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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.

It's too bad we don't have MP, or the defense defenders would get skooled in a hurry. If you are in a dominating position, then you will win whether you waste resources on defense or not. If the enemy is equal in tech, production and economy, then you will lose ships in DA combat, and defense won't change that. Well, at least it won't change it as much as we would hope.

I just spent an hour or so simulating another battle scenario with all attack vs. high defense ships. Here is the rundown:

Fleet A = high attack fleet: medium hulls, 24 hp each, 7 x Photonic Torpedo II, 28 attack, 0 defense, cost = 465, maint. = 13

Fleet D = high defense fleet: medium hulls, 24 hp each, 4 x Photonic Torpedo II, 7 x PD Combo II, 16 attack, 21 defense, cost = 790, maint. = 23

These hulls use exactly the same amount of space. I used a spreadsheet and the numbers get a little tricky, but I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it. If we set up our scenario by equal cost, we can form fleet A with three ships opposed to fleet D with two ships. In that case the typical outcome would be A destroying D with one loss, so the battle costs A 465 production and D 1580 production. Ouch. Doubling the fleet sizes gives us more of the same with A typically losing two ships while D loses all four. I don't have to delve much into fractions in this particular example, because whole ships are lost to a good approximation. Having said that, it is an operation of random numbers and there could be lucky outcomes in either direction. But every time I look at it, the law of averages is clearly on the side of investing all your money into attack.

To take it one step further and give defense every advantage, consider fleets A and D with four ships each. In that case D finally starts to win, but it will have about an equal chance to lose two or three ships on average. But the cost of defense still isn't justified since 2.5 * 790 = 1975 and 4 * 465 = 1860.

Also note several assumptions were made about defense, with the main one being the defense is optimal. I don't think I have to explain what would happen if the defense wasn't optimal, and in a real game it is as likely as not that we will face more than one type of weapon. Also PD Combo II is slightly higher on the tech tree than Photonic Torpedo II in a concession to the fact that defense is cheaper to research than attack. However, if we dismiss defense as inadequate, we have little reason to reasearch it at all. If we take that tactic, we could be further along the attack branch than our opponent who researches both.

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%).

I don't think that anyone has claimed that defense is useful in a situation like this. I've specifically said that defense is useful IF you can make a ship that has defense equal to 1/2 the enemy fleet's attack or more.

But, to use this example, pit one ship A against one ship D. Ship D will win, and it will likely have full hp (because this battle fits my IF condition).

Or how about a fleet of two ship As against one ship D. The A fleet will do about 7 damage or more every round (there's a big margin of error on that number). Ship D will do about 8 damage every round. It's a very close battle, because after one ship A dies, ship D will take no more damage.

But ship D isn't really a good design for a defense ship. As you add more defense, defense becomes MUCH more powerful. From the stats of ship A and D, it appears that 3 photonic torpedoes take up the same amount of space as 7 PD combos. I'd prefer a ship D2 that has 1 torpedo and 14 PD combos, for stats of 4 attack and 41 defense. One ship D2 will probably win against a fleet of 3 ship As, because it's 41 defense against 78 attack. Again, it's a close fight, but pretty good for one ship versus three.

And if you had researched defense more and weapons less to build the defense ship, the odds would be even better because defense is cheaper to research.

I'm not arguing that defense is overpowered or that it's always useful. Using defense is bad in some situations, for example, it's hopeless against the ultimate fleet in Wyndstar's screenshot. Bit it's very powerful when you can do ShipDefense >= FleetAttack/2, which happens when your hull size and defense are better than your enemy's weapons and logistics.

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.

Big agreement on this. A balanced ship is worse than an all-attack ship, and worse than a ship with "enough" defense. Low defense means that it has a low chance of blocking damage, it is reduced to 0 quickly, and the ship won't survive long enough for the defense to recharge at the end of the round. Surviving a round with little damage is the only thing that matters for a defense ship. That's why defense ships can operate solo; fleeting them doesn't help much.

It's weird that there's such a fine line between uselessness and invincibility for defense. But as long as defense is good sometimes and bad other times, I think it makes an interesting strategy choice.

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.

As a formula defense >= attack/2 sounds OK at first glance, but you can't just ignore the cost of it. If defense was free, who would argue against it? Nor does it in any way guarantee you victory, especially if your attack values are very low. You should also remember that as attack values go up the formula starts to break down. In the long run, you will need more and more defense as insurance against lucky rolls by an attacker. I know we are discussing average rolls and the law of averages here, but in this case the randomness itself is statistically significant and using nothing but average numbers can lead to false conclusions. That is because if on any roll defense rolls lower than attack, then damgage is done. These lucky rolls are a statistical certainty, and the more rolls, the more of them we will see. The average damage for 1 attack against 500 defense is still greater than zero. Unfortunately for defense, the defender doesn't get anything for his lucky rolls except to live longer, which you are assuming anyway.

