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SG7
05-26-2012, 04:29 PM
I wonder what is a defense of 400u and 1M planet? And how much fighting back power does it have?
What happens when it is destroyed?
Will it become an attacker's property with all his colonies?

Tsagoth
05-26-2012, 10:52 PM
If you mean 1M population it will be pretty low.

When it's beaten, yes, it becomes property of the attacker. Depending on how long the fight lasted the population might be reduced to a quarter of what it was, or might not change much at all

SG7
05-26-2012, 11:55 PM
Sorry, I meant 400Mu and 1000Mu. What would be defense and ATK points?

fieryspoon
05-27-2012, 12:12 AM
Were mining colony defenses removed? Someone just took out three of my bases with a destroyer.

ChickenHawk07
05-27-2012, 12:31 AM
Were mining colony defenses removed? Someone just took out three of my bases with a destroyer.

Yikes, which Server.

SixDaysShort
05-27-2012, 12:42 AM
Were mining colony defenses removed? Someone just took out three of my bases with a destroyer.
Oh, hi. Lol. No hard feelings.

catswift
05-29-2012, 04:31 AM
If you mean 1M population it will be pretty low.

When it's beaten, yes, it becomes property of the attacker. Depending on how long the fight lasted the population might be reduced to a quarter of what it was, or might not change much at all

I would also like some indication as to the attack and defense numbers of a 400u planet. Throwing ships at one and getting no feedback as to how effective my ships were is... silly.

Strongbad
05-29-2012, 09:42 PM
The planet defenses are crazy strong, have you got any idea of many ships it takes now? I tried to kill a new colony and even it bested a lot of ships....

ChickenHawk07
05-29-2012, 09:48 PM
The ATK / DEF of a 400mu planet would be ATK 2800 / 7200. (basically 7/18 per 1 million u of population.)

Strongbad
05-29-2012, 09:55 PM
So you need 63 dreadnaughts or 234 battleships. Seriously devs?

Tsagoth
05-30-2012, 01:59 AM
2745/7136

Seriously.

Edit: In beta people were slashing at each other with fleets of 800 cruisers.

zarkwizard
05-30-2012, 02:08 AM
So you need 63 dreadnaughts or 234 battleships. Seriously devs?

Ok that's funny.. As you level up in skills you need a lot less ships. Home worlds are designed to eliminate grunt rushing, something which we saw a lot of in beta. If you have rank 8 skills you might need 15 dreads to take a regular home world size planet. If you get up to planet killers it's a whole other world of damage.

We saw fleets of 800 Cruisers taking out home worlds and capturing them. In the later game things start moving REALLY fast. The universe is young. Right now it's about building your empire to withstand the test of time.

Strongbad
05-30-2012, 04:20 AM
These players will never recover IMHO particularly when a new orbital takes 24 h to build, their hw will remain starved a long time

Strongbad
05-31-2012, 12:55 AM
So instead of warships the way to win is to spam indestructible colonies , all because that makes for better strategy??

catswift
05-31-2012, 01:32 AM
When life gives you lemons...

ChickenHawk07
05-31-2012, 01:37 AM
So instead of warships the way to win is to spam indestructible colonies , all because that makes for better strategy??

I think Zark just disproved this theory with the PKs, you get one of those and it sounds like no matter the defense of your colony you're going to see it vaporized. Think 'Return of the Jedi'.

ravenzachary
05-31-2012, 03:29 AM
Strongbad - the way to win is to expand like mad land grab style until you bump into your neighbors, build up economic wealth and talent points until you can pursue your victory condition. If that's Warlord, use Dreadnaughts and Planet Killers to take out other players. If that's Trader, hoard wealth. If that's Researcher, collapse stars.

Warfare is only the requirement of one skill tree - Warlord. Wars happen, but if you can avoid them, you're better off. Warfare in the endgame is where it gets interesting. Warfare prior to the endgame is frankly, just a waste of resources.

Strongbad
05-31-2012, 05:44 AM
If you don't fight for the best planets early on, you loose, you won't see endgame!!

ravenzachary
05-31-2012, 05:51 AM
If you don't fight for the best planets early on, you loose, you won't see endgame!!

It depends on how you define "fight". If you define fight as racing to the unclaimed planets and taking control of them before other players get there, YES. If you mean warfare, then you're going to spend way too much time and resources early on fighting small wars that keep you small while other players who took the peaceful route, grow faster than you.

Strongbad
05-31-2012, 06:28 AM
When I started, there was 3 players nearby, and 3 systems to take, I smashed them all and took their stuff and won...I don't see how trade would have really done anything here except make me loose those systems and the game. If you don't have any income I don't see how you can research your way out of that. Later on, I met another aggressive player, it turned into a slugfest and he won, the rest of the people in the sector are now toast in oh so many ways..

Trade your way out of that.

ravenzachary
05-31-2012, 06:30 AM
Strongbad - read my post here:

http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/showthread.php?649-Raven-s-Guide-to-Winning-Empire-of-the-Eclipse

Strongbad
05-31-2012, 06:37 AM
That's a nice guide, I don't disagree with some of your points, but I think you underestimate the wargame, you will get seriously burned.

Leedot
05-31-2012, 07:28 AM
A couple other options for dealing with high population colonies - Equip your dreadnaughts with Biological Weapons, or use smuggling to sap their population then attack, or just use blockade running so you can trade with them while at war status and then crank up your counterfeiting skill and economically strangle them. Just a few thoughts anyhow.

Velucritus
05-31-2012, 08:02 PM
Raven has a good point about waiting. Granted most of my skills to this point have been in advancing my riches through more ships(Advanced orbitals), defense, mineral collection, and getting cargo ships for long distance trading (Of course, i'm a trader so all valuable skills.) I've seen what he currently has, and lets just say I'm glad I haven't pissed him off yet. I've also seen another neighbor be aggressive, and while he's done some impressive things he's pretty much locked in a battle at someones home world and I'm not sure it's going to end pretty for him.

On a side note, Leedot, can you choose to use counterfeiting on certain people or once you've researched it, it's always active?

JetJaguar2000
05-31-2012, 08:36 PM
Of course quietly amassing a huge empire of resources is the best the long term strategy, but is it the most fun?

The problem with that style of play, in my opinion, is that it's kind of boring. I am curious to see how the game pans out, but with 150+ players, I'm guessing the winner is going to be someone on the other side of the galaxy from me that I never even encounter over the course of 2 months. He'll blow up 15 planets or stars I've never seen, or use his vast network of harvesters to get the trade win without me having much to do with it. I know I'm not going to be the last man standing, so to spend two months shuffling harvesters around and trying not to piss anyone off feels like a pretty banal exercise. I'm not out to be an aggressive jerk, but if it means some interesting multiplayer interaction, I'd rather do that than play it like a singleplayer game.

