Hi!

Do you know how combat in DA works? If you don't, then it's pointles to tell you anything. Better check DA (Beta) Combat System. If you do, then "defenses of the wrong type never deplete" tells you everything you need to know.

BR, Iztok

I believe military starbases can make them worthwile. Since the way military starbase bonuses are applied, you get far more benefit from many small ships than a few large ones, i think?

Well those games where you are almost loosing are the most fun! and the satisfaction of anihilating that invincible fleet that has been kicking your ass because it followed you into the jaws of starbase death is most satisfying!!

As you say, they are worthless if your fleets are already able to hold their own without starbase assistance.

I am noticing this more and more. But since I'm on 1.5, I'm not sure how much of this is the "1.5 defense bug" in action, because I usually utilize multiple types of defenses.

I guarantee you that I have been able to dominate with large fleets of well developed smalls, with few losses, where the individual ships would have been like throwing snowballs at the walls of a steel mill ("look! I can't miss! - sssst.")

The structural advantage of fleets is that you can afford to make the individual ships defensively stronger, because the ATTACK of the fleet all works together on sequential targets. Therefore, the individual attack strengths don't need to be maxed out. True, it doesn't combine into one overwhelming 'super-beam' or something, but all of the weapons of the fleet contribute to the burn through for selected targets.

Eventually in the progress of the game, defenses and bonuses will get so large that you can't get enough attack even with fleets for rapid burn through of the toughest targets. At that point, it is smart to switch over to 'all-attack' designs and accept some resulting losses for the sake of the greatly accelerated collective burn through generated by the massed array of weapons. This is also the point at which a series of single ship 'all weapon' attacks may be better (less total losses) than fleeting then, AS LONG AS that 'all weapon' design can get through the defenses and kill at least 1-2 enemy ships before dying itself.

Personally, I kind of like the (perhaps unintended) concept that the general rise of technology among all the civs leads to changing design philosophies and the operational balance of battles. Kind of like the Cavalry Cycle, or the Rise of the Defense in the late-19th and early 20th Centuries due to the great improvement in the lethality of 'fixed' firepower; then the Era of Mobile Warfare with the development of airpower, mobile armor, and advanced artillery coordination.

Also note that the forces are geopolitically weighed by the AI as fleets, which will give them more presence in AI decisions than (virtually) scattered individual ships will.

drrider