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The reasoning behind nerfing defense?

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The reasoning behind nerfing defense?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm wondering if anyone can explain the reasoning behind nerfing defense in DA. I don't really have an opinion yet either way. It seems that the majority opinion on defense in DL was that by and large it wasn't worth the cost, especially late game when attack values became ridiculously high. Since I play with tech trading off, my DL games have never lasted to the point where anyone has attained the best weapons. So my experience has been that ships with good defense dominate the AI's high attack, zero defense, small hull strategy in the critical mid-late game period when the first war is being decided and the probable game winner emerges.

I wasn't aware of the changes to defense when I started playing DA, so I kept the same strategy with what seemed at first to be about the same results. But I noticed that fleets that would have been almost invincible in DL were suffering attrition. That's really a good thing as challenge has increased.

But that leaves me to wonder what place defense has in DA. The dominance of defense has been nerfed in mid game, but it will be more useless than ever in late game wars with ultra high attack values. I think the discrepancy boils down to a few design peculiarities.

1. Attack and defense are random, so an unlucky roll means damage taken even with high defense.

2. Hit points don't scale, except for the fact that a few larger hulls become available as time goes by, and a few techs and one trade good increases it. But hit points don't increase nearly as much as weapon damage.

3. In fleet battles, one ship is targeted until it is destroyed. In DL this meant that in a four ship vs. four ship fleet battle a ship with defense equal to the individual attack values of enemy ships would shrug off most damage. In DA, a ship would need more than twice as much defense for the same effect. More than twice as much because on the second attack the defense value will be on average half its value in the first attack, assuming equal attack and defense values.

4. Even in DL the effectiveness of defense decreased as attack values went up even if defense values kept the same pace. That's because no matter what the defense value, the average damage taken is always greater than zero. The defender always takes damage when attack exceeds defense, but is never healed when defense exceeds attack. As attack values go up, this average residual damage goes up too.

As I see it, this has a few interesting consequences:

1. Attack, which has always had the computational edge over defense is further strengthened in DA by a huge margin.

2. Fleets got a big boost and the larger the fleet the better. Logistics got a big promotion. Gone are the days when a single large hull with good defense could take out a huge fleet of small fighters.

3. One on one battles and one ship vs. fleet battles aren't affected by the changes. They will play out exactly as they did in DL as far as I can see.

It looks to me like the changes are on the whole bad news for the AI and benefit the human player much more. The human player's ability to use mobile fleets for planet defense will be a greater advantage than ever. And the AI's poor use of engines in the current version of DA will make them even less effective at mounting a really threatening assault on player planets.
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Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Mistralok:

I thought defense, if anything, was overpowered in DL. It was pretty easy to build tailored ships that would shred the AI fleets without getting their paint scratched.

But that was cool in a way, as it forced the AI to adapt to your defenses (usually too late) and very occasionally you would have to adapt to AI defenses.

Now the optimal tactic just seems to be to build endless swarms of small-medium ships with massive firepower. Late game you can play around with 4000 cost dreadnoughts with 300 defense to shread endless mediocre AI fleets, but if that's the case you're probably just doing mop-up anyway.

Cheers

h
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Possibility: a fourth branch of techs for defensive modules in the form of hull reinforcement. Increasing a ship's HP by a certain percentage could be a useful addition to gameplay, and it would be AWESOME if such modules were also available for starbases, which don't scale well with the rest of the game.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The weapons and defence lines haven't been changed since at least 1.1 and yet the combat mechanics have been changed loads since then. It's no wonder that defence doesn't work anymore. To be frank missiles are also rubbish under the new combat system.

Brad/Frogboy/Draginol needs to make changes to the weapons and defence branches to reflect the new changes in the combat system.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I also find that defenses are now nearly useless and researching them is not really worth.I also agree about the other issue that using different defenses on a single ship is nearly useless so it's better to focus on a single defense on every ship.
But I don't think the problem is game mechanics, because also if they deplete during combat they can be useful at a right cost.
IMO as some other people suggested defenses should give an higher defense probably doubled or should cost a lot less space to make them useful.
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Since defending against a weapon is calculated collectively and since the defences are weak anyway, is there still some strategic value of even having three branches of defence? Or even attack, given how either one ends up effective because of the nerfed defences?