But again, we'll see how it pans out. While I do like the idea of a single winner, the largely "individual" win conditions make me think the game can be won by ignoring everyone else in the game. That kind of defeats the point of an "MMO" game like this, doesn't it?

zarkwizard
05-31-2012, 08:58 PM
Everyone has a different play style I suppose. I am curious if you could think of different win conditions. Maybe even not really have "win" conditions per say, but maybe a score based system. Where each action effects your score.

Then at the end of 2 months scores are tallied and a ranking is displayed. I suppose if that was the case we could probably display in game details live rather than have a global score. Since if we had something like fighting gives you <x> points, trading gives you <x> points, discovering sectors gives you <x> points, holding artifacts every day gives you <x> points.

As always we are open to discussion on things and peoples thoughts. So then even people that do little skirmish type battles on a regular bases might end up with the same points as say someone with Ravens play style.

As a side note, while his guide is a good foundation if there were too many Ravens doing land grabs it might not be as easy for him in the long run. Since in reality you have major contention if everyone grabs their allotted 13 planets.

Royce
05-31-2012, 09:03 PM
Everyone has a different play style I suppose. I am curious if you could think of different win conditions. Maybe even not really have "win" conditions per say, but maybe a score based system. Where each action effects your score.

OMG, maybe this is crazy or impossible, or just not your thing, but I think having a persistent never ending server, in addition to the winnable game servers would be very cool, and might draw a wider audience.

ravenzachary
05-31-2012, 09:07 PM
As a side note, while his guide is a good foundation if there were too many Ravens doing land grabs it might not be as easy for him in the long run. Since in reality you have major contention if everyone grabs their allotted 13 planets.

Agreed! Part of the reason I posted that was because I seemed to be the only player doing the land grab strategy and at 150+ planets on Aruru, I felt like I was getting too far ahead of everyone. I did run into one other land grabber, but he started the process later than I and has a lot less planets.

JetJaguar2000
05-31-2012, 09:23 PM
I've been thinking about alternative win conditions, but I don't have any bright ideas yet. I think the score based system is a good idea, possibly better than the current one. The problem, I think, is coming up with a system that both encourages player interaction, but also is not prone to "runaway wins," because those are annoying.

I very much like the idea of some kind of live statistics that indicate everyone's progression towards the end game, assuming you can influence the outcome as a result. Another aspect of the current system that feels less than ideal is the fact that the inevitable win is going to come out of nowhere. What I think would be really neat is if everyone received reports when a player reached certain milestones towards victory, so that they could react and maybe form alliances against that person to beat them back down, etc.

Another half-thought I had, although this would be tricky, is to give effectively defeated players some kind of "nuclear option" that would have a significant effect on the rest of the game. Again, I am trying to think of ways for all players, even the ones who aren't able or willing to be hardcore about their strategy, to have some agency in the outcome of the game. I'm not necessarily thinking they should be able to detonate their homeworld and take out half a sector, but maybe something like pledge their resources to another player or something, or allow themselves to be assimilated by the some AI Borg collective that gives them some interesting powers but removes them from victory contention.

Anyways, I think at the very least you need a scoreboard so that that everyone has some feeling of progress at the end. When only one guy can win, 149 people have to lose, and to lose a 2 month game with nothing to show for it is kind of sad. With a scoreboard, at the very least you can have micro-competitions between local players and that sort of thing. If I know I'm not going to be #1, I can at least focus my efforts on finishing ahead of my neighbors.

JetJaguar2000
05-31-2012, 09:29 PM
Agreed! Part of the reason I posted that was because I seemed to be the only player doing the land grab strategy and at 150+ planets on Aruru, I felt like I was getting too far ahead of everyone. I did run into one other land grabber, but he started the process later than I and has a lot less planets.

Yeah, this is the major issue with the current system. You have already won Aruru, so what is the point in continuing for another 7 weeks? Granted, you have played this game before and no one else has, but still, you have the runaway win, no one is going to catch up to that. Even if I played aggressively, I'm not devoted enough to this game to hunt down 150 of your outposts. I think that's probably true of a lot of players, who will all just get left in the dust.

Somehow the game needs to acknowledge "micro-competition" within the larger "there can be only one" format. Not totally sure how to do that, but live scoreboards are a good start.

AntiHaze
05-31-2012, 10:11 PM
Yeah, this is the major issue with the current system. You have already won Aruru, so what is the point in continuing for another 7 weeks? Granted, you have played this game before and no one else has, but still, you have the runaway win, no one is going to catch up to that. Even if I played aggressively, I'm not devoted enough to this game to hunt down 150 of your outposts.

Doesn't this foster the type of MMO experience you were hoping for? Get together with 5 or 6 other players and take him down if you think he's going to run away with the game.

ravenzachary
05-31-2012, 10:32 PM
Agreed, and I may not win because someone could win with one of the other victory conditions. I think FINbit has 50+ planets and that gives him enough of an economic base to do big things.

ravenzachary
05-31-2012, 10:43 PM
I should add...I want a game where the player who plays 15 minutes a day (3 times, 5 minutes each, for instance) can hold his or her own against the land grabber strategy player who can jam out many more play sessions in the first week to sprint ahead. I think the land grabber strategy is actually a bad one for the game quality unless it's pursued by multiple players simultaneously to share the wealth. In the case of Aruru, being the first real game, people didn't think of that necessarily as an option.

JetJaguar2000
05-31-2012, 11:02 PM
I should add...I want a game where the player who plays 15 minutes a day (3 times, 5 minutes each, for instance) can hold his or her own against the land grabber strategy player who can jam out many more play sessions in the first week to sprint ahead. I think the land grabber strategy is actually a bad one for the game quality unless it's pursued by multiple players simultaneously to share the wealth. In the case of Aruru, being the first real game, people didn't think of that necessarily as an option.

Exactly. The vast majority of players are not going to be dedicated enough to pursue this strategy (this is an iPhone game after all), which means the guys that do are going to have a lock on the game. There is also a discrepancy between the way the mechanics are advertised (long form, play a few minutes a day) and the dominating land grab tactic that requires a significant investment in micromanagement. To me this is a problem.

Also, land grabbing is just another Zerg rush tactic in a different form. There are systems built in to the game to prevent homeworld zerging, so why is this form of rush sanctioned? The outcome is the same: zerging player who "knows what they're doing" shuts out other players before they have a chance to get their bearings.

