meznaric

Join Date 09/2004

Do you use defense?

Purely offense or defense, too?

When I build ships I tend to put only the offensive weapons on them. My reasoning is that the defensive technologies tend to be too bulky for the effect and only add to the research cost, when in the meanwhile you could have researched better weapons. However, I have been wondering about whether this is really the best strategy (and to tell the truth, the defensive technologies do look neat in combat). So as the title says, do you put any defense on your ships?

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I do. Defense, esp the right defense, beats weapons for a while in the game. The wrong defense, though, may wel not be worth it.

A good case could be made that, if one faced all three weapons types in likely near-term enemies, that pure weapons wpould be better.

Later in the game, one can probably see which AI one will soon fight. In battles between full tech or near-full tech fleets, my personal experience is that I lose one-third the hulls that the enemy does when I have the right defense.

One could also argue that the first move in a war is always to smash and grab the enemy red bases. That is, the opening move should be to hit every red base with a fleet escorting a bunch of constructors. If you manage that and have the right defenses, you may lose as few as one ship per fleet battle, and sometimes none.

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qrtxian

Join Date 03/2010

+30

Yes, I definitely use defense. Full-tech wars are uncommon enough in my games that the supposed inefficiency of high-level defenses doesn't matter much, and certainly at lower levels defense is invaluable. In my experience it is rare (though not totally unheard of) for the AIs to use all three types of weapons - typically there is one 'majority' and one 'minority' weapon type.

I should note that I have never been interested in maximizing my gameplay and so I might be wrong about the effectiveness of defenses.

This is highly effective, though red (military) resources are somewhat uncommon in my games. I also usually have a fleet of fast constructors some distance from the front lines rather then having constructors in the fleets that hit the starbases. It's worth noting that I have seen the AI use this tactic on several occasions.

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Defense is much faster and easier to research than offense, so it is useful, even against max weapons. You can upgrade (which also repairs) a ship with a useless defense to a new defense. It the price is too high, just get it on max lease. It makes a big difference in survivabilty of your ships; they gain experience and live to fight even more effectively another day. Low level defense techs are bulky and fairly useless.

The AI usually focuses on offense, and will often trade even high tech weapons - especially if you are allied. If you appear overpowered (because of the spin controll center), you can move your ships out of the SCC and try again next turn.

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After searching for a bit, I found an interesting simulator from a while back. You specify the ship's defense/attack ratings for each of the categories and the HP and it gives you probabilities of victory. After playing a bit, it seems that if the size ratio between the defense and attack is 2:1 it pays to give SOME defense on the ship. So for instance, if you can put 1 attack in 10 size and 1 defense in 5 size, it would be best to have a 2 attack and 2 defense rather than 3 attack and 0 defense. Anyway, if you want to run some simulations yourself, the simulator is now only available on the internet archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20091025112709/http://geocities.com/saber_marionette_cherry/index.html

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Fanatically. I find that the ai's, so called, rarely use it at all, and never effectively (yet?). So with relatively modest effort on defense research, and a moderate effort on miniaturization, I can field a single frigate (my terminology) based on a small hull up against an opponent fleet with three "heavy fighters" (again, small hull) and destroy them all, every time, with no damage in the majority of the encounters. My ship is 0/0/4 - 10/18/0; the opponents are usually 0/3/0 - 0/0/0. A more intelligent opponent might offer a fleet with a battleship, so called, and two frigates (his terminology, now), with scores more like 6/0/0 - 0/4/0. I still win, but always with damage. That's a single small hulled ship against an opponent's fleet with two medium and one large ship. That's an intelligent+ opponent--I forget the nomenclature, but the next up from intelligent. I am always fighting against opponents with much larger fleets and empires (in the beginning...), and this is the only way that I have found so far of holding my own.

I do not claim fully to understand this yet--I am new to the game--but I don't know how to survive against always stronger opponents without defense. It is my top priority for the first three or four (?) years of the game, until I'm strong enough defensively that I'm confident of not getting creamed by one of the big uglies.

The downside--if I start off close to one of the aggressive big uglies, I'm usually worm meat. Always, so far. Maybe I'll figure out a strategy to deal with that situation someday, but not yet.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

Defence is especially useful if you've kitted your ships out with HP boost modules, because in the event that a ship's defences fail or damage bleeds through, the hull takes the rest of the beating. The more HP your ship has, the more likely it is to survive for another round, at which point its defences are fully recharged.

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