender would defend with 100 + 10 (square root of 100) + 10 = 120 so the average damage would be 300 - 120 = 180.

The 2 x 300 attack would average 150 for each attack but the defense gets all his defense against both weapon types, so the attacker would get (150 - 120) + (150 - 120) = 60 only half as good.

The 3 x 200 attack would get 3 x (100 - 120) = 0 because damage can't be negative.

I can go into this some more but Battlestar Galactica is on and I *have* to go.