ENDLESS™ Space is a turn-based 4X strategy game, covering the space colonization age in the ENDLESS™ Universe. You control every aspect of your civilization as you strive for galactic dominion.
Because they don't use approval, they already have a huge advantage by using Tolerant early game. So the uselessness of its new effect compensate their early bonus.
Cheers,
I thought they had less growth until they researched the necessary tech to compensate for that. Or am I imagining things?
Okay, I've changed my formula to implement a chance to hit bound between 10% & 90%.
Here is the table I get using your your simplifications, no defenses & no EvasionDisorientation. My numbers match except for the lasers. I the laser values you are using are different than the ones in the spreadsheet you posted or the ones that are in 1.1.15.
I also computed the data for a small ship full of weapons. I just ran a simulation with 0 Evade for the ships. If I set the evasion to 50%, my result are close to yours indeed.
Thanks a lot for investing so much time in this and all the calculation you did. This is indeed interesting data! Unfortunately, I think there is some misunderstanding due to the opacity of the code.
[LIST=1]
Accuracy and evade are computed for a salvo, and not the number of shots: when a ship evades a salvo from a Kinetic 1 Short Range, it avoids the whole 60 shots
We cap the result of evasion between 0.1 and 0.9 to avoid perfect evade and perfect accuracy. We believe that a part of unpredictability spices up the game, and brings a lot of fun.
[/LIST]
Here are the results I obtain:
Theoretical damage: the damage done for a whole phase without considering evade nor accuracy. But, it computes deflection and absorption if there are.
Damage Long Range / Medium Range / Melee: based on Theoretical damages, and includes a simplification of evade / accuracy mechanics (no evasion disorientation considered, just a flat result capped between 0.1 & 0.9). And it takes in account the defence of the ship & the hull weakness if there are. In the present case, there is no defence.
I'll be glad to discuss about this subject if you need.
Cheers,
Hopefully I can provide some useful information.
1. Accuracy and Evade in my calculations were also per salvo. The numbers I have above are reported for a full destroyer's worth of weapons, not just a single one. I believe that might be where you were mislead.
2. The Chance to Hit (I think this is what you meant by "the result of evasion") being capped at 10% and 90% will make a difference. I'll get back to you on this one.
Thanks a lot for investing so much time in this and all the calculation you did. This is indeed interesting data! Unfortunately, I think there is some misunderstanding due to the opacity of the code.
[LIST=1]
Accuracy and evade are computed for a salvo, and not the number of shots: when a ship evades a salvo from a Kinetic 1 Short Range, it avoids the whole 60 shots
We cap the result of evasion between 0.1 and 0.9 to avoid perfect evade and perfect accuracy. We believe that a part of unpredictability spices up the game, and brings a lot of fun.
[/LIST]
Here are the results I obtain:
Theoretical damage: the damage done for a whole phase without considering evade nor accuracy. But, it computes deflection and absorption if there are.
Damage Long Range / Medium Range / Melee: based on Theoretical damages, and includes a simplification of evade / accuracy mechanics (no evasion disorientation considered, just a flat result capped between 0.1 & 0.9). And it takes in account the defence of the ship & the hull weakness if there are. In the present case, there is no defence.
I'll be glad to discuss about this subject if you need.
Kinetics (Medium), Laser (Medium) - Not very good, but better than the alternatives.
Summary
There doesn't seem to be much use for anything but kinetics and more kinetics.
Missiles really get the short end of the stick.
Medium lasers are okayish.
Defenses
Defenses need to be evaluated on defense/weight and defense specific advantages.
Defenses complicate things a little.
Deflectors have the best passive. They just cancel X shots.
Flak is more complicated but also results in canceling shots. Given that Missiles are heavier and launch fewer shots per ship, missiles are really looking bad. The addition of flak working on a fleet level also decreases the value of missiles.
Shields passive is trivial at max level it reduces damage per round by 2 per ton. That's nothing to worry about.
This is all true for a single ship. What happens when we add more ships? Well, damage approaches the theoretical damage value. Kinetics (SR,MR), Laser (MR), and Missile (LR) are the best values here. With Kinetics (SR) having double damage on a tonnage efficiency basis than other weapons.
