No. There's a checkbox in the options which specifically says 'Only show fleet combat if BOTH sides are fleets' - you want to toggle this off to see fleet combat when only one side is a fleet.
What I'm saying is that if one wave of defenders - the maximum according to logistics - isn't going to hurt the enemy enough to stop him attacking a second wave (because he's not strong enough to fight them) or better yet, wipe the enemy out completely, then the planet is probably already lost. And, because it's unlikely that you can squeeze in a third wave of defenders because there's only space for ten ships, two waves maximum is all you have.
Remember that 300 attack is actually thirty 10-damage weapons (or even fifty 6-damage weapons) and by the time you get to the closing shots with those weapons, more damage is likely to leak through than when you started firing because of defence degradation (assuming for the moment there isn't an off-type defence) but the downside is that with less defence, your own ship will see damage leakage sooner rather than later. A strong offence is necessary when you want to cause lots of damage
Having re-read the example posted for the DA combat system, I noticed that weapons are targeted to cause optimal damage - that is, the weapon which can roll against the lowest possible defence value goes first. However, since this targeting method breaks down when a large off-type defence is present, I suggest an alternative. Considering the same ship using the targeting formula, all ships should fire on-type weapons at the strongest defence if it exceeds the square of the secon
The orbital fleet manager shouldn't be something you put down on a tile and forget about. The technology may become available, but that doesn't mean you or the AI should necessarily commit the maximum number of ships according to your logistics to an orbital defence fleet. What you really want is several waves of defenders, instead of the laughable ten ships you can at present have defend the planet. To hold a planet until help comes, you need to inflict enough damage on your a
If your goal is to take away your enemy's capability to make war, then take along an empty troop transport or three. When you successfully invade one of his worlds that you don't really want, bring your soldiers back up and destroy the colony. That way, it doesn't add to your economy, and if you want it later on you can always colonise it yourself or invade the new occupier. This is an especially good idea if you're going for the conquest victory and already have enough planets to do
So because defences don't degrade when they block an off-type weapon e.g. shields against mass drivers, when they are massed they give a guaranteed dice-roll advantage from the first to the last shot. My opinion is that off-type defences should stop helping to repel damage when the on-type defence is zero to begin with, or reaches zero at some point during the combat round. At that point, a mass driver shot by the attacker is likely to sail through a hole in the armour and impact the h
It may well be that in order to punch through the overall defence value and cause damage in a combat round, you'll need to wear down the strong defences with a saturation attack. Even if you don't actually break through, you've lowered the value that is square rooted, making it easier for the rest of your weaponry to score a hit. If that's right, fleet combat has a whole new level to it.
You know, I was just thinking that it might be an idea to match defence more to the sort of ship that it needs to protect, rather than a progression of components that take less and less space to achieve the same result. For example, you could have an ECM array which offers a much better rating than the standard ECM unit - you won't pack one of them on a small fighter, but on a capital ship it could scale better than several independent ECM units.
You need to increase spending (boost the social production slider) or rush-buy some industry to get things rolling. Because you're getting only half as much production for every bc you spend, you need to make sure enough money is distributed to the colony.
Defence serves a purpose in helping to set the order in which your ships will be attacked, from most to least expendable. If the ship with the best weapons in one of your fleets is last on the target list, it is more likely to survive the battle on account of all the damage it inflicts without reprisals. Of course if the enemy starts deploying ships packed with weapons that can cut through most of your defences, then the most cost-effective way to take them out is to build your own.<br
With the current revisions, defence is fairly expensive for what it does. In the early game, it also takes up too much space to make it into any workable ship designs. Attack on the other hand has become more useful. For example, having different weapon types allows for another target to be acquired if the first one is destroyed by the first weapon to fire. This creates a pressure to add a second weapon type instead of a defence component to a ship design.
I like the idea of ship modules which give similar bonuses to military starbases. However, one has to wonder whether the area of effect would need to be the same. If the best effect is gained with fleets of small and cheap ships, the greatest advantage is in being able to move these ships around to attack rather than having to sit and wait for the enemy to come to you.
The AI is dramatically improved in DA, but IMO you need to crank the difficulty up to at least Challenging to see the full effect. In my current game, the Yor have swiftly taken out one of the major races and are working on another. If they keep going, they'll probably win.
You're forgetting about cosmic radiation. Mars doesn't have as strong a magnetic field as Earth, nor does it have as thick an atmosphere. Any habitat that is set up on such a planet will need to either have some form of shielding, or at least a shelter built in solid rock. Plants still need oxygen to breathe when there isn't any sun, and they need nutrients and water from the soil in order to grow. They might not be as high maintenance as humans, but it's a long way from getting a fe
I suggest an additional maintenance cost for every billion citizens left on a world they don't have the technology to live on as if it were normally habitable. Just because it's there doesn't mean you left someone alive to show you how to run it.
I agree wholeheartedly. Even if two empires have a different hue of a secondary colour, it's can still hard to tell them apart when the things being coloured are particularly small. Ships on the mini-map, for instance.
I can't confirm if this happens with any other ship styles, but definitely with the Krynn Consulate style picked out, it's entirely possible for a weapon to not appear on the hardpoint you were placing it on. It instead appears on a different hardpoint, possibly one that is already occupied - which causes an additional problem in that neither the new weapon, nor the item occupying that HP originally can be moved or deleted.
You can always turn off upgrades with the Planetary Governor. The downside of this is that you can't readily see which planets have auto-upgrades on.
I was just thinking that in order to truly appreciate which technology or improvement is best for its situation, the AI needs to consider opportunity costs. For example if I start upgrading buildings at a planet which is a plentiful producer of ships, there will be a reduction in military output because unused social production is added to military. One of the main reasons that I disable automatic upgrades at planets like these is because the opportunity cost of completing the u
Let's not forget that some of us were deeply disappointed by a certain 4X game which failed to deliver satisfaction. GalCiv 2 fills a need to actually be able to see nifty-looking ships do battle. We know that space is vast and that in actuality to see the entirety of a battle you probably wouldn't be able to see the ships themselves, not to mention you wouldn't hear any explosions or beam noises from your vantage point. But a culture that has grown up on the TV and movie sci-fi
Range isn't really an issue unless you play on larger maps, and even then it's something which becomes less problematic as starbases are built and planets are colonised.
If transports have to park one turn and invade the next, it still allows the AI the chance to use any fleets it has stationed nearby to attack those transports. Without park-and-invade, there is no strategy it can formulate. As I said way up above, if you properly escort your invading transport all the way in protecting it from interception, then the AI will have to concede that world. Always though it should be looking to avoid such a checkmate if possible.
Well, not to spoil it for you too much but.... Ion engines in DA are (in beta 2A) an early cost-effective propulsion system, even if they're not as space-efficient as impulse engines which come after them. All engines are now considerably larger and more costly than they were in DL. With sufficient miniaturisation you can still stuff a fair number of engines onto a ship but it will cost more to make than it used to, and of course if it isn't exempted from maintenance, that will be hig
Here's a couple of screenshots with the tooltip info. The sum total does add up, I checked. Full-size image Full-size image
