How is he beating me???

Without seeing exactly how your ships are armed individually, we can't say for certain. My guess is that your bigger ship is defense-heavy, and your lighter ships are mostly attack. This would result in the Ranger targetting the small ships first, and blasting two of them in the first round. Then the survivors don't have enough firepower to get much damage past the Ranger's armor, so they don't do much damage in following rounds while the Ranger chews them up.

On second thought, this is pretty clearly what happened, as the one time you won, your bigger ship was the only survivor - meaning it was targetted last. The AI (including your fleet, as you have no control over it) will attack ships in order of their rating, using the formula "attack/(defense + current HP)". Putting one massive "tank" ship in a fleet doesn't absorb damage for the others, because the tank is targetted last.

Does either side have a Luck attribute rating of 25% or 50%?

If ever i find myself taking heavy losses, i will quickly drop starship defences altogether in favour of more firepower. If your going to take the losses anyway, may as well make them pay!

Only when i develop improved defence technology will i bother using it again.

Hi!

You better check the Dark Avtar combat changes section, esp. Corollary. IMO you simply don't have enough firepower to get through his defenses fast enough. Those Rangers are nasty, esp. with krynn's 50% defense bonus.
For more detailed analysis you ned to post exact configuration of every ship in combat, and also game version you're using. Some older versions of DA had a nasty off-type defense bug that made ships virtualy indestructible.

BR, Iztok

Try researching up to Massive hull buliding or Large hulls. Then produce your own mammoth ships to take down the Krynn rangers and make them pay for all the losses they inflicted.

I have seen a few people saying things like this. If all ships fire simultaneously each round, wouldn't your ships die a lot faster? Or does the fact that they are doing more damage to the enemy (because they have more weapons) compensate for that?

I can't imagine sending out what precious few ships I can build with no defenses, yet some players don't bother with them at all. Is it because there are ways to build ships faster that I haven't figured out yet?

If you're a Yor, I suppose you're Evil. Research beam weapons and get the exaggerated Psionic Beam. This 12-damage beam should be good to burn through the Ranger's armor. If you're Good, get Arnorian Battle Armor to block the Ranger's Mass Drivers. What weapons and defense equipment are you using anyway?

It is possible that the Krynn have Luck bonuses. That means that their weapons and defenses roll higher - from the amount of luck they have up to 100%. Thus your ships may be rolling weak, inaccurate shots while the Ranger hits spot-on and swats your little fighters out of the way to cripple your 'tank' medium ship. Small and Tiny hulls are kind of pathetic, esp. against a Huge. Try putting 3-4 Mediums in a fleet at least.

Also, why are you using Mass Drivers, Point Defenses and Shields in your fleet at all? They'll be of little/no help vs. the Ranger.

If nothing works, just don't target the Ranger. Fly around it and invade the Krynns' planets. With less planets, the Krynn will eventually surrender, beg for peace, or get dogpiled on by everyone else and eliminated, should you not simply eliminate them in the first place. The only problem is that once the Krynn are gone, the Ranger will either switch ownership and join someone else's forces, or become a lone pirate ship whose only purpose is to destroy anything and everything in sight.

See, that's the thing I'm not getting AT all (and why I'm VERY frustrated at this point). I thought that when your ships are in a fleet, you get the BonUs of having all those defenses/attack points ALL together for these "exchanges/fights"... and you're asking me what my individual ship make ups are... why would/should that matter??

I've got all those ships together... why aren't they treated as a 'whole'??? Like the book/manual suggests... "fleets have added bonues/etc. when it comes to fighting"... I'm not seeing it in the slightest and it's really frustrating.

And you're totally right about my M. ship being ALL defense... I think he's 4 Missle and 12ish Armor.

"My guess is that your bigger ship is defense-heavy, and your lighter ships are mostly attack. This would result in the Ranger targetting the small ships first, and blasting two of them in the first round."

But WHY does this matter???!???? My fleet has an Armor rating that's more than twice his M. Driver attack rating.... if my fleet isn't going to be treated as a whole.... what in the world are these "advantages" the manual speaks of??????? Because I'm not seeing the point (at this point).