Your assumption that in a one on one battle ship D takes no damage isn't quite true. It will take an average of about 1 hp per round, but you are correct that the odds are probably 10:1 in favor of ship D. But then it costs about 70% more and if I had an all attack ship that was worth as much, I could expect the same result. According to my calculations, two A vs. one D is a likely win for A, since I calculate about 11 damage per round inflicted by two of ship A. In fact, A should win more often than not without losing a ship, but if it loses one, it stands a very good chance of losing both. There is some interesting granularity there, but the numbers aren't in defense's favor because the cost is so much higher for ship D. If it kills both A's one time in three, that doesn't make up for losing the other two.

I get an even worse result for three A's against one of your 4/42 D2 ships. According to my spreadsheet, the three A's will do about 7 hp damage per round and the battle will most likely end without loss for A. Three A's against two D2's will probably result in the loss of one A. If that sounds like too much, remember that D2 has 21 chances to roll something less than A's average damage of 2 in every round. The chances of that happening on the first roll when defense is at its maximum is still somewhere between 5%-10%. Toward the end of the round, the chances will normally be better than even for each successive roll for A to get some damage. If D2 rolled the max possible every time and A rolled its average, D2 would barely squeak by on the last roll to avoid damage. If at any point A rolls 4 and D2 rolls 0, then D2 takes 4 hp damage, and no amount of perfect rolls thereafter will bring them back. That was the whole point of the first paragraph. Defense will never be entireley successsful at deflecting damage.

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.

At no point was I trying to say that in every situation defence is great.

What I am saying is that it does have uses. And It can be very, very effective. And in many situations it can and will make you invulnerable.

I can tech to the highest defence levels much, much, much faster than I can tech to the highest weapon levels. I can also get a lot of defence on a medium sized ship long before I have researched all the miniturization.

So mid game I can easily dominate the enemy by producing ships that are invulnerable to all mid level fleets.

I started by build medium ships with 1/2 attack and 1/2 defence. They worked great. I would slowly lose them, but they were doing their job, and that allowed me to build large hull ships with a lot of defence, and those ships were able to completely destroy my enemy. They can't build fleets now because each turn my ships destoroy whatever they build and I am not taking any attrition.

In the end I will need some massive attack ships to deal with my friends and allies who are building massive attack fleets of their own, but in the mean time I found a sweet spot where my ships weren't taking any real damage, and were totally dominating. This gives me a huge advantage.

In the early game defence isn't that great, in the mid game defence can be amazing, and in the late game I am sure defence will be less useful, though still useful.

Everyone was saying that defence was broken or that it doesn't work at all. And I don't think that is true. Defence can be amazing. It depends on the situation, and it is up to the player to relize the appropriate use to fit their strategy.

- Livonya

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.

That's good to hear. I didn't see any Frogboy posts about it.

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Reply#4

This discussion shows why I argued for a less complicated combat system. Why does it have to be so complex?

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.

Given the tech level of the weapons you were using, and the fact that your enemies were only toting mass driver and plasma weapons, it sounds like you already had an absurd technological advantage, so your point is moot. You had such powerful technology that you could completely ignore the poor cost/benefit ratio of defenses.

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.

Er... that wouldn't be a good test, since the maximum techs aren't necessarily balanced against each other perfectly. In most games I play, techs that advanced almost never see the light of day anyways.

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.

After reading this thread, I had to try it out myself. I was making the typicle attack/defense balanced ships, but changed to making all attack ships and a few high defense ships. There is certainly no arguing that the attack ships are cheaper to build, and as they fall, they can be replaced quickly. My main ship planet is building large size defense ships. They cost about 30% more to build, but that isn't too bad.

My game is about middle stage now, so I am sending out large and medium ships against the Korath. They are using ships armed with Disruptor 3's and no defense. I have Graviton drivers I believe, with Subspace Rebounders for defense. My fleet of attack ships tear them up but with losses. My defense ships are flying solo, they kick butt too, but without losses.

So far, both methods work great. It's just a matter of preference. Although, I'll give points to defense ships, since there is less management necessary. I do not have to have a supply line of fresh ships setup for them. And with engines so much more expensive, and slower ships because of it, that's a big plus.

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

We've already demonstrated that a defense oriented ship that is much more expensive to build will win one on one battles with all attack ships. It is in fleet battles where all enemy ships concentrate fire on the same target that defense fails.

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

Unfortunately, stories don't prove anything. I'm usng all attack ships against AI's set to a mixture of crippling and masochistic now. Guess what? I'm doing very well in a war with the Yor and my custom opponent. I've lost only two ships while the AI has lost dozens upon dozens. I haven't even researched defense. I'm doing it the same way I did when I too believed in defense--by using larger hulls and better tactics. My ships are cheaper to build and I'm not losing any more of them than when I used as much defense as attack. I don't worry about the enemy building defenses against my beam weapons, because I know they can't keep up with my attack numbers. I don't worry about what defenses I need to be building, because I have done my homework and decided it isn't a good invesment even if I could make sure I always had optimal defense.

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.