Well, I think the die-roll rock-paper-scissors like model has reached its limit. It cannot hold if the combat system is made more complex. Sure defenses seem to have been made weaker, but unless a more convencional attack/defense model is used, combat will never be an interesting part of this game. I think the devs know that, and hopefully the lots and lots of ideas they have for GC3 include totally rewriting the combat system - and ship design, and the techtree. Question is, will that still be GC?
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, I just played a game as the Kryn and did very well with defensively-oriented ships. Of course, I also started with an innate 80% defence bonus...

I'm not convinced that defences don't have a role to play on ships below huge. If the big ships aren't in play yet, it's probably also true that the big *fleets* aren't in play. So even if you are using small ships, the fraction of your fleet that is hit but gets to recharge defence can be significant (due to fleet size limits and low-tech weapons). Also, you will often be facing single planetary defenders, where good defences can seriously cut your attrition.



The problem isn't that defense has no value, the problem is that defense isn't nearly as good at deflecting damage as attack is at inflicting it. As attack values go up, at some point defense is no longer a decisive factor. Attack wins battles. A ship with all the defense in the world and no attack will never win a battle. Also consider the Dread Lord ships. What good is defense against them? Using ships with any defense at all against them would be very foolish whether in DL or DA, because your only hope is overcoming their hit points with all the attack you can cram in. You can be a threat to them because even in the low tech era attack quickly catches up with hit points and in the high tech era leaves it far behind.

If you have a substantial lead in tech, production and economy, then defense becomes more attractive, because you can add defenses and still be equal or better in attack on a ship by ship basis. But if you have that, then you are likely well on your way to a win anyway. If you are behind in tech or equal, then spending substantial resources on defense isn't likely to pay off from what I can see. In most games you can work up to that economic and tech lead and that may be why defense often seems like the way to go, because in that situation it is. But if you are on the ropes and trying to fight off an invasion through attrition, then spending resources on defense is dangerous.

Just look at the cost of defense if nothing else. I haven't compared all the modules, but when I started this thread I was interested mainly in the mathematical disadvantage of defense. Then I noticed others were complaining mostly about the cost. When I started looking, I was shocked even though I had used the modules many times. I had never noticed just how expensive defense was. It generally takes less space, but costs much more on a point for point basis than attack. A protonic torpedo has four attack and costs 55, whereas a point defense module with a defense of three costs 70. The early defense modules cost as much as 40 per point. Just three of those would cost as much as a small hull with basic weapons.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Defense has not been 'nerfed', per se. The absorption, size, and cost of the various modules are precisely where they were in DL. What has changed, is the combat system. In DA, the attacker has double, quadruple, or more chances to degrade your defenses. The greater number of 'rolls of the dice' will give a greater chance of a negative outcome.

I thought defense, if anything, was overpowered in DL


Not so much overpowered, as underutilized. The AI was slow to become aware of the potential advantage that a proper defense could give it. Only quite late in games did I see it begin to produce ships that were properly protected, and by that time, it was too late. (aside to HH) Love your handle. Big fan of that genre. Have you read O'Brian?
I had never noticed just how expensive defense was.


