Defence now IS too powerful » Forum Post by Roxlimn

It's not WAD, see any of the "off-type defense bug" threads.

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What's "WAD?"

And yes, I've seen and noticed the off-defense bug. This isn't about that. Even when it's on-defense, the defensive ships are too easy to build and too useful not to build in almost any game.

Even if you build only 6 ships - two for each defense type, you'd have a very useful tool at your disposal. Likely, you'll only need to defend against two weapon types, so you'll probably have 3 ships each.

Building these ships is easier that building the Hyperion Dreadnaught, and they appear on the scene earlier.

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And there is a corresponding hit to your offensive tech and firepower when you go heavy on defense. I haven't found it in any way too powerful... ships still take a substantial amount of abuse in any REAL battle, and the ease at which you can take out lone orbiting ships is less a fault of the game mechanics and more a failing of the AI.

They're fantastically useful tools, yes. As they should be. An investment in defenses SHOULD be worthwhile. I don't see any real problem with the current setup, save for the bizarre problems with off type defenses.

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No hit at all. As I said, just mooch the defensive tech off of other AIs and research the last two, which should be about as good as another level of weapons tech only. Equivalent level defensive tech is effective enough.

Nonfleet battles are still real battles, and arguably more important than fleet battles because that's where the real money is made. You usually only need a fleet if your top defensive ship can't take on their top fleet by itself and that happens often enough to make offensive fleets situational, too.

The fact that they're fantastically useful isn't a bad thing. The fact that they're ALWAYS fantastically useful is.

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The fact that they're fantastically useful isn't a bad thing. The fact that they're ALWAYS fantastically useful is.

How is that a bad thing? Are you also arguing that it's a bad thing that weapons are always fantastically useful? Or money?

Somehow the fact that there are two distinct types of players, ones who claim that the defenses are broken and others who have mathematical proof that they're not worth the credits and research, makes me very hopeful that the defenses are actually quite balanced at the moment (except for the off-type bug).

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

I tend to play with tech trading off precisely because it's too easy to sponge what you need off the AI opponents. That doesn't stop me from spying on them, though

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pahis:

Not at all. In fact, I would like for variable levels of defensive involvement to be good for ship design, but that currently isn't the case. You either build a one-defense ship, a no-defense ship, or a max defense ship. No other ship design makes sense.

Is it a bad thing that all-weapon ships are always useful? Yes, it is. All-weapon ships should be sometimes useful, just as all-defense ships should also be sometimes useful.

I'm arguing for more variability in the game.

As for math, don't put too much stock in that. Math can be misleading, and it's made many people misinterpret what has been said.

Even before the patch, defense was useful. Not useful all the time, but useful nonetheless.

Now it's always useful. That's a bad thing. Whereas the problem was with all-weapons ships before, now the problem has spread to mostly defense ships as well.

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As an example, it would be nice, for instance, if mixed defenses on a ship aided the other types more than if no mixed defenses were put in.

This means that I would like for a 5/5/0 ship to defend slightly better than a 10/0/0 ship, overall. This would make a 10/0/0 ship a viable choice for when you're fighting a specific kind of attack ship or group of attack ships, but that 5/5/0s are generally more useful.

The problem of focused defense stems directly from the problem of focused attack. It makes more sense to focus a ship on one kind of attack because that makes it more effective against a larger number of target ships. This is compounded by the fleet dynamic, which allows you to vary attack content by ship inclusion into the fleet, not by ship design.

A mostly focused-attack philosophy means that the defense is mostly a focused-defense philosophy, and the simplistic ship combat dynamic begins to feel rather shallow.

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I usually stick about 1\4 engines, 1\4 defense, rest weapons. I may still lose ships, but they don't get as continually ground down. Works for me.

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If your defenses are working at all to any effect, then you should be able to field in a mostly invincible ship - that is, a ship whose defenses are so massive that nothing the AI throws at it will damage it to the point of destruction.

Such a ship would fall only to the most advanced, biggest fleet the AI can muster. It can take on anything else, so you can have it sweep the galaxy of everything it can handle, and then simply have it avoid whatever it can't defeat.

The relative advantage in production you'll get will allow you to research faster and/or field in a powerful enough offensive fleet or series of fleets to take out their most powerful fleet.

