Entropy Avatar -

I had the same experience. I would sometimes use my cargo hull weapons platforms (which I use for transport interception) to attack enemy ships with very low hp, and I would always lose.

Do you think it gives the 1 hp not to the attacker, but to the fleet with the highest attack power in cases of mutual destruction? Almost every battle I fight is mutual destruction in the first round, so that little rule difference would give an even bigger advantage to the offense minded.

Good job Rataan! Nice to see someone else has also broken down the mathematical weakness of defense in the current system. In your scenario you were very fair to try and give the defensive player the advantage.

And let us take his scenario one step further. Say, instead of researching better weapons, defense player instead spent those research points in just going from medium to large hulls. Using the same tech level/miniturization/hit point bonus you were using.

For 765 bc (less than that 790 defense medium) you could build a 44 missle / 50 hp large hull.

Two larges are 14 logistics, three mediums are 15 logistics, so just for arguments sake what would happen if three defensive mediums (2370bc cost) went against two larges (1530bc cost). The larges will do on average 23 hp per round, so we will even say no mediums are destroyed in the first round. On average this battle will take four rounds, and the result is all three defensive fighters destroyed, and one large hull destroyed (with one large hull surviving and gaining experience). The cost to defense empire is 2370bc, the cost to large attack empire is 765bc, AND the attack focused empire gained experience. More dramatic than the medium on medium fights, the large player is gaining a net 1605 for this clash. And the attack empire had lower maintenance costs, and the defensive player had a slight logistics advantage.

What if we up the logistics value to 21? Then we get 3 larges (2295bc, 21 logistics) vs 4 medium defenders (3160bc, 20 logistics). This is where defense is really starting to break down. The larges have an aggregate attack of 132 missle and 150 hp, the defenders have 64 missle, 84 missle defense, and 100 hp (for significantly more cost). This battle on average is over in three rounds. Result, one large hull destroyed, all four medium fighters destroyed - two surviving large hulls gain xp (and are almost completely undamaged). Now attack empire has traded 765bc for 3160bc of the enemy empires production, a better than 4 to 1 ratio. And the cost advantage doesn't even take into account experience.

Am I saying always go with the large hulls? Not necessarily, it is better to always go attack. Lets do the same analysis with those 28 missle attack fighters that only cost us 465.

To get equal cost, three large hulls (2295bc, 21 log) would have to take on 5 attack based medium hulls (2325bc, 25 log). What happens when these fight?
Round 1: large hulls do 66 damage (two meds dead)/ meds do 70 damage (one large dead)
Round 2: large hulls do 44 damage (two meds dead)/ meds do 42 damage (one large dead)
Round 3: large hulls do 22 damage (med fleet wiped)/ meds do 14 damage.

The larges do win, but the last ship limps away with less than half of its starting hp (but with some valuable combat xp). Here, we can say that the larges do win, but only managed a 1530bc vs. 2325bc advantage....
So, assuming you haven't gone large (cheaper, hits harder), we have:
defense ships losing 3160 to 765 (worse than 4 to 1) OR
attack ships losing 2325 to 1530 (1.5 to 1) SO
the attack ships are almost 300% more effective per bc than the defense ships!

Surprising that this outcome is close to Rataan's original scenario of 465 to 1580 when these two kinds of medium fighters fight each other (for a 340% advantage)? Not really. Attack ships are about 3 times better for the bc than MATCHING defense, defense falls to stupidly overpriced if you are using the wrong kind.

I did not beta test this game, and only stumbled upon this inequity about 3 days after the release of the game. But I think it really needs to be fixed. When I play with tech trading on, I now routinely trade enemy AI civs defense techs that match my weapons - just to watch their empire's military effectiveness drop 60-70% (about 66%).

Nullspace - I think you understand the value of defense better than anyone. And it is true that YOU have never said that defense is useful in a situation like Rataan's example.

But people on these message boards often claim that even under the new DA rules balance is the key to victory. I strongly disagree, and I am trying to show the less experienced people why I disagree. The key is to commit (to either attack or defense) - no middle ground ever.

And, as I have said elsewhere, I agree that when def >= fleetattack/2 defense is not only very powerful - it is priceless. How can you put a price on invincibility??

