Rataan

Bingjack, you may want to revisit the thread title. The point was to help the AI and make conquest more challenging. I'm finding it hard to imagine under what conditions not having AI fleets in orbit would be an advantage for the player. I'm playing a game where the Drengin have at least two medium hull ships with > 100 attack in orbit around most planets. I can pick them off one by one with my large hulls, only losing one when the math behind the 1 hp rule somehow ends up in the D

This is a good idea, and if Stardock doesn't make it canon, I will mod for my own games. IME, the AI does keep its best ships in orbit as often as not. Mascrinthus is correct, when both sides have the strong military tech the 1 hp rule reigns supreme. Aside from the fact that it is currently bugged and often heals victorious ships when the 1 hp rule is invoked, it is quite exploitable. As already mentioned, the player can always out think the AI when it comes to maneuvering. In most

I have experienced this numerous times in my latest game. I'll keep an eye out for it to happen again and send an auto-save. I would also be agree that the 1 hp rule leads to some unfortunate results, like a single powerful ship becoming invincible against weaker opponents. A more sophisticated algorithm would be nice, such as one that gives a percentage chance for survival to both sides and takes into account the initial hit points of the ships.

I can see espionage becoming more and more unbalanced the more civs and the bigger the map. I have been playing huge maps with three opponents and espionage isn't too annoying if I don't get the spy mega-event. But it is almost impossible to get past medium espionage level with more than one AI.

I have won every game at crippling I have tried so far, so maybe I can help a little. IMO, the colony rush is by far the most critical portion of the game. If you don't carve out a competitive empire in terms of number of planets, then you have a very difficult struggle ahead of you. This is especially true if the dominant empire turns out to be one that is aggressive, like the Drengin. The first choice you have to make is in the game setup when you choose your abilities. All of t

Here are my experiences: Altarians: game dominating if they win the colony rush. They seem to hold up well most times even if they are the smallest civ. Drengin: always seem to be strong in my games. The are good at the colony rush and if they end up in a dominating position, you are in for a very exciting game. Korath: seem to be more or less similar to Drengin, but I need more experience with them. Arcean: they seem to come up short on the colony rush m

I agree choosing good is essentially an increase in difficulty level. There should be some payoff for good alignment other than increased defense, which itself was of dubious value in DL and nerfed to oblivion in DA. I think there should be a substantial economic bonus at the very least. I think it would be reasonable too if AI civs were more likely to surrender to a good alignment, assuming it wasn't the good civ that started the war.

I haven't seen many opinions on how defense should be brought up to speed in these threads, so I would be interested in hearing opinions on that. I think the easiest and most logical thing to do would be to cut the cost in half across the board. That way there would be no AI tweaks necessary, no combat changes. It could hardly be considered unbalancing, since defense is at best half as effective as in DL and many experienced players argued that is wasn't cost effective then. The on

We've already demonstrated that a defense oriented ship that is much more expensive to build will win one on one battles with all attack ships. It is in fleet battles where all enemy ships concentrate fire on the same target that defense fails. ok, do the same test but use say 5 ships and see what happens? If it works the same as the tests I have done, then five ships vs. five ships will likely be a win for the d

After reading this thread, I had to try it out myself. I was making the typicle attack/defense balanced ships, but changed to making all attack ships and a few high defense ships. There is certainly no arguing that the attack ships are cheaper to build, and as they fall, they can be replaced quickly. My main ship planet is building large size defense ships. They cost about 30% more to build, but that isn't too bad. My game is about middle stage now, so I am se

OK, that test is easy to do. Start a Battle of the Gods scenario. Attack Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 14 blackhole eruptors, and one aereon defense to fill leftover space. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 3120. Total stats: 388 attack and 18 defense. (that's after I give it to the Altarians, it was only 353 attack, 12 defense for me) Defense Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 4 blackhole eruptors, and 21 aereon defenses. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 4320. T

Sorry, but that was a lame troll. I can only rate you a 2 on the Troll-o-meter. While you did score points for good puntucation, your propensity for inocomplete sentences, your deadpan delivery, and dunce-like grasp of basic facts may be indicative of severe head trauma. We suspect the same accident was responsible for the tragically placed stick in your rectum, as this is not known to be a congenital defect. Indeed, studies have indicated that such a confluence of maladies have been respons

It seems to me that if your military is strong enough you can go the whole game without a war regardless of aggressiveness settings, unless you get an event that triggers one. I made a custom opponent and named them the Shadows after the Babylon 5 villains. I set them to totally evil and totally aggressive, gave them all the military bonuses and a 20% economic bonus. In my current game they haven't attacked anyone yet and we are late in the mid game on crippling difficulty. They and the Alta

