The value of a good defense?

I find myself ignoring defense totally a lot, and just piling on more guns. As long as you keep your logistics up, and make sure you always get the first attack, you'll wipe out the enemy without them ever firing a shot. Its the only way I was able to handle the dreadlords.

Another thing to take into account is ship hitpoints. If you have a ship with 10 hitpoints, 18 attack, and 0 defense, all it takes is a weeny 10 attack ship to get lucky and take it out. However, if you have 6 of these ships in a fleet, you'll lose one, then the enemy is hit with 90 damage on the return volley.

For this reason, I find large hulled ships to be less than optimal unless I have defense, or enough logistics to put 3-4 of them together. The idea is to have enough firepower left over if the enemy gets the drop on you and has enough firepower to destroy one of your big ships in one volley. Whereas with the same logistics I could put 19 (yes, 19) tiny ships in a fleet and lose a much smaller chunk of my firepower.

On top of all of this, ship experience plays a massive roll. If you take to farming transports, scout ships, wimpy fighters, and frieghters for experience, your fleet of 3 small ships with 10 hitpoints each can over time reach 50 and even 200+ hitpoints each. Upgrading massively experienced ships like this with modern components can really bring the pain.

Defense is very VERY powerful. That's all I'm going to say.

Having played the game, I can say with absolute certainty that defense is just as important as offense. In fact, it might be more important. in 3v3 (small fleet) battles, for example, a 6/6 fleet will usually take out a 12/0 fleet with no casualties, or losing a single ship. Play & see -)

Having seen the Dregs heavy fighters die beneath the shadow of a starbase that gave my ships 12 armor instead of 2 I can attest that defense is indeed important.It was a joy to see the starbases functioning.

Sorry, it's 2.40am here (guess what I just finished playing?) so I've not read all posts, but...

If I'm reading this right, defense is very powerful, because:

- Your offense power is simply only the maximum damage you can cause. You can (randomly) cause damage from 1 up to max damage. So with an 8 rating in beam, it's still possible to cause only 1 damage.

- Defense will always negate at it's value. So with an 8 rating in shields, you will always ignore the first 8 points of beam damage.

- Even if reducing the the percentage of damage wasn't good enough- the moment your defense equals your opponents offense, then you are effectively invincible (e.g. defense 7 vs offense 8 may let that ship survive 17 battles (assume 18hp and ignore experience-induced hp. Also assume that the enemy rolls the maximum of 8 on *every* attack); but defense 8 v offense 8 means you won't take damage!)

- Ships with more defense than offense may need larger fleets to defeat enemy ships due to their reduced firepower, but the added resilience means they receive more experience = more hp = juggernauts!

Though like yourself, I often focus on offensive powers- but because I'm the kind of player who turtles in my territory, focusing on research; so most of my battles occur in my territory- and obviously, I need to be able to stop incursions so offense > defense.

so, what you're saying is, defense doesn't get a roll, it have it's value and that's it???

that would mean that if i build ship 1/8 and fight versus ship that is 8/0, i will win and recieve no damage???

unless this is a recent change, the maual says you *do* roll for defense, and you roll from 1 to your defense value =P

I'm positive jp-uk is mistaken, because I had several fights where a ship of mine with defense rating 6 (shields) died after several waves of attack from fleets of attackers with attack rating 3 (beam).

Im pretty sure you roll on defense. The thing nobody has pointed out is defense takes less time to research which is important. so the more balanced player would would have more stats on his ship. so it wouldn't be 4a 4d vs. 8a 0d. it would more then likely be 4a 6d vs. 8a 0d.

I tend to prefer all-attack ships so I can rapidly switch strategies (research 2 weapon types and no defense). This way, no matter what my opponent uses, I have a weapon that can rip through any possible defense. I do, however, in the late game research defenses if the game becomes superpower vs. superpower. So yeah, defenses are good, but I still prefer offense.