And also to clarify, I personally love defense. That is why I want it repriced so that it is useful in more situations (even all situations). I really want to go back to making balanced, or at least more defensive ships.

My turn to weigh in here.

I'm still goofing around with DA, and I have to say that I definately have found an interesting dynamic between not-enough and invincible level defenses.

The other thing I found is that while the AI will never trade you weapon techs when you're at war (or maybe never, I've never gotten any), I'm always able to get all the defensive techs I want on the cheap. This saved me in one game as even a bit of light defense allowed my ships to survive more than a single battle until I could get better ships produced.

Late game defenses are of marginal use. When the 1024+ missile armed pirate fleet came around, I loaded a huge hull ship down with as much point defense as I could, along with a couple missile weapons of my own. It didn't make much of a difference. The pirate fleet won, my super-bling-expensive ship didn't make it past one round and even then only spaced a single pirate ship. I decided a swarm of fighters would be the best way to deal with this menace, and it worked.

Later when my zero-defense fighters with superweapons were at war, they often didn't survive engagements with much inferior fleets. They took thier share of tonnage down with them, but they still took heavy losses. Small and medium hulls with even a bit of defense fared much better, even taking down much superior fleets where the total attack was greater than the defense of the engaged ship.

So there's the balance. When you can't possibly defend against a given attack--don't try. However against more mortal opposition, even a little defense goes a long way.

As for me, I try to stay current in weapons and ahead in defense research and I build balanced ships. Until that doesn't work, then I try something else I also took the Super Warror ability this time just in case that sort of thing happens again.

Defence serves a purpose in helping to set the order in which your ships will be attacked, from most to least expendable. If the ship with the best weapons in one of your fleets is last on the target list, it is more likely to survive the battle on account of all the damage it inflicts without reprisals.

Of course if the enemy starts deploying ships packed with weapons that can cut through most of your defences, then the most cost-effective way to take them out is to build your own.

It's worthwhile to try modding the defences to make them more effective, anyway.

By comparison to dread lords, or the cost required to make effective defense based ships, the balance has certainly been thrown out of whack. No stats changes occured as a result of a switch to a radically different combat model that favours weaponry, and you bet thats caused things to go a bit awry.

Its really a moot point to be arguing about it, though. Frogboy has already stated that he'd be rebalancing it.

See here:
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Reply#4

I like all the numbers guys but this balanced fleet of mine took out 21 all attack fleets. 2 huge hulls each with 14 armor 14 point 10 sheild and using 2 phasors/2 nano rippers/2 photon torpedos. versus 9 large hulls using mass drivers and plasma weapons. These 21 fleets were all stacked in 3 different groups of seven each. My total damage recieved was a mere 14 hp total one ship had 8hp the other 6hp of damage. Also each of these 3 stacks were so close together that I was unable to disengage between one battle and the next, so I am not sure how this works against all your numbers with the following note, Random events occur at Random times. So maybe the luck factor also plays a part as well I had a luck bonus of +25%. To finish all the numbers in the worlds do not mean squat in the final tally, its wether you survive or not.

Anyone that thinks defence is useful should do this following test.....

experiment by building the most powerful 'weapons only' ship that you can, then give it to the AI and attack it with your most powerful ship with defences (provided hitpoints are the same) and see which ship wins?

this test will work best with maximum defence and weapons technology.

OK, that test is easy to do. Start a Battle of the Gods scenario.

Attack Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 14 blackhole eruptors, and one aereon defense to fill leftover space. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 3120.
Total stats: 388 attack and 18 defense. (that's after I give it to the Altarians, it was only 353 attack, 12 defense for me)

Defense Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 4 blackhole eruptors, and 21 aereon defenses. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 4320.
Total stats: 101 attack, 264 defense.

I fought this battle 5 times, and the defense ship always won.

that looks like a pretty good test to me, unexpected result tho!

ok, do the same test but use say 5 ships and see what happens?

If it works the same as the tests I have done, then five ships vs. five ships will likely be a win for the defense ships, but their losses will total more production units than the attack ships. If the fleets are built with equal cost, then it will most likely be heavily in favor of the attack ships.

But then I think this is a terrible example. What does huge hulls and weapons from the end of the tech tree prove? Most games will not last long enough to see ships like that.