thuvian your elaboration is very much helpful, as you said "The worth of the module would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis" now that really means we have to spend some time doing math while designing our ships ^^

And this problem assumes consideration about balancing between power module and weapons only, where are other modules that you may want to put on the ship? hell a lot of thinking

Also it's worth noticing as you said that as you start taking losses fleet firepower diminishes, and that's very important detail to worry about!

Maybe it wont be a bad idea to create few ship templates for various missions, and save them some were for next game or writing down their configuration on the piece of paper so next time we don't have to think too much about optimal ship configuration. I'm definitely going to try that out, at least it may save some time with experiments.



monthar, yeah that's not bad idea with repair module and troop fleet so that you don't have to go home to refill your troops, just park them away and wait few turns



I've learned a lot from you guys, appreciate all your help!

Very Very good work thx thuvian for all the work.







But Still considering that Kinetics defense mechanics i would never put a powermodule on a kinetic ship cause such ships are of course more effective when they are above your Break even Point in terms of potential Damage output but also easier to counter when the enemie changes his Ship designs to anti Kinetic. I also wouldnt consider armor as useless cause i find armor far more relayble then Defense Modules at least online, humans just react to fast to your ship designs and i dont want to redesign all my ships every few turns in a war.



Btw: How does the Modules Bonuses (or Deadly Weapons or Hissho Bushido) interact with Fighters and Bombers?



Do they even apply to them?

Monthar wrote:
Power, Engines, Armor and Repair modules all take a percentage of the ships tonnage in Disharmony instead of a flat amount. This makes them virtually worthless on the larger ships unless that ship has a weight reduction modifier for one of them.

Larger ship has higher base HP, which, guess what, Armor and Repair scales at least linearly with. A good defense ship need Armor, as EHP is essentially baseHP*(1+armor)*(defense+hull_weakness)/hull_weakness. I.E. armor module stack multiplicatively with defense modules. Higher level armor also provide percentage defense bonus, which effectively means that armor enhance EHP slightly more than just HP percentage increase. As to how good it is, you need a chart. (But you don't need one to see that for example the 100% armor increase the number of weapon hits required to destroy your ship/fleet by slightly more than 100% just for 20% of space)



Throw in repair. Take the most effective repair, the intelligent tools. As long as your ship is not destroyed, you recover 10% HP, and thus EHP, each combat phase. Thus, for one single battle, the effect of repair is max similar to 20% increase in EHP. However, if your ship has to endure multiple combats, e.g. vs endless AI, repair can be so effective as to let your defense ship take 0 damage effectively. Its use is mostly 'strategic', and stacks with armor+defense well. Versus the AI at least, good defense ships are all you need to kill 50 fleets in one turn, or lock down their fleets forever allowing you to flank their vulnerable non-border worlds.

Without the armor, you can put more weapons on the ship. Since weapons have a flat tonnage, the larger the ship, the more damage output you sacrifice for the extra defense. The more damage output you have the faster you kill the enemy ships. The more ships they lose the less damage your ships take. The old saying, "The best defense is a good offense", never rang truer than it does here.

Monthar wrote:
Without the armor, you can put more weapons on the ship. Since weapons have a flat tonnage, the larger the ship, the more damage output you sacrifice for the extra defense. The more damage output you have the faster you kill the enemy ships. The more ships they lose the less damage your ships take. The old saying, "The best defense is a good offense", never rang truer than it does here.

True but i just have the feeling that tier 2 and tier 3 weapons just to easy melts 450 HP (combined with some defense mods). Then I am forced to use Defense Modules which consumes tonnage and so weapons damage again.

And if the Enemy changes Ship loadout the horror of redesign and micromanagment begins.



And 450 cause i see no point in using Dreadnoughts atm and Battleships and Cruisers only from some specific affinitys.



Dont get me wrong Armor isent that strong or cool (found it better in vanilla) but it can give you an good advantage in a War in the early game where 10 Corvets more or less can decide everything.Even in midgame it can keep you some of your Ships alive i like to call them Obsidian Glass Cannons.

thuvian wrote:


Caveat

This assumes that the equivalent number of shots land. This is true for beams, but false for missiles and kinetics due to the secondary effects of the defenses. Flak and armor defenses block a certain number of shots, whereas shields block a certain amount of damage. Power Modules work by reducing the number of weapons and shots fired, but increasing the damage each does. Because Flak and Armor block the same number of shots, regardless of the type of ship shooting, the higher damage but fewer shots from the Power Module ships will be reduced more than the shots from pure Weapon Module ships. For kinetics the reduction is rather trivial due to the low damage and massive number of shots. In contrast, it makes a larger difference to missiles because of how heavy missiles are and how few you can fit onto a ship.