So what do I suggest? Get rid of EvasionDisorientation. Once that is done, then it will be MUCH easier to calculate and simulate combat mechanics.
Calculating damage is tricky because it relies on a number of random factors. The easiest way to deal with it is to just look at the worst and best case scenarios. A more complicated method is to calculate average damage. The ideal method would be to develop population distributions, but that is not straight forward to evaluate or to document. For this I'll be calculating average damage based upon probability of each of the outcome. For cases that are more complicated, I instead report an estimate of the average damage and the worst case damage.
Note that I ignore defenses. As a general whole we can get an idea of the accuracy effects before the different defense effects.
Below is an image that demonstrates the math that went into this. Note that I did accuracy averages based upon full permutations of hits & misses. Unfortunately due to how I coded it, it was not efficient enough to calculate weapon sequences of 20+ hits. However, it should display the frequency of the various outcomes. Note that the higher shot counts I simply calculate the difference between the best case and worst case scenarios. Note that with a Accuracy - Evasion difference of 50%, a maximum of 10 misses can occur per round per target.
If EvasionDisorientation was 0, then all weapons would have a 50% average. Instead it increases towards full theoretical damage.
To base this analysis we look at how much damage a single 100 weight destroyer can do based upon using each of the level 1 weapons. The arguments do scale up on weapon tech levels and hull sizes, but that won't be covered here.
Below we have the output for our first table. Weapons refers to the number of these weapons that can be fit on a 100 weight destroyer.
ACCL0, ACCM0, ACCS0 - The Accuracy during the Long/Medium/Short Range Phase against a target with a 0 Evasion.
HL0,HM0, HS0 - The Number of Hits that occur on average.
DL0,DM0,DS0 - The damage dealt based upon the weapon and number of average hits.
DC0 - The total damage done across all three range phases.
The Kinetic Averages are based on assuming performance halfway between the worst case scenario and the best case scenario. This is supported by the previous plot.
Best Weapon for Long Range against 0% Evasion ships (i.e., dreadnaughts, dreadnaughts are 15% Evasion, but its close enough) - Kinetics (all), lasers (medium & Long), missiles (long range)
Best Weapon for Medium Range - Kinetics (short & medium), Laser (medium), missiles (medium)
Best Overall Weapon - Kinetics (short, medium), lasers (medium)
So, meedoc wanted to know what we thought of EvasionDisorientation. I've never liked it, and I might even be thought of as crusading against it. To provide some evidence as to why it still isn't working, I'm going to be providing some tables and charts. I'll be spreading them across several posts for safety. If the terms and mechanics I describe are unfamiliar, please consult the wiki and other posts about mechanics in the forum. If I stopped to describe them all, I'd be here forever.
Chance to hit is currently determined by the formula
While I currently don't like the Evasion as implemented, I think that the largest problem is with EvasionDisorientation. I'll provide several arguments against it in the following.
The first problem is that it lacks face validity. Face validity is the idea that what you would expect to happen, does happen. An example of failing face validity are FPS games where you can shoot your normal, unarmed human opponents in the head with a huge gun, and it fails to kill them. Maintaining face validity is important, especially when it comes to the casual player, who doesn't have the time or interest to do massive calculations or deep searches into game mechanics. As it stands, a casual player designing ships will NOT come to the correct conclusions about which weapons to use and how much damage they should expect their weapons to do.
The second problem is that experienced players don't know how to figure out which weapons are best either. Make some predictions about what type of weapons should go onto a destroyer to kill destroyers, battleships, and dreadnaughts. We'll see how those pan out.
Addendum
While I'm at it:
Can weapons be a consistent weight again? Right now they vary based on type (missile, kinetic, laser), ideal range (medium, long, short), and tech level (1,2,3). It would be much more straightforward if they were all based upon a single weight and then were scaled based upon that. This will impact the accuracy, EvasionDisorientation, Flakk, and deflector balance, but it would make things be much more straightforward.