Once you do that, your defensive ships can simply pick off enemy ships as they're produced.

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What difficulty level are you playing on? Some races never seem to have a problem destroying my high defense ships. The Yor come to mind.

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If your defenses are working at all to any effect, then you should be able to field in a mostly invincible ship

That hasn't been my experience at all, even "balanced" ships (that's 50-50 defense-offense) seem to go down fairly easily to like-weapon ships under 1.5X for me. They hang in a little longer than a defenseless ship, don't get me wrong, but they're a long, long way from "invincible." Like Wyndstar I'm wondering what difficulty you're playing at and what other circumstances may be producing this peculiar functionality in your games.

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The only invincible ships I've had were Precursor rangers that took advantage of the off type defense bug.

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You either build a one-defense ship, a no-defense ship, or a max defense ship. No other ship design makes sense.

At least on Tough I've been quite happy with dual defense ships, so I hope they make sense as well.

As for math, don't put too much stock in that. Math can be misleading, and
it's made many people misinterpret what has been said.

Math and simulations aren't misleading. When it comes to games they're very high on my list of who or what to believe.

My DA games have all been on Tough, Large Galaxy and 5 opponents. To me it seems that the large or huge ships with rather heavy defenses dominate because AI is bringing lots of crappy fleets to war. In my previous game Drengin had more than twice the military rating I had but at least half of it came from dozens after dozens of tiny ships with Stinger Missiles. Of course my large ships with 0/16/9 defenses destroy them. They had couple of fleets with about 70 Missiles too, and my ships had no chance against them unless I put 3 to a fleet as well and in most of those battles I lost at least 1 ship. If Drengin had had a reasonable army considering its tech level the war would have been far closer. I don't think I won that war because defenses are broken, I won it because Drengin army was literally broken

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Thats the Drengin super ability, where they get swarms of tiny Dominator corvettes every time they declare war. It's quite useless, to be honest... they should be getting ships that scale throughout the game, not just more of the useless ones.

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Thats the Drengin super ability, where they get swarms of tiny Dominator corvettes every time they declare war. It's quite useless, to be honest...

At the very least it isn't very... uh... super

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Hi!

Drengin had couple of fleets with about 70 Missiles too, and my ships had no chance against them unless I put 3 to a fleet as well and in most of those battles I lost at least 1 ship.

I'm facing stronger fleets: 2 mediums and 2 small with missile attack around 100. My counter is a large hull with 3 photonic torpedos, 1 engine, rest PD-combos. With one millitary resource it has 18 attack and 99 missile defense. Average damage it receives in a battle with such a fleet is about 5 points. The worst outcome I got when I by mistake (I have an old medium hull with 9 beam attack and 24 armor nearby for dealing with them) attacked a fleet of 5 super-dominator corvettes, all with mass weapons. They did 15 points of damage.

All defense ships are a game-breaking feature. Before the patch I needed a good number of medium ships to successfully attack a neighbour with ~10 planets. Now I need one or two. The worst thing is the AIs don't even try to counter my two ships by researching proper defenses. Drengin keep researching Photon Torpedos II despite losing war badly. I bet the AI doesn't want to be "misleaded" in counterdesign war by just two ships I'm using.

BR, Iztok

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I'm facing stronger fleets: 2 mediums and 2 small with missile attack around 100. My counter is a large hull with 3 photonic torpedos, 1 engine, rest PD-combos.

In my opinion the problem in the above is not the defenses but the fact that AI has not been able to adapt to the current military environment. AI is still waging war with tiny and small ships like it used to in DL while large and huge ships have become much more powerful in DA. If your ship would be facing a large hull filled with missiles and perhaps a tiny bit of defense it wouldn't have any advantage at all (unless you're counting disadvantage).

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Hi!

In my opinion the problem in the above is not the defenses but the fact that AI has not been able to adapt to the current military environment.

Exactly. I know very precisely what I need to cheaply kick their digital a... . AIs don't. And when I get what I want I also immediately use that. Before AIs can adapt, there are quite less of them.

BR, Iztok

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This thread is similar to one posted before the latest patch. Yes, an all defense ship is very powerful. I am still playing a DA game without the latest patch, where def is still expensive, and built a huge hull with 792 shield defense, 202 beam attack. It has 32 ultimate invulnerability shields and 4 doom rays, and took 20-some weeks to build. I also have +174% bonus to defense(good alignment).

