Well, the Yor, Drengin and Korath AIs are the least likely to use def it seems, being evil they focus on attack. That they were all using the same weapon type just means that you got lucky, not that the system needs to be changed.

As for how far you get in the tech tree, that really depends on map size and research level. I'll admit I typically play with very fast research, and each civ has usually maxed out one weapon line halfway through year 2 (say 130 turns in). This is usually a good year and a half minimum before I'm in a situation to win. Accordingly, my results may be slightly skewed toward those galaxy settings.

I think the current system is better only because the AI's use of defense seems to have started to matter. And as already mentioned, I've never seen a ship that remained unkillable for more than say about 3 months. Once the defense bug is fixed, I'm anxious to test play the current balance. If medium hull defense then rules the universe, I'm sure I'll be advocating a change (maybe that the AI should use the same tactic, for instance). Right now though, it is difficult to tell... defensive ships should be very easy to destroy with the right weapons (non-matching) and we can't see that element at work right now.

Still, when facing matching weapons I would want a result like you achieved. Matching defense SHOULD beat matching weapons. Perhaps the AI should be quicker to start researching another weapons tree, although again I've not really had a problem with it doing that.

I disagree. I think it means the computer does not use defense against your one weapon branch enough. Defense should beat the matching type of weapon at pretty much all levels of the tech tree. I had a really long discussion about this elsewhere where I tried to explain why for game balance purposes.

It sounds to me like what you are saying is that because of the expense of research, everyone uses just one weapons branch. That branch is easier to beat with cheaper defenses... so you just react to your enemy. And you are better at reacting to your enemies weapons then they are at reacting to yours. But if the AI reacted to you in the same way, you would have the same problem. Presumably, if you don't have a tech advantage, then you only have one weapon tree as well. Your low attack high def fighters could be beaten by balanced attack/def fighters that matched their armor to your guns.

And the whole point of having a rock/paper/scissors combat system requires that rock always beat scissors. This way you are challenged in which elements to research with limited resources. If you think that matching weapons should beat matching defense, I really disagree. I saw what that system was like for a few weeks - and it was ridiculously easy (and boring) in my opinion.

Okay. I wanted to test so I started a game with Krynn (+50% Defenses) yesterday. I built medium ships with 1 engine,3 Plasmas and rest PD-Combos. My settings were as before: tough, large and 5 AI's. Drengin had quite dominant position in the game when they declared a war to me. My economy was okay (few hundred bc profit a week and about 20k treasury). Here's how the war went:

One of my ships was capable of destroying many Dominator Corvette fleet. This was as I expected. They did take little damage though despite the off-type bug.

One of my ships was capable of destroying 2 to 5 small hulled Drenging fleets with missile attacks in the 30 to 40 range. Not bad but hardly invincible. Even with this bad opposition the fact that defense ships have more chances to get an unlucky roll evens out a bit.

The best Drengin had to offer was medium hulled ships with fleet's missile rating around 60 to 90 (depending if they had decided to put Corvettes in them). These ships had a small amount of PD defenses so due to off-type bug they got a slight advantage. One of my ships usually destroyed 0 to 2 ships from these fleets before they got killed themselves. My only chance was to fleet up too and even then my fleet lost ship(s) in almost every combat.

Initially I lost 4 planets to Drengin invasion. To withstand their attack I had to bring in more ships by buying them. I brought transports from within my empire and managed to take back my planets (by destroying 2 of them) and actually gained one from the Drengin. After my invasions I offered Peace and they accepted. All of my treasury was gone and due to leases and eh... planetary problems I was taking 200bc hit each week. I'm confident though that my dozen or so ships can keep me safe until I get my economy up again.

So how would have things gone if I had used the "invincible" tactic of building just a couple of these? My military would have been dead in a turn or two. Against technologically equal opposition with good portion of its fleets built decently these ships are not, I repeat ARE NOT invicible. Without some Logistics I would have lost too as these ships couldn't take down Drengin's best fleets on their own.

Wyndstar:



It's the same charge against the Hyperion Dreadnaught - the computer simply doesn't know how to defeat the ship design (not that it's unbeatable). That doesn't mean that the existing condition is acceptable.

I disagree with you on a fundamental - that Defense should beat the matching type of weapon at all levels of the tech tree. That is simply not a tenable situation.



I suppose this is because it would be a tie, and fleets that have higher attack win ties?