Here is the (mostly) correct table of weapons provided by meedoc. The SRM should have a damage of 136. I also think the Accuracy at Medium Range for SRLasers should be 0.1.
[TABLE="class:grid,width:1065"]
WEAPONS
DAMAGE PER SHOT
ACCURACY
INTERCEPTION EVASION
NUMBER PER SALVO
TURN BEFORE REACH
TURN TO RELOAD
Shots
LONG RANGE EFFICIENCY
MEDIUM RANGE EFFICIENCY
MELEE EFFICIENCY
THEORETICAL DAMAGE
WEIGHT
DAMAGE / TONNAGE
Kinetic1LR
[TD="align:right"]2[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]50%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]4[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]200[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]8[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]25[/TD]
Kinetic1SR Worst
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]100%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]60[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]4[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]240[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]4[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]60[/TD]
Kinetic1MR
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]75%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]45[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]4[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.33[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.33[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]180[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]6[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]30[/TD]
Kinetic1SR Estimate
[TD="align:right"]2[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]50%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]62.5[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]4[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]500[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]10[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]50[/TD]
Laser1LR
[TD="align:right"]103.5[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]60%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]2[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]207[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]10[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]20.7[/TD]
Laser1SR
[TD="align:right"]45[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]110%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]2[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]90[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]6[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]15[/TD]
Laser1MR
[TD="align:right"]112.5[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]85%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]2[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.33[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.33[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]225[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]8[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]28,125[/TD]
Missile1LR
[TD="align:right"]390[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]40%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]28[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]3[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]3[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.25[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]390[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]12[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]32.5[/TD]
Missile1SR
[TD="align:right"]136[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]90%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]14[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]3[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]3[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]136.5[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]8[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]170,625[/TD]
Missile1MR
[TD="align:right"]247[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]65%[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]21[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]3[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]3[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.33[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]1[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]0.33[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]247[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]10[/TD]
[TD="align:right"]24.7[/TD]
[/TABLE]
Note: Theoretical damage is the damage that would be done if all shots hit. This will occur only when evade disorientation wipes out the difference between accuracy and evasion. Expected damage will approach this value as the number of weapons increase. This is in contrast to the expectation that would occur if EvasionDisorientation is 0%.
We did mention that we were listening to your opinions and that is exactly what we did. The balancing part of a game can always be tricky: we experiment some things and you get back to us with your input (be it good or bad – so make sure you explain your opinions clearly!). This weapon balancing aims at answering to several discussions that appeared with the release of Disharmony (and the huge changes that we have made for the expansion pack). We are looking forward to your feedback once again.
Weapon Balancing
Introduction
We returned after an entire week off, with a fresh mind in a rested body, and great ideas to improve balancing of weapons from scratch with two big intentions.
One of the first of my main concerns was to get rid of the Glass Cannon issue: using them should be a potential strategy, and therefore it needs a counter, which can cost you a lot. Making Glass Cannon is a strategic choice with an important risk/reward investment; at least that’s what I aimed for with this new balancing.
Second, Weapons had lost their identity. With the different range modifying every parameter, they weren’t any consistence within a weapon family. That was a big problem, because without an identity, it gets hard to understand the strength and weakness of a family, and it confused the whole battle system. I also removed the side effect of the defence to simplify the comprehension of the battle. Even if I liked the idea, the current system may not be the best suited for that.
From this point, I settled a list of rational rules which guided me during the balancing process.
New Rational
Thus, we have Missile which is extremely powerful, but they will require a lot of tonnage while the related defence is light; making missile easy to defend against.
Weapons & Range uses
Missile & Flak
Missile is meant to be destructive but easily countered. The best range for them is Long Range: making it the weapon with the most initiative. However, this destructive weapon can be evaded and easily intercepted by a player allowing enough space for Flak. So Missile is meant to be very efficient against large ships, and less against Small ships. This change reduces the unfairness which can come from galaxy generation, and available resources. However, Short Range missile are accurate enough to deals significant damages to small ships. Moreover, you can stack more Short Range missile than Long Range, and so they’ll go more easily go through Flak.
Medium Range Missile is a compromise, and should be combined with another weapon to be really useful.