This ship is invincible, but that is only because I am winning the game. The AI can't stop it, but I could probably put a fleet together that can, with a cost that would be lower. That was the problem that Wyndstar pointed out before the patch. Defenses were very strong even before the patch, when done right, but not worth it. Now that defenses are cheaper, I'd like to see the AI crank out a couple ships like that, and game on.

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I've had AIs that formed some pretty impressive fleets... the Arceans and their fleets of medium hulled attack ships come to mind (MAN, that was a painful war), though even they would often pair inferior ships with superior ships. Unless time is at a premium (or you have a tech advantage) thats a fair amount of your military you're giving up. If you take two military powers with equal militaries (in both ships, technologies, and loadouts), the one that puts its most powerful ships only into fleets with similarily powerful ships will probably win. One powerful fleet and several more outdated fleets are going to win against a bunch of fleets with a mix of the weak and strong ships, so long as the powerful fleet is properly used to hammer your foe into submittion.

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I'll address the more important points:

What difficulty level are you playing on? Some races never seem to have a problem destroying my high defense ships. The Yor come to mind.

Tough, if you'd like to know. The difficulty level should not be a determinant of military strategy. Given relatively equal resources for everything else, all-defense builds should not be universally useful.

That hasn't been my experience at all, even "balanced" ships (that's 50-50 defense-offense) seem to go down fairly easily to like-weapon ships under 1.5X for me. They hang in a little longer than a defenseless ship, don't get me wrong, but they're a long, long way from "invincible." Like Wyndstar I'm wondering what difficulty you're playing at and what other circumstances may be producing this peculiar functionality in your games.

50/50 is worthless. In order for your defense to be useful, it has to take away a large majority of the attack of your target fleet or ship. Defense increases in value the higher it is, because it allows you to tackle more and more fleets.

Going against mostly attack ships (which the AI does pretty usually), you only need just enough attack to damage one vessel every round. You devote the rest to defense. Ideally, your defense target is twice the attack rating of your target fleet. Even if you score only about 90% of that, your ship will be invincible enough to be very, very useful.

My DA games have all been on Tough, Large Galaxy and 5 opponents. To me it seems that the large or huge ships with rather heavy defenses dominate because AI is bringing lots of crappy fleets to war. In my previous game Drengin had more than twice the military rating I had but at least half of it came from dozens after dozens of tiny ships with Stinger Missiles. Of course my large ships with 0/16/9 defenses destroy them. They had couple of fleets with about 70 Missiles too, and my ships had no chance against them unless I put 3 to a fleet as well and in most of those battles I lost at least 1 ship. If Drengin had had a reasonable army considering its tech level the war would have been far closer. I don't think I won that war because defenses are broken, I won it because Drengin army was literally broken.

No no no. Defense is cheap. Both defensive tech and the defenses themselves. That means that your defense should be about on par or better than the equivalent level weapons tech.

Defense-oriented Large ships should typically have more than 16/9 defenses, even at the first stages when you actually get Large Hull Building.

My games are on Tough, Large Galaxy, 7 opponents. Try this: keep a key defense tech on par with an enemy's offensive tech. Not great, just on par. You can usually effortlessly manage this by trading your tech to a rival civ who's researching the defense tech you want (typically the Altarians), or researching the tech yourself and trading it out for civil tech.

Once you get Medium Hull Building, prepare a plan to get one engine, one weapon onto a ship. The rest is defense on-type. You can lower the defenses a bit if your opponent's Logistics isn't that high, but watch his Logistics tech!

If your enemy has no more than Advanced Logisitics, your Medium ship should be able to handle fairly anything they throw at you. Even when their Logistics goes higher, your Defense Ship's ability to duel individual enemy ships at advantage makes it the ideal sweeper, raider, Transport Escort, and Planetary Stripper.

The thing is, it doesn't even have to be a Large Hull!!! As long as you can fit enough defenses on it and you're only facing limited defense use from your enemies, your weapons number is largely superfluous beyond, say, 5.

I've taken down fleets with superior numbers, superior logistics, and even superior weapons technology, just because my defensive tech was that good (and it wasn't all that hard to acquire).

Defense trumps logistics AND weapons.

