You know, I was just thinking that it might be an idea to match defence more to the sort of ship that it needs to protect, rather than a progression of components that take less and less space to achieve the same result. For example, you could have an ECM array which offers a much better rating than the standard ECM unit - you won't pack one of them on a small fighter, but on a capital ship it could scale better than several independent ECM units.

For what it's worth, in the five on five, the attack ships win. I already mentioned that offense can ultimately outpace defense, and nullspace already admitted that at the end point defense is no longer useful.



How fast you get to endgame weapons and fleets depends a lot on galaxy size, tech speed and the number of planets out there. There is a large area in the middle game where if you manage to outpace the enemy, you can make defensive ships that are worthwhile, at least for a short time (but come on, how long does any war take?)

I'm happy for the people that get defense to work for them. Overall, offense is the way to go these days, and I dislike that because my games have become much less interesting. I ignore what weapons/defense the AI uses, and I have not suffered since I noticed the cost imbalance in DA. This is a problem, because if even on the highest difficulty level a player is able to ignore weapon types and defense, then a lot of depth has been removed from the game. If I give the AI the best defense against the weapons I use, that should slow ME down, not them (which it currently does).

Thinking about it, maybe changing the 1hp rule would be a good way to take exp away from offense, which has many advantages at this point. I like defense, and I'm very happy the devs have agreed to look at it. I hope the defense modules come out a lot cheaper - even endgame that could change the cost/benefit analysis to bring defense back to being useful almost always.

I have gotten defense to work in DA (using the Krynn mostly) - but it is very difficult. It is almost artwork to craft a successful situation and ship where the price is justified. For instance - trade all of your enemies beam weapons that are higher than they have researched in the first year... knowing this will make the AI switch weapon tracks. THEN research shields with large hulls, and you will do pretty well.

Ancedotes and stories about specific situations only carry so much weight. Part of the current problem is that the "uselessness" of mid range defense really hurts the AI - that is the kind of defense it always uses. I included specific fleets and descriptions of games I have played not to show how clever I am, but because I strongly believe that vis a vis the AI, the new value of defense becomes a systemic disadvantage for my opponents always.

I'm very curious to see how this is re-balanced in the first real patch (and yay, we will finally get research treaties that work!)

Hi!

It proves the validity of both extreme concepts: all-attack ships without single defense until defenses tech is low, and most-defense-low-attack ships when one can mount on a single ship enough defenses to block attack power from a whole fleet.

I agree the huge hull is mostly late-game tech, but large hull is quite cheap if I compare it's research costs with what I'd get for the same investment in defensive or weapons branch. The medium hull however has a problem: if I mount on it one engine, I can give it just about the same amount of weapons as I can put on a small hull without one.

So in DA I've developed a rule-of-thumb:
- early game NO warships (just some defenders), but economy;
- early mid game all-attack mediums with one engine;
- late mid game all-attack large with one engine;
- late game depends on what AIs are fielding, but I'd (like) to prefer defensive ones.

BR, Iztok

I haven't seen many opinions on how defense should be brought up to speed in these threads, so I would be interested in hearing opinions on that. I think the easiest and most logical thing to do would be to cut the cost in half across the board. That way there would be no AI tweaks necessary, no combat changes. It could hardly be considered unbalancing, since defense is at best half as effective as in DL and many experienced players argued that is wasn't cost effective then.

The only effect on game play that I can see is that early wars with one on one battles and very small fleets will be tipped in favor of those choosing to invest in defense, assuming the player can insure it is always the optimal type. Lowering the cost won't do much to change the diminishing relevance of defense as fleets get bigger and attack values go up.

Tweaking the cost is probably the best way to get it back in line, yeah.

Existing balance is always a balance of sorts, even if it isn't always the desireable point. Right now, defense and offense is kind of strange, but it's not incredibly so, IMO.

Making all attack ships work only works if you have the best attack ship and are correctly placed on the tech tree. Manipulating the AI to hamper its ships by placing defense on them haphazardly points to the weakness of the AI, not to the weakness of defense per se, and this is only one of the ways in which it's possible to hoodwink the AI.

Sometimes, the AI won't build ships with defense of any sort regardless of what you give it, and it also happens that they will occasionally have better Logistics than you, or bigger hulls, or better weapons. If you have all those in advantage, then haven't you already won? Isn't that the same as saying that investing in defense is a fool's mission, because you will have already won anyway?

The ways in which attack is useful has been already beaten over the head, but defense has been, IMO, much more game-turning, IMX. Having an invincible or nearly invincible ship or fleet is remarkably useful when you're behind in technology or production or both.

It can be difficult to trade for advanced weapon technology, even when you're militarily behind, but defensive technology is easy to come by. This means that you can adapt defense technology relatively easily as long as someone else you know has it. Moreover, even though defensive ships cost more, if they're invincible, the cost is no object and can defend your borders incredibly well.

