Dreadlord special combat rules?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Are there actually special rules for DL ships in combat?

I've noticed they're appear to be much more likely to receive 0 damage than ship stats would indicate.

For example.

DL escort has ridiculous attack and 16 beam defence.

Three medium ships with 12 missile attack go after this escort one-by-one. However, 2 out of the 3 do NO damage while the 3rd knocks off grand 2 points (out of 11) ..

Expected result should be that the ATTACK is 0-12 and the DEFENCE is SQRT(16) = 0-4 points ..

I did some statistical analysis and came up with this projected results for 1 round of combat:

Damage Frequency
0 2293 22,9 %
1 799 8,0 %
2 750 7,5 %
3 800 8,0 %
4 777 7,8 %
5 760 7,6 %
6 793 7,9 %
7 782 7,8 %
8 792 7,9 %
9 577 5,8 %
10 443 4,4 %
11 283 2,8 %
12 150 1,5 %

So in other words, you have 23% chance of doing 0 damage with each ship. So far so good, but 2 consecutive 0 damages would add up to 0.229 * 0.229 = 0.052 or 5,2% .. Not so tall odds. No, I'm not basing this just on isolated incident. It's constant carnage with almost no damage dealt if you send lone ships after DLs whatever the numbers would suggest.

What's more, when I group the 3 ships into a fleet, the damage starts to work like you'd expect! Even when your fleet gets wiped out, DL ship takes damage.

Perhaps there's bad random number seed or somesuch that tends to roll you 0 on 1st turn on 1vs1 going against DLs?

In vanilla GC2 it was futile to send just ONE ship against DLs, while TWO ships had almost 100% result rate.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Weapons are rolled and deducted from the defense roll individually, so a lot depends on how your weapons are laid out. If that 12 comes from three 4-power beams, you'd be rolling three times against that defense of 0-4. For the first shot, both have an average roll of 2, so you're not too likely to do much.

Given an average roll of 2 on both sides, the 16 defense is then reduced to 14 (deductions are made to the base value of offtypes, not the sqrt'ed value). For the second shot, the defense roll is 0-3 (avg 1.5), so you may or may not deal a point of damage on average. A typical attack of 2 would reduce defense to 12, which still gives a roll of 0-3 against missiles for the third and final shot, with similar results to the second shot.

If you're sending the ships in piecemeal, you then get to contend with the ship's full defense each time you attack. When you fleet them up though, you actually wear the defense down to nothing such that the last couple of shots are unresisted.

As you can see, when you have the weaker ships it can be a good idea to use fleets so you actually accomplish something. Especially if you bring a sufficient number of ships so that the enemy can't fire on all of them in one round (so you're more likely to survive the battle rather than falling prey to the no-mutual-destruction rule). When you're the stronger though, you can attack with single ships and put the no-mutual-destruction rule to your own advantage.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hmm. Ok, I assumed the weapon power is lumped together even thought they can divide weapons to multiple targets.

So if I get this right, it might be most cost-efficient to send small-not-medium ships against DL ships - You can bring more guns to bear in the all-important 1st combat round WRT logistics ability. Unfortunately, thought, dreadlords usually have quite a few of those doom rays on-board. 20hp medium ship may survive up to 2 direct hits, 8hp small ship is likely as not to perish on 1.

Someone really should write definitive DA combat simulator, quite a few variables there.

Many people recommend "just send one ship at a time" but clearly this is patently false..
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Many people recommend "just send one ship at a time" but clearly this is patently false..

I'm affraid you've over-generalized the "just one ship" rule. It always depends on the situation. In your case even if you'd fleet your 3 mediums with only 12 attack each, that would not guarantee you a victory because of the "the strongest ship survives" rule, the DL's scout obviously being the strongest one. If it would manage to destroy all your ships in return fire in the first round, it would survive.

"Just one ship" is used with very high attack ships as kamikazee against FLEETS with high attack and low defense (where this ship kills several ships of opponent's fleet), or agaist singe, but weaker ships, where it's destroyed, but survives by "the strongest ship survives" rule.

BR, Iztok
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
but weaker ships, where it's destroyed, but survives by "the strongest ship survives" rule


What does this mean? Two 'buts' makes the sentence kind of hard to get. And what's singe?

I also think the single-ship thing can be used with high-speed pure-attack hit-and-run ships which destroy soft targets and run away, in which case a fleet would be overkill.

Many people recommend "just send one ship at a time" but clearly this is patently false..


As Iztok said, don't generalize this rule. 'Just one ship' would've worked if your opponent was an unarmed soft target like a Dread Lord troop transport.