This thread is similar to one posted before the latest patch. Yes, an all defense ship is very powerful. I am still playing a DA game without the latest patch, where def is still expensive, and built a huge hull with 792 shield defense, 202 beam attack. It has 32 ultimate invulnerability shields and 4 doom rays, and took 20-some weeks to build. I also have +174% bonus to defense(good alignment).

This ship is invincible, but that is only because I am winning the game. The AI can't stop it, but I could probably put a fleet together that can, with a cost that would be lower. That was the problem that Wyndstar pointed out before the patch. Defenses were very strong even before the patch, when done right, but not worth it. Now that defenses are cheaper, I'd like to see the AI crank out a couple ships like that, and game on.

It wasn't true that Defense wasn't worth it prepatch. It was just not universally advisable. Now, it is.

Now, an all defense strategy is nearly as fool-proof as the Hyperion Dreadnaught, you can field it much easier and at earlier levels, AND it's no less powerful, nor significantly more expensive.

The problem with the Hyperion Dreadnaught was that if your enemy AI can field in a fleet or ship that trumped its attack, it's largely become worthless, or at least not quite as powerful as it was.

This essentially meant that you were merely leveraging a superior weapons, Hull, and Miniturization level to win. Thus, you were already winning, tech-wise, to begin with.

Defense is not the same. Defensive technology is relatively cheap and easy to trade for. You can have inferior logistics, weapons, even Manufacturing and Economy. If your one ship can handle fleets of theirs, what's the premium of 150% the cost of an all-attack ship? It's a huge bargain!

Even when this ship's defenses fall below the attack of particular fleets from the AI, this one powerful fleet can't be everywhere, and wherever it's not, your Defensive Ship will win! Blockade planets, strip enemy planets of ships and ships of defenses, remove enemy raiders - the uses are practically endless.

The only thing it can't do NOW is take on your enemy's most powerful fleet, and you can always build a comparable fleet to take that one threat out (and it doesn't even have to survive the encounter). Heck, fleeting your Defensive Ships would probably solve the problem all by itself (although it doesn't extend the attack margin by much).

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Thanks for your response to my question. Here is my response to your observations:

Tough, if you'd like to know. The difficulty level should not be a determinant of military strategy. Given relatively equal resources for everything else, all-defense builds should not be universally useful.

The reason I ask is because all defense builds are NOT universally useful at higher difficulty levels. With more money, resources, and technology the AI is much better at constructing fleets to match and defeat what you are using against it. If you think combat is too easy, I would recommend upping your difficulty. I'll think you'll find the AI will find a way to overcome those medium fighters you are so proud of.

Once you get Medium Hull Building, prepare a plan to get one engine, one weapon onto a ship. The rest is defense on-type.

But that's the trick isn't it. On-type defense SHOULD be better against the weapons they match. That's the point. If that is not true, the combat system doesn't work. You are fortunate that you are facing an enemy that doesn't use any defense, even some would stop that weaksauce weapon on your fighter, and you wouldn't do damage either.

Defense trumps logistics AND weapons.

And this is simply not true. I know for a fact that when you finish the tech tree, you can make fleets that destroy any defense in the game. My Hyperion Dreadnaught screenshot was an example. Right now, defense is too strong because there is a bug to non-matching defense. I am sure this will be fixed in an upcoming patch.

The problem with the Hyperion Dreadnaught was that if your enemy AI can field in a fleet or ship that trumped its attack, it's largely become worthless, or at least not quite as powerful as it was.

This essentially meant that you were merely leveraging a superior weapons, Hull, and Miniturization level to win. Thus, you were already winning, tech-wise, to begin with.

Again, I'm glad you liked my example ships. However, in the game where I was using them, I had no tech advantage. Every civ had maxed out the tech tree about 6 months earlier. I usually didn't fleet them up, because alone they could wipe out an enemy one and one and survive using the one hp rule. The point was specifically that you didn't need a tech advantage, you just needed to build all attack ships, and even an enemy with the top tech could not stop you.

The changes that were made were a good thing because when everyone maxes out the tech tree, if you focus on just one weapon type there should be fleets that stop you. I'm happy to report that in my first game after the 1.5x patch I gave Ultimate Invulnerability to all of my enemies, and didn't use defense myself, only beam weapons, and I lost. That was perhaps the happiest I have ever been in a loss in this game. I still destroyed enemies, but not fast or cheap enough compared to the cost and attrition my ships took.