Since deflectors and flak blocks the same amount of shots regardless of the type of ship shooting(mounted with power module or not), then this means that power module gives it's maximum with beam weapons since beam doesn't get blocked(only damage is reduced), of course assuming that enemy ship don't have shields more then other defense modules.



I that correct?

codekiddy wrote:
Since deflectors and flak blocks the same amount of shots regardless of the type of ship shooting(mounted with power module or not), then this means that power module gives it's maximum with beam weapons since beam doesn't get blocked(only damage is reduced), of course assuming that enemy ship don't have shields more then other defense modules.



I that correct?

Right its always better for kinetics that more shots hits

overrunning the Deflectors Capacity.

For Missiles it would be the same princip but due their High Damage Output per Shot the Breakeven Point is reached much earlier. But if the enemy has realy High flak the +X% Damage gains you nothing.

Monthar wrote:
Without the armor, you can put more weapons on the ship. Since weapons have a flat tonnage, the larger the ship, the more damage output you sacrifice for the extra defense. The more damage output you have the faster you kill the enemy ships. The more ships they lose the less damage your ships take. The old saying, "The best defense is a good offense", never rang truer than it does here.

You are just trying to simplify things too much without putting real numbers into perspective.



Whether the ship is larger or not do not matter for how much damage you lose in exchange for an armor module:

let's say corvette 100t vs cruiser 200t

For same CP you have 2 corvettes and 1 cruiser

Putting armor on both make you use 40t in either situation, i.e. 40t less of weapons, it's completely identical amount of damage replaced!

However armor on cruiser is still better due to defense modules being more effective and dodge/accuracy being underpowered.



Lets say you build your ship with bare bone defense module and rest all weapons, say 90% tonnage weapons.

Now let's replace 20% with +100% armor.

Your new armored ship has 70% weapons but at least twice durability. However, damage is only 70%/90%=78%, i.e. reduced by 22%

Tradeoff of -22% damage vs +100% EHP? Very good in many circumstances.



More realistically you might have more defense modules on larger ships, say 60% weapons.

Tradeoff is at -33% damage vs +100% EHP. Still very good.



It of course depend on weapon level, armor mod quality, ship size, heroes etc. E.g. if you get oneshot anyway adding more hp doesn't matter. However that is not the case in many situations.



But don't just say "more damage kill enemy faster" without thinking the math through. 100hp 40 damage ship will lose to 200hp 30 damage ship.

Monthar wrote:
...Out of those 4 modules, armor is the only one that doesn't have a fleet wide bonus for the higher tier versions. So armor pretty much never worth it, even on the small ships.

Thanks for that, Monthar. I've been putting the armor module on all of my ships. The math is a bit much for me, but I'll look at this thread again before I do any more ship builds.

Hello guys, I've been doing some math and came to an conclusion:



Power module (2-module second upgrade) gives 35% boost to min/max damage and it's cost is 44 tonnage on ship hull on which I've doing the math.

I put on my ship 2 missiles, 2 beams and 2 kinetics (2nd upgrade)

1 missile gains 1170 min/max damage

1 beam gives 337 min/max damage

1 kinetics gives 180 min/max damage



that totals in 2x1170 + 2x337 + 2x180 = 5051 min/max damage on given ship...

now if we put power module onto the ship we gain 35% boost:

5051 x .35 = 1767 min/max damage boost for 44 tonnage.



Instead of power module we can put more weapons for 44 tonnage which gives us additional 2 kinetics, 2 beams and 2 missiles, and that's:

2x1170 + 2x337 + 2x180 = 3374 additional min/max damage.



Conclusion is obvious: 3374 damage vs 1767 damage

That means our power module does not give a boost of 35% to weapons but actually decreases additional ships firepower for approx. 50% !!!

Maybe I'm wrong with the math but numbers are obvious



However power module is not so useless IMO because there is a 3th upgrade of power module which does not increase firepower of a ship but actually increase firepower of whole fleet, that means only one ship in a fleet is required to have power module to give a boost to the whole fleet.

This is bad because level 1 and level 2 power modules will be skipped by the player since they don't boost but decreases firepower



Please let me know if I'm wrong with this..

Sovereign wrote:
Right its always better for kinetics that more shots hits

overrunning the Deflectors Capacity.

For Missiles it would be the same princip but due their High Damage Output per Shot the Breakeven Point is reached much earlier. But if the enemy has realy High flak the +X% Damage gains you nothing.

That mechanic of kinetics vs deflectors was something I didn't understand very well until now but after reading the thread from link which Gwydion5 (thanks man) posted in the post above I see how all that stuff works



It's so cool to exchange all that info since many of us would never know this game without you guys..