Building a Glass Canon strategy with missile is risky: a “turtle” (ship full of defence) strategy will almost counter every missile set up, except if you use a Nose Breaker with Long Range Missile. However, a fleet with enough Flak and a few weapon modules will annihilate a Glass Cannon fleet without suffering of too much damage.
Laser & Shield
Laser is the weakest weapon regarding pure damage, but the most accurate. Long Range and Short range can be completely denied by high defensive ships, whereas the Medium Range is powerful enough to go through shields. Moreover, laser is the weapon with a weight cost close to the defence weight and for an equal amount of Defence / Weapon, the weapon will deal a consequent amount of damage. So it’s insensitive to put a lot of weapons within your ships to force your opponent to charge them with shield. Long Range and Short Range can be really powerful if there are no shields in front of them, so I’ll rather use them as a secondary weapon on my ships (just a few module just in case). Glass Cannon Strategy can be countered by using any Long Range weapons. So if someone attacks you with an army of Glass Cannon equipped with Medium Range Laser, just a few ships equipped with Long Range laser and Shield will destroy its fleet.
Kinetic & Deflector
Kinetic is the king of melee, and is able to deal the most damage. Moreover, the deflector is the heaviest defence, making the kinetics, whatever the range, the hardest weapon to counter. Long Range kinetics are still easily countered by a good defence due to their low accuracy and because they have the lowest amount of projectile. Medium Range kinetics is a safe move which will be almost always efficient, but because of that, it may be too predictable, and deflectors will greatly reduce their impact. Short Range kinetics can be used to build the most effective Glass Cannon, able to destroy a turtle fleet in one fight. The only way to counter such a tactic is to use Long Range weapons, especially Kinetics, because Deflector requires a lot of tonnage and thus the opponents won’t be able to stack a lot of weapon as well as being protected against them.
Defence Type & Hulls
Since the release of Disharmony, the different hulls have a new property called Hull Weakness, which modulate the received damage: the lowest hull weakness is, the more resistant the hull. A large ship has 100 Hull Weakness, a medium 200 and a small 300. The damage modulation is directly related to the value of the defence: the higher the defence value, the more efficient is a low hull weakness. With this new patch, Deflector has the highest defence value, then shield and finally flak. So that means that a large ship receives a better protection from deflector than flak because of the final impact of hull weakness will be lower in the first case.
Weapon Levelling
I tried to make a lower level still useful (even if reduced) against the level just above by increasing the weight with the level and a smoother value’s progression.
Conclusion
In the meantime, I updated the spread sheet file which is online with the new data. If you have any questions or feedback, I’ll do my best to answer.
Sowers
Further to the discussion you have on the “Save The Sowers” thread (that I keep reading avidly), I decided to do little changes to improve the Sowers, which for me aren’t that weak. It’s not the best early game race, but they can become a true juggernaut. I understand Multiplayer complaints but as some members said, Single player is at least as important as the Multiplayer, so we need a certain diversity regarding the pace of the different factions.
At first, I moved the technology unlocking the Industry To Food from the 4th circle of the right Technology Tree to the 2nd circle of the left Technology Tree. Then, you started a discussion around the Tolerant trait. I think the trait is one of the most interesting traits of the game; opening the colonisations’ choices for a drawback brings interesting dilemma. The trait is a bit overpriced, and it has been to avoid too powerful combination.
The solution which has been implemented is the following:
[LIST=1]
Sowers have a unique bonus regarding Tolerant: while they haven’t searched a planet-related technology, they benefit from -25% / -50% approval loss on all planets. Thus, colonising a gas planet only hurts them by 10 instead of 20.
Any faction benefits from -50% approval loss for a planet type once the planet-related technology is researched
[/LIST]
With this new bonus, I think tolerant is worth its cost now! Even if this kind of bonus isn’t as powerful, as Optimistic, and will require investment to benefit from it; it makes Tolerant a positive trait for the whole game, and rewards the player which will unlock colonisation technology better. The Harmony won’t benefit from this new bonus, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing: Tolerant has no drawback for them.