Yes, defense is expensive, but it can be one of the better values in the game, depending upon your style of play. I don't think that most players realize the value of their ships, over time. Certainly most know the initial cost of producing that ship. There are hidden costs, as well. First, there is the opportunity cost. While your starport is building a ship, any other building project on that planet will be slowed down, and you will lose the value that project would have given for the time necessary to build the ship. Second, there is the maintenance cost for that ship. Military ships have a maintenance cost that is approximately 3% of their original cost (in industrial units). That is, a ship that cost 100 IUs will take approximately 3 billion credits each week to maintain. You pay it out, turn after turn, and if you lose that ship, then that is money wasted.
Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I saw a forum quote in past that indicated that defense had value on large ships because it allowed them to survive to high hit points. I have seen this myself in DL games where I had a Medium Hull survive to 3x the original hitpoints. It became unstoppable in it's class. Players that do not plan for their ships to survive lose some strategic value in favor of a winning tactic. Additionally, dead ships cannot be upgraded. I have not run the rigorous analysis on the following quote, but I suspect it's true. In terms of BC/damage ratio, high defense ships cost more to start, but yield more in the long run

My poorly numbered example:
6 Medium Hull 25 HP, 2 Gun, 4 Armor costs 1200 bc
6 Medium Hull 25 HP, 6 Gun, 0 Armor cost 1200 bc

Each battle I would expect to lose 0-1 Armored ship and 1-2 Unarmored.
Those numbers would shift to the left as HP increased

After 6 battles:
3 Medium Hull 40 HP, 2 Gun, 4 Armor valued at 600 bc
reguires 600 more bc to return to full strength
0 Medium Hull 25 HP, 6 Gun, 0 Armor cost 1200 bc to replace

If someone knows actual numbers please post them.
Galen
Reply #34 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are two problems with your example. First, the 6 medium hulls that use 4 defense will be more expensive than the pure attack ships, so your model should take into account less defenders. Pure attack ships are roughly half as expensive as ships that use defense in the current cost model. Second is that the attack numbers are almost never that low. You can quickly get to the point where attack/2 >= hit points of target, and then you just mop up. IF attack values were as low as your example, defense would be worthwhile, and all hail the gain in experience. In your example, the defensive ships are doing well only because of the ratio of HP to weapon damage, your opponent can't kill fast enough.

As it is, experience is nice, but 'more guns' is better and cheaper. I wish this was not the case, I liked the complexity defense added to strategy.
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
galenbd


You have reminded me of a good tacktic i use. one thing about firepower in DL is that you can use firepower and defence to manipulate which ships get fired upon first.

In a game where i am strugling, i usually cannot afford to upgrade ships but this works out nicely. What i discovered is that the new ships i build which have superior weaponry, seem to attract all the enemy firepower in a fleet.

I use this to my advantage by fitting these new ships with appropriate defence.

So i might end up with a fleet full of older ships that carry armor defence, and i can go and fight somebody using missiles sucessfully because i have one new ship in the fleet that has good missile defence which atracts all the enemy firepower.

I have no idea if this would work in DA?
Reply #36 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
My poorly numbered example:
6 Medium Hull 25 HP, 2 Gun, 4 Armor costs 1200 bc
6 Medium Hull 25 HP, 6 Gun, 0 Armor cost 1200 bc

Sorry, but what gun and what armor? If you're speaking of the ultimate gun and ultimate armor, are numbers and situation quite different than in the mid-game, where most of battles are fought.

BR, Iztok
Reply #37 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I saw a forum quote in past that indicated that defense had value on large ships because it allowed them to survive to high hit points. I have seen this myself in DL games where I had a Medium Hull survive to 3x the original hitpoints. It became unstoppable in it's class. Players that do not plan for their ships to survive lose some strategic value in favor of a winning tactic. Additionally, dead ships cannot be upgraded. I have not run the rigorous analysis on the following quote, but I suspect it's true. In terms of BC/damage ratio, high defense ships cost more to start, but yield more in the long run

My poorly numbered example:
6 Medium Hull 25 HP, 2 Gun, 4 Armor costs 1200 bc
6 Medium Hull 25 HP, 6 Gun, 0 Armor cost 1200 bc

Each battle I would expect to lose 0-1 Armored ship and 1-2 Unarmored.
Those numbers would shift to the left as HP increased

After 6 battles:
3 Medium Hull 40 HP, 2 Gun, 4 Armor valued at 600 bc
reguires 600 more bc to return to full strength
0 Medium Hull 25 HP, 6 Gun, 0 Armor cost 1200 bc to replace

If someone knows actual numbers please post them.
Galen


Well, it's a good thing you put in those disclaimers, because it looks to me like you just pulled those numbers out of a hat. In your second sentence you said 'in DL games', but we are talking about how DA changed defense. In DL defense was powerful in the mid game, provided you could afford to build and maintain high defense ships that still had speed and firepower. In DA all that has changed. Far fewer ships will survive to see their hit points doubled. Even in DL you would be doing very well to go from 25 to 40 hp after only six battles.

