Server is Aruru, planet is at G3,3 S20,7 P7,4. Battle would have been overnight last night some time.Originally Posted by Tsagoth
Server is Aruru, planet is at G3,3 S20,7 P7,4. Battle would have been overnight last night some time.
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.
Hah, well that's disappointing, but thanks for,looking in to it.
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?
Last edited by JetJaguar2000; 06-03-2012 at 01:05 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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