Let’s Play
I hope you’ll have fun with this new beta patch (which should become a public patch next week if everything is ok =)). We talked about playing with the community for a while, and I think this future release will be a good occasion, so I’ll be available and be glad to play with some of you between the 19th and 21th August (I’ll try to convince other devs to join me!). I’ll create a lobby those 3 days around 7p.m. GMT, and I hope to have fun with you guys!
Cheers,
P.S.: I’ll refuse VIP players (they ruined my empire too many times )
To me, one of the biggest problems with ES right now is that the AI factions never make peace with each other. All of their wars are fights to the death, which often last a whole campaign. The peace treaty game mechanisms are useless for them.
Is there any way that this could be fixed in the new patch? It would really make a huge difference. Thanks in advance
First I want to say the patch looks great (I love the new tolerant) much because all the big problems seem to have been dealt with, which means I can finally start enjoying all the great changes in the expansion (influence, expansion, new techs, planets etc). But I still have some issues/ideas for changes:
The idea is to have:
- Small ships: weak hull, they can't tank a lot of damage, but they have a good evade to deny a part of the received salvo.
- Medium ships: average hull resistance and average evade: they can play on both terrain.
- Large ships: strong hull but low evade; they will get it really often but if they have enough defence modules, they can take hits.
I think this can be accomplished with a flat evasion rate as opposed to the complicated and difficult to understand evasion deterioration thing going on now. A flat rate (of, let's say, 25/10/0 for small/medium/large) would still allow small ships to take much less damage from low accuracy long range weapons and have a big impact on weapon choice versus small ships while being easy to understand for the casual user and allow players to make rough estimates in their heads on how effective different weapons/cards/ships are in different situations.
I also think the hull weakness multiplier is unnecessary since large ships are able to stack defenses with armor more effectively just from having higher tonnage. Also armor is more effective on big ships now since they have higher base hp per CP compared to smaller ships. The problem in the non-beta version is that while defenses are better for big ships armor works better on small ships, which means players can tank up small ships virtually just as well as big ones.
In summary, I propose a very similar system to what we have now, but with flat evasion rates instead of the current dynamic one and the same hull weakness on all ship sizes. I think this will still make for interesting decisions regarding fleet composition and card use but be easier to understand and balance.
We'll check on the depleted planet which are reset bug, and we added the troops recuperation in the task list.
Regarding the Tolerant trait, other factions can benefit from the post research effect, but it will cost them 20-30 points, so it's up to the players to find out if it's a good pick for their builds. Tolerant will always grant -50% approval loss once the technology is researched, regardless of the trait level. That's why level 1 is 20 and not cheaper. The 10 extra points are for upgrading the FIDS income (except for the Sowers who also benefit from a better approval from the start with Tolerant 2).
Regarding the battle, there is interesting feedback here! (We're on the lag / freeze issue by the way)
The idea is to have:
- Small ships: weak hull, they can't tank a lot of damage, but they have a good evade to deny a part of the received salvo.
- Medium ships: average hull resistance and average evade: they can play on both terrain.
- Large ships: strong hull but low evade; they will get it really often but if they have enough defence modules, they can take hits.
The lifespan of a small is clearly lower than the lifespan of a large; but, it's compensated by the difference of industry cost and the CP value. However, maybe the gap between small's and large's hull weakness is too high and should be reduced, we'll see. We need to do some further testing to validate that I think.
Putting defences on Small is still increasing their lifespan a lot comparing to a ship without defence: after all, hull weakness won't change a thing if there are no defences on a ship.
[CODE]Damage taken = Defence/(Hull Weakness+Defence)[/CODE]
Do you think Evasion Disorientation is too punitive to make high Evade viable? For me, combining enough defence with high Evade can lead to interesting defensive ships. Actually, I like using some small ships with high defence and a few support modules. But it may not be the most optimal use we can do from Small ships.
Every live missile is put into a list, starting at the top of the list flak modules are assigned to the missiles. After all missiles are assigned one flak modules, the excess flak modules are then assigned in the same way, repeating as necessary until all flak modules have one target. This is very similar to how the targeting ship commands work and is likely.