Also, when players have expensive capital ships(unlike this situation), it is beneficial to keep them out of fleets during peacetime since the cost of maintaining such fleets makes the taxpayers unhappy. But in wartime, it is better to fleet them up.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm affraid you've over-generalized the "just one ship" rule. It always depends on the situation. In your case even if you'd fleet your 3 mediums with only 12 attack each, that would not guarantee you a victory because of the "the strongest ship survives" rule, the DL's scout obviously being the strongest one. If it would manage to destroy all your ships in return fire in the first round, it would survive.


Ah-ha, but the dreadlord ships are actually fairly flimsy. Escort has just 11hp so your 20hp (base) medium ship is going to be "stronger". Actual rule states that:
If both sides kill off the attacking ships in the same round, the last attacking ship on each side is compared for max HP. The one with the most max HP survives with 1 hp. If they both have the same max HP, the attacker wins.

I'm not sure if "max HP" here is overall max hp or HP at the start of combat. If it's the max hp, it'd mean the DL battleship would be damn hard to take down as you'd have to have large/huge ship of your own in the (stack) to prevail.

"Just one ship" is used with very high attack ships as kamikazee against FLEETS with high attack and low defense (where this ship kills several ships of opponent's fleet), or agaist singe, but weaker ships, where it's destroyed, but survives by "the strongest ship survives" rule.


However, if your opponent has defences as in my example, it's futile to drip-feed ships, when they combine their firepower they can actually do damage.

Granted, dreadlords are a special case. In fact it'd be nice to have "normal" campaign(s) as well, DL campaign doesn't actually do very good job of teaching you how to play galciv as all-important trade is disabled, your opponent has ships with huge firepower but low hp and so on.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For what it's worth, I'm currently experimenting mixing gun barges (freighter hulls, warp drive, all guns) with medium warships. At least theoretically added punch of the kamikaze-ships should provide an edge against DLs while the warship survives by last-man-standing rule.

EDIT:

Yeah, some testing later, "strongest" rule indeed looks at MAX HP, not HP at start of combat. Therefore max 22hp medium ships CANNOT defeat max 28hp DL frigate unless they have enough numbers that the DL can't wipe them out in 1 turn! Doesn't matter if the DL ship has 3 HP remaining when your fleet attacks it.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
MAX HP is pretty bad rule. A ship with 1 remaining HP is actually a shipwreck, which is still in one piece. If you use a fully armed new ship against such wreckage, it should survive. Or better - if all ships have power to anihilate enemies in one turn, there shall be no survivors.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Gives you incentive to build those large ships, thought. They're not actually that much more expensive if you keep the gun count the same and you can load cheap sensors and stuff into them.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
^If you build Eyes of the Universe, it may be beneficial to not put many sensors on your ship and would be very useful to track the Dread Lords. Sensors don't even cost much to research. And Eyes, being a Galactic Achievement, gives you a points boost.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, well, EOtU is kind of luxury. Survival comes first.

In fact I built it in my defence-of-the-drengi game just now but only because I was getting the upper hand .. Throwing >1000BC ships around on both sides but I have the bigger industrial production so the bad boys in gray might just as well give in now.

Still kind of cool how feel of ships that supreme industrial world builds for 8 turns are gone in a flash..
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I understand how to workaround it, but what i dislike is that it does not make any sense. It makes also cargo rush more difficult (cargo ships with full of weapons and with no protection).
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
cargo rush more difficult (cargo ships with full of weapons and with no protection).

I've tried the armed cargo approach, and failed miserably. Even reported the weird combat (half of my cargo ships not firing and still get destroyed) to the developers. Remember, cargo ships have only 1 HP. They would work as intended only if I'd be playing Arceans.

BR, Iztok
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I succesfully used cargo ships against Dread Lords. It was a success. But it was on GCII, not in Dark Avatar.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
With the strongest ship survives-rule, 1hp gun barges need to be backed up by a warship that has bigger max HP than the DL ship or it's a waste of time and resources..

I got to agree, thought, "strongest ship"-rule should consider HP at start of combat, not max HP .. you can't bring down DL ship by kamikaze tactics as it is now!
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It may be possible that authors wanted to prevent this type of combat. It may make huge ships invaluable. It is possible it does not make a real sense, but it improves gameplay.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sigh, Iztok and Kyro both make good points. I've pointed this out before elsewhere, but hopefully this will help you. In DA, there is a rock paper scissors to fleet design to take out any enemy.

Against an individual attack ship, you want to use a fleet of defensive ships. Against a fleet of defensive ships, you want to use a fleet of offensive ships. Against a fleet of offensive ships, you want to use an individual attack ship.

Balanced designs are typically beaten by all offense minded fleets. But remember, its the all offense FLEETS that are in the real trouble against kamikaze single ships. Trying to duel with a weaker ship one on one is, as you've discovered, just suicide. And if the enemy has high enough attack, you won't even cause attrition.