If you're telling me that (when a fleet goes against a single ship), that the ships "take turns" firing on each other.... then I'm completely lost here, because it is my understanding that the fleet fires as a whole/defends from fire as a whole...?.....


He also has half the HP of my fleet and NO armor to protect against my Missle attack.... I just don't understand this.


fyi - I'm not sure if the Krynn are getting a 'luck' bonus er not.. your guess is as good as mine : )

Hey guys... will reply to everyone elses replies later on this morning... to the person who made a mention of a previous version of DA exhibiting a "bug" of some sort that might be causing this....

When I'm in the game, it says 1.5 in the lower left corner of the screen...
I have been reassured that if I'm playing DA, then I'm on 1.6 (EVEN) though it says 1.5 in the lower left corner... this is what I was told by Customer Support at Stardock... the guy told me that it was most likely a 'graphical' glitch of some kind... that... and he couldn't really explain it.. BUT, he assured me that I was playing 1.6 if I was playing DA.

When my friend bought this game... his says the same thing - 1.5.

Does the guy at Stardock not have a clue and am I truly playing with version 1.5 I wonder...?.....


Sorry to hit you guys with so much, but I'm super appreciative as always! : )


Chr*s

I'm soo glad I don't have to work support for this product....with soooo very many products out there. I would recommend you update to the latest beta...1.7-3. It is very stable from all accounts and then you'll be on the product that most of the DA players are playing on.

Somewhere along the line, DA went from Fleet to individual ships in a group. The game when i first installed it played exactly like the manual. But it got updated and now, well, combat doesn't work the same. My feeling is, fleet against individual ship, as in your description works exactly the same as individual ship against individual ship multiple times. The way it works is that the fleet each singly attack with a salvo at the individual ship. The individual ship takes damage and fires back at the "best" individual ship in your fleet. If a ship is destroyed by this fire and the individual ship has unfired weapons, he shoots again. Each of those fired upon ships takes damage individually, not collectively. So a ship with an attack value of 24 is going to hurt small hull ships. After each salvo, destroyed ships are removed, so if his return fire destroys 2 ships, they return fire and are removed. The enemy ship then targets the next individual ship and on, until the combat is resolved with only one side remaining.


Non-aligned defense is sq-rooted for its value in later releases. There was a bug where non-aligned defense was not sq-rooted. Non-aligned would be a beam against a point defense or a missle against armor.

So as pointed out above, the reason you are losing is that your small ships are probably targeted first and do not have the defense to overcome the 24 attack and succomb quickly. If you are fighting against the off-alignment bug, your opponent has 24 defense against anything that you throw at him.

The manual might be outdated. There has been many updates since DA was released. It would be wiser to think of the manual as a guide instead of words written in stone.

Ships in fleets are treated as individual ships, so you are not making a "super ship" when you fleet them. The reason why you want to fleet ships is so that they may participate in the same battle.


The advantages are as follows:
-Where a lone ships might not be strong to take down an opponent, a fleet of them might. A super ship with a *realy* high defense can have its defenses beaten down to nothing, then destroyed (in DA, attacks weaken defenses, even if they were unable to do damage themselves).
-A ship, or a fleet of ships can only make so many attacks each round. If you have enough ships, your opponent might not be able to annihilate your fleet in one round even if he is using "doom rays". This gives your remaining ships another round to try to destroy his.

The down side is:
-Fleets require some extra resources to create. Logistic techs for fleet size, techs for the ships themselves, and the money and planets to build the ships themselves are all required.
-If the fleeted ships are not strong enough to take the opposing ship down, you are effectively saving your opponent the trouble of hunting down your ships for him.

________________
So the moral of the story is, if you are going to use fleets, make sure the individual ships have a fighting chance instead of just throwing them in.

omg

Foam is starting to gather at the base of my lower lip.... I can't believe this... so a Fleet isn't treated as a FLEET then.....

what is the point of having a fleet then....


good lord





I'll be back in a day er two... this is rediculous - the game doesn't sound like it's gonna be as fun as I thought.... having a fleet should trump having a single ship ALL day long when the #s are stacked the way I've presented/played in my current game.