But the main problem is you didn't say what your hypothetical ships were fighting. If they were fighting other six attack ships, then I have very bad news for you: your defense ships get slaughtered in DA combat. Consider two fleets of four hulls with 8 hp each. One fleet has six attack per ship and the other is 2/4, with the 4 being the optimal defense. All numbers are average. With more hit points, it would play out the same, it would just take longer.

Round one: defense ship #1 zapped, attack ship #1 at half hp. Can you see where this is going? But to continue...

Round two: defense ship #2 zapped, attack ship #1 now down to 1 hp. But for the sake of argument, let's say it is zapped too.

Round three: Defense ship #3 down to 3 hp, attack ship #2 down to 6 hp.

Round four: Defense ship #3 zappped, and for the sake of argument, we'll say the overkill doesn't cary over to the last defensive ship, although there is that chance. Attack ship #2 down to 4 hp.

Round five: Defense ship #4 down to 3 hp, attack ship #2 down to 3 hp.

Round six: Defense ship #4 zapped and the high attack fleet survives with two untouched ships and one down to 2 hp.

To add insult to injury, the defensive ships would almost have to cost much more. You seemed to postulate that the cost was equal. It isn't. Check the production and consequent maintenance costs and see for yourself. Defense is considerably more expensive per point. In DL I believe these two fleets would be evenly matched according to my quick calculations, but the defense ships would still cost a lot more.

So you could say that in DL defense was an expensive luxury you could use to turn your skillful empire management into something concrete and set up your end run for the win. I DA, defense is so expensive compared to its actual combat value that it is hard to justify it under any conditions. I may be wrong on some points, and if I am I would like to hear it, but this is how DA combat plays out according to how I understand it.
Reply #38 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I posted my opinion about this a while back, I don't think the reason is with the defense, but with the weapon.


The concept about "you can mount as long as you have space" is not exactly a logical way to think about. Like in real life, three 5" guns is not the equivalent of one 15" gun. The problem here is that every ship class share the same technology. That's the main reason why defense get as more useless as the game goes, since as the tech advance the gap between raw damage and the amount a ship can mount get very small.


IMO, the solution to this is not with the defense, but has a limit on which hull carry which weapon. Maybe Tiny/Small is limited to the first 1/3 of the weapon tree, Medium is limited to the first half, Large is limited to the first 2/3 and Huge has full access. Because, common, a fighter with Black Hole Generator, something doesn't add up


Reply #39 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
IMO, the solution to this is not with the defense, but has a limit on which hull carry which weapon. Maybe Tiny/Small is limited to the first 1/3 of the weapon tree, Medium is limited to the first half, Large is limited to the first 2/3 and Huge has full access. Because, common, a fighter with Black Hole Generator, something doesn't add up


I dont' think the idea is bad, but what you're suggesting would require some serious balancing. If a civ gets out in front in tech, that basically would say that they'd get out in front with weapons as well. I'm not sure that would make for a very fun game when you get down to the reality of it.

Now, I like the idea, but what I'm saying is that it would take a major overhaul of the game, IMO. For instance, I like a strategy, now and then, of huge fleets of tiny or small fighters vs. other ships. There are advantages to that. But what you're saying would make that obsolete around mid-game.
Reply #40 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are several posts to "depleting defense" in this thread. Can anyone explain to me what that is?

I thought in DA each weapon got a roll from zero to it's value and vs. a defense roll from zero to the ships total defense (sqrt'd if appropriate). If the attack roll exceeds the defense roll the difference is taken as damage, otherwise no damage is taken.