It wasn't true that Defense wasn't worth it prepatch. It was just not universally advisable. Now, it is.

Well, I partially agree with you. Overall defense wasn't worth it, especially as used by the AI. But even prepatch you could make invincible ships in the right situations. Now, there is a bug, and defense IS always a good tactic because of the bug. When it is fixed, those defensive monsters will start to die quickly against two weapon types, which is as it should be.

If you think you have found the ultimate strategy for combat, again I suggest you up the difficulty. I think you will find the AI uses more defense, and those low attack values you seem to enjoy will become a problem. The off-type defense bug works for the AI too. You will find, I believe, that they are quite effective at destroying the kind of ships you are talking about.

Even with the current bug, at the end of the tech tree I have never seen a ship that I or the AI can't kill. There are times when a civ can make a nearly invincible ship by gaining a tech advantage. That is part of the interest of the arms race, and it makes weapon types matter if you CAN significantly stop an enemy with matching defense. Maybe defense was made too cheap (I am not at all persuaded in this direction yet), but in any case it is hard to test the game balance until all of the bugs are fixed. As Vinraith noted in the very first reply to this post, the system is not currently working as designed.

Good luck in your future conquests.

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Hi!

> Defense trumps logistics AND weapons.
And this is simply not true. I know for a fact that when you finish the tech tree...

But most my games end WELL before ANY weapons or defense tech is maxed. Until then defense do trump logistics AND weapons most of the time. In the maso game I just finished I did not research a SINGLE level of logistic beyond the basic one. I did research just medium hull, plasma weapons, PD combo, and some miniaturization. I'd say comparable costs to Photonic torpedos and 2 more levels of logistic. But with just 2 medium ships (3 plasma, 1 engine, rest PD-combos) I removed Yor with Harpoons and Photonic torpedos from the game. Then I just researched large hull and PD combo-4 for 4 blocked damage and repeated process with Drengin and Korath. I've been lucky - all three evil civs used missiles as their weapon.

You are fortunate that you are facing an enemy that doesn't use any defense,

That's what's funny: in that game I haven't seen a SINGLE ship with ANY defenses on. Just pure atack.

the system is not currently working as designed.

In my game it did - I haven't been using the off-type-defences glitch. But I bet the system isn't working as it was supposed. Designers probably haven't noticed that both extreme edges in ship configuration allow temporary "invulnerability". This should IMO be changed: even full defenses should fail sometimes, and "one ship survives" rule should be scrapped or nerfed significantly. Then the game will play as it was supposed.

BR, Iztok

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Wyndstar:

Thank you for the discussion!

There's always something to be had in fruitful conversation.

The reason I ask is because all defense builds are NOT universally useful at higher difficulty levels. With more money, resources, and technology the AI is much better at constructing fleets to match and defeat what you are using against it. If you think combat is too easy, I would recommend upping your difficulty. I'll think you'll find the AI will find a way to overcome those medium fighters you are so proud of.

I don't believe so, because unless the AI has a massive tech and economy AND manufacturing advantage, there's just no way it'll code for a comparable ship. Upping the difficulty beyond tough doesn't improve the AI - it only adds bonuses to it! If it can't make the right ship at Tough, it'll never make the right ship.

Moreso, as I said, Defense allows you to surmount technological advantages that are beyond what is reasonable.

But that's the trick isn't it. On-type defense SHOULD be better against the weapons they match. That's the point. If that is not true, the combat system doesn't work. You are fortunate that you are facing an enemy that doesn't use any defense, even some would stop that weaksauce weapon on your fighter, and you wouldn't do damage either.

You're only quoting a truism that doesn't apply. On-type defenses should be better against the weapons they match. So what? That doesn't make my point any the less. I don't pit my Mediums against ships that have off-type weapons because I'm aware of the bug and I don't want to take advantage of it. I only field and use on-type defense ships.

I'm talking about ON-TYPE defense vs, offense conflicts, not any other bug you might be aware of.

Sometimes the enemy WOULD field in a little bit of defense (but not really substantial amounts). The weak defense is really easily surmounted by fleeting even two Defense Type ships, or merely loading on just that little bit of weaponry (and the refit cost is trivial).