Dammit! Am I the ONLY ONE who reads the manual? Read the manual guys and gals! Here's an important excerpt answering your questions:

Ship vs. Ship When individual ships fight, the attacking ship fires each of its types of weapons as a single shot. All available beam weapons, mass driver weapons, and missile weapons are grouped into single attacks. When firing, the weapons roll a value between 1 and their combined attack rating. At that point, the defender then rolls a value that is between 1 and its corresponding defense rating. Shields defend against beams, armor defends against mass drivers, and point defense defends against missiles. Non-optimal defenses are also added at a rate of the square root of their value. For example, your ship has six laser cannons with a beam attack of 1 for a total of 6. It has no missiles or mass drivers. You’re attacking a ship with two deflectors with a shield defense of 1 and titanium armor with an armor defense of 9. The attacker would roll a beam attack between 1 and 6. The defender would roll a defense between 1 and 2 plus another 1 and 3 (the square root of 9 is 3). It’s total possible defense would be between 2 and 5. If the attack roll is greater than the defense roll, then the difference is subtracted from the hit points on the defender. If the defender survived, roles are reversed and the defending ship attacks. This repeats until one ship has no hit points left and is destroyed. Fleet Battles In a fleet battle, the attacking side adds together all of its attacks against a single defending ship, even if the defender is also a fleet (in which case the most lethal but most easily destroyed defending ship is targeted first). Then the roles are reversed until one of the fleets is destroyed. This allows for some very interesting battles. Imagine a Dreadnought with five Phasor Cannons (20 beam attack), three Harpoon Missiles (9 missile attack), and one Singularity Driver (4 mass driver attack). This capital ship has 40 hit points. Now imagine it’s being attacked by a squadron of 4 fighters, each equipped with two Mark III Plasma Cannons (4 beam attack). All four of the fighters get to take their shot before the capital ship can respond. So each one rolls between 1 and 4. Since there are 4 of them, that means an attack between 4 and 16 against the Dreadnought. But consider that each fighter only has 12 hit points. Suffice to say it’s going to be a close call.

Citizen Lamprey1234 wrote:

Having played the game, I can say with absolute certainty that defense is just as important as offense. In fact, it might be more important. in 3v3 (small fleet) battles, for example, a 6/6 fleet will usually take out a 12/0 fleet with no casualties, or losing a single ship. Play & see -)

Citizen esnoble wrote:

I tend to prefer all-attack ships so I can rapidly switch strategies (research 2 weapon types and no defense). This way, no matter what my opponent uses, I have a weapon that can rip through any possible defense. I do, however, in the late game research defenses if the game becomes superpower vs. superpower. So yeah, defenses are good, but I still prefer offense.

These two are the crux of my quandry. That 6/6 fleet has had to put in roughly 4x the research time as the 12/0 fleet they fought, in order to reach that level of success. Otherwise, they are a 6/2.4 fleet, and die quickly.

Basically every point you put into defense research is noticably less valuable than every point you put into offensive research.

What I really wish I could do it set up a pure AI match, with one wired to balance offence and defence, and the other set to maximise offence, and batch run it to see which AI's perform best. In fact, to produce the best results, it would probably be best to run a 9 NPC match, with 3 balance, 3 offence, and 3 default AI players, and see how each group performed over a number of runs. Maybe the devs have done that already.

I just don't feel like I'm seeing any returns on the defence investments I've made, especially since I'm facing mixed weapon hostiles.

Harry Voyager

Well, we gotta find out a few things first.

What is cheaper, researching a 8/0 ship or a 4/4 ship (A/D ratings) ?
Which design takes up more space?
Which design costs more?
Who wins in battles like a 8/0 vs a 4/6 or a 10/0 vs a 6/6 or a 14/0 vs a 4/10?

I find that I get great investment from my defense......on challenging difficulty where the purposely built brain dead AI builds low weapon ships. On higher difficulties, I dunno, I'll get there in a few days.