I cannot believe this...


  
(will be pouting the rest of the day)



thks for the info!

I got caught out by this when I updated to DA. It's doesn't seem so easy to understand so I'm gonna read the wiki page to see if it makes things for understandable.

I'm beginning to wonder if you know what the word "fleet" means. Your ships don't combine into a super ship like, I dunno, Voltron or something.

Okay, from what I gathered from the wiki is this:

- Don't create fleets, especially during late game.
- Single ships with lots of fire power is better than fleets.
- Use the luck ability.
- 75% of the enemies attack into defense for your ship can make your ship invincible, especially in the mid to later game (not sure about this).

Hi!

You have the buggy version of the game. The off-type defense bug (defenses of the wrong type never depleted) was killed only in 1.61.


To lose more money in battles, when your ships, that never fired, got destroyed by return-fire of opponent's destroyed ships. Logistics in current DA has a role only for decreasing costs of new starbases.

BR, Iztok

Once you understand how it works, it doesnt to me seem to make much difference which way its done. You just have to use the game mechanics the way they are employed. Using the rules the first way, and using the rules the second way (Stacked Fleets vs Individual Ships Stacked)certainly changed the way I played, but I adapted. It wasn't a detriment to the game, just made it different.

I dont see the benefit in using fleets other than its easier to move them around vis-a-vis individual ships. One disadvantage is you lose the attack moves with a fleet. If you are fighting dregin and there is a stack of fleets 8 deep, its better to attack with a few large individual ships, each using their movement points to attack and destroy a fleet (or fleets). If you are arcean and have first strike ability, maybe...but short of that, its not valuable as a military tool, pretty much just a micromanager....

And to clarify a point made above...if you have 10 ships in your fleet and are attacked by a single ship, with 3 movement points, you could lose all 10 ships. If they were individual ships, the most that you could lose would be 3 ships, as that's all the attacks that could be made. So I think this is a disadvantage of fleeting inferior ships...not a benefit.

Not trying to add to your turmoil at all, just trying to help you....I'd totally suggest building more powerful individual ships, upgrading the weaker smaller ones and going with quality over quantity and being careful with the deployment of fleets.

Hope that helps!!

There is still a place for fleets. When you are attacking an enemy fleet that you can't destroy in one turn with a single ship and some of your ships will survive to the next round of combat, it may make more sense to use a fleet.

In addition, the strongest ship always survives if two ships mutually destroy each other(one on each side), so if the AI has a stronger, mostly offensive ship, you want to put enough ships into a fleet to have a minimum of two survivors and hit him with a fleet...

I'm sure there are more circumstances where a fleet is beneficial, but those are the two I most commonly encounter.

It's just that the way fleets are currently handled and with the "one hp rule" (one ship must always survive any combat with a minimum of one hp), you really need to sit down and think every time. Am I better off using singletons or fleets in these circumstances?

Well, then judging by that logic.... it makes me think that the 'bug' should help me since I've got all these extra defenses that the comps ship doesn't have...?.....

I'm in the midst of getting 1.61... the comp that GalCivII is installed on does NOT have internet access... trying to work out a way to get the update.. I'm bearing with Stardock at the moment..

I hope I can get this fixed soon, because when I go home tonight (while I'll still enjoy the game), I'm going to be wondering if "did I really win that battle or did the bug help me, and vice versa"


: (


still in love with the game, and I can't thank you guys enough for being so helpful


Chr*s

Fleets also help when you are going into a battle you know you will win. Fleet other ships with it, and they all get exp from the battle.

Also, while perhaps it makes the game less enjoyable, this is one thing I prefer realism on. There's no reason that a fleet of ships should share defenses, if you ask me. In ToA, I presume with additions like the Atlas they will have ships that can effectively do this, but for now we have no technologies suggesting nearby friendly ships can pool their shields, so there' s no reason that a fleet would cause such an effect. A fleet's always useful if you're using it against weaker or about equal-strength ships/fleets. A fleet' s never useful against a much stronger ship/fleet. The massed numbers are simply for quick comparison of fleets.

