Offense vs Defense in Design

Well as I understand it the 0-9-0/4-4-4 ship would have really good defense because non-optimal defenses still defend for the square root of thier values. That is to say that 4-4-4 defense actually ends up being 8-8-8 defense in practice and thus would undoubtably be an excellent general purpose ship. One note, I am pretty sure the game rounds down the square roots so if your going with a multiple defense type ship you should really try and make the defense numbers perfect squares to get the most advantage out of this mechanic.

One thing about using the multi defense ships though, the problem with that strategy is that you have to research all the defense techs as opposed to just one.

That being said, if your going to war with someone you should always know what weapon/defense techs they have reasearched and build/upgrade your ships to take advantage of this knowledge. Basically the question of "would x ship be better than y ship" all boils down to "what does your enemy have?"

It depends on what your opponents are rollin out. If you can cheaply and quickly (relatively) produce fighters and swarm, be offensive, get the heavy damage fighters. But if your ships are going to be more standalone warfighters, protect them with some defenses, particularly if your enemies have defenses against missiles, which will reduce the damage you do. Or, if some of their ships use one weapon type and some use another, I would also use the defenses. That usually doesn't happen though. Ideally, you would build a ship with only one defense type, against the weapon they are using. Is it possible to build a 0-9-0/0-12-0 (assuming they are using missiles)? Remember, off-type defenses still apply the square root of their value to defense, so at such low numbers early in the game its usually better to max out one defense type. a missile defense of 12 will still apply a defense of its square root (rounded down), which is 3, so a 0-9-0/0-12-0 is actually an 0-9-0/(3)-12-(3).



I don't think that the defenses stack; in combat your ship just uses the best value. So for example, if you ship defenses are 3-16-5, it would use 4 (sqrt of 16) instead of 3 for mass drivers, 16 against missiles, and 5 (greater than sqrt of 16) for beams. So this ship can afford to lose it's armor in favor of more weapons or more shields, since the high missile defense makes armor redundant.

Interesting. I don't see any support for the 0-15-0 and 0-0-0 ship. I thought that if its hit points would keep it alive for a couple of shots the 15 harpoon hits would kill the enemy.

Maybe to make the example more clear I should have asked it this way: Given the same info as above, which would be more likely to win a head-to-head combat, the ship with 0-15-0 and 0-0-0, or the ship with 0-9-0 and 4-4-4? Assume both have 20 hit points for their hulls.

Assuming equal race stats, and average luck, the all offense ship will do 4 damage with every shot (average roll from 1-15 = 8, 8-4(defense)=4), whereas the other ship will do 5 damage (average roll from 1-9 = 5, 5-0=5).

However, I'm starting to recall that defenses might be consumed over the course of battle, meaning their effect weakens...so I'm not entirely sure if I'm right.

Where's Iztok when you need him?

Thanks...I learned a lot from this.

I've been too active in posting on this forum, asking simple questions. I love the game but the Manual and Tutorial leave a lot of things to be learned by osmosis and trial and error, or by asking questions here as I am doing. For example, nowhere in the DA Manual does it tell you how to simply move a ship from one place to another, as far as I can find. The section titled Command Your Ships on Page 60 gives a list of commands, but omits the basic command to move a ship. I have the feeling that those of us who picked up the Dark Avatar expansion and never had the basic GC or Dread Lords, are at a disadvantage compared to those who have learned the game from the earlier games.

Hi!

Tallyho!!! Iztok to the rescue!


The answer is simple: if you can match defenses on a single ship with offenses of the whole FLEET of your enemy (at least 75% of defenses), then you use defenses, the rest engine(s) and weapons. On strictly defensive ships even no engines. If you can't match, then you use all-offense ships. But that makes combat expensive, as you tend to lose them.

In your case (and assuming an attack value of 20-30 for enemy's fleets) I'd use 1 harpoon, 1 impulse-3 engine, rest point defenses medium hull in fleets of 2-3 ships, to kill opponet's fleets faster.

In my maso+ games this approach works. But against Yor with their insane miniaturization bonus, and Drengin and Koraht with their tendency to push weapons really high, this approach needs big investment in defensive tech. Quite often I've been using (pen)ultimate missile defenses in a large hull against fleets of small ships with 4-6 photon torpedos each, 100+ fleet attack!   It's a good idea to check what weapons each AI uses, research defenses for the mostly used one type, and USE those defenses to remove those AIs while your advantage lasts. BTW to remove those AIs you don't need to fight their 100+ attack fleets, but just the fleets that defend their planets. Easy to achieve if you have faster ships than they have.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

True, but for DL. In DA combat is more complicated, and defenses don't stack. Check the thread DA (Beta) Combat System for detailed explanation, or wiki: Ship combat, where the combat is explained in more compacted form.