That's how Flak works, but the interception is random and becomes easier: but the interception is random and becomes easier as the missile comes closed. A missile is interecepted if:
I think that by undervaluing weapons, you only create soft spot for your design. You can define that a weapon is theoretically more efficient than others but their concrete efficiency is bounded to the opponent's design. So, it's more interesting to have different perception for the different weapon family, which are going to influence how you design your ships, than the same perception. Missiles are, theoretically, the worse weapon because how they can be countered, but if you undervalue it and just put a few flak, you won't survive a long range against my Missile-oriented design.
Regarding the Single player an Multi player, it's beyond the matter of pure balance: it's a matter of pace, and therefore a matter of balance in a certain way. Multiplayer players seem to consider mid / end game races as not viable because everything is decided in the early game. This isn't true in single player: the AI gives you a more flexible window, making mid / end game races more viable.
Meedoc wrote: 1) Unlike Deflector and Shield, Flak protect the whole fleet. Each flak try to intercept a missile every round; so they have 4 tries before a missile reaches a ship. That's why missiles are the easiest to counter. However, if they aren't, the low defence of the flak won't protect the ships that much.
Cheers,
This mechanic gives me a headache on trying to figure out how it works.
The craziest way is that each round, a missile is subject to attacks by every single flak the opponent's fleet has. That's unlikely. It is simple though.
Each flak randomly targets a missile in the air. That means you ships have even protection (on average), and the ship with all your missile defense would be just as likely to die as a ship with no missile defense (assuming equal effective health versus missiles). That's more likely, but bizarre.
Each flakk targets a missile targeting their host ship, any flaks left over after all missiles targeting the host ship are accounted for, are then allocated to other ship's missiles, in some order. That's unnecessarily complicated.
Every live missile is put into a list, starting at the top of the list flak modules are assigned to the missiles. After all missiles are assigned one flak modules, the excess flak modules are then assigned in the same way, repeating as necessary until all flakk modules have one target. This is very similar to how the targeting ship commands work and is likely.
Every live missile is put into a list, starting at the top of the list, flak modules fire until they hit the missile. After hitting the missile, the next missile is shot at by the remaining flak modules, repeat as necessary. This is less confusing, but still weird.
Every flak modules shoots at one missile. Excess modules do not fire.
I suppose the test that would help sort this out is a fleet of 12 ships, with the 12th ship having 1 flak modules (with a interception value of 100) targeted by a fleet of 12 ships, each of which has 1 missile (200% accuracy, 100 damage, 1 shot per salvo or even the base missile). Run that combat a few times and see which missiles are destroyed. Change the position of the flak ship and repeat to confirm the results.
In the end, this suggests that missiles are not good weapons, unless you go with a full missile fleet (or some short ranged kinetics to increase the dodge penalty from EvasionDisorientation). Given that your ships should be packing all three defenses, any missiles you fired will face ALL of the defenses of the fleet. If deflectors work on the salvo basis (which my testing back in 1.1.9 suggested), then kinetics are also a poor choice. Which leaves us with lasers (who are definitely paired against the weakest defense) being your weapon of choice. You need to keep enough of the other weapon ships around to keep your opponent honest (make sure he has all three defenses), but the majority of the damage would then be from your laser ships (unless some sort of min/max calculation was performed based on cost/composition/etc, which is obnoxious to do, let alone midgame).
Multiplayer versus Singleplayer
I have to say while multiplayer and singleplayer should be balanced very similarly. Ideally, with good AI, singleplayer would be just like multiplayer. In which any balance arguments for the two should be the same. The only difference in my mind is how fast the game should go. In multiplayer one would like the game to play faster so you could finish one in a reasonable amount of time, wherein singleplayer you should be able to stretch out game length to get that epic feel in it. All of these arguments I keep reading based upon "single player" experience seem to really be biased by people who aren't very good at the game. When I read a post about someone who has difficulty winning on Easy difficulty (after 9 months of trying), I can't take those claims seriously, obviously this person is missing something fundamental. While I can appreciate that they aren't enjoying themselves and find something wrong, I can't really give their balance suggestions any credibility. Likewise people who play on Endless (whatever the hardest difficulty is called) difficulty in a galaxy with wormhole choke points against 7 AIs, I also am skeptical. They have arranged a game wherein all the advantages of the AI (lots of production) is dwarfed by the disadvantages (they AIs fight each other to the death, and the player only has to hold 1-3 systems in safety). That is indeed a way to win, and requires tactical planning, but it really is just abusing the poor AI with situations it is not designed with. It's akin to fighting a black belt by blind folding him and sticking him in a room with 6 other black belts (also blindfolded), while you stand at the side with a 6 foot long stick. Those games are not addressing basic gameplay, but just AI weakness.