• An old poster wrote some great threads and analysis on how combat ship designs evolve, I strongly suggest you search for it and read it. It is outdated in the numbers, but the principles are unchanged.
• Armor Modules are not always useless. anomalacaris explained that well.
• Armor Modules increase Base Health, Defense Modules increase Effective Health. They synergize. The break points differ depending on lots of factors.
• May conversations consider what happens with virtually maxed technologies. I'm not sure this is the appropriate level of technology to consider. Most of my games have reached their critical points prior to that and so the ships that matter are ones with very inferior technologies.
  
  

Dreadnoughts

• Dreadnoughts have targeting problems. They can, at most, kill 12 ships per battle (ignoring strikecraft). That is only if they use kinetics. If they use missiles, they can only kill 3 ships per battle. In contrast for the equivalent CP cost, 4 destroyers can kill 48 ships per battle.
• Dreadnoughts also have cost issues. They are pretty expensive, and destroyers are pretty cheap.
  
  

How does Destroyer versus Dreadnought Combat work?

• I specialize in the Harmony, so I'll use them to illustrate one example.
• The Harmony Anti-Dreadnought solution is a 2 step process.
• Step 1. Threaten with a mixed weapon module fleet of Long Range Glass Cannon Destroyers (GCD) with max weapons and 2 fighters.
• Step 2. Destroy them with Long Range Missile (LRM) GCD with 2 bombers.
  
  

How it works

• The Dreadnought will always kill anything it hits, so defenses are pointless.
• The Mixed GCDs force the Dreadnought to have Omnidefenses (all three types).
• If they don't have Omnidefense, they die to Step 1 very easily.
• The Dreadnought is either full fighter modules or full strikecraft defense modules. If fighter modules, then the first wave of GCDs have fighters and kill the defense fighters. As a best case scenario, let's assume that the Dreadnoughts have full strikecraft defense modules.
• After defense fighters and Omnidefense has been achieved, we then hit them with fleet after fleet of LRM GCDs with 2 Bombers.
• The Harmony have a -75% strikecraft destroyer hull, which is what we use. Our Bombers weigh 5 each. The rest goes into LRMs.
• These LRM GCD are cheap, really cheap. The actual costs depend on numerous factors, but you can make a bunch of them for the cost of a single dreadnought.
  
  

hold on, larger ships still have their place, especially late game with all of those tonnage increases. besides power modules + high level heroes + amazing dreadnaughts = endless death

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:


hold on, larger ships still have their place, especially late game with all of those tonnage increases. besides power modules + high level heroes + amazing dreadnaughts = endless death

I invite you to partake in:

Thuvian's Super Dreadnought versus Glass Cannon Destroyer Challenge.

• Design and Post a specific and valid dreadnought fleet design with a specific valid race.
• I post counter fleets composed of Glass Cannons of equivalent technology levels of equal industry cost.
• We rig a game to pit these two fleets against each other and see how they do.
• This isn't exactly a fair challenge. Growth and Industry curves for races across different technology levels are very different, but it is a start at addressing this issue. I have no idea which race has the edge though.
  
  

thuvian wrote:
I invite you to partake in:

Thuvian's Super Dreadnought versus Glass Cannon Destroyer Challenge.

I'll take you up on this challenge if you want. But I think you have a good enough understanding of the combat system to get a rough idea on viability. Though I guess if there is further dispute a game may have to be created. It should probably happen anyway just to make sure.

• Design and Post a specific and valid dreadnought fleet design with a specific valid race.
  
  
[/QUOTE]

For clarification, does specific valid race exempt custom factions using standard affinities and standard 65 point cap?

• I post counter fleets composed of Glass Cannons of equivalent technology levels of equal industry cost.
  
  
[/QUOTE]

I'm thinking Industry cost should be a secondary point to this challenge.

• We rig a game to pit these two fleets against each other and see how they do.
  
  
[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't know how to rig a game to do this other than creating a fast game on hard/serious difficulty with other AI players. That should put the AI at a decent level to facilitate this experiment. There is an added benefit of doing real game over a fake game and that is the factions will be more in line with being fully playable in the game rather than stacked to beat this challenge. (IE I create a custom faction that takes all ship / battle traits. It may beat the challenge, but it would probably suffer economically in a full game.)

thuvian wrote:
I invite you to partake in:

Thuvian's Super Dreadnought versus Glass Cannon Destroyer Challenge.

• This isn't exactly a fair challenge. Growth and Industry curves for races across different technology levels are very different, but it is a start at addressing this issue. I have no idea which race has the edge though.
  
  

Going solely on Racial Ship types (Allowing for Custom races to match any benefits of another race):

• Amoeba :: -30% Defensive Module Tonnage. If the point is to survive and deal enough damage to kill this will increase survival.
• Harmony :: -25% Weapon Tonnage. Less tonnage required to reach kill point, allowing more defense
• Sowers :: Used Tonnage is added to HP of Ship. Minimum of 400HP added, more with extra tonnage and extra HP from Armor
• United Empire and Vaulters :: -30% Industry Cost. 30% Fewer GCDs (or each GCD is 30% weaker) to match industry cost.
  