An AI might react in the same fashion that I'm acting, but the way I'm acting is highly difficult to code - I actively trade for and maximize defenses based on a strategy that uses multiple individual ships in non-fleeted OR fleeted mode. It's easy for a human, but I can see where the algorithm would be devilishly hard.

And it wouldn't solve the Defense problem anyway. It'll just mean that everyone maxes defense and continually refits to the current ship, even if no new technology exists.



A Rock/Paper/Scissors system is too simple, IMO, to encompass ship design games. It's just not that interesting, and boring. Whether it's attack or defense advantage, the end result is much the same - a simple solution for a simple problem.

The tech situation has to be more complicated than this or it'll simply not be all that interesting, however you modify it.

pahis:

Your enemy had sizable weapons, logistics, AND manufactuing advantage. As you said - they were dominant.

One medium Hulled ship at that stage in the game capable of destroying 5 Small Hulled Ships in fleet (15 logistics score, at least) constitutes a sizable advantage.

I notice that you mentioned that you were facing 60-90 missile attack ships in fleet. Even then you said that you LOST SHIPS in combat. Not lost battles, lost ships. Comparing the advantages each has, I would say that Defense is making itself very much felt.

AND you gained a planet (against a militarily superior foe) AND your 12 (?!?) ships will keep you defended until you manage solvency.

I'd say that you ended up on the winning end of a bad situation - and all because of the power of defense (which you apparently didn't even have that much of).

OK, well I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree. As it is, defense will only beat matching weapons for most of the tech tree, at the top end weapons win out anyway. In my experience this was very similar to how combat was in DL as well, which is why I used to stick religiously to mixed weapon type fighters.



Maybe it is too simple, but it is the system this game has. A more complex combat system is a project for another game, not this one. All I want to do is preserve the rock/paper/scissors strategy. When attack became overpowered, the system became even MORE simple than it is now, because r/p/s is still more complicated than all attack all the time.



Two thoughts on this. First, what you are saying is that through trade you really do have a tech advantage, just a tech advantage in defensive techs. This is really a weakness of the trading system, not of the combat system. In the latest patch they made tech trading exceptionally difficult on the highest three difficulty settings. If for nothing but this reason, I would recommend you up your difficulty level.

Second, I think a higher difficulty level also makes a big difference because players and the AI have different advantages. You can plan well in advance your next opponent, and be prepared in tech and ships when you finally fight. The AI is less savy about long term planning, and fights the wars it finds itself in. But, on higher difficulty levels it does this better. While you spent many turns researching and trading for the right techs to prepare for war, if the AI has money and research boosts, it can "make up" your preperation time quickly after the war has started. If it has the resources available to it, the AI will adjust to your strategies - and field forces that match yours.

On tough, you might be getting the best AI strategies, but the AI strategies in general are short term, and take more of a brute force approach. To see the AI shine given its general approach to the game, you will need to play it on harder difficulty levels to be challenged.

Other than that, yeah, I wish you the best of luck with your future games. I disagree with your opinion that matching defense should be less effective, but I don't think we are going to be changing each other's minds. Such is life. Take care

I guess I agree then. We do have to agree to disagree.

There are several things on which it isn't that simple though:



The game doesn't have to be this simple, and still run on the three weapon/three defense chassis it already has. For instance, you could postulate that smaller ships have better defenses. That alone will shake up the algorithm because smaller ships having better defenses will offset the hp and firepower advantage larger ships have.

You can postulate that smaller ships give a better return for beam weapons. This will mean that races who favor beam weapons could go for smaller ships with a solid justification.

If you modulate sizes, you could make Laser II (for instance) a deadly upgrade for Small ships, but less so for Tiny Ships, and not at all for Medium or above ships. You could make it so Laser III only fits on Medium ships when it becomes initially available.

Note that this kind of variable already kind of exists. Some "upgrades" are worthless depending on size and some are even downright worse than the preceding technology (depending on size, again). Rather than just lazily coding "upgrades" according to some predetermined formula (and ending up with nonsense, even bad results), you could manipulate this to make the tech game on weapons and defenses lots more interesting.

And that's only one way you can make this more interesting.

As for the previous incarnation in DA, I don't agree that it was just attack all the time. As I said, it was so for the comp, but I used Defense situationally. Now I use both all the time.

So no, the new paradigm isn't more complicated. It's actually somewhat more simple.



Similarly, the inability of the AI to fight the Hyperion Dreadnaught is a problem with the AI, not with defense, no?