Multiplayer on the other hand simulates a singleplayer experience with a good AI (people). I find those arguments much more convincing and based on mechanic flaws rather than a lack of understanding of the game or taking advantage of AI weakness. That's not to say multiplayer is the only way to balance, but it should be dismissed so easily as what I've seen on the board.
As I understand it, one traits "fix" has an effect on all factions, I doubt it can be good. Some factions are already largely above happiness requirement with a fast expansion with that additional happiness bonus it will be just insane.
Speaking of which, when you say "Any faction benefits from -50% approval loss for a planet type once the planet-related technology is researched", do you mean -25/50%, depending on the trait level, or is it -50% whether you're at Tolerant level 1 or Tolerant level 2?
... The damage modulation is directly related to the value of the defence: the higher the defence value, the more efficient is a low hull weakness...
suggests that the defense to hull weakness formula has changed. It implies that defense is dependent upon single module defense values and then modifies the efficiency of hull weakness? I'm he meant what he said, then something has changed in the defense & hull weakness formulas. My own guess is that he didn't write what he meant to say and that the relationship is unchanged, however his framing it as being module dependent instead of total defense dependent has me concerned about what additional functions are around that make this (module defense per module) being the key way to examine the issue.
Small ships get the short end of the stick for defense. They get less of it than large ships due to the hull weakness formula. This also means the cost of defense on small ships is greater than the cost of weapons, which puts us back into a version where we don't want to put defenses on small ships because they still won't be able to take any hits and it will be more expensive. Sure Evasion gives them a little damage avoidance, but only against other small ships. Against large ships they will be taking so much weapon fire, that evasion disorientation will wipe out the evasion bonus.
As an aside, I've been unable to find the conditions imposed by each of the three combat phases in the XML files in the current beta patch. Have I overlooked them? In either case, what are they?
As per my above post, the answers you seek are in:
BattleDescriptor.xml
They are:
Weapon Accuracy Range Progression
Long 1: 0.25: 0.25 = 1.50
Medium 0.33: 1 : 0.33 = 1.66
Short 0.10: 0.25: 1 = 1.35
Accuracies are modified by Range Phase. However, again, Evasion Disorientation works against this.
I have to admit, it seems odd to me that smaller ships have such high Hull Weakness given that defense modules are of fixed mass. If defense modules scaled with ship mass, then scaling hull weakness would make sense, but that's not what's going on here. Why the double-whammy?
On the one hand, the design expressed at the top of this thread suggests that the intent is for there to be roles for small ships even after large ships are available, but it seems like the fundamental of (defense points)/mass will dictate using larger hulls whenever available.
Granted, as inelegant as the current evasion mechanic seems, it does seem like it would provide pressure to use small ships to defeat high-weight-per-salvo weapons such as LR missiles... but given the current numbers I suspect that the defense advantages of larger ships will dominate.
As an aside, I've been unable to find the conditions imposed by each of the three combat phases in the XML files in the current beta patch. Have I overlooked them? In either case, are they still accuracy modifiers according to weapon class?
Nook wrote: Despite the new numbers thrown it still means nothing, a defense of 100 and hull weakness of 100 is better than a defense of 200 and a hull weakness of 50? Impossible to say with that partial explanation. And only tedious very high number of tests would allow get an idea.
Damage taken = Hull Weakness/(Hull Weakness+Defense)
That formula is known. You can do the math yourself, it's pretty simple.
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