KyleMac
05-31-2012, 11:29 PM
A lot of talk about victory conditions but no mention of Neptune's Pride where the way to win was to be the most sociopathic diplomat (as long as you didn't fall too far behind militarily). The inclusion of such a fully featured chat system in EotE leads me to believe that the devs want us to go down this route.

In NP Raven's strategy would probably lead to him being the first player eliminated and coming in last place. But even in NP the last couple of days can become very hectic and often players will just surrender since they don't want put the time in and are happy with a podium finish.

EDIT: One thing NP has going for it is that every star you own automatically builds ships (it's a very simplified "4x" game) and there's of course a defender bonus. So if a player rarely logs in his homeworld is probably going to be better defended than a player who moves regularly and has their ships attacking. This means that attacking the homeworlds of even idle players will cost you a lot of ships which you don't want to waste in a war. So the final standings in NP are generally the winning alliance top, the idlers next, and the other players who lost wars last.

I think the strong colonies in EotE is aiming towards this but there probably needs to be a more complicated build queue for the same full effect.

Strongbad
06-01-2012, 09:44 AM
In my sector a pretty big war erupted, but I think if there are too many passive or idle in a sector it's just too easy

mischmi
06-01-2012, 04:28 PM
Yeah G3.0 Aruru right. Destroyed 112 ships of cat swift at one of my systems. Hope he has learned ;)

Leedot
06-01-2012, 04:53 PM
Neptune's Pride is a great game and the backstabbing / intrigue are definitely some of the qualities that I'd like to see carried over to Empire. I think one of the big things that makes land grabbers a target in NP is that the player standings are always known so the front runners are obvious which makes the need to form alliances more clear to other players as well. We've recently been talking about implementing a more clearly defined scoring system in Empire as well so players would have more awareness of what's going on in the world around them without revealing exactly what they're doing.

Kyle - When you say a more complicated build que what do you mean? Longer build times? More steps in a tech tree to accomplish certain tasks, etc..

fieryspoon
06-01-2012, 05:17 PM
I feel like colonies scale up in strength too quickly. You get to 400 Mu population pretty much immediately, in the scope of the timeline of a game. It takes so long to produce ships and move them, that a colony will almost certainly be able to defend against any number of units at the early stage of a game. If someone lands a colony ship nearby, there's basically no way to get rid of it until much, much later. I feel like colony populations should grow slower and the defense strength should not be linear, to allow for early game technology to take out low population colonies. I feel like the reward to risk ratio of sending out a colony ship is pretty out of wack at the moment. I'm fine with a full population colony being able to defend itself against lots of stuff, but it's just way too easy to get to a point where the time, resource, and strategic investment required to pose a threat to that colony is really unreasonable.

By a nonlinear growth, I mean that it should basically stay at a 1Mu defense level until about 150Mu, then grow on a really strong power curve up to its current level. Like raise it to the 6th power and let it grow from there. I also think that populations should grow at a rate that is about 20% of what it is now. It should be a much bigger deal to grow a colony to full size. That would also make the population growth science projects worthwhile.

Leedot
06-01-2012, 05:35 PM
Spoon - We were actually talking about this just last night. I'm a big advocate of homeworlds being strong as someone being wiped from the game should be a big deal imo but regular colonies are very easy to establish considering their strength. (and that's without getting into the fact that colonies can have populations over 400mu)

fieryspoon
06-01-2012, 05:41 PM
I feel similarly about the pain in the neck that is attacking a colony with a few cruisers, then just planting an orbital defense array there. The investment required to remove it is way higher than it is to put it in. It's a less egregious problem than the colony problem though.

fieryspoon
06-01-2012, 05:47 PM
Spoon - We were actually talking about this just last night. I'm a big advocate of homeworlds being strong as someone being wiped from the game should be a big deal imo but regular colonies are very easy to establish considering their strength. (and that's without getting into the fact that colonies can have populations over 400mu)

Yeah, I'm fine with homeworlds being well defended. I'm also fine with 400 Mu colonies being well defended. It's just that it's too easy to get to 400mu and on the way up they're orders of magnitude too difficult to deal with. Maybe colonies should require terraforming to get up to their current strength, but homeworlds can start off at that level? I don't know. A new colony should be barely hanging on though, not immediately become an impenetrable fortress until you're two weeks into the game :-)

JetJaguar2000
06-01-2012, 05:51 PM
I would propose that homeworlds be given special "strong" status, but that new colonies be much weaker and take much longer to reach "full strength." As the previous poster points out, it takes only a few hours for a colony to hit 400mu, at which point it is effectively indestructible until much later in the game. This allows for lots of annoying plays by land grabbers (I still don't understand why land grabbing isn't kept in check the way attacking homeworlds is, but ok) who can take ownership of huge swathes of the game very quickly.

Building a colony should be a very risky proposition, especially if you're considering doing it in an area where it is likely to be attacked. Right now, you can swoop in to an opponent's space, knock out an outpost with a very small fleet of ships, and drop a colony ship in its place in a matter of minutes. If you can avoid a counter attack within, literally, 2 hours, you're golden. You now have an effectively permanent foothold in their space, and there is nothing they can do about it.

EDIT: Btw, I think you guys should really reconsider how you frame the strength of colonies. I don't know if this bothers anyone else, but the idea that an "undefended" colony is actually capable of handily obliterating everything up to huge fleets of capital ships just feels bizarre to me. It makes you wonder what role the explicit orbital defenses are supposed to have. A laser defense array, as strong as it is, adds literally nothing to the strength of a colony. It's peanuts in comparison. I think colonies should automatically build some kind of defense units that are observable as orbitals, if for no other reason than to give some visual parity with the actual defensive units.

fieryspoon
06-01-2012, 05:54 PM
Also! do populations grow linearly? Maybe they shouldn't. They definitely don't grow linearly in real llife. Maybe there should be some kind of generation thing. Like, 16 hours, the population doubles. So it would take 5.8 days to grow it completely, but the strength of the colony would stay relatively low for a few days. The numbers would need to be balanced, obviously, but I would welcome a change where a new colony is something precious that would need to be protected for a little while. And maybe if you take over a struggling colony, it just kills the whole population and turns into an outpost, to prevent people from just being total vultures about it?

Tsagoth
06-01-2012, 07:06 PM
No, I think they grow faster in the beginning and taper off somewhat as they get larger. I believe part of that was to get them to the 100Mu at least, relatively quickly so that their defense would go up.

It was done like that because a huge complaint in beta was that colonies were so easy to take over, because you couldn't build anything until the population got up there.

JetJaguar2000
06-01-2012, 07:16 PM
But there are a number of colony defense options that don't require the colony to be productive: mine deployment ships, cruiser and battlecruiser transforms, or just leaving a fleet in orbit.