It changes nothing. If the game can be better designed to match the AI's weapons and defense approach (or to better match a modestly improved AI), then the game becomes more equitable, regardless of the difficulty setting.

What you're saying is that if I see an exploit, I should use it and compensate by giving the AI bonuses. Shouldn't it be a better solution to just get rid of the exploit? In like manner, if off-type defenses are making my ships better, shouldn't I just increase my difficulty level as well?

Actually, its a problem with a basic game mechanic. The tie rule, also known as the one hp rule, makes it so that when both sides wipe each other out, the side with the higher attack survives with one hp. I just use this rule to make pure attack ships that never die. For some reason the devs seemed to think this was a better solution than simultaneous death.

The tie rule has a flip side that is just as frustrating, although less exploitable. If you have two fleets that fight each other and one side can't destroy the other in 50 rounds, the fleet with the smaller attack power is just wiped out. This is even if it took no damage the whole fight. The first time this happened to me I was mad, now I just make sure I always have the highest attack power. (I thought it would be fun to have two high def ships fight it out over several turns, so I gifted one to my enemy, and then attacked it... to my suprise watching the combat viewer there were 49 turns of 0 and 1 damage, then in the last round one of the ships took 120 damage and died. The highest attack value of either ship was 36)



Kind of, that is what I'm saying. This game is very open ended, giving the player a lot of options. To retain that open ended playability, there will always be exploits. You can either choose to exercise self control and ignore them, or increase the difficulty level for your ability to manipulate the game engine through practice. I tend to choose the later, because it makes for a more challenging experience. Some exploits are bugs, like off-type defense, and that should be fixed. Others, like tech trading, are more difficult to close as exploits and yet still leave the game with its open ended feel. Hence the huge backlash to the recent changes to this system.

Also, part of what I'm saying is that the way the AI is designed, it needs bonuses to compete. It doesn't plan ahead like you do, so it can't compete with the player. The AI starts every game fresh, trying to forge its empire from scratch. You start every game smarter, having learned from the last game you played. Essentially, you give the AI bonuses to compensate for your learning curve. If that doesn't appeal to you, that is fine. But at some point Tough is not going to be a challenge for you anymore. Then, you can either choose to move onto a new game, or up the difficulty level.

They had weapons advantage but that's to be expected with defense heavy approach I took. They didn't have meaningful logistics advantage as I traded logistics at the start of war. Due to AI's terrible planet design they didn't even have meaningful manufacturing advantage. They had the advantage in the amount of military, number of planets and therefore influence - that's all.



Yes, but it's also the best case scenario (fleets of tiny ships would be even better but at that stage they're fortunately quite rare) for that type of ship. If it wouldn't excel in that situation it wouldn't have much use.



Quite obviously I also lost battles. With two of my ships on fleet (I tried to keep them 3 ship fleets but with casualties I was forced to use 2 ship fleets as well as single ships) battles were perhaps 50/50 (didn't take notes, but I lost lots of ships). With 3 ships on my fleet I probably didn't lose a single battle but lost 2 ships few times.



I gained a planet because invasion works bit weird (and I didn't even really gain a planet as I destroyed two of my old colonies during the counterstrike). I hate when it costs nothing to keep bunch of 3000M transports in space. Also the attacker receives huge bonuses (Drengin had sligthly bigger Soldiering than I had but still my attacks with Mini-soldiers and Mass Drivers were about 4:1 or 5:1).

And the reason I hope my ships keep me safe is that 1) all of them are located at Drengin border and they're now deployed in several 3 ship fleets, and 2) Drengin have other wars still going so I'm hoping they'll stay out of my space for some time and maybe they don't have the resources to strengthen their army that much.



Bad situation yes, but I haven't yet won for sure.

I'd like to emphasize that I'm not trying to say that defenses are bad. Currently high attacks and high defenses both have their uses. I think that most of the problems concerning the battles (disregarding obvious bugs and perhaps the 1 HP rule) are due to AI's inability to design effective armies.

Anyways, if I'd have the power I'd probably change a lot from the attack-defense system to make balanced ships the best general approach, while leaving all attack ships some limited uses. All defense ships just don't sound very logical so I wouldn't really miss them.

pahis:



Now there's something I think that we can all agree on!

I think that all kinds of ships should have significant usages - balanced design, lots of defense, and lots of offense, as well as some defense, and some offense.



