Please move the post to the appropriate part of the forum, as i am not sure where to post this.



In my eyes the combat system is so broken i today really thought i will trash my endless space and will never play it again until it is fixed, but first i thought i will get some feedback from the very experienced or even the developers here.



The card thing and how the battle itself is designed is a great idea, so i am not asking for a reimplementation as this is also one of the "we wont do it"-points on the amplitude list.



What happened to me today:



I got ships with a power of ~600. Amobia design of the Lysos class.

Deflector: 126

Shield: 0

Rocket Defence: 54



Plates: +95



Beam: 210

Kinetic: 20

Rockets: 90



~7 of this ships with a total power of 5300 and another fleet with a power of about 4500 were not able to do ANY damage to a 1200 hitpoint ship of a friend of mine. I had the whole galaxy, but was not able to do ANY damage and this really sucked. I expected to at least take this ship down over many turns with selecting the right battle cards and having the better technologies and the better economy, etc. If it would only be that he countered my battle cards (which he did NOT), i countered HIS cards and still - no damage.



This drained any fun out of the game for me, as more than twice the unit strength had not been able to do >0 damage. I think in combat both sides fired, he killed me and then my already fired projectiles/beams/rockets did not do any damage anymore, if this is how the combat works its really lame. I was able to build 6 of this ships per turn and expected to steam roll his small part of the galaxy but instead he crushed me without any damage.



Please give me some feedback how this could have happen. Until this game i enjoyed endless space. In the points i was far ahead in any tree of the game.

Um, for giving good feedback about this, it would be good to have a few additional informations:



Did you play normal (non custom) Amoeba?

Which race did your friend play? Was it standard or custom?

Which kind of equipment did your friend field in that ship?

Did any of the fleets in combat have heroes? If yes, which type and level?

The combat system isn't broken, at least not in the way you suggest. Since you're not posting what ships you were fighting against it's a little hard to give advice, however. Jumping to conclusions and suggesting the game is 'broken' also doesn't help.



If your friend was using any beams at all against your zero defenses it would explain why you lost.

Hero information would be very useful. More than likely, he had a high defense hero that made his shields invulnerable to your beams. At that point it doesn't matter how strong you are you will lose.

He played the Hissho and i played a custom race:



Custom Race - based on amoebia:

+3 food on planet

+2,+2,+1 population on planets

+20 approval in system

+1 food per population

+10% industry costs for improvements



7x Ships of the type Lysos:

3x Fusion projectiles

7x precision plates

3x reactive ship body

1x high energy cuppling (the help modul)

1x intelligent tools

1x advanced container

1x ultra dense bullets

7x synchraton-laser

3x fusion torpedos



He had a level 5 commander, i had a lvl 9 hero:

+20% min,max fleet damage

+20% fleet strength for weapons

+20% fleet strength for defense

+10 defense for system

+10% defense for system

+20% rocket, beam, kinetic defense



I cant check his ship outfit at the moment but the combat screen says:

2x Ships with:

108,270,108 weapon strengths

114,0,44,+42 defense strengths

642 hitpoints



1x Ship with:

288, 432,0 weapon strength

233, 154, 88, +42 defense strength

1242 hitpoints



All i know was that i played attack in the first distance and he played tactics. He won in the first round and i inflicted ZERO damage. This happened twice in a row as i got 2 of this fleets and wanted to take him down in 2 battles.



If i get him online i will check for his ship fittings, but as far as i see it i am not possible to load the game in his player position.



"Jumping to conclusions and suggesting the game is 'broken' also doesn't help."

All i say is that if 2 fleets of equal strength meet each other and i play the battle cards which counters his, how can i inflict 0 damage (literally! the combat log stated "0") and he wins in the first range. This just feels broken. It feels like the ships fire, damage is calculated and if any ship is destroyed its already fired projectiles do not inflict damage anymore - which is as far as i am concerned would be broken.



But maybe the more experienced here can help me to understand why this battles both played out like they did.

Well the combat system is not entirely broken but it is kind of badly balanced and the border from an even battle to a "my ships don't take a scratch" situation is very thin. In especially if you aren't aware of how the system works.



To your Ship configuration:

So as far as i have seen you didn't have any beam defense in your ships. This is a complete k.o. kriteria and you will loose any battle against a beam fleet because your ships get roasted by the first salvo.



That you did no damage even if you have more ships deployed is "odd" because you ships can focus fire on more than one target at once. Well maybe this can be explained by the fact that your ships get roastet in the first rounds and his ships have self-repair systems.



Let me give you a tip:



1. Use shields! beam weapons are the most overpowered weapon in the game. If you dont have enough shields you will loose..always!

2. Dont mix weapons! Your Weapon configuration is weak because it is a mix. Both Kinetics and Missles can easily be countered by def. The remaining laser damage is also too weak to break the shields. Try focusing on beams to overload the defenses.

3. If you want a quik victory in this situation just build a fleet of suicide destroyers stuffed only with tier1 missles. This will overload the most flak defenses easily.

"Well maybe this can be explained by the fact that your ships get roastet in the first rounds and his ships have self-repair systems."



Ah do you mean i maybe made damage but he repaired more than i inflicted? This is a point i totally overlooked and it could be the answer. My main point was not that i lost the battle, it was that i couldn scratch him at all.



I hope the battles will be balanced a bit more in the future, as battles of ships with nearly same configurations are quite tense and interesting (already).

Personally i dont understand the combat system. I understand how it works but i dont understand why is it any good in a sense of design choice and how is it correlates with the tech tree. What is the strategic model behind it?

CaptainPsilon wrote:
Personally i dont understand the combat system. I understand how it works but i dont understand why is it any good in a sense of design choice and how is it correlates with the tech tree. What is the strategic model behind it?

The combat system is deeply flawed in some regards. It's still a fun game, but in some areas there's just so much wrong... One problem with combat/ship design is how strategic resources throw off the balance, especially when you have a monopoly. This could be one of the explanations for Mortem losing: He thinks his ships are superior because they are higher tech and more expensive, but perhaps his opponent simply had resource abundance, making his low-tech weaponry much superior. Really anxious to see what the upcoming patch will bring because I think it will be telling for what's further down the line.



@ Mortem: I don't mean to be rude but I really think you should search for info instead of creating all these threads. Many of your questions are answered many times. I highly recommend you check out the wiki, it has a lot of useful information - including a section with plenty of information on how combat works. I'm afraid it's impossible to tell why you lost that match when we don't know the loadouts of your friend's ships. However, I'm fairly sure what happened is he had enough shields to sustain your fire for the short time it would take to cut through your ships when they are unshielded. There are aspects of how combat and economy interact that are very poorly designed, but combat isn't 'broken', you don't just randomly lose battles without a good reason.

Apheirox wrote:
This could be one of the explanations for Mortem losing: He thinks his ships are superior because they are higher tech and more expensive, but perhaps his opponent simply had resource abundance, making his low-tech weaponry much superior. Really anxious to see what the upcoming patch will bring because I think it will be telling for what's further down the line.

Monopoly (well with the exception of one "crystal" that increases damage by 40% ) has no big impact on ship combat performance. Monopoly will usually decrease production cost of some resource modules meaning you can build ships with that modules faster. However the weapons parameters including its size remain unchanged so that the ships battle performance is not affected by resource monopoly.