By comparison to dread lords, or the cost required to make effective defense based ships, the balance has certainly been thrown out of whack. No stats changes occured as a result of a switch to a radically different combat model that favours weaponry, and you bet thats caused things to go a bit awry. Its really a moot point to be arguing about it, though. Frogboy has already stated that he'd be rebalancing it. That's good to hear. I didn't see

Fleet A = high attack fleet: medium hulls, 24 hp each, 7 x Photonic Torpedo II, 28 attack, 0 defense, cost = 465, maint. = 13 Fleet D = high defense fleet: medium hulls, 24 hp each, 4 x Photonic Torpedo II, 7 x PD Combo II, 16 attack, 21 defense, cost = 790, maint. = 23 I don't think that anyone has claimed that defense is useful in a situation like this. I've specifically said that defense is useful IF you can make a sh

It's too bad we don't have MP, or the defense defenders would get skooled in a hurry. If you are in a dominating position, then you will win whether you waste resources on defense or not. If the enemy is equal in tech, production and economy, then you will lose ships in DA combat, and defense won't change that. Well, at least it won't change it as much as we would hope. I just spent an hour or so simulating another battle scenario with all attack vs. high defense ships. Here is the

It's too bad people start these threads and present anecdotes as proof of mistaken beliefs. Defense is a lousy way to spend your bc's in its current implementation. There may be situations where it seems to pay off, but overall, it is way too expensive for what it does. Just look at the cost of defense compared to the cost of hulls and weapons. The cost of defenses on a ship may well cost more than another of the same hull with the same weapons. If the defense is higher than attack, it may

But aren't diplomatic translators a trade good and not a wonder, or achievement or whatever? I'm a little fuzzy on the difference. The funny thing about trade goods is you probably want to think twice about trading them to anyone.

It's not really that big a deal though I hope not! allot of people like complicated espionage, me, i just want to build ships and kill stuff! please, carn't i just build ships and kill stuff in peace? thats all i want to do If you don't get the agent mega-event, they are a reasonably benign part of the game. If you have an opponent with a weak economy, like if they bankrupted themselves in the colony rush, you ca

I think a tech branch that adds hit points would make sense. Throw out the redundant weapons and combine all weapons into the same tech branch. One laser, one railgun etc. Pare down defense to two types: shields which would act as defense does now, and armor which adds hit points. Make the shields defend against any attack at full value. I suppose this would eliminate the rock/paper/scissors paradigm, but I have yet to see it be a decisive factor in any game.

I agree that planet development seems to be among the AI's weakest points. That and war, but I don't know if AI will ever really be good at war. I wonder if it wouldn't be reasonable for the AI to have a fairly rigid build strategy for its planets. Planet specialization may ultimately be the best strategy, but having each planet be as well rounded as possible works well too. A PQ 10 that has 3 factories, two labs, starport, 1 farm, 1 entertainment and 1 econ makes a lot of sense and doesn't

I saw a forum quote in past that indicated that defense had value on large ships because it allowed them to survive to high hit points. I have seen this myself in DL games where I had a Medium Hull survive to 3x the original hitpoints. It became unstoppable in it's class. Players that do not plan for their ships to survive lose some strategic value in favor of a winning tactic. Additionally, dead ships cannot be upgraded. I have not run the rigorous analysis on the fol

Well, I just played a game as the Kryn and did very well with defensively-oriented ships. Of course, I also started with an innate 80% defence bonus... I'm not convinced that defences don't have a role to play on ships below huge. If the big ships aren't in play yet, it's probably also true that the big *fleets* aren't in play. So even if you are using small ships, the fraction of your fleet that is hit but gets to recharge defence can be significant (due to f

I agree with the general strategy as a short-term solution. Somewhat increase the effectiveness/space of defences, and significantly decrease the costs of defences while increasing the research costs (though not to the research costs for weapons). That would be a start, but I don't know if it makes sense to increase the research time, since you will need far more defense now than ever to counter offense.

Wyndstar, I think we should also say in fairness that in most situations short of massive overkill in attack value that defense will prolong the battle. Whether or not that does much to change the outcome depends on how fast our defending ship can kill his attackers. Ephafn made a good point that with small ships defense gives them a tad more staying power than they would have without it. But if that defense module displaces a weapon then we have the same question of whether or not it is wort