They have Logistics advantage because you weren't maximizing yours. Despite having a theoretical parity, they ARE fielding larger fleets. That gives them the advantage, even if you both theoretically had the tech, since the tech simply wasn't useful to you.

You simply shouldn't research and/or trade for better Logistics unless you can use it. Trade for something else you CAN use.

They have weapons advantage.

They also have numbers advantage, which is essentially what a manufacturing/econ advantage is - you can field in more ships. Strictly speaking, they didn't sustain this advantage, but they still had it. We can call it "numerical advantage" if you wish.

So, despite a weapons, logistics, and numerical advantage, you still came out the better. I think that argues for an overly strong Defense.



Nope. Best case scenario for a Defense ship is use as a Raider or Planet-Taker. Nothing but one on one battles. You can even take out Large Ships this way. Defense Ships taking on entire fleets strikes me as a bit out-of-league.

Wyndstar:



You say tomato, I say tomato.

Regardless of how the AI competes, I'll eventually be able to beat it at any difficulty level. This is also regardless of which ship design is dominant.

It has no real bearing on what I'm saying here.



You say tomato, I say tomato.

I don't see such a huge problem with the Hyperion Dreadnaught other than that the AI can't deal with it.

Same problem with the Defense Ship.



It never occured to me to check because I don't field in ships in battles that tie. I always plan to win.

If, for instance as you say, the AI fields in ships that have just enough Defense to negate one ship's offense. Why, then, I'll fleet them in twos and clean his clock! If he plans for two, I'll field in threes, and so on, up to the maximum of my logistics. It takes no planning. I simply look at his fleet and deploy my ships accordingly.

If the AI fields a ship that has enough defense to be immune to my best fleet, why then it's using the Defense Ship Design! This simply means that it's "using the same exploit." Wouldn't a like propensity be a solution for the Hyperion Dreadnaught as well? No, you espouse a reworking of basic rules.

It's the same thing.

Your just using a logistics advantage. When the AI has even numbers with you and has mixed defense/attack ships, they will beat pure defense ships with only small guns just based on the tie rule. When the AI shows up at your door with fleets of 3-5 cruisers (huge hulls), your defensive strategy won't work at all.

And all of this assumes you are only fighting one enemy or all enemies that use the same weapons. I'm often at war with 4 or more enemies, being attacked by all three weapon types. Defense strategies don't work so well in that situation. Or at least they shouldn't, if the game was working right.



Actually, I'm trying to retain the basic rules. I want the same strategies that existed in DL to work in DA, just with increased complexity added by the new logistics and hull rules. You are the one that is advocating a change in the basic rules, when you say for instance:


Etc...

Defenses (in DL) used to work fairly well against matching weapons, starting at the medium fighter level and up. They do again, thankfully, after a short reprieve. That is a good thing. For defense to be unbalanced, it needs to be able to stop all weapon types (which it sort of does now, sadly). When that is fixed, you should be in a situation where you need to change your fleets based on the enemy, and they based on you. If you can focus on just one weapon or one defense, the game is not working... that destroys the r/p/s balance.

Under the new system, I agree that balanced ships can be the toughest. If they are using the right armor. That is exactly the sort of strategy the game should encourage - so that you need to worry both about enemy weapons and enemy defense. In this way every tech for every civilization on the combat tree can matter.

What I REALLY want to test - and I must wait for the bug fix - is can mix weapon ships become useful again. If so, that significantly reduces the value of an armor heavy strategy. Ideally, you want the game design set so that the player really wants all three weapons and all three defenses, so that they have to make tough, situational choices about what to use, what to research, and why. For that to happen, defenses need to beat one offensive type, and only one offensive type.

Wyndstar:



"Even numbers" is a weird qualifier. What qualifies as "even numbers?" Even numbers of ships in a fleet? Equal logistics or capability to exploit it?

I'm not talking about a logistics advantage. You just mentioned that the AI can and will design ships that will just defeat my one ship's offense and win by virtue of a tie. That can't happen because ship offense is dynamic - I can easily exceed the alloted defense by fleeting two Defense Ships into a fleet that WILL win, even if I don't have Logistics advantage. Recall that I had been using just one ship - I haven't been using Logistics.

If the AI creates a ship that is balanced defensively to take out the best offense that I can muster with my Defense Ships - it has then created a ship that is handily defeated by an all-attack fleet!