All offense is good, but leaves you open to packs of fighters with all offense. And first strike adds in a good weight of damage, whereas ships with defense can handle being "ambushed" by faster or luckier ships. I get the feeling that defense is better for bigger ships so they can get in more shots, while smaller designs can just forget defense as they'll probably die quickly to any type of fire thrown their way.

TheWickedFlea said:

Dammit! Am I the ONLY ONE who reads the manual? Read the manual guys and gals! Here's an important excerpt answering your questions: All available beam weapons, mass driver weapons, and missile weapons are grouped into single attacks. When firing, the weapons roll a value between 1 and their combined attack rating. ... The attacker would roll a beam attack between 1 and 6. The defender would roll a defense between 1 and 2 plus another 1 and 3

Um... no. I read the manual, but it was a prerelease version, so I'm exempted. I'll update my combat simulator accordingly

I had written, "Thanks! I had gleaned from other posts (e.g. Frogboy's) that attack AND defense rolls 0-max, but now it appears that they both roll 1-max, making two vessels with HP=x, atk=1, def=1 fundamentally superior to a single vessel with HP=2x, atk=2, def=2... "

But then I realized, no, the manual is wrong. That's utterly impossible. Defense CANNOT roll 1-max, because if it did, a ship with atk=1 could never damage a ship with def=1 (since they would both always roll 1), while in practice, damage DOES occur.

So: Who knows what the real combat formula is? I'm still assuming attacker and defender roll 0-max. If you wish to see just how powerful defense is, I invite you to download my java simulator (based on that assumption):

www.geocities.com/saber_marionette_cherry/index.html

I can't hard link it, as this forum does not support underscores. At any rate - defense is pretty darn powerful.

The manual is wrong on sooooo many things... it's best only to use it to get the general idea, not the actual numbers. And it will get worse with increasing number of updates.

I assume the roll is from 0 to max as well, btw., but I don't have hard evidence either (apart from the fact that you can kill a 1-def ship with a 1-att ship)

What is cheaper, researching a 8/0 ship or a 4/4 ship (A/D ratings) ? Which design takes up more space? Which design costs more? Who wins in battles like a 8/0 vs a 4/6 or a 10/0 vs a 6/6 or a 14/0 vs a 4/10?

Besides that, you might also want to factor in the fact that defense will only be good against one type of weapon whereas the weapon will be good against two type of defense.

I've been using Darth Kryo's sim, which is part of what lead me to this question. Basically it has been consistently showing that a matched defense is only equivalent to offense, rather than it having any advantage over it, and that a mixed or unmatched defense is consistently inferior to offense in all reguards. It is only when you show more combined matched offence and defense points, that a defended ship has any advantage over a purely offensive one.

Considering that if you don't research any defense techs, you will have at least twice the available weapons research available, it is easy to stay several steps ahead of any defense you opponents might muster, particularly if they aren't already specced in the correct defense type.

Harry Voyager

Basically it has been consistently showing that a matched defense is only equivalent to offense, rather than it having any advantage over it, and that a mixed or unmatched defense is consistently inferior to offense in all reguards. It is only when you show more combined matched offence and defense points, that a defended ship has any advantage over a purely offensive one.

Keep in mind that if you're simming one-on-one matches, which ship you set as the attacking side and which you set as the defending side can have a TREMENDOUS effect on the results.

I'm running 3v3 and switching def and off groups, and varrying the hp values. a 12/0 v a 6/6(mismatch) the 12 wipes the 6/6(miss) every single time, the 6/3+3 every time, and the 6/6(match) about half of the time (favoring the attacker).

Harry Voyager

Sorry about my irritation, heh, I've worked as support now and then and it's amazing how many folks just don't read the manual!

I try to keep my defense rate at least at 66% of the enemies attack rating. It's better to deflect most shots, than none.