I'm curious about that feedback, then. People thought those options weren't good enough, or people didn't want to actually spend resources defending their new colonies?

VanderLegion
06-01-2012, 07:28 PM
Sounds like maybe people just didn't want to use those forms of defense, they wanted to be able to build the planetary defenses from the planet itself. I know in one of my games the only defenses I have are the orbital arrays. It all depends on what you decide to research, mine deployment and orbital defenses are easy to research to throw up, but the cruiser/battlecruiser transforms take a coupla research items each, since first you have to research the ship itself, then the tech to transform it (don't remember what tier those techs are, but if it's not tier 1 for the ships and the transforms, thats even longer before you can get em, whereas mine deployment and orbital defense i believe are both tier 1). As for minefields, I have no idea what kind of attack they have for how effective they are.

JetJaguar2000
06-01-2012, 07:43 PM
Well, if you ask me, you should have to invest in defenses if you want to build colonies in places that you think need to be defended. Isn't that a no brainer?

Otherwise you are just empowering the landgrab approach, enabling folks to just crap out outposts and colonies as fast as they can click on them. Colonies should be an investment, and you should have to treat them as such, or risk having them taken from you.

Landgrabbing will kill this game, I really hope they do more to slow it down.

KyleMac
06-01-2012, 09:01 PM
Kyle - When you say a more complicated build que what do you mean? Longer build times? More steps in a tech tree to accomplish certain tasks, etc..
Two things I can think of:

1) Repeatable queues. This would be good for defences and replicate NP.

2) Automatically build something when the resources (or research) are available. A simple implementation might be that you could add stuff to the queue even when you have insufficient resources and it'd just sit at 0% until they are available (or build up to whatever % you can currently afford). This would increase the amount you can do per login and eliminate those situations where you don't quite have enough resources but can't login again for eight hours.

Tsagoth
06-01-2012, 09:51 PM
But there are a number of colony defense options that don't require the colony to be productive: mine deployment ships, cruiser and battlecruiser transforms, or just leaving a fleet in orbit.

I'm curious about that feedback, then. People thought those options weren't good enough, or people didn't want to actually spend resources defending their new colonies?

Mine deployers, and the ship conversions didn't exist then. All of those things were added later to try and address the problem of protecting newly placed colonies.

You would drop a colony and somebody would come by with a pair of cruisers and that was it, colony gone.

JetJaguar2000
06-01-2012, 10:05 PM
Maybe that means you can dial back the awesomeness of colonies, then. As I wrote before, I think allowing colonies to be so indestructible feeds in to the "land grab" strategy that I think is really problematic for the game. I think there needs to be more checks against that, so that people who don't play constantly can stand a chance in the long game.

Leedot
06-01-2012, 10:37 PM
We'll most likely be making some adjustments to colonies so they're more of an investment that you'll need to protect and nurture early on. We'll want to sit down and run some numbers first though.

On the issue of players picking of outposts with cruisers and then converting them to energy arrays I don't really have an issue with that considering that it takes one T2 tech and one T1 tech from a separate tree. Also, if the outpost was actually defended this would be much easier to fend off. It's possible that the ATK / Cost balance of energy arrays / cruisers, etc. need to be looked at but on the whole I think it's a good strategy. If you're not defending your outposts then you should expect them to get ganked.

JetJaguar2000
06-01-2012, 10:51 PM
I agree completely on outposts. Seems like already people feel that they should be able to stake claims across the sector and not have to worry about defending them. Defend your outposts, people!

I'm glad you guys are open to making adjustments, I really think it will improve the balance of the game.

VanderLegion
06-01-2012, 11:05 PM
I had someone get upset at me when I used my colony ship to kill their outpost then colonize the planet. They said I should respect their outpost. It entertained me.

Tsagoth
06-02-2012, 01:05 AM
In reviewing the planet regen code, the population refreshing like it does is consequence of a change I made in beta. This is a mistake and it will be undone in a patch tomorrow.

In rough numbers, with no skills, a Terran planet will go from the initial colony pop drop to 400Mu in ~7.5 days.

Leedot
06-02-2012, 01:07 AM
On the other end of the spectrum Rock planets will take roughly 15 days to reach 400mu without any tech upgrades. (although with their lower terraform level you'd need to do some work on them to even get to 400mu.)

Magorath
06-02-2012, 09:58 AM
I thought that there may have been a bug when I started 3 new colonies and they poped with 400mu straight away. They also have home world icons on the planet/sector tiles. So it looks like I have 4 home worlds?

Leedot
06-02-2012, 04:46 PM
Ah, yeah - that's a different bug. Basically what happened there was you colonized a terran planet that was slotted to be the home world of someone who had signed up for the game but hadn't started yet. In the future those systems will be hidden from view until the player joins the game.

Even right now a standard terran planet will take 4 hours or so to get to 400mu if it's not intended to be a homeworld.

banjankri
06-02-2012, 05:43 PM
So you need 63 dreadnaughts or 234 battleships. Seriously devs?

My calculations suggest much lower - what am I doing wrong?

Assuming a fleet of Cruisers (attack value of 11) vs. a 400 Mu population world (defence value 7200, or 14400 in combat.)

Assuming that there are no orbital defences, just the planet.

And assuming that the planet will kill one cruiser each round (which is how it works, I think?)

It should be possible to take a 400 Mu planet with 51 cruisers. The attacking fleet will be reduced to 6 cruisers at the end of the battle.

Note that 50 won't do it. 51 is the magic number.

Are my calculations completely off the mark? I wrote a dumb little script, output follows:



51 ships with an attack value of 561 attacking unit with defence 14400.
50 ships with an attack value of 550 attacking unit with defence 13839.
49 ships with an attack value of 539 attacking unit with defence 13289.
48 ships with an attack value of 528 attacking unit with defence 12750.
47 ships with an attack value of 517 attacking unit with defence 12222.
46 ships with an attack value of 506 attacking unit with defence 11705.
45 ships with an attack value of 495 attacking unit with defence 11199.
44 ships with an attack value of 484 attacking unit with defence 10704.
43 ships with an attack value of 473 attacking unit with defence 10220.
42 ships with an attack value of 462 attacking unit with defence 9747.
41 ships with an attack value of 451 attacking unit with defence 9285.
40 ships with an attack value of 440 attacking unit with defence 8834.
39 ships with an attack value of 429 attacking unit with defence 8394.
38 ships with an attack value of 418 attacking unit with defence 7965.
37 ships with an attack value of 407 attacking unit with defence 7547.
36 ships with an attack value of 396 attacking unit with defence 7140.
35 ships with an attack value of 385 attacking unit with defence 6744.
34 ships with an attack value of 374 attacking unit with defence 6359.
33 ships with an attack value of 363 attacking unit with defence 5985.
32 ships with an attack value of 352 attacking unit with defence 5622.
31 ships with an attack value of 341 attacking unit with defence 5270.
30 ships with an attack value of 330 attacking unit with defence 4929.
29 ships with an attack value of 319 attacking unit with defence 4599.
28 ships with an attack value of 308 attacking unit with defence 4280.
27 ships with an attack value of 297 attacking unit with defence 3972.
26 ships with an attack value of 286 attacking unit with defence 3675.
25 ships with an attack value of 275 attacking unit with defence 3389.
24 ships with an attack value of 264 attacking unit with defence 3114.
23 ships with an attack value of 253 attacking unit with defence 2850.
22 ships with an attack value of 242 attacking unit with defence 2597.
21 ships with an attack value of 231 attacking unit with defence 2355.
20 ships with an attack value of 220 attacking unit with defence 2124.
19 ships with an attack value of 209 attacking unit with defence 1904.
18 ships with an attack value of 198 attacking unit with defence 1695.
17 ships with an attack value of 187 attacking unit with defence 1497.
16 ships with an attack value of 176 attacking unit with defence 1310.
15 ships with an attack value of 165 attacking unit with defence 1134.
14 ships with an attack value of 154 attacking unit with defence 969.
13 ships with an attack value of 143 attacking unit with defence 815.
12 ships with an attack value of 132 attacking unit with defence 672.
11 ships with an attack value of 121 attacking unit with defence 540.
10 ships with an attack value of 110 attacking unit with defence 419.
9 ships with an attack value of 99 attacking unit with defence 309.
8 ships with an attack value of 88 attacking unit with defence 210.
7 ships with an attack value of 77 attacking unit with defence 122.
6 ships with an attack value of 66 attacking unit with defence 45.
Defender destroyed!
6 attack ships remaining.

Royce
06-02-2012, 05:55 PM
And assuming that the planet will kill one cruiser each round (which is how it works, I think?)

No, the planet's attack value will be spread across multiple attacking ships until it has all been used up. So many cruisers would die every round. You need capital ships with high defense to take on a colony, though I think sending smaller ones in as well to draw fire might help depending on how target priority is set.

banjankri
06-02-2012, 06:20 PM
No, the planet's attack value will be spread across multiple attacking ships until it has all been used up. So many cruisers would die every round. You need capital ships with high defense to take on a colony, though I think sending smaller ones in as well to draw fire might help depending on how target priority is set.

This makes more sense, but where is this written? In the combat overview it says specifically that


Combat takes place in a series of rounds, during which each ship choses a target before all ships attack simultaneously.

It doesn't say anything about "unused attack points will be allocated to remaining ships." Though I like this idea. :)

Royce
06-02-2012, 06:30 PM
This makes more sense, but where is this written? In the combat overview it says specifically that

It doesn't say anything about "unused attack points will be allocated to remaining ships." Though I like this idea. :)

Yes I only found out from the forum here. It's been mentioned a few times, including in this thread: http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/showthread.php?588-Combat-System

JetJaguar2000
06-02-2012, 06:37 PM
I think there are still some details missing from the explanation of how combat works. Here is another anecdote that Player One might be able to confirm if he reads this:

Last night when I logged out of the game, my opponent had a fleet of 23 cruisers orbiting the star of a system in which I had a colony. Given that I couldn't attack this fleet directly (because of the "no combat in star orbit" bug), I parked 26 cruisers at my colony, in addition to the 2 orbital laser arrays. This was a 400mu colony.

When I logged in this morning, his fleet was gone, my fleet was gone, and all of the orbitals around the colony were gone, but the colony was still mine. I assume he attacked with the 23 cruisers, although I suppose he could have mustered some more ships.

The outcome kind of surprised me. For one thing, it seems pretty clear that orbitals are targeted first. That's fine. But 23 cruisers have an ATK of 241. One laser array alone has a DEF of 300+, if I'm remembering correctly, and I think I had 2 (although it could have just been one). An additional 26 defending cruisers obviously outmatch 23 on their own. Then factoring in the 400mu planet, there is enough damage output on the defending side to obliterate 23 cruisers in one round, if combat works as recently described ( the "trample damage" analogy). So how is it that I lost all of my cruisers, all of my defense orbitals, and all of my non-defense orbitals in the battle? It doesn't add up if combat works as has been described here.

Player One, if you're reading this, feel free to fill in any details if it helps us understand how this game works.

Royce
06-02-2012, 06:44 PM
That does sound very strange, and like his whole force should have been vaporized instantly, but of course, you don't know if he had any battle tech to help him out, cloaked ships, etc.

Another thing I've been wondering about is that I saw a dev mention there is an orbital location used for orbitals that don't belong to the planet owner. What sort of orbital can you build on an opponent's planet? Can you turn a cruiser into an energy array and blast the planet from its orbit with that? I certainly hope not :p

Leedot
06-02-2012, 06:58 PM
Royce - I'm not sure what you're referring to. Currently all orbitals can only be placed in the orbit of planets you control. The only units that can target things outside of the orbit they're in are planet killers and the biological weapons ability.

Royce
06-02-2012, 07:10 PM
I can't find it at this moment (advanced search is still not working :( ), but I could have sworn I saw a dev post recently describing the significance of the various orbit positions, and in addition to owner ships, fleets, orbitals, opponent ships, fleets, he also mentioned orbitals that don't belong to the planet owner.

Tsagoth
06-02-2012, 07:17 PM
The bottom left position of a celestial body is the "Other" orbitals position. Before beta it was possible to drop certain orbitals, like a JumpGate at an enemy owned spot, but that ability is no longer present.

Tsagoth
06-02-2012, 07:18 PM
I think there are still some details missing from the explanation of how combat works. Here is another anecdote that Player One might be able to confirm if he reads this:

Last night when I logged out of the game, my opponent had a fleet of 23 cruisers orbiting the star of a system in which I had a colony. Given that I couldn't attack this fleet directly (because of the "no combat in star orbit" bug), I parked 26 cruisers at my colony, in addition to the 2 orbital laser arrays. This was a 400mu colony.

When I logged in this morning, his fleet was gone, my fleet was gone, and all of the orbitals around the colony were gone, but the colony was still mine. I assume he attacked with the 23 cruisers, although I suppose he could have mustered some more ships.