Is there some other mechanism that comes into play when a ship is attached multiple times that people are terming "depleting defenses"?
Reply #41 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are several posts to "depleting defense" in this thread. Can anyone explain to me what that is?

I thought in DA each weapon got a roll from zero to it's value and vs. a defense roll from zero to the ships total defense (sqrt'd if appropriate). If the attack roll exceeds the defense roll the difference is taken as damage, otherwise no damage is taken.

Is there some other mechanism that comes into play when a ship is attached multiple times that people are terming "depleting defenses"?

In DA, every time a ship takes a weapons hit (whether it does damage or not), the appropriate defense rating is reduced by the amount of the attack roll until the end of that "round" of combat. This means that it's possible to hammer down even the strongest defenses if you can bring enough firepower to bear.

Reply #42 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The concept about "you can mount as long as you have space" is not exactly a logical way to think about. Like in real life, three 5" guns is not the equivalent of one 15" gun. The problem here is that every ship class share the same technology. That's the main reason why defense get as more useless as the game goes, since as the tech advance the gap between raw damage and the amount a ship can mount get very small.


IMO, the solution to this is not with the defense, but has a limit on which hull carry which weapon. Maybe Tiny/Small is limited to the first 1/3 of the weapon tree, Medium is limited to the first half, Large is limited to the first 2/3 and Huge has full access. Because, common, a fighter with Black Hole Generator, something doesn't add up


This is an execellent point and should be the next bit of cheese removed from combat.

I think the way to do it would just be to scale the damage of the weapon to the hull. How many hulls...5? Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, and Huge. Ok, 5. Cargo as Large for this purpose.

Tiny Hull = [Weapon Damage] * (1/5);
Small Hull = [Weapon Damage] * (1/4);
Medium Hull = [Weapon Damage] * (1/3);
Large Hull = [Weapon Damage] * (1/2);
Huge Hull = [Weapon Damage] * 1.

Or, the Medium hull could be the zero point with multipliers for larger hull sizes and divisors for smaller hull sizes.

The same thing would apply to defenses as well.

While MOO4 sucked--or was it 3? I dunno, the most recent one in any case; while the game sucked I was quite enamored with it's weapon system. Any weapon could be mounted, but it was the weapon mount itself that determined the role of the weapon. A 'light' mount did less damage, while a 'heavy' mount did much more (akin to your 5" v. 15" compairson--a light mount was a 5"; a heavy 15"). A 'spinal' mount did tremendous damage, but had a very small firing arc requiring the ship to manuver into position to fire accurately. There were also 'point defense' mounts which allowed any weapon mounted as such to function as a point defense weapon which only targeted missiles (and maybe fighters too but I don't remember and I'm not re-installing the game).

This system had a side effect of scaling: some hulls were just too small to mount anything more than a 'light' weapon mount or two. Of course, these hulls had much less combat power than a ship that could mount medium or heavy mounts or a spinal mount.

Anyway, that has been one of my pet peeves too. I don't much like the idea of a fighter-class hull that can poke holes in a ship 3x its mass with a weapon of such power that it could never hope to power it on its own.

Oooooh...another idea...mounting certain support items that magnify weapon damage or defense ability. Like...say, 'super capacitors' that would boost weapon power, but would be too big for anything smaller than a medium hull to carry, and not even practical then. This would be reserved for large/huge hulls or something like that, just out of sheer size.

Thoughts?
Reply #43 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yep, there is a problem with weapons. They have a sizemod, which is about the most unrealistic thing about this system. A laser on a huge hull occupies more space than in a tiny hull, yet does the exact same damage! This is totally absurd. And then comes size reduction with level, AND with miniaturization. All this leads to a very bad combat system (in terms of realism if you will).
That's why a BHG can be mounted on a tiny hull. With the current system, there's little that can be done about it. Maybe make hull sizes only mount weapons and defenses in an equivalent "tier" - tinies mount only the basic beams, smalls can mount up to lasers, etc (same for other weapons and defenses). This probably would need the techtree to be slightly restructured though.
Reply #44 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


Maybe make hull sizes only mount weapons and defenses in an equivalent "tier" - tinies mount only the basic beams, smalls can mount up to lasers, etc (same for other weapons and defenses). This probably would need the techtree to be slightly restructured though.


