Attack or Defenses?

Its alwas a tough decision. I like a lot of defence so i can walk away from a battle with no damage.

However i would not go with 48 defence and 8 attack. You wopuld be able to absorbed their first volley mostly but with only 5 attack you would need a few rounds to get them. In that time you woul lose your defences and some ships.

I would suggest more minituriztion. But in the maen time go with like half and half. Generally thats what i like to do.

I'd favour the all attack build - the one with just 8 attack and 48 def has the problem that their attacks (especially when ships are in fleets) will easily outstrip your defences, meaning that the relative damage you deal to them for each damage point they deal to you is much lower with the 8 attack build than the 56 attack build.

I tend to go for defence when I am confident I can outtech my opponent, such that I can get a high defence (compared to their attack) and still have time to get decent weapons. Also due to their nature defence strategies rely more on large ships with miniaturization (since defence afaik is based on each individual ship, and not shared across a fleet), which takes up more research time.

I also think that the more attack based approach may be your best bet here. Since you can't block everything that the enemy is throwing at you, best to go in and kill-em first. But consider researching some miniturization and possibly the next larger ship size to counter the opponent. Logistics may also yield the advantage you are looking for.

Remember that all of their damage will be concentrated on one ship each round. Unless you can get enough defense to tank all of the damage from the entire fleet, the defense strategy loses. Either way you're going to lose ships, but all attack makes taking a few of them with you more likely.

My in-game watching of laser-shields battles makes me believe attack generally trumps defenses. The cause is watching my 1/2 (1 las / 2 las def) ships getting trumped by 3 las / 0 las def ships.
But also hitpoints adds into it as > means longer standing power. So I'd say it's weapon damage potential per hitpoint that is the best formula for figuring out your ships' values, with your defenses merely adding more hitpoints iff you chose right, and those hitpoints are 'regenerating' hitpoints. In the first example, basically my defense wasn't regenerating my hitpoints fast enough to make a difference (maybe extra thought should be given to the percentage of def to hitpoints though as well, as in this example a ~1 def to 4 or 8 hitpoints isn't much coverage, but say a 1 def for every 2 hitpoints is great coverage.

So really defense is a gamble.
But it's a great gamble when your enemies have very predictable weapon types, as a little goes a long way, since defense = regenerating hitpoints if your defense counters your enemy's weapons. In that case, 1/3 uncountered attack to 2/3 defenses is like invulnerability. Otherwise though, figure your defenses are just insurance, and that it's better to have only 1/3 defenses, with the broadest spectrum of types that you can afford.

Overall, weapons + hitpoints + logistics (which is really just a multiplier for more weapons + hitpoints)+ miniaturization (more weapons, but I'd estimate it's only like a +1-2 weapon level, like researching an Laser VI or VII, so least important until you have a couple levels of miniaturization) is the way to go when you can afford high research levels, but when you have to cut research to build during a tough war, then 'band-aid' defenses and more miniaturization (more defenses per hitpoint) to upgrade your ships is the way to go to try to both out-turtle and out-produce the enemy. But any quick gains, the free +10 weapon abilities, etc.. are appreciated in the middle of a war of course as long as they're as cheap or cheaper than the defenses, and lastly the hitpoints of bigger ships. Basically think of the defenses as a strategic parry-riposte during a war to render the enemies ships so you can then effortly cripple their economy (take planets and resources).

I haven't considered cost per weapon vs. cost per defense though. That will make a difference if you tend to wait until a war starts to build up your military.

At any rate, early on, more weapons. :*).

Edit: and the reason why I rate bigger ships last during a tough war is they're impossible to buy from the AI, and way expensive to research when you need to cut research.

That's not a fair comparison, though. Your typical defense is going to be much, much SMALLER than the corresponding weapon. I'm willing to bet that the ships you were fielding were significantly lower tech, weapon and defense wise. In general, defenses are better in small engagements where they won't be overwhelmed by enemy fire. Once engagements get large enough that your opponents stand a good chance of simply overpowering your defenses through combined attacks, defenses are more likely a last ditch chance to reduce damage than anything else.

