Who wins ties (in battle?)

The wonderful "Dreadlords arrival" is plaguing my current game.  They have a battleship running around that has something like 585 attack in Mass Driver, no defenses at all, and 67 HPs.  It's pretty easy (even at my early tech level) to build a fleet that can knock it down to zero.  Of course, my fleet gets annihilated.  And the Dread Lord ship wins every tie, regardless of whether I attacked it, or it attacked me.

So, in Twilight of the Arnor (1.96), what are the rules for who wins ties?

Bonus question, why was it considered necessary for anyone to win ties?  If two fleets wipe each other out, well, then they wipe each other out, what's the problem?

Thanks
4,194 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top
In the event the last ship in each fleet is destroyed in the same round of combat, the last surviving ship on either side is evaluated on (2*attack + current HP + defense/2) and the ship with the higher rating has the kill shot ignored.

There are essentially two ways to beat Dread Lords. The first is to build a fleet of tiny hulls with as many weapons as possible, and count on at least one ship surviving the first round of DL fire - the number of ships the DL ship can kill is limited by the number of weapon emplacements it has, not it's total attack power. If it only has 6 weapons and you have 7 ships, you win because the tie rule never ocmes itno play.

The second is to build a ship which can outscore the DL ship and thus win the tie rule. This is obviously a more expensive option in terms of research and construction, but has the benefit of not suffering attrition. If you use tiny hulls you will be replacing most of your fleet every time you attack a DL ship. This monster is reusable.

Bonus answer: I don't know for certain, but I assume it has to do with a conscious decision to value quality over quantity. Mutual destruction would favor cheap, disposable fleets.
Reply #2 Top
I had a lucky shot once at one of these crazy DreadLords bumble bees - i sent in a bigger_faster_stinger wasp with everything polarized at countermeasures; heavily defending against "his" and fully loaded attacking around "theirs".
Experience didn't matter, sustained damages by both neither.

The calculation is quite simple in fact; the tie rule never applies unless you purposely provide a condition that enforces it.

Analogy; Stronger than weak is pure offensive while lost battles continually destroys whatever happens to be just **ONE** point of attack less. Relatively speaking. Direct opposite variations still applies in the case of **ONE** defensive asset - if kept by winning through similar but weird lucky shots in any given battles.

Won't go into the fleets variables, though! ;)
Reply #3 Top
Given that it's pretty early in the game, I guess I'm just going to have to go nuts on the Logistics branch and swarm with tiny hulls.

Thanks for the answer, I was using up a lot of ships trying to figure out if attacking first or defending, or what was the deciding criteria.

Thanks