I don't know if "slightly" is the word your are looking for...

Reply #45 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe make hull sizes only mount weapons and defenses in an equivalent "tier" - tinies mount only the basic beams, smalls can mount up to lasers, etc (same for other weapons and defenses). This probably would need the techtree to be slightly restructured though.


That would make smaller ships completely useless mid-late game. Unless smaller ships got other modifications, like higher defence because of their smaller size and inertia.

Hey thats an idea, maybe smaller ships should get more defence from defensive modules and less attack from weapons than larger ships.

Reply #46 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't know if "slightly" is the word your are looking for...


Not really big changes, only restructuring the # of weapons/defenses per class. Hence slightly   


That would make smaller ships completely useless mid-late game.


Yep, but that's what you get from a system that decreases size with level, instead of increasing power... and has no slots, just a weight limit. Anyways maybe miniaturization could be made more effective for smaller ships.
But like I said above, with the current system...
Reply #47 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Yep, there is a problem with weapons. They have a sizemod, which is about the most unrealistic thing about this system. A laser on a huge hull occupies more space than in a tiny hull, yet does the exact same damage! This is totally absurd.

At the beginning (1.0 versions) the sizemod for weapons was so big you could IIRC mount on a large hull only twice as many weapons than on a small. It took the community quite a lot of time to convince developers that a gun is a gun wherever you put it.

Tiny Hull = [Weapon Damage] * (1/5);

That's IMO silly: a gun is a gun wherever you put it.

BR, Iztok
Reply #48 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think a tech branch that adds hit points would make sense. Throw out the redundant weapons and combine all weapons into the same tech branch. One laser, one railgun etc. Pare down defense to two types: shields which would act as defense does now, and armor which adds hit points. Make the shields defend against any attack at full value. I suppose this would eliminate the rock/paper/scissors paradigm, but I have yet to see it be a decisive factor in any game.
Reply #49 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think a tech branch that adds hit points would make sense. Throw out the redundant weapons and combine all weapons into the same tech branch. One laser, one railgun etc. Pare down defense to two types: shields which would act as defense does now, and armor which adds hit points. Make the shields defend against any attack at full value. I suppose this would eliminate the rock/paper/scissors paradigm, but I have yet to see it be a decisive factor in any game.


You probably haven't played enough, then. I've seen tons of situations where an inferior military using the right weapons and defenses has crushed one that was using the wrong ones, and places where wars using the same weapons and defense techs are decided by one race taking a risk and rushing up a different tech tree.
Reply #50 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's IMO silly: a gun is a gun wherever you put it.

BR, Iztok


Indeed, but it's the size of the gun that the divisor (or multiplier) is meant to represent.

If you think in naval terms, a PT boat isn't going to mount even a single 16" gun of an Iowa-class battleship. However, it might mount a 40mm gun that could be a scaled down equivalent of the 16" gun. Heck, I might even believe that you could fit the right 127mm (5") gun on a PT boat...but it still would have dramatically less power than the 16" gun of an Iowa-class.

Frankly, more powerful weapons require more infrastructure to support: a heavier chassis, stronger metals, more space, larger motors to turn, reload, or fire; a larger crew which requires more living space inside the ship, larger provision stocks to feed the troops and even more toilets and showers.

Ever see an F-16 with a toilet?

There in lies my point. While an F-16 might be capable of firing one or two missiles that are capable of high amounts of destruction, in terms of a game mechanic the trade off of infinite ammo is less (drasticly less!) power. This is borne out in modern terms where that F-16 has a single powerful salvo while a cruiser or battleship can fight a small war on its own.