Hope that helps,
- Wyndstar
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Sigh, Iztok and Kyro both make good points. I've pointed this out before elsewhere, but hopefully this will help you. In DA, there is a rock paper scissors to fleet design to take out any enemy.


Except dreadlords, who can realistically only be taken out by a ship which has bigger max HP. Those 300+ attack values make ketchupapago out of anyone in 1 turn so the solution is to have so much firepower that both parties kill each other in 1 turn and having more HP than the bad guy for rulebook survival..
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

It may be possible that authors wanted to prevent this type of combat. It may make huge ships invaluable. It is possible it does not make a real sense, but it improves gameplay.


I would imagine it's just something they didn't think of. The problem really only exists with dreadlords. Otherwise you're more or less supposed to have ships in similar ballpark or if you don't you can blame yourself..

Simple rule change from max hp to start-of-battle hp would take care of the problem, it's not like it's painless to throw away squadrons of ships to take down 1 capital ship even if it's possible..
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Dreadlords are trickier, but not impossible. First off, 300+ attack is nothing. I routinely see and build ships with values of 800+. See my Combat Balance thread for instance.

The best way to take out the dreadlords is to get anything so that their worlds are in view, and then fill every tile they have with spies. Suddenly attrition starts working against them.

The r/p/s still applies to dreadlords, you just have to use multiple units where one would suffice otherwise. Dreadlords almost never use high defense ships, so you are focusing on two (well three) types of craft -
1. Individual all attack ships. These will be surprisingly effective the few times the DLs acttually fleet up.
2. Very fast ships with good sensor range and some attack. These should be used to intercept and destroy all transports.
3. Fleets of mostly defense oriented ships, with only a few guns on each.

Now, it may take you three fleets of defensive ships to knock out one DL ship, where as normally one fleet would win against a single ship. But they are still killable.

I've beaten both the DL and DA campaigns on suicidal. I know it is possible. I've faced individual ships with 2k attack values. Sending in a fleet with 4k defense worked really well against that.

Good luck with your campaign.
- Wyndstar
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
^Attack values of 2000? Fleet or ship? What the... ? How many Hyperion Shrinkers / Military Resources / Racial Bonuses did they have?

And 4k attack??? How many boosters did you have?
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Big fleets of tiny ships should still work against the dreadlords. They can still only take out one ship with each gun, so a fleet of 11 can finish off a dreadlord that has 10 guns. That seems cheaper than using defenses to survive the attack.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Attack values of 2000? Fleet or ship?

One dreadlords dreadnaught, had an attack value of over 2k on the ship. Going in with a fleet with 4k defense was important because I needed one ship to survive, otherwise the dread could have endlessly killed my guys relying on the tie rule. 2k attack, and only 150 hps.... the only key was having a survivor.

How many Hyperion Shrinkers / Military Resources / Racial Bonuses did they have?

They were the dreadlords and I was playing on suicidal. I don't know exactly what their bonuses were, but they must have been pretty large.

And 4k attack??? How many boosters did you have?

Actually, I think I have only once built a fleet with 4k attack, and that wasn't during the campaign. But 3k attack is easy to hit in a fleet of 5 huges with the tech tree maxed... and doesn't even require a military resource. In any case, I wasn't using 4k attack fleets against the dreads, but 4k defense fleets. It is much easier to push your defense value higher, because more things provide a higher bonus to defense than to attack (wonders, for instance).

Big fleets of tiny ships should still work against the dreadlords.

This is a good point, and I have never tried it. They key to getting around the tie rule that the dreads make such massive use of is to figure out some way to get one ship to survive. Big ships with lots of defense is one approach. Hordes of tiny ships is another.

Hope that helps.
- Wyndstar
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Big fleets of tiny ships should still work against the dreadlords. They can still only take out one ship with each gun, so a fleet of 11 can finish off a dreadlord that has 10 guns. That seems cheaper than using defenses to survive the attack.


If you concentrate that much effort on logistics you're really going to be hurting on other tech areas!
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
They key to getting around the tie rule that the dreads make such massive use of is to figure out some way to get one ship to survive. Big ships with lots of defense is one approach. Hordes of tiny ships is another.


It's easier to get more HP than the DL's have, at least on a reasonable difficulty (painful or below). You don't actually have to cram the dreadnough full of guns (which makes it super expensive), you need just enough to get a kill with reasonable odds on 1 round against frigates. Actually "large" hull ships have more HP than the DL frigates. Combining kamikaze ships with one bigger ship is perfectly valid tactic too..

Bigger hull alone is not as expensive as you'd think.

.. In any case, since you like to play with max tech speed and huge maps, YMMV!
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
at least on a reasonable difficulty (painful or below).

Please note that game on the suidical difficulty level is VERY different. Your experience with below-painfull will not help much there, you need a completelly new bag of tricks.

BR, Iztok