While it's true that I, myself, use attack-oriented ships more than defense oriented ones, I've used variable levels of defensive tech on a situational basis. I guess the bottomline is that defense is situational but attack is all-purpose. Of course, threat-response theory already holds that to be obvious.

Of course, you must also somewhat engineer the scenario diplomatically or what-have-you in order to leverage a win with an all-attack ship anyway, so that makes that "situational" as well. I've found both attack and defense useful, and both likewise situational.

I don't favor high production strategies, as you might surmise. It costs more to favor a high-attack ship strategy because barring the almighty Hyperion Dreadnaught, attack fleets always lose ships, even to technologically and numerically inferior foes. Fighting off an unexpected (or expected) three way attack is easier to manage with defensive technology, IMO.

Even when you favor research, you do eventually get to the point where you have your Hyperion Dreadnaught, but until you do, it's easier to leverage your puny ship numbers by making invincible ships.

Since Dec. 2005 (I was a DL beta tester), I have complained the first strike advantage was exploitable! When it was announced that it was being removed in v1.2, I said at last! However, an exploitable attacker advantage remained. In a 1 on 1 battle where both the attacker and defender wipe each other out, the attacker should survive with 1 HP but in fact is restored to full health! Even without this bug, having the attacker survive with 1 HP means that high attack ships in 1 on 1 battles will almost always win. In DA things are worse since we have brought back the old (pre-1.2) first strike advantage as one of the special race abilities; so now we can again extend the exploit from 1 on 1 battles to fleet battles!

In my opinion the only advantage that should be given to the attacker is deciding who and when to fight! If both the attacker and defender deliver a lethal blow then both should be destroyed; why can't battles end in a tie!?

Even if this change is made, I agree the high cost of defense makes the all attack ships more cost effective. Recall one weapon type is optimal against two defense types but one defense type is only optimal against one weapon type. Researching weapons is more expensive than researching defenses but I only need to research one or two weapon's trees whereas he needs to research one weapon's tree and all three defenses. For the cost/time of building a single dreadnought with moderate attack and very high defense, I can build 2 all attack dreadnoughts each with a different weapon's type. At least 1 of these all attack dreadnoughts will have the optimal weapon and easy destroy the high defense dreadnought! If you place all three defenses on your dreadnought then your effective defense will not be enough to block my attack!

Only when the attacker advantage is removed and the cost of defense is lowered will defenses be worthwhile!

The 1 hp feature may very well be overbalancing the game in favor of the Hyperion Dreadnaught, but it's the fleet feature and longer and numerically mightier Weapon Tech Tree that really makes the game slightly biased for offense.

It's a relative misnomer that defense is half as effective as offense because it's only effective against one type of offense, whereas offense is only effective against two kinds of defense.

In the first place, you can usually only afford to invest in one kind of up-to-date offensive technology, and your opponents likewise. Defensive tech being relatively fast to research, you can delay research defensive tech until you know which offensive techs are likely to be paramount in significance, in which case your defensive tech is 100% effective.

Likewise, since the research and installation of defensive technology is reactive, offensive technology is 100% likely to be countered by the right defensive tech if the war lingers long enough.

Midgame Medium Hull warfare can be dominated by defensive technology - because Medium Hulls are sizable enough and have enough hp to use defense techs. Moreover, at that point, Logistics hasn't always progressed to the point that offensive fleets can take out defensive oriented ships no matter what defense they have.

Of course, having offense have a slight edge makes the game more stable. I don't know what will happen in a ship battle with two mutually invincible ships, but it can't be that good. At the very best, it'll take your comp forever to resolve every ship encounter, and then you'll resort to never watching any ship combat at all.

After a certain point they apparently just choose a ship to lose.

I'd like to see this 1 hp feature go as well. Though I've personally never played in situations that bring it to the forefront (I tend to play with low tech levels), from the sounds of it it's just causing trouble without a significant improvement to gameplay. I think both fleets should be able to wipe each other out at once.

In my games I play military conquest against 9 races. Between them they use 2 or 3 different weapons types.


In my games, the AI declares war on me when he sees my forces near his planets. Within a few weeks/turns, the AI is toast!


Mind can because my research progresses faster than the AI at midgame (even on level suicide). Plus, the first thing I do in any war is take out the AI resource starbases (especially military) and build them up with my waiting constructors.

Mascrinthus:

In that case, you've probably already won before the first shot is even fired! Such was exactly the charge being leveled at people who said that defenses mattered - that it wouldn't have made a difference anyway.

I contend that it's the reverse. Attack-only ships are only effective when you're so positioned that you're guaranteed to win anyway, whereas defensive ships pull you out of unexpected and difficult situations.

Your experience shows exactly the point I was trying to make.

Hi,

"Your experience shows exactly the point I was trying to make."

There are people that claim that defence doesn't work as specified. At least I understand them to this regard. See this other thread "[DA1.5] defence nerfed(lol)".
As I understand them they claim that defence is a lot better as it should be.

A big aaargh if the claimants a correct!

Have fun