If you tell me the server and the planet involved, I can pull the log and play the fight back to see what went on. I'm under no illusion that combat is working perfectly.

banjankri
06-02-2012, 07:56 PM
Yes I only found out from the forum here. It's been mentioned a few times, including in this thread: http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/showthread.php?588-Combat-System

That's a good thread. I like the part where the devs casually contradict a big part of what their tutorial says about combat...

Revised my script, the magic number is 561 cruisers. :)



561 ships, atk: 6171 def: 10098 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 14400.
155 ships destroyed. 405 ships remaining.
405 ships, atk: 4459 def: 7298 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 8229.
155 ships destroyed. 249 ships remaining.
249 ships, atk: 2748 def: 4498 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 3769.
155 ships destroyed. 94 ships remaining.
94 ships, atk: 1037 def: 1698 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 1020.
Defender destroyed!
94 attack ships remaining.

catswift
06-02-2012, 08:27 PM
I would LOVE to know if this proves out to be accurate in game. Maybe someone can test it before I waste my 600+ cruisers on it ;)



That's a good thread. I like the part where the devs casually contradict a big part of what their tutorial says about combat...

Revised my script, the magic number is 561 cruisers. :)



561 ships, atk: 6171 def: 10098 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 14400.
155 ships destroyed. 405 ships remaining.
405 ships, atk: 4459 def: 7298 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 8229.
155 ships destroyed. 249 ships remaining.
249 ships, atk: 2748 def: 4498 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 3769.
155 ships destroyed. 94 ships remaining.
94 ships, atk: 1037 def: 1698 vs planet, atk: 2800 def 1020.
Defender destroyed!
94 attack ships remaining.

JetJaguar2000
06-02-2012, 08:42 PM
If you tell me the server and the planet involved, I can pull the log and play the fight back to see what went on. I'm under no illusion that combat is working perfectly.

Server is Aruru, planet is at G3,3 S20,7 P7,4. Battle would have been overnight last night some time.

Tsagoth
06-02-2012, 10:24 PM
I've had a brief look at this. First there was definitely a bug at work here, as the planet seems to have only being doing partial damage against the attacking fleet. Since the other player attacked first, his first strike took out quite a few ships. This reduced the response and let him get off a large second strike as well before his ships started vanishing. After your ships were gone the planet killed what was left of his fleet albeit more slowly than it should have.

I'm looking into why the planet was not applying full damage to the targets in this case.

JetJaguar2000
06-03-2012, 12:39 AM
Hah, well that's disappointing, but thanks for,looking in to it.

JetJaguar2000
06-03-2012, 01:02 AM
Ok, here is some more sample data:

I've been messing with this guy's outposts just to experiment with various combat scenarios. Earlier this evening, I took one of his outposts and dropped 4 orbital laser arrays on it (by transforming cruisers). Each array has an ATK of 262, so 4 of them have a combined ATK of 1048. Dividing this by 18 (2x DEF of a cruiser) gets you roughly 58. This means, again, that these arrays should destroy 58 cruisers in one round. This in itself is pretty ridiculous since it implies the cruiser can transform in to something that can kill 14 cruisers per round, but whatever.

Nevertheless, when I logged in just now, he had reclaimed the outpost. I am 100% sure he did not have 58 cruisers to attack with (in fact it would take more than twice that to kill 4 arrays if the combat system works as advertised). So what the heck is the deal? It is very difficult to strategize your combat actions in this game if you have no idea how combat results are calculated. Nothing makes sense as described by the devs, I don't think combat works at all as described so far. Why can't we get this sorted?

catswift
06-03-2012, 02:26 AM
I don't have a dev quote on this, but I don't believe orbitals "trample" as colonies do. I once watched my 10 laser arrays get attacked by a fleet of 92 battlecruisers. I think they killed maybe 3.



Ok, here is some more sample data:

I've been messing with this guy's outposts just to experiment with various combat scenarios. Earlier this evening, I took one of his outposts and dropped 4 orbital laser arrays on it (by transforming cruisers). Each array has an ATK of 262, so 4 of them have a combined ATK of 1048. Dividing this by 18 (2x DEF of a cruiser) gets you roughly 58. This means, again, that these arrays should destroy 58 cruisers in one round. This in itself is pretty ridiculous since it implies the cruiser can transform in to something that can kill 14 cruisers per round, but whatever.

Nevertheless, when I logged in just now, he had reclaimed the outpost. I am 100% sure he did not have 58 cruisers to attack with (in fact it would take more than twice that to kill 4 arrays if the combat system works as advertised). So what the heck is the deal? It is very difficult to strategize your combat actions in this game if you have no idea how combat results are calculated. Nothing makes sense as described by the devs, I don't think combat works at all as described so far. Why can't we get this sorted?

Tsagoth
06-03-2012, 03:28 PM
Everything "tramples" or at least it should. Two issues are causing the AI to behave poorly. First, it doesn't understand the first strike advantage, so it targets like it has all its ships available. Second, when it has more ATK than the other side has DEF left, it's dogpiling on one ship. This is what happened in JetJaguar's first case. His ships had the attacker dead, so the planet AI just fired everything at one ship.

What happens though is the other side shoots first and some or most of the defenders disappear, and the planet has wasted its round on a ship that might have already been killed by someone else. I've modified the AI to not just target the one, but more pretend like it is fighting alone, which should improve its response. I'll be putting that change in today.

Tsagoth
06-03-2012, 03:32 PM
I don't have a dev quote on this, but I don't believe orbitals "trample" as colonies do. I once watched my 10 laser arrays get attacked by a fleet of 92 battlecruisers. I think they killed maybe 3.

I'd have to look up the numbers to see if this right, but it sounds like first strike advantage. His 92 fired, and by the time the arrays activated there were only a few left. Defender AI doesn't activate until the first shots land.

JetJaguar2000
06-03-2012, 03:54 PM
The notion of "first strike advantage" seems problematic to me, since it means equal power fleets are not actually equally matched -- sufficiently powerful first strikes can wipe out a huge portion of the defending fleet in the alpha strike, crippling them for the remaineder of the battle.

If first strike advantage has to exist, I would propose that it not be universal. For instance, if you are at war with someone, conceptually one would expect that your fleets are on "high alert" for attack and could not be surprised in that way. Alternatively, you could imagine only giving the defending fleet the 2x DEF bonus to offset the huge advantage of first strike a bit (or maybe you could explicitly put fleets in to a "defensive posture" as an offset).

Naturally, this leaves open the possibility of cloaked ships always getting first strike when attacking from cloaked status. Makes sense, right?

Generally, I feel like this first strike stuff, and the ridiculous power of colonies, etc., is making combat really unintuitive. Between all the different ship and orbital combinations, and these mechanics (and the bugs around them) it is impossible to understand what is an appropriate defensive strategy against any given attacker. I wish it was all a bit simpler.