You're right, HP is generally the determining factor in an engagement on (mostly) equal terms. Its the reason why ships built with prohibitively expensive HP addons are still cost effective.

Defenses are technically more effective than HP boosts in that they can absorb large amounts of damage for free, and then do it AGAIN next round. The downside is the size of them... two 5HP modules will take up about the same space as a defense module (varying for type and generation). They are, however, much cheaper.

If your goal is to maximize ship longevity, you use this formula: number of volleys you expect a ship to last * (total defense / 2) = the amount of HP your defenses will save you per battle. If that is greater than what you'd get out of an HP booster for the same space (or the cost of the boost is prohibitive) you use the defenses instead of the HP.

Defense is very useful. Sufficient defense saves ships and makes them comparably immune. I roll with +50 Mil and still feel the loss of ships. Have good attack at the same time of course. Although I do not have experience at Suicidal, I do play Tough (soon to be Painful).

Might change a little bit with patch with less research overhead, but you would still need ridiculous amounts of research to zoom down the line of weapons and miniaturization and maybe hulls to achieve massive weapon superiority, not to mention be able to mass produce your defenseless ships afterward, although there'll be less need for that if you truly are able to achieve, for example, a 5 to 1 weapons advantage.

The exceptions are the Drengin and the Korath. By researching Xeno ethics and choosing evil, you get access to the Psyonic Beam just after Laser V, jumping from +1 damage weapons to +12!

A question from the newbie. Do all forms of defense give you defense? It seems like the tech trees are lasers, missiles, and ballistics with defense for each. So, would high missile defense still be useful and give some bonus against other weapon techs or do you need the right one (thus having to research all or just go all offense)?

Defenses have reduced effectiveness against off-type damage. To be exact, it's the square root of the designed defense, rounded down to the nearest integer. So if you have 16 missile defense, it can block 16 missile damage, but only 4 beam or mass driver damage.

Square root, that is harsh. At least it does something though-- I guess.

In my opinion defense techs are only useful if you pair them with fleet modules - normally the most vulnerable ships are targeted first, so if you have a mixed fleet of all attack / low attack+defense ships, the all attack ships will be hit first. Fleet modules, however, are always attacked first. Therefore, a ship with a fleet mod + high defense + 1 attack can be put in a fleet with pure attack ships and take all the damage. Generally you'd use a ship one size class higher than your attack ships to carry the fleet mod, since fleet mods are size-hungry and it gives your tank extra HP.

Also, keep in mind that auto-designed ships don't pay hull size penalties for ship component size, so you get a bonus for using auto-designed ships as your attackers - the auto-designer generally doesn't bother with defenses until medium and always favors attack over defense.

I have for example 24 attack to their 3 and I still take damage. Put on defense

As with almost everything in this game, there are too many variables to say for sure what "the best way" is. I said i like to go alost 50/50 with attack and defnce, but this will depend on what stage of the game I am in; what my enemy is using what my tech level is at th time etc.. I've seen AI ships over do the dfence and underdo offence and come up with large ships with like 8 attack and 80 defence. In those cases i won't ory too much abaoy my defemce but put in enough to still take no damage.

Another thing to consider, are your ships going to be fighting AI fleets or widdling down planetary defenders (assuming no fleet manager is present)?

I generally go 80/20 on my attack/defense strategy. I also try to go bigger ships earlier than my opponent. Then, if I still have some extra space, I do actually make use of +hp modules.

I start off with missile and research straight through to Harpoon. Then I go bigger ships and some miniaturization. I throw in some Logistics as well so i can get more ships in than my opponent (and also invade planets with more than just 1k of troops). then I go defense. I focus on whatever defense works against whatever my "Current" opponent is using.

When I pile them all on my ships, I usually end up with about 80/20 split of offense and defense. Then, if I still have space, i throw on some of the low space HP items. This generally rounds out my ships so that they can last just that bit longer than my opponents.

With this strategy, I can generally decimate any opponents long enough for me to progress through Psionic Missile (if I play evil) and that is all she wrote. In this way, I usually end up with several fleets of level 8 or higher ships.