Hi!
Indeed the combat has changed:
- in each round of combat all ships in a fleet attack single target,
- when that target is destroyed, the remaining unfired weapons fire at another ship,
- each weapon now rolls separately from Luck ability (0%, 25% or 50% of max weapon's power) to max weapon's power,
- defenses (if any) on that ship roll for each attack of each weapon. If they roll lower than the attack is, ship loses hitpoints. If they roll higher or equal, their max roll is decreased by the damage taken (they got deleted),
- off-type defenses first deplete, then get sqrt decrease,
- in each combat round ALL ships fire (no more first strike),
- only Arceans have first strike in first combat round,
- tie rule: if in last round of combat surviving ship(s) destroy each other, the strongest ship still survives (the strongest seems to be the ship with highest attack).

The end result is:
1) while you can match your defenses on a ship with about 75% firepower of the AIs fleet, are your ships nearly indestructible. That's usually until the late game.
2) when the firepower of the fleet becomes too great for the defenses, the rule of the day becomes all-attack single suidical ship (firepower several hundred points), that destroys many of the opponent's ships in the first round of the combat, and by the "tie rule" maybe even survives.
3) AIs can't match either approach effectively.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

I forget to mention a very important thing:
- defenses fully replenish between combat rounds.


AFAIK no. The only case would be with the tie rule and both ships being equal. In this case attacker would survive.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

Attacker's FLEET attack.
Very doable, since defenses are cheap to research and to put on ships. However you need quite some space on that ship, so for the start the medium hull is mandatory. My first design in my current game to fight fleets of small hulls with ~20 gun attack was medium hull with only one Impulse engine, one Harpoon, but 7 Superior Duranthiums. Because of the low firepower battles took longer, and it received quite some damage in each. After I researched two levels of logistic, I put two such ships in a fleet and the damage was immediately significantly lower.

BR, Iztok

Early on the in orginal campaign, you only get laser weapons and mass driver defence. Which means the defense will always be square-rooted (I think). In this case, is it better to play the whole original compaign with a weapons-only strategy?

I'm very new to the game and playing through the original DR missions. I'm at about the third or fourth mission, and the game is giving me shield technology. However, this thread tells me that they're a waste of time until I can slap them onto a ship that's big enough to hold a load of shields equal to enemy weapon strength or greater, and also supply enough firepower to match their weapons.

It also sounds like mixing and matching ships isn't a worthwhile practice, for example, pairing a ship with heavy shielding in a fleet with a ship with heavy weaponry. Or, for that matter, fleeting a defenseless ship with an armed escort.