BR, Iztok

Maybe this is for the purpose of inciting fellowship among the masses and getting you to come to this forum and discuss the game If I wanted to have a lot of user feedback on a game I would just give a small tutorial and leave them to ask questions. It is also cheaper to answer questions then to prepare for all available questions.

GalenEvil

Iztok you are briliant, thanks again!

As far as I know, defenses do stack but are drained during combat-rounds (they are recharged at the beginning of each new round). This would mean that in one-on-one combats, the system of DA matches that of DL. Only in fleets things change radically.

In general, defenses are worth using when the technology of your enemy is low compared to your own hull size. A medium hull will survive a few rounds when the offense/defense values are around 5 while HP are around 15. Things change, however, when the offense/defense values reach up to +150 because a small deviation will see the ship wiped out. Defenses become useless quicker on smaller hulls because a smaller deviation will already end the fight.

What really allows defense to work later in the game is that on a gigantic map you'll usually have 3-4 milatary resources.

Once you gobble them up, and park fleets on them that goes a long way to ensuring your defenese completely dominates the game.

As Iztok said, all you need is a few weapons, a few engines and all the right defense. On a massive hull, that gets to be pratically invincible. (except sometimes against Dregin and Yor with their crazy weapon heavy ships...)

A slightly less than 75% fleet offense will still work. You can get it down to 60% of total fleet attack and still have a reliable chance of success if you have reasonable weapons and logistics of your own, and can expect to reduce enemy fleet attack power sufficient to become invincible before they take out too many of your own ships.

It's fortunate that the AI doesn't create Defense-oriented juggernauts, although I wish they would do so if profitable in TA. An on-defense juggernaut with meager weaponry would actually be a good justification for building a 3-weapon type ship with just the right amount of on-type defense.

I tend to rely on capitol ships with good defenses. But only when I know what my enemy is using. More often than not, the AI seems to use mass drivers. So I usually make my armor and my weapons about equal on my capitol ships. I've had one large hull ship, which was an "explorer" (meant to seek out new life, not for combat) that was lightly armed and armored fight off a fleet of two heavily armed medium hulls. This was because it had the appropriate defense against their weapons. Keep in mind that this ship only had a 3 or 4 beam offense. So yes I believe defenses are pretty useful, in every application.

Well, it is best to tailor your force to your foe, rather than having a generic design. But marching on with this as a premise...


Whether I had super warrior ability (only Arceans and Custom Races) and my logistics size would probably be the biggest determining factor. I'll just assume you're not Arceans for the rest of this... but if you are, go all offense all the time.

As soon as I started to run into enemies though, I'd need to quickly find out their fleet composition to know what to build. Here is a basic decision tree:

1. Can the enemy fleets I face destroy me in one round? Note, that's round, not overall battle outcome... but do they destroy you with just one set of rolls. In your example, do their fleets pack roughly (20+(8x2))x"number of fighters in avg. fleet" in offense.
If yes: Build the all offense fighter. This way you will do at least some damage back to slow down the enemy as they toast you one after the other. If no, continue to question 2...

2. Can the enemy fleets I face soak up all the damage my defense fleets can kick out? This is rare by the way. In DA though every now and then you will run into the Krynn or Iconians who are using larger hull sizes and went with defense. Figure it thusly: Is the defense on ONE enemy ship > 9/2x"number of fighters in avg. fleet". Say your logistics allowed for 3 fighters. They will do on average 4.5x3 damage in one round of combat, so if enemy ships pack 15 or more defense PER SHIP given these sample numbers your answer to this question is yes.
If yes: Build the all offense fighter. You will need this just to do any damage. If no, continue to question 3...

3. Can I build a ship that can destroy an enemy FLEET in one round? Again, not battle, one round of shooting weapons within a combat. Given your small sample numbers, this will really only come into play if your enemies are using tiny fighters and cargo hulls with limited logistics ability. Later in the game though this question becomes very important. Trading individual ships for whole fleets is the key to winning the production war against the AI at high levels.
If yes: Build the offense fighter. If no, continue to question 4...

4. (a) Am I on offense and (b) can I build a ship that can destroy an enemy ship with orbit bonuses in one round that (c) also has a higher attack value than the orbiting enemy?
If yes to a, b and c: Build the all offense fighter. In this case you have created an invincible attack ship that you can use against any number of enemy ships while on offense. The AI rarely uses orbital fleet managers, and if you have the higher attack value and can kill the enemy in one round you will always survive with at least 1 HP. Its hard to beat invincibility. This is very common late game. If no, continue to question 5...