  

UE and Sheredyn both get +40% HP using default races. (Sheredyn's DN bonus isn't as useful since it is for Power Module Tonnage).

Amoeba has -40% Dust Cost if there are no weapons, so for a purely defensive DN this would be quite useful (however then it wouldn't destroy the GCDs).

Hissho have extra damage by default, along with lower cost weapon modules, so more space can be dedicated to Damage all other things being equal.



Going by numbers alone on the default races:

[list=1]

United Empire. 40% HP bonus and -30% Cost is most cost efficient.

Sowers if you have enough +% HP and +Tonnage bonuses from Industry and modules to overcome the UE +40% HP

Vaulters might be better than Sowers. Depends on Industry Cost vs HP bonuses for greatest survival.

[/list]



Of course custom factions can gain different bonuses (as pointed out by Gwydion5), so it is worth looking at hull bonuses separate from the faction bonuses.

thuvian wrote:
I invite you to partake in:

Thuvian's Super Dreadnought versus Glass Cannon Destroyer Challenge.

• Design and Post a specific and valid dreadnought fleet design with a specific valid race.
• I post counter fleets composed of Glass Cannons of equivalent technology levels of equal industry cost.
• We rig a game to pit these two fleets against each other and see how they do.
• This isn't exactly a fair challenge. Growth and Industry curves for races across different technology levels are very different, but it is a start at addressing this issue. I have no idea which race has the edge though.
  
  

Very interesting, buying ticket to watch! (Someone please try it!)



Although I must say that I won't stop using my invincible DN designs against AI, who has n times my production but terrible designs. (Also against AI invincible DN requires far less micromanagement)

Don't forget Sheredyn have a tech that reduces the CP value of Dreadnaughts from 4 to 3. So assuming 24 fleet cap, you could have 8 dreadnaughts instead of 6 in your fleet.

Gwydion5 wrote:
I'll take you up on this challenge if you want. But I think you have a good enough understanding of the combat system to get a rough idea on viability. Though I guess if there is further dispute a game may have to be created. It should probably happen anyway just to make sure.

I do have an idea. I also don't want to exhaustively check all combinations because that's a ton of work. My current belief is that it will be pretty close and the people who advocate the Super Dreadnoughts will be disappointed that GCDs perform as well as they do.

For clarification, does specific valid race exempt custom factions using standard affinities and standard 65 point cap?

Anything you want, that is a reasonable race design. Don't pick something stacked up on Combat bonuses that you'd never play in a real game, it has to be viable. The default races aren't very good. I'm either going to use the Base Harmony Race or my Industry Low Research Harmony design that I've been working on in the other threads.

I'm thinking Industry cost should be a secondary point to this challenge.

Industry is the most important part. If you have to take 10% of your GDP to produce your fleet of dreadnoughts, then I should get 10% of my GDP to produce my destroyers.

I wouldn't know how to rig a game to do this other than creating a fast game on hard/serious difficulty with other AI players. That should put the AI at a decent level to facilitate this experiment. There is an added benefit of doing real game over a fake game and that is the factions will be more in line with being fully playable in the game rather than stacked to beat this challenge. (IE I create a custom faction that takes all ship / battle traits. It may beat the challenge, but it would probably suffer economically in a full game.)

Probably in a modded single player game, build in your racials and a massive FIDS bonus into an AI and then add my own race as a player. Lobotomize the AI so it doesn't build anything or research anything. Then take control of the AI, build the fleets, and set them against each other. I supposed editing the save game would be easier, but I haven't gotten around to do anything directly to that file yet.



The AI is bad. Watching it play versus other AIs you can see just how bad it is. It is tedious switching races by editing the save files.





re:Zinsho on Races

Thanks for posting that. The problem I was talking about was more along the economic front. An example would be the Harmony after getting Personal Shield, Efficient Stock, Efficient Stock, and Dust Contamination Barrier on a planet. That FIS is much larger than any other race would be able to do, and these bonuses are empire wide (and not planet specific like heroes). Other races get similar sorts of bonuses that could be arranged. Therefore, I don't know how to calculate GDP for a race given a particular game period. I suppose it could be done, but it would be a ton of work. You'd also have to equivocate between the benefits of just buying all production (or some) versus having to use pure industry.



re: anomalacaris

Go try out Ail's AI Mod that changes ship designs. It isn't perfect, but it is a lot better. I (biasedly) think the Harmony Ship Designs combined with the default Race are the best challenge.

for the sake of this challenge will the heroes of the glass cannon fleet be offensive and the heroes of the dreadnaught fleet be defensive?