Each time I change my fleet assignments, I force the AI to rethink and redesign its ships - precisely because it is very poor at that kind of thing currently.

This doesn't change the situation at all.



If you're fighting 4 opponents at the same time, then you SHOULD lose, regardless of defense/offense points.

Despite trading being considered an exploit by you, it's a viable technique at Tough or below, and those aspects of the game are not any the less important just because you don't play at them. I'm a little disappointed at your implied notion that only play at higher levels of difficulty should be catered to.

Play should be fun and viable at all levels of difficulty.

Defense being cheap enough, I frequently have no problems having most of the defense types available for when I need them.

While it seems a little strange to say that yes, I frequently face situations when the entire galaxy is fighting with one weapon type, this is the situation when your tech rate is less than the rate that allows you to finish the tech tree in half the game!

Because of tech trading, AIs and players frequently get better results by trading the same weapons tech tree between each other than by going solo and researching an entire weapons line all by yourself. By process of elimination, civs that favor divergent lines often get eliminated as power players relatively early and thus the galaxy ends up with just one or two dominant weapons type.

Yes, this also occured in DL.



Um, no? You propose chaning hitpoints, or 1 hp rules or tie rules. Those are basic rules.

I proposed changing variables in an xml file. Those are NOT basic rule changes.



I actually found the tech game in DL to be fairly simple and predictable. Weapons tech in DL is more likely (but not assuredly) to be varied because defense allowed you to win a lot. The threshold for "invincible" or "functionally invincible" is rather less there than in DA. I recall building a Small (!!!) Fighter in a tough game that turned out to be mostly invincible, even though I didn't design for it.

That means that there's a big premium with coming up with a new weapons type, even up to the point where you armed your ships with secondary weapons tech just to play the comp AI. Indeed, this is a somewhat successful plan. Invade with one tech, then refit to another weapons tech mid-invasion. Even if it's two levels inferior, the off-type defense would work wonders on your overall impact.

This technique is remarkably effective for all invasions. Not much variety there. You refit to the older tech because it's cheaper to do so than upgrading obsolete weapons ships.

It's even simpler if you have on-type defenses and your enemy doesn't. Just use your weapons minimally, and overload on the defenses. He won't stand a chance.

Err... I found that extra logistics quite usefull when trying to fleet 3 medium hulled ships.



Yes, because I chose to chase the defenses advantage.



They had the numbers advantage due to their super ability, due to the fact that attack ships are cheaper than defense ships and because their planets were at times in very primitive form. There wasn't big difference in our industrial capacities.



Actually I didn't. It didn't take long for Drengin to overrun the remaining 2 races, and then they came back to me. I had managed to put my economy back on track but the new generation of ships (large, 9/5/0, 0/126/0) were still in the making. Old medium ships lasted only couple of rounds and right after I got the first new ones out Drengin pulled the ace from their sleeve and fielded dual attack ships (not that much of an ace with the off-type bug but still) with small defenses. My defense ships had no chance against their greater numbers (1 on 1 a fleet of 3 of my new ships won perhaps 60% of battles against their best fleets but sustained heavy damage every time, and against their 2nd rate fleets they lost a ship well over half of the time). After that test I'm not ready to jump on board with the "defenses are too powerful" people

pahis:

Re: Logistics

Even so, their numbers and weapons focus makes Logistics more useful for them than it was for you.

Re: Weapons Advantage

Defense tech advantage shouldn't be costing you a significant Weapons deficiency. Perhaps one or two levels only, nothing more. A larger deficit indicates a significant tech advantage which means that your positions are not more or less equal. He has tech advantage on you.

Re: Industrial Capacity

While Industrial capacity impacts fleet numbers, since the Drengin already has numbers advantage, it's immaterial whether his actual industry is better or not. In real terms, even if his infrastructure is deficient, he can be said to have a virtual and applicable industrial advantage (more ships).

In fact, his situation is better. You can't turn around and capture his industrial planets to get them to work for you. The super ability mimics a significant industrial advantage in every way that counted.



Despite conquering two other races and the resulting tech and industrial gains, you were STILL winning battles at better than even odds. That tells me that defense is just too strong.

Wyndstar:

I've had a strange brainstorm.

You tell me that the Medium + size ship battles in DL were great. I beg to differ, but it was at least reflective of the RPS doctrine. The problem is Small and Tiny Ships.

You also tell me that the problem in the new paradigm is that Medium + size ships have too much of an advantage in either offense or defense?