5. Can I build a single ship with any offense that also has defense greater than enemy FLEET attack totals divided by two? That is, for example, if enemy fleets pack only 20 attack and you can build ships with at least 10 defense and still have some sort of gun, you would answer yest to this question.
If yes: Build the defense heavy ship. It will be close to invincible, and will at the very least greatly reduce your attrition. Some people prefer anywhere from 60% to 75% of enemy fleet attack totals for their invincible ship calculation... but even at 50% you are going to significantly reduce the damage you take. If no, continue to question 6...

6. Can I get at least 1/1/1 for my defense stats at a reasonable cost efficiency? I bring this up because the first kind of armor plating you get is way too large and expensive for the one point bonus it confers. Otherwise these are the three best points you can spend in defense in the whole game. Because of the square-root applied to off-type defense, only the first point in each catagory will hold its value against every weapon in the game.
If yes, design fighters that include at least a 1/1/1.


From that point on its a matter of taste and what technology you have researched. How fast do you want your ships to go? How much beyond 1/1/1 in your best defense tech do you want to increase that one defense type?

Generally speaking - if the average hit points of the ships you build are roughly greater than or equal to the firepower of enemy ships you face, you will do better with defense, because you have the hits to survive multiple rounds and make that defense pay off by recharging. If, conversely, the average hit points of the ships you build are less (or vastly less) than the firepower of enemies, you want to stick with attack. Because late game weapons eventually far outpace HPs, it generally tends to be the case that late game an all offense approach works best (plus the tie rule). Because early game weapons aren't so hot against even medium fighter HPs, early and mid game it is often better to build more balanced craft.


Hope that helps,
~ Wyndstar

Thanks, W, for some good stuff.

But do you have that many choices? In the DA games I play on smaller galaxies, which will be won or lost in relatively fewer turns, and given that offensive units take up two or three times as much hull space as defensive units, I usually end up just giving a ship as many offensive units as will fit on the hull, then fill up the rest of the hull space with defensive units. (This is aside from considerations of speed and range modules, of course.)

Thanks for replies.

Um... Seriously all you defense haters... Try it out. Once you get some resources going, defense is the way to go. Granted if the AIs are building 400 attack ships, then it doesn't work so well. But most of us are not playing suicidal.

The reality is 100-150 points of the right defense X military bonuses == invincible ships, even with fairly weak offense.

Take that along with using the evil beam, plus how easy it is to get top level defense.

Then the real gravy is, you don't lose ships anymore. Micromanagement goes way down.

Oh, and since your ships don't die, they get crazy hitpoints.

If the AI actually used defense, this wouldn't work of course. But the game has been out for quite awhile, and I see no signs that the AI is going to build defensive ships.

Granted, all of this only applies at a certain tipping point in the game. The trick is to know when to start researching defense, and if the ships you're building are good enough. (not quite good enough == worthless...)

Point well taken. I usually research defensive techs a little ahead of offensive techs. So, when I said in my post above that I end up making ships with as many large offensive units as the hull will take and the rest of the space filled with the smaller defensive units, that can mean that the ship might be something like 0-4-0 and 0-0-6 or 0-6-0 and 0-0-10. Those babies are especially good against AI's that build many fleets of ships with 0-0-2 or 0-0-3 offense and no defense, as they often do...they knock the AI ships down with little or no damage to themselves and gain hit points from every battle.

I've been studying Iztok's monumental paper in the WIKI on ship design, in which he teaches that focusing your offense and spreading your defense is best. I'm playing games on the smaller galaxies that are won or lost in relatively few turns. Note that because of the stacking effect and the square root of 1 being 1, a 1-1-1 defense gives you 3 defensive points against any weapon, a real bargain. I plan to experiment with spreading my defense and see if the extra turns it will take to research more than one type of defense is worth it. Suppose I were playing on a tiny galaxy and needed to focus on one AI with strong gun weapons, at a point I might have ships with 0-0-12 defense. But if I were up against AI's with variable weapons, then a 4-4-4 defense would be a better choice for about the same amount of hull space, because that would give me 8 defensive points against any weapon. Even a 0-4-4 defense would give me 4 defense against beams and 6 defense aginst missiles and guns, a pretty good deal.

Hi!