The real issue is how effective your defences are? If your taking heavy losses while using defences then you may as well use more weapons instead.

I'm 'this' close to finishing a game in 1.5. I'm unsure if I really wanna go up to 1.6.... do I??

What are the main differences? (I'm about to go look that up actually)
I don't really understand the 'problem' caused by the 1.5 "weapon bug"......


In other news: the current game I'm on has gone splendidy well.. it was an uphill struggle with the Drath the entire game (they're the only AI I put on intelligent level)... they got mediums before me/larges before me/and finally got a Huge before me. Long story short : ) I've taken over 75% of the galaxy and am averaging around 3400 BC/week: I've never made this kinda money in the game before and it makes me wonder if I'm still not building my worlds properly.


I can't get my head around the notion that building "stuff on planets = good" no matter if the planet is ALL manufacturing or ALL research/etc... it seems to me that the generation of the 3 types of points is all that's needed... I'm unsure on this though.

For instance, if I have a planet with 10-15 factories, I would expect it to be able to produce a ship fairly fast simply because it's got so many factories on it, but sometimes, that's not the case. Sometimes, I've got planets with 2-4 factories on them that can outproduce a planet with 2-3 X the # of factories. it's weird


most addictive gameplay since I picked up War3 two years ago.

If you've got 75% of the galaxy, you've got Influence victory. If you're OK with this kind of victory, make peace with anyone you're at war with, make sure your not under the effects of the Xenophiles event, and wait 10 turns for your win(is this your first?).

Anyway, FYI, 1 factory on a Precursor Mine tile is worth 8 factories on normal tiles. 1 factory on a Rare Elements tile is worth 4 factories on normal tiles. Same things with labs on Precursor Libraries(8-in-1) and Precursor Artifacts(4-in-1). Economic Starbases also boost planets within their area of influence by up to 24%.

Afternoon to you sir,

(interesting info about the tiles, thks for that)

No, I don't want to win by influence... and I've got all 4 of the game options unchecked, so it'll be straight up domination to put an end to this one... I'm simply salvating at the amount of money I'm making every week.

Plus (the funnest part for me) is about to happen - the building of an uber Battleship class Warship... I've got everything teched now.. and I wanna run around the galaxy with my God of a warship and laugh at all Drath opposition - they WILL pay for the hell they put me through in my 2nd and 3rd years of the game.


One thing I learned last night was that one can't 'take back' the building of a Manufacturing Capital. Is this the same for Politcal/Research Capitals as well as the 'Galactic Achievements'? I was furious when I found a 20something rated planet with an Ocean Bonus tile (700% on manufacturing)!! because I wanted to 'move/rebuild' my M. Capital from my home planet to this new totally badass planet..


And I'm not entirely sure if 1.5 has anything to do with the following or not: but, I was actually noticing some slight benefits to having ships fleeted (towards the end of my game mind you). I guess the only time I wasn't seeing any advantage was when I was going against that lone Capital ship we discussed earlier.

I really wish I knew what the "1.5 attack/defenses don't work properly bug" was all about... because at this point.. I think I'm gonna stay with 5 unless you fine people think I should go ahead and move up to 1.6 (I've got the files sittin there at home ready to go, just hadn't installed 'em).
I'm guessing here, but is the "bug" that: non essential defense types STILL do defense against attack types they shouldn't be able to defend against? OR Are non essential defense types NOT performing the amount of defense they should in those situations?

THKS,


Chr*s
  

1 ship vs 1 ship (A. VS. B.) - both same size

A. 10 Laser attack/No defense
B. 10 Laser attack/10 Armor defense

1.5 - Does the armor offer ANY protection whatsoever?
1.6 - Does the armor offer ANY protection whatsoever?

A. 10 Laser attack/5 Armor 5 Shield defense
B. 10 Laser attack/ 10 Chaff defense

1.5 - Does the Chaff defense offer ANY protection at all?
1.6 - Does the Chaff defense offer ANY protection at all?

Thanks a LOT,


Chr*s