What about these fundamental rule changes:

1. Small and Tiny ships deduct their attack from defense, ala DA combat, if defense is greater than 0. Medium + size capital ships do not. They simply apply their total attack to whatever defenses are left after all in-fleet Smalls and Tinies fire. Fire is distributed in all cases, ala DA.

2. Small and Tiny Ships can only be attacked by whatever capital ships they have attacked that round. Fire on them is distributed also, ala DA. Small and Tiny Ships can freely attack any other Small and Tiny Ships.

What do you think? I'm not sure how codeable they are, but they seem promising to me.

I'm sorry if that is what you were getting from me. One of your core complaints seemed to be that you felt the game was easier for you with the new combat changes. If the game is too easy, the intuitive solution is to up the difficulty level (if there are higher levels to expand to). My point, typically, in bringing up the highest difficulty level is that if there is something the AI can't do there, it can't do it anywhere, so it is a hole at every level.

If, say, at the highest level the AI never neutralized spies, you would want the devs to look at the code and see how the AI is prioritizing its espionage resources. But if the AI IS good at doing this at the highest level, but doesn't do it mid level - because perhaps the AI doesn't have enough money - that is less of a problem, because if you want the AI to be better at spying, you simply have to adjust the difficulty.

I feel the same analogy holds true for combat. If you want the AI to adjust its designs and strategies to what you are using faster, you will find that it does do this (at least better) at higher levels.



It sounds, then, like you never really liked the combat system this game offered. While it was simple, I did like it. I think it works within the structure of the game, and I just wanted something approaching the old game balance restored - for game design reasons. My problem was when DA first came out it became even more simple, and I was looking for a little more complexity. There could be better systems, but that is almost certainly beyond the scope of this game. This is the combat system we are going to have, so lets make every option meaningful in some combination. I think the lower defense costs have done that (probably).



Interesting, but I really am not looking for fundamental rule changes. The 1 hp rule is an oddity, but I have never once asked that they change it. That entire defensive fleets go poof after 50 turns is sad, but that situation is rare enough that I just ignore it. The Hyperion Dreadnaughts work probably slightly better than intended because of that rule, but the point of them was that you couldn't endlessly make invincible ships. Give the enemy enough time and resources and they can always overcome defense. The question was, how easy and at what cost did the overcome on type defense.

I think 1.5x patch did a good job of moving towards the r/s/p strategy that used to exist. It still needs to be fixed, but it is almost there. I don't want to try tweaking the system in a way that destroys that depth. But again, we obviously fundamentally disagree about this point - in part it seems because we value the underlying combat system and game design differently.

Heh, no offense meant Roxlimm but to me it seems that everything tells you that

In that game I was just trying the tactic that was described as invincible. My initial ships were exact duplicates of ships that were supposed to defeat complete armies alone but somehow they failed me. I don't find solace in defeat by just "knowing" that my ships were superior to opposition, and I can't imagine them invincible when they explode before my eyes. At the moment I don't have anything to add to this topic. I just confirm that I'm among the unbelievers.

Roxlimn, the devs have been mostly silent on this issue, so what we say is mostly conjecture. Well, they were silent except for the part where they un-nerfed defense in the latest patch. I haven't had much time with the new defense costs, but defense clearly got a major upgrade. But too powerful? That debate may never be settled completely, because there are a lot of things at work. I don't think there is much doubt that there is now a point when it is worth investing in, but the earliest defenses are still a waste.

That's because hull hit points are always less expensive point for point than defense, even the ones at the end of the tech tree. Consequently, the most cost effective way to increase your defense is to increase your hull size, which is one of the things you did in your early examples. Sorry, I didn't read all of your long posts, but we already know that tactic works. It works for all attack ships well into the late game until you get to the time when attack values completely dwarf hit points.

One thing that needs to be remembered is that defense never wins battles. Only attack can do that. The best that can ever be said for defense is that at some point it is worth more than the attack it displaces. Pre-patch, this point didn't come until very, very late, if ever. Now it may come as early as the start of the mid game, about the time medium hulls come around. But that is still debatable, since defense does come at a cost, however much it is now reduced.

One invisible cost for defense is that it delays research into weapons, or other things. Defense techs may be cheap compared to some other techs, but they aren't free. And both weapons and defense get to be more cost effective the further up the tech tree you go. So while you are working up the defense branch, you are stalled at a weaker spot on the weapon branch.