My new favorite trick.. 1attack/defense tiny ships with good engines. Use them as cheap planetary defense against transports, and send them out to snipe nearby frieghters. Slap a fully upgraded military starbase in problem areas, and boom! little ship turns into quite a killer.

Seems from the formula that defense is most universal at a value of 1. Since wrong type of armor works as the squareroot, the squareroot of 1 is 1, so strength 1 defense is fully effective against all attacks.

This way 1 shield + 1 chaff + 1 armor is defense 3 against all attacks. So any well defended ship should use something like 6 shield + 1 chaff + 1 armor or whatever you decide to counter.

just going by what ive "felt" while playing... not any actual numbers here.. but..

When i have an equal technological level in a weapon, and a defense.. I find that the weapon is a much better thing to have.

That is very vague and hard to understand .. let me put it differently..

a scenario: by mid game I may have researched halfway through the Missle tree, and halfway through the Armor tree. When I go to make a ship.. I will have missles with a size of 10 and an attack of 2. I will have defense with a size of 9 and a defense of 1. So what is better? 4 attack for 20 space..or 2 defense for 18 space? Thats a no brainer.

To make things worse, you cant just load a ship up on defense and send it out... lets say I have a hull with 30 space... I can either give it 2 attack and 2 defense.. or 6 attack (not counting engines of course).. I think it is safe to say that the 6 attack ship will pwn the 2 attack one.

I know that defense IS powerful... I usually get my defense by researching starbase fortifications..and then forward building some military starbases near a planet I want to take, and around my borders.. then I pump it full of the ship defense assist modules. This allows me to field some very powerful ships, for alot cheaper than it would cost to actually put all that stuff on the hull. the ships in my military base zone of influence can take out ships MUCH more powerful than them..it is very apparent that defense makes a difference.

Unfortunatly it just isnt possible to really put defense on your ships until the late game...when you have bigger hulls with more space.. and defense that isnt too bulky and gives 2-3 defense for each.

I have been pondering this quite a bit as well. As the all offense ship has the inherent advantage of being useful in all situations, vs the blended ship which takes a square root hit against weapons of another tree. So pumping out 10/0 mediums and fleeting them is not only easyer, but usually superior to designing ships with defense becasue it let you stay on the move from planet to planet, race to race.

Maybe defense shoudl be given some advantage to justify 'specializing' a ship against another race. I kind of am thinking making it take up LESS SPACE than weapons, but keep them very expensive is a good one. that way you could make a 10/0 or a 6/6 in the same amount of space, but it would be pricey. Thus the counter to the fleet of 6/0s would be to make a few big old 4/4s and the counter to the 4/4s would be to make a fleet of little ones with a DIFFERENT style of weapon. Its kind of a circle of life thing.

MG

Seems from the formula that defense is most universal at a value of 1. Since wrong type of armor works as the squareroot, the squareroot of 1 is 1, so strength 1 defense is fully effective against all attacks. This way 1 shield + 1 chaff + 1 armor is defense 3 against all attacks. So any well defended ship should use something like 6 shield + 1 chaff + 1 armor or whatever you decide to counter.

Seems to me this is an important point! Too bad that (other than miniaturization) you don't get a bunch of really small 1-defense upgrade. If this is true (which is appears to be) then in the early game, you are probably actually better off having a 1 defense on anything than having a 2 of the wrong thing?

Besides that, you might also want to factor in the fact that defense will only be good against one type of weapon whereas the weapon will be good against two type of defense.

Not exactly. Non optimal defense(armor vs beam weapons) still adds to the defensive roll. It doesn't add its full value but still can be effective.


Typically I'll make a mix of ships with different weapons and defensive. Like I'll have 20 beam attack ships with 15 Point defense and 15 shields. Then I'll make different ships with say 20 missiles 15 shields and 15 armor. When I stack these different types of ships in fleets the AI usually freaks out and starts making crazy combos too. Makes things much more interesting.