The battle system still works as it did before.
It seems that strategic weapons and defence planning are no longer a part of this game. You used to be able to look at your opponent's ship and equip your fighters with the correct weapons and defence to beat it. Now, it does not matter which weapon or defence you use.
If and attacker with only lasers attacks a ship with no shields, it should be reducing the hit points of that ship regardless of other defences. It was bad enough before, but now you have to wear down all defence systems on the ship before you can damage it at all.
I am fairly new to this game, so I can't help but wonder what was the driving force that turned such a simple thing into a complicated formula requiring square roots of this and rolls of dice and if this and if that. Wow, enough all ready. Let me remind you of the "KISS" principle. Keep it simple ____ .
Why not get rid of the darn "leak through defence" concept all together? The defence you buy is what you get. Why should a missile defence system stop a laser or a big black hole comming at you? Not only does it not make any sense, but why would you want that feature in the first place? A level one laser shoothing at a level 10 force field is like shoting at a bullet proof jacket with a pea shooter and expecting it to degrade the jacket if you shoot enough at it. Its seems unrealistic to me!
To add some realism, the jacket would be weakened if your keep shoting it with a 22 cal. riffle, you could damage it faster if you shot it with a 32 cal. Using a 44 magnum, you could do some damage to the person wearing it. If you shot an armour peircing round, you would cause lots of damage. If you used a bazooka, pow, he is history. Could the game use a similar concept? So you would need a weapon stronger than the shield's power level to affect it.