I shouldn't be credited for just about everything on wiki. I've only contributed the "Further analysis of weapons" part. AFAIK PeskyFly added those leading dotted statements there lately. The rest of that "monumental" page is not my work.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

Yes, but even when I had 150% of defenses, against races with Luck I sometimes LOST a ship. When I've been montoring those battle rounds I quite often saw my ship took an unreasonably high damage: like average damage was 0-2 points, but sometimes it was 20. When I've asked about that here on forums, I've for the first time heard of "supershoot": all attack bonuses from all weapons added to the shot of the first weapon, so that weapon rolls not from 1 to 4 but from 1 to 20. Unconfirmed, but plausible. :NOTSURE:

What I've also noticed when using the most-defense ships is AIs NEVER counter-designed them, despite they had the approprate defenses, and my ships (large hull, 2 harpoons for 6 attack - 2 hits min with Luck, 80 defenses) were really easy to counterdesign. I explain that with ship's next-to-nothing firepower. AIs probably "thought": why bother with defenses when he has so low an attack?
There's a LOT of AIs' tombstones with that epithaph.

BR, Iztok

In some patch a while back (1.6?), defenses got a significant boost. Since then, it is generally worth it to use mixed ships with offense and matched defense, at least as long as your enemy doesn't adapt and switch weapon types.

This answer is not only simple, but also wrong. Let's take for example a late-game situation where the opponent has fleets with 3000 missile attack and no defenses worth speaking of. You now have the options: A: build ships so that your fleets have also 3000 missile, no defenses; and B: build ships that give your fleets 1500 missile and 2000 PD. In both cases, let's say combined fleet hit points are 1000, for both you and the AI fleets.
Scenario A is obviously a tossup. you may win or lose, but either way, most of your fleet is toast, as the opponent attack is more than double your fleet HP -> you lose your fleet in the first round.
Scenario B: In your first round, you kill only about 2/3-3/4 of the enemy fleet in the first round. The AI, on the other hand, kills about half of yours in round 1 (1000 hull + 2000 defense -> 3000 effective HP). In round 2, your ships kill what's left of the opposition while taking only relatively light damage.

This would be much more obvious if defenses were still stronger in relation to weapons, and it requires you to use matching defenses, but defense is definitely worth it. You just have to constantly monitor new AI ship designs and react whenever they change their weapon types.

I've had the same thought, the sad thing is just a little defense would make that AI ship much better. (my ship has very little attack) Once in a blue moon you run into a dreadnaught, with massive defense, and it's like "OMG, the AI is countering me!!"... But, it's more like the AI got lucky and built 2-3 such ships...



And, the AI switching weapons ussually happens when you're invading his last 3 planets, and worse, he'll just "sprinkle" a little of some other weapon.

What gets me, is that ship design is the cornerstone of this game, and the AI just doesn't come close to understanding the dynamics.

Hi!

Not wrong, just incomplete. I forget to add: in late game it's mostly bad idea to use fleets in combat (Not valid for Super Warrior).


You forget the Scenario C, that's clearly stated on GalCiv wiki:
"When the firepower of the fleet becomes too great for the defenses, the rule of the day becomes all-attack single suicidal 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. "
Scenario C's way you lose one ship per AIs fleet.

BR, Iztok

OK I didn't consider that one. But I seriously doubt that strategy works out against a well-defended fleet. No matter just HOW many weapons you cram into a huge hull, you can also design a huge hull with 200+ base defense, and one "suicide bomber" won't manage to crack that in one round as long as the defense matches the weapon type used by the suicide attacker. Tie rule only applies when killing the whole fleet in one round, which is ridiculous against a defense-heavy fleet.
Against an offense-only strategy, the "suicide ship" probably works, but that is only useful when the opponent makes a strategic mistake (designing ships without defense). From a game-theoretic perspective (that is, always assuming the strongest possible response) the suicide ship strategy won't do you a lot of good.

Here is part of one of my replies quoted from another discussion:

As for dealing with super-high attack fleets, there is a pretty simple strategy for minimizing your losses by choosing which matchups you fight tactically. Against a FLEET with a large attack value, you want to send in a single kamikaze all-attack huge hull. You only lose one ship, and you will knock out the majority of the fleet. If you are facing a single all-attack huge hull, you want to send a FLEET of mostly defense huge hulls. These will take down that single juggernaught while taking little to no damage. Against a fleet of mostly defense huge hulls, you want to send a super-high attack fleet, which will then suffer few losses. And so the rock-paper-scissors of fleet composition is complete.


Simply, end game offense outpaces end game defense. Read Combat Balance

~ Wyndstar

I took another look at the exact stats of the end game weapons and defenses. There might be something to the statement above, though I haven't tested it personally.



That seems to be the case only for Nightmare torpedoes versus Aereon Defense, but at least there it holds. Unfortunately, Stardock made MN torp too strong and defenses in general still a bit too weak. Ideally (IMHO) a super-high attack fleet (one attack type) with no defense should win against a fleet with diversified defenses, but lose against a fleet with matched defenses. If that isn't the case, it's a design flaw that I think I'll mod away by increasing the end-game defenses to 15.