Also, while defense is now much cheaper, the total cost of a defense oriented ship is still high. Nevertheless, defense is now a much more viable option than it was. I'm playing my first game post patch on tough, which is an easy difficulty for me. I have a significant tech lead over the Korath, but they are aleready fielding medium hulls with attack in the 20's and I have already seen mixed fleets with attack values in the 50's. The best defense ship I can make is a medium with defense 30 and attack 9. One on one, this ship would do very well against the best the Korath have to offer, but in fleet battles it would't be invincible by any stretch. That's the same thing I found pre-patch, not surprising since only the cost of defense has changed.

According to my quick calculations, which may be wrong, a fleet of three of my 9/30 ships against three Korath 25/0 ships would be a close battle, but mine would be more expensive to build. However, if I were winning and mopping up orbiting ships, I could send my defense ships out to win countless one on one battles and come away with mucho experience. That's one reason I advocate automatic fleeting of ships in orbit.

I think most people who swear by defense are in this situation. There are times when it works very well, but it is usually when you have already won the game for all practical purposes. I think the new patch brings defense mostly back into balance. At least now you are better off with it than without it, at least from mid game on, and it is now small and cheap enough to fill in left over space points at just about any point in the game.

Not an especially close battle. On the first turn, you could expect to do 13 or 14 damage and they would do something in the range of 7-10 damage. Once you killed one of their ships, they wouldn't have enough damage to reliably penetrate your defences. So there's a good chance you would lose one ship, but that's all.

Now 4 on 4, you'd be doing about 18 damage and they would do around 20-23, but once they started dying they would have trouble getting through the defences once more. So you would probably win that with 2 ships remaining.

Wyndstar:



The problem with your approach is that while your statement here may or may not be true the converse certainly is not - while something a high level AI can't do may be indicative of a system wide problem, solving the same problem at the highest level solves only that level and could result in negative repercussions at the lower levels.

Thus, I think that AI behavior throughout all levels should be given equal weight and priority. An AI donig stupid things that a novice player finds annoying won't be solved by increasing the difficulty level - because he still hasn't acquired enough skills to advance. He'll just continually be annoyed at stupid AI behavior.

Similarly, the "bonuses fix the AI" philosophy is largely something you see in things like Civ or MOO. The whole thrust of GalCIv2 is that the AI isn't needing these bonuses to compete evenly. If you want to fix things by giving the AI bonuses, then why make a decent AI to begin with? Just give tougher AIs more and more bonuses like most other titles do!

I think that ship design is one of those things that's mechanically fixable on such a simple system and something that deserves good AI management. Certainly, the AI in Alpha Centauri made decent units, even if it didn't usually utilize them to any good effect.

As for the AI adapting better - no it doesn't. Invincible ships stump the AI at Tough, even when you give it enough time to react (and even enough econ and manufacture). Giving the AI manufacturing, economy, and research bonuses enough to overwhelm me with numbers doesn't make it better, any more than giving it bonuses makes it a better AI overall. It makes for a tougher challenge, yes, but if I just wanted that, I'd up the difficulty, obviously.



You're right. I wasn't all that satisfied with the system to begin with. As DA shows, it seems like the devs weren't all that happy with it either. What's the point of having Tiny and Small hulls in the game when you obsolete them almost from the start of serious warfare?

The DA system makes them more valuable marginally, but I feel that it doesn't go far enough, and mind you, the DA change DID institute major and game-changing rule changes. I'm simply going farther along the same path and trying to think of rules that may bring about what the devs have always wanted.

Medium to Huge Hulls already have great niches in the game. Large may be a bit marginalized once Huge is available, but by and large, it's a good tempo shift in a key part of military strategy.

Smalls and Tinies are largely left in the cold. Even many patrol and garrison duties are better done with Mediums.

Giving these hulls unique advantages (like being able to deplete Capital Ship defenses) gives them longevity and relevance throughout the game. It also introduces a simple but profound wrinkle in the simplistic and monotonous RPS scheme. It would be nice to be able to do something other than a Retrofit Shuffle in military strategy every once in a while.

There is no depth in the RPS system, and it makes a joke of the ship size variables.

pahis:

Your ships failed you because you failed to realize that Defense Ships are always a creature of their times. Attack ships are, too, but less so. Particular designs must be custom-fit to deal with the situation they're meant to be deployed in. In other words, they're a dynamic build philosophy.