ChickenHawk07
06-03-2012, 04:01 PM
I agree with Jet 100%. Also, I thought I read somewhere that the first strike advantage is lost if both parties are at war with one another, is that not true? It would make sense that a Homeworld and its defending fleet would attack "On Sight", as it were, and take away an attackers first strike advantage. Unless of course the attackers are cloaked.

Tsagoth
06-03-2012, 05:46 PM
If you are at war with someone then you should get the first strike as soon as they appear at your planet. Your defences should fire as soon as the enemy has reached orbit.

JetJaguar2000
06-03-2012, 05:58 PM
There must be a bug there as well, then, since I was at war with this guy when he wiped out all my colony defenses with that first strike.

Tsagoth
06-03-2012, 06:01 PM
Generally, I feel like this first strike stuff, and the ridiculous power of colonies, etc., is making combat really unintuitive. Between all the different ship and orbital combinations, and these mechanics (and the bugs around them) it is impossible to understand what is an appropriate defensive strategy against any given attacker. I wish it was all a bit simpler.

Colonies are overpowered because the ease with which they were taken was just about the number one complaint during beta, although their current population growth rate is bug. Although we used our entire allotment of 100 devices for testing, I think only about twenty-odd people played with any regularity, so it was pretty difficult to judge how well many of the mechanics were working. Thus colonies were given better defense, and the ship conversion to orbital defense was introduced. The patch today will reduce population growth to 1/12 of it's current rate, so going forward new colonies will not be hitting 400Mu in a few hours.

The current combat AI is always going to first strike. With the multi-threaded nature of the server and the fact that the ships and AI operate as independent entities, there is always going to be a first strike advantage. I'm willing to entertain any and all suggestions, but there are a lot of technical limitations on what the AI can be twisted to do. Honestly, this combat AI is the most complicated thing I have coded in more than 30 years. There are some aspects that I hardly even understand myself.

JetJaguar2000
06-03-2012, 09:46 PM
I assume this means that "combat" is not modeled as an explicit event between two players, but rather there is some thread monitoring everyone's assets asking "is this thing being attacked? If so, attack back!" and that is where first strike derives from?

The combat tutorial claims that combat damage is resolved simultaneously to both sides. Does first strike imply that this is not that case and they alternate attacking, or is first strike just the trigger that starts them shooting at each other on the same schedule?

Tsagoth
06-03-2012, 10:08 PM
No combat is not a single event, like rolling dice and saying x wins. Say Player A and B are at peace, and A flys ships to B's planet. B's possessions do nothing as A is not a known enemy. A says attack B. A combat AI is launched for A. AI(A) then finds all of A's ships that can be used for the attack. It then locates all the targets that B owns. It then attaches individual combat AI to each attacking ship. Then it runs through all of the attackers and assigns them their targets, using as many ships on each target as it deems is necessary to kill the target outright. Finally it gives the signal to each ship to start shooting. After that AI(A) goes to sleep. When an attacker destroys its target, it notifies AI(A) that it needs a new target, at which point AI(A) will run through target selection again for that ship. If an attacker is destroyed, AI(A) removes the ship from the attacker list and makes its target available for other ships to attack. During all of this each of player A's ships are shooting on their own schedule as dictated by their indvidual AI routines. The process is essentially the same for player B. When one of ships take damage, it launches a combat AI for player B and it also alerts all of player B's other assets, so that even if it is destroyed by the first strike, whatever remains of B will continue to attack. The shooting of the missiles/energy beams by the attacker is separate from the application of the damage to the target. The defender can't know what the attacker has done until the damage begins to appear, and this is always going to be the case. Sorry for the long paragraph, but the stupid editor is borked and I can't put in blank lines.

Supamand
06-03-2012, 10:47 PM
Hmm so a person with a huge force could just 1 shot things without taking casualties?

What happens if player B is at war with player A? Do ships then attack simultaneously?

Royce
06-03-2012, 10:50 PM
What happens if player B is at war with player A? Do ships then attack simultaneously?

You mean this?


If you are at war with someone then you should get the first strike as soon as they appear at your planet. Your defences should fire as soon as the enemy has reached orbit.

Looks like first strike goes to the defender if at war, attacker if not.

JetJaguar2000
06-04-2012, 02:54 AM
No combat is not a single event, like rolling dice and saying x wins. Say Player A and B are at peace, and A flys ships to B's planet. B's possessions do nothing as A is not a known enemy. A says attack B. A combat AI is launched for A. AI(A) then finds all of A's ships that can be used for the attack. It then locates all the targets that B owns. It then attaches individual combat AI to each attacking ship. Then it runs through all of the attackers and assigns them their targets, using as many ships on each target as it deems is necessary to kill the target outright. Finally it gives the signal to each ship to start shooting. After that AI(A) goes to sleep. When an attacker destroys its target, it notifies AI(A) that it needs a new target, at which point AI(A) will run through target selection again for that ship. If an attacker is destroyed, AI(A) removes the ship from the attacker list and makes its target available for other ships to attack. During all of this each of player A's ships are shooting on their own schedule as dictated by their indvidual AI routines. The process is essentially the same for player B. When one of ships take damage, it launches a combat AI for player B and it also alerts all of player B's other assets, so that even if it is destroyed by the first strike, whatever remains of B will continue to attack. The shooting of the missiles/energy beams by the attacker is separate from the application of the damage to the target. The defender can't know what the attacker has done until the damage begins to appear, and this is always going to be the case. Sorry for the long paragraph, but the stupid editor is borked and I can't put in blank lines.

That sounds incredibly convoluted. It's strange to me that you are modeling combat as if it were a simulation when it is (or should be) an entirely deterministic event based on simple input (the ships present at the site of the event), especially given that combat itself is non-interactive.

In any case, this is very different than what the combat tutorial describes. Having one side fire first completely changes the dynamic of the battle. Couldn't you just have the first shots fired after an attack order be "dummy rounds" that do zero, or some fractional damage? Enough to trigger a response but not enough to give an advantage.

catswift
06-04-2012, 03:39 AM
First strike needs to go. I captured my entire galactic sector on day 3 of a server start (not colonies, just outposts), all without losing a ship.

Diplomatic status having an effect on first strike just contributes horribly to this mechanic. Set my diplomatic status with everyone to war, please. The cost otherwise is simply not worth it.

Supamand
06-04-2012, 03:46 AM
I wonder what will happen if a reinforcement fleet arrives in mid combat. Will the new fleet be allowed to join?

Also, what if the planet that I attack has fleets from 2 different players in the planets orbit? Will I have to fight those fleets at well?