It's a little bump -a small complication- that doesn't matter in the least.

And this is simply not true. I know for a fact that when you finish the tech tree, you can make fleets that destroy any defense in the game. My Hyperion Dreadnaught screenshot was an example. Right now, defense is too strong because there is a bug to non-matching defense. I am sure this will be fixed in an upcoming patch.

To say again, I'm NOT talking about the defense bug. This performance is PURELY with on-type defense ships. Since you don't need that many, you can build as many on-type defense ships as your tech allows.

WHEN YOU FINISH THE TECH TREE, offense strongly overpowers defense purely on a numerical scale - the defenses simply don't numerically scale to the same level.

However, not every situation is at the end of the tech tree, and not every game is BATTLE OF THE GODS. For many situations in the middle of the tech tree, a Defense Ship is, for most intents and purposes, just like a Hyperion Dreadnaught. The current Defense situation merely brings that phenomenon out of the end game and puts it at every level of the tech tree - creating a problem where no problem previously existed.

If you don't like the end-tech situation, I propose making the game go at 1/2 tech speed.

Finished Tech Tree Scenarios aren't only NOT representative of the whole game experience, they're also reflective of a problem with the end-tech tree itself, not just Defense or Offense.

The Defense Ship problem is more fundamental because it exists at most levels of the tech tree.

The changes that were made were a good thing because when everyone maxes out the tech tree, if you focus on just one weapon type there should be fleets that stop you. I'm happy to report that in my first game after the 1.5x patch I gave Ultimate Invulnerability to all of my enemies, and didn't use defense myself, only beam weapons, and I lost. That was perhaps the happiest I have ever been in a loss in this game. I still destroyed enemies, but not fast or cheap enough compared to the cost and attrition my ships took.

That merely reflects a change in AI behavior - the more important change. Perhaps it would be advisable to make defenses cheaper in the end game as you acquire more weapons tech, but I think that this end-game problem is merely reflective of a shorter defense tree compared to the Offense tree.

Fixing an end-game problem by wrecking the rest of the game is not a good solution.

Well, I partially agree with you. Overall defense wasn't worth it, especially as used by the AI. But even prepatch you could make invincible ships in the right situations. Now, there is a bug, and defense IS always a good tactic because of the bug. When it is fixed, those defensive monsters will start to die quickly against two weapon types, which is as it should be.

I think you have a fundamental lack of understanding of what I'm saying. I apologize for not making myself clear enough.

1. The bug doesn't figure in my estimations.

2. For most intents and purposes, most AIs in the game only have one weapon type. The cost of weapons tech is such that you can only really afford to ace one, and maybe secondarily research another. IMX the AIs don't readily trade weapons tech to each other. For the same reasons, you probably only have one major weapon type.

Since Defense is a reactive technology, it is 100% effective, not 1/3. Moreover, since you only need a few ships of middling size, even, you can afford to build multiple defense-type ships, one for each AI threat.

Post two Defense Ships on each border that needs it and you're pretty much set on a Large Map.

Even with the current bug, at the end of the tech tree I have never seen a ship that I or the AI can't kill. There are times when a civ can make a nearly invincible ship by gaining a tech advantage. That is part of the interest of the arms race, and it makes weapon types matter if you CAN significantly stop an enemy with matching defense. Maybe defense was made too cheap (I am not at all persuaded in this direction yet), but in any case it is hard to test the game balance until all of the bugs are fixed. As Vinraith noted in the very first reply to this post, the system is not currently working as designed.

My experience is not the same. In fact, the I believe that the AI NEEDS a sizable tech advantage to kill a Defense-type ship, either in weapons, mini, or logistics. That makes Defense tech possibly the singlemost worthy military investment you can have for ship components, and it doesn't even need that much investment to take advantage of.

I'm not that good a player, and I frequently fall behind in tech at Tough, especially at the stage where we only have Medium Ships. My opponents all have better weapons, better economies, and better miniturization. The fact that I can up my difficulty level purely on the basis of a military advantage from Defense means that Defense is disproportionately powerful.

I repeat: YOU NEED NO TECH ADVANTAGE TO MAKE AN INVINCIBLE SHIP. It's not even that expensive.

This is clearly not working as intended.

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