You may have been better served, for instance, with even less attack and even more defense.

Rataan:

Even prepatch, Defenses could come into their own at the Medium Hull stage. Certainly this was true in DL. Now they do so more readily. Regardless of how many unrelated truisms you post, my points are still valid.

As to your Korath, I'm a little curious about the game situation, tech wise. What's their ships, weapons, miniturization level, and Logistics? Military resources will also count.

Now you say that your best ship has defense 30 only, and that doesn't strike me as a significant "tech lead," especially if you also mean that you've devoted a small amount of effort into getting defensive techs.

Despite not being invincible even when you could've arranged for it, such Defensive Ships are still very useful for you, and you're well advised to build at least one or two such ships for patrol and escort duties, whatever else you decide to do. They'd also win in fleet vs. fleet battles, but I'd recommend, in that situation, to field in one Attack Only ship with the rest Defense. This allows you to more quickly bring their Fleet Attack down to the point where your Defense Ships are invincible, allowing you a more assured win in exchange for the loss of a cheaper ship (which you were likely to lose anyway, even if it was Defense oriented).

Mixing Defense Ships and Attack Ships in variable amounts gives you a surprising amount of power in dealing with enemy AI ship designs.

As I've said before, you only think that Defense is useful when you're already winning, because you haven't succesfully used it for winning when you're on the ropes. It doesn't mean that it can't be done. It simply means that you haven't done it yet. Arguably, the same charge can be made against Hyperion Dreadnaught and Attack-Only ships as well - that they only win you the game when you've already won anyway.

Well, now that I actually tried it, I'm getting an average of 11.5 damage for the attack ships, so there would be a slight advantage in favor of the defense ships in this case. But remember we are comparing 9/30 ships against 25/0 ships. Increase the attack ships to 27/0 and the advantage tips in their favor.

11.5 is somewhat higher than I'd expect, though I guess part of that is due to the Korath weapons bonus and the super-shot effect. I don't think 3 27/0 ships are favoured to beat 3 9/30 ships in the general case, though. The attack fleet can expect to do more damage in the first couple of rounds, but once they lose their first attacker, their expected damage will go way down (54 attack is pretty marginal for getting through 30 defence). If the 27 attack has a large component due to weapons bonus (or if the individual weapons are large) then they might pull it off on average. A lot depends on whether they kill the second defender before losing the first attacker.

Rataan:

Not at all. Defense Ships still win. Against anything less than maximum fleet power (and there can't be too many of those), your Defense Ships can handle them handily. If the attack edges higher, include one all-attack ship with a mostly Defense fleet. The purpose of the Attack Ship is to exchange with one of theirs. The exchange is in your fleet's favor because it lowers the attack of their fleet below your defenses.

In general, you can't simply add an all-attack ship to a defensive fleet and expect it to exchange for one member of an all-attack fleet. The attack ship will be the first to be targeted, and while it is getting hit, the defensive fleet is getting zero benefit from it's defenses.

The exception to this is when a single all-attack ship is powerful enough to expect to wipe out an equivalent ship in one round. So overall, sometimes it will be a good idea, sometimes not.

But I'm not assuming any bonues at all. At first glance, the attack fleet looks like it should do about 7 hp damage while all three ships survive: 75/2 = 37.5 and 37.5 - 30 = 7.5. But that is over-simplifying. Since each weapon gets an attack roll, there are numerous opportunities for the small attack roll to be larger than the defense roll. Even when the first weapon is fired and defense is 100%, there is still a significant chance for the weapon to do damage. When you have 25 weapons being fired, it is a statistical certainty that there will be some lucky attack rolls and unlucky defense rolls. This can't be averaged out to zero, because defense doesn't gain anything from its lucky rolls.

This is very plain to see when you do the calculations by brute force, which is what I do. I just set up a spreadsheet with as many instances of the weapon I need rolling a random # between 0 and weapon value. A second column rolls for defense using the current defense value in a third column. The fourth column subtracts the attack roll from the defense roll if it is positive and at the bottom of the fourth column the damage is totalled. All I have to do is hit any key which will recalculate the sheet and I get a new value for a simulated round of combat.

A ship with 400 shield defense only gets between 1 and 20 defense when attacked by a mass driver.

If you pick right against the right enemy, then your ships should be nearly invulernable.

The issue I see is that the AI is too foolish in their tech trading makign it easy for players to quickly switch defense strategies.