JetJaguar2000
06-04-2012, 11:29 AM
First strike needs to go. I captured my entire galactic sector on day 3 of a server start (not colonies, just outposts), all without losing a ship.

Diplomatic status having an effect on first strike just contributes horribly to this mechanic. Set my diplomatic status with everyone to war, please. The cost otherwise is simply not worth it.

Yeah, the balance of this game is all messed up. I'm not even sure anymore what factors are contributing to it, which of them are bugs, and what can be done about it. I still think colony defense is too high, but outposts are too easy to take. Taking an undefended outpost should be easy, but with first strike it's nearly impossible to deploy sufficient defenses at an outpost. Once an attack by 20+ cruisers is common (which doesn't take long), first strike means you need 5 or more orbital laser arrays to fend that off. Is that really what the designers intended?

What we need is a bunch of fixes and then a fresh game to see how they play out. The dynamics are all out of whack in the early games because of the lack of ship count early on, artificially inflated empires, etc. (that said, I've already given up on the latest server, since my home world spawned in the absolute corner of the universe, with nothing within 10 sectors, and the closest stuff already claimed by others... And I'm not a trader).

As much as I love the idea of this game, I'm starting to think it's really just not ready for prime time. It needs 6 more months of design and development. The fact that fundamental balance changes are patched in willy-nilly is not encouraging. For a game of this complexity, you really need to think through the impact of every tweak.

Tsagoth
06-04-2012, 12:27 PM
I wonder what will happen if a reinforcement fleet arrives in mid combat. Will the new fleet be allowed to join?

Also, what if the planet that I attack has fleets from 2 different players in the planets orbit? Will I have to fight those fleets at well?

Yes, the reinforcements should join the fight. Spectators are not involved. If A attacks B, and C & D have ships there, they will not become part of it, unless they decide to attack A or B.

Tsagoth
06-04-2012, 06:13 PM
First strike needs to go. I captured my entire galactic sector on day 3 of a server start (not colonies, just outposts), all without losing a ship.

Diplomatic status having an effect on first strike just contributes horribly to this mechanic. Set my diplomatic status with everyone to war, please. The cost otherwise is simply not worth it.

Well we're definitely discussing things internally, but I'll say one thing here: If somebody shows up with 40 cruisers and you only have 20, why shouldn't the attacker be able to one-shot the defender ? How is it fair that we say to the attacker, sorry, although you had double or triple the ATK to destroy the defenders, you have to lose 1/3 of your ships anyway.

Dummy rounds might be a possible solution. I'm also looking into some kind of early warning system that would alert the defenders when the attacker initially gives the order to fire.

VanderLegion
06-04-2012, 06:16 PM
I would say that if you're at war, both sides should attack at the same time, since they both know it's coming. If you aren't set to war with each other, whoever chooses to attack should get the first shot, since the other side wouldn't be expecting it.

catswift
06-04-2012, 06:27 PM
Well we're definitely discussing things internally, but I'll say one thing here: If somebody shows up with 40 cruisers and you only have 20, why shouldn't the attacker be able to one-shot the defender ? How is it fair that we say to the attacker, sorry, although you had double or triple the ATK to destroy the defenders, you have to lose 1/3 of your ships anyway.

If I build a defense system, whose sole purpose in life is to kill anything hostile to my interests, and it is always prepared to do so, why would it suddenly not decide to fire?

That's like saying the U.S. missile defense system won't shoot down a nuke sent from Russia because the President hasn't had the chance to say "we're at war" yet.

But, hey, if y'all are cool with me taking over an entire galactic sector in less than 56 hours from game start who am I to dissuade you.

JetJaguar2000
06-04-2012, 06:31 PM
Well we're definitely discussing things internally, but I'll say one thing here: If somebody shows up with 40 cruisers and you only have 20, why shouldn't the attacker be able to one-shot the defender ? How is it fair that we say to the attacker, sorry, although you had double or triple the ATK to destroy the defenders, you have to lose 1/3 of your ships anyway.

Dummy rounds might be a possible solution. I'm also looking into some kind of early warning system that would alert the defenders when the attacker initially gives the order to fire.

I don't understand your argument. If you show up with 40 cruisers and I have 20, I shouldn't expect to inflict at least SOME damage on your fleet? Because my fleet is half yours, it's value is actually zero? That doesn't make any sense. I've never played a strategy game that works that way.

EDIT: In fact, that view is exactly why the game is screwed up now. You amass a big enough fleet, and you can just waltz through someone's empire obliterating all of their defenses without your attack force weakening it all. Not only have you taken all of their assets, but you have reduced their defensive capabilities to zero. How is that in any way sensical? Instead of deciding how many attacks you can muster before your fleet takes enough casualties to retreat, you just get to take everything. Absurd.

Tsagoth
06-04-2012, 07:28 PM
Lee has drawn up a draft for a revised combat system that will be more fair and I expect it will show up in the near future.

SG7
06-04-2012, 08:44 PM
I have a simple question. For a planet with 450Mu and shipyard and with no other defences how many crusers one has to have to take down the shipyard? Lets assume that both parties are at war.

Tsagoth
06-04-2012, 08:59 PM
I have a simple question. For a planet with 450Mu and shipyard and with no other defences how many crusers one has to have to take down the shipyard? Lets assume that both parties are at war.

Ten should do it assuming they strike first although the planet should wipe them immediately thereafter.

Tsagoth
06-04-2012, 09:43 PM
I don't understand your argument. If you show up with 40 cruisers and I have 20, I shouldn't expect to inflict at least SOME damage on your fleet? Because my fleet is half yours, it's value is actually zero? That doesn't make any sense. I've never played a strategy game that works that way.


Well we'll just have to see. Once Cheerio and company start roaming around with their 800 cruiser/battleship fleets, we'll find out what works and what doesn't.

Leedot
06-04-2012, 10:23 PM
I've posted notes about the proposed combat revisions in a new thread over here.

http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/showthread.php?706-Combat-Revisions&p=5203#post5203

SG7
06-05-2012, 12:17 AM
Ten should do it assuming they strike first although the planet should wipe them immediately thereafter.
Then something went wrong. Today morning 13 cruisers attacked terra planet G 0.2 S 16.9 All have been wiped out but shipyard is standing.

AntiHaze
06-05-2012, 12:29 AM
Then something went wrong. Today morning 13 cruisers attacked terra planet G 0.2 S 16.9 All have been wiped out but shipyard is standing.

Did they attack the shipyard or the planet? Does it make a difference which one they choose?

Tsagoth
06-05-2012, 01:43 AM
They should go for the ships/orbitals first, because they are an easier target. The planet is last to be attacked.