I understand the basic principles of combat and how the card system works.



My question is how does the game handle the combat when there are multiple fleets all attacking at once but the turns are capped by the number of ships available in a fleet is different for different players?



The reason I ask is I have had multiple battles where I have had 15-20 'destroyer type ships' fighting 2-3 'cruiser' type ships but the 2 cruisers always manage to wipe my 20 ships out without taking any damage since the my ships only attacked 5 at a time.



I thought the combat totalled your entire fleet power? It seems like 20 ships (striker 8s) should be at least able to dent 2-3 'cruiser' sized ships attacking them all at once?

Please clarify - are you able to place all of your ships in the same fleet? You may be limited in this respect by Command Points; additional Command Points are available through the left hand research tree. If you aren't stacking your ships into a single fleet, each fleet attacks the enemy in a separate and independent combat.



Another issue may be that your weapons are outclassed by their defenses, either through technological disadvantage or an opposing Hero with a strong Defense stat.

I discovered this too.



Its the same like dreadnoughts against everything else. Dreadnoughts win. If your technology is equal to your opponents fleet (you may check this via the exchange technology button) the higher shipclass will make the difference and win in 95% regardless if the enemy team has a hero or not.



I know this because i played a game with >300turns and i pumped in every system i got (~100 all terraformed and fully upgraded) 1 dreadnought per round. So I had a fleet of >100 dreadnoughts and put 3-5 dreadnoughts in one fleet, positioned them on every system the last enemy had (i used to be allied with him, when i did this).



Then i declared war and attacked every system he had and every fleet.

Even fleets with equal combat points AND a hero got blown into the space - i lost around 4-5 dreadnoughts in the WHOLE war. He lost like 1000 ships.



So in future i will only stack the biggest ship i have already developped. Smaller ones are heavily underpowered against bigger ones.



Edit: i only fought the first 4-5 combats manually. The rest i just pressed autocombat. and i still won almost every fight. The fights I lost, where single dreadnoughts (i didnt them put into a fleet.) against an enemy fleet. so make sure you never fly around with 1 solo dreadnought. If they are solo they are much weaker than in team.



And: If there are 3-5 dreadnoughts in 1 fleet, NOTHING else than 3-5 other dreadnoughts can stop them.

I disagree.



It's a weapon tech race. 15 missile destroyers takes out a similar command point size fleet of dreadnought(s). (However, they probably be struggeling if only using kinetics)

Well i only fought against AI so far.



Player vs. Player battle is always a different story.

My dreadnoughts just had defense against all 3 weapon types and were also equipped with all 3 weapon types. They even had invasion modules, so i guess i could have made them even stronger.



Anyways you should try to focus on bigger ships once they are available to you. They are much more cost efficient in my eyes. There is no real reason to loose those 15 missile destroyers against 2-3 dreadnoughts.



Obviously the combat cards and heroes may turn the luck to your/the other side.

sorry i didnt word this properly but liquidGG basically clarified the results I was speaking of. My questions is how does the game calculate the combat based on fleet sizes?



Say my above example. If I have 20 destroyer class ships in fleets of 5 all attacking one fleet of 2-3 larger ships at the same time. When the battle ensues it is broken down into 4 battles of 5 smaller ships versus 3 larger ships rather than 20 smaller ships versus 3 larger ships, which of course the 3 larger ships wipe the 5 ships out easily four times which doesnt really seem right.

oflow wrote:
sorry i didnt word this properly but liquidGG basically clarified the results I was speaking of. My questions is how does the game calculate the combat based on fleet sizes?



Say my above example. If I have 20 destroyer class ships in fleets of 5 all attacking one fleet of 2-3 larger ships at the same time. When the battle ensues it is broken down into 4 battles of 5 smaller ships versus 3 larger ships rather than 20 smaller ships versus 3 larger ships, which of course the 3 larger ships wipe the 5 ships out easily four times which doesnt really seem right.

Fleets engage independently specifically to avoid Giant Fleets of Doom. Without a fleet limitation, the game would degenerate into a scenario where the biggest fleet always wins. (At higher levels, the computer has been seen putting out forty 15 or 18 CP fleets PER TURN. You really don't want to face those kinds of numbers all at once.)



My suggestion would be to always keep your fleets at their maximum size in order to reduce the chance of your ships being defeated in detail.



As to which class of ships to use, that's still being discussed. In the beta, by far the most efficient use of your CP was to make glass cannon destroyers. Right now, my understanding is that it's looking like omni-tanked battleships MAY be the way to go, but people are still running numbers. The problem larger ships have is that smaller ships can double-team them, while they can only attack one ship at a time. What remains to be seen is whether or not omni-tanked battleships do as well as either tanked or glass cannon destroyers, worse than them, or better than them.

Taliesyn wrote:
The problem larger ships have is that smaller ships can double-team them, while they can only attack one ship at a time. What remains to be seen is whether or not omni-tanked battleships do as well as either tanked or glass cannon destroyers, worse than them, or better than them.

Double-teaming is only a problem if the larger ship uses a lot of missiles. In this case, the large ship fires a single salvo at one small ship, which overkills it, and in the meantime both smaller ships are doing damage (missile or otherwise). However, overkill is not a factor for beam or kinetic weapons. These fire multiple times, and as soon as one small ship is killed the large ship switches to the remaining target.



IMHO, omnitank BS are the best approach, although I do look forward to proof of this by a number-cruncher more talented than me. Furthermore against the AI, laser armed ships are the best approach, since the AI usually ignores shields, and also beam research is on the same path as deflectors so you get higher kinetic defense "for free".

davea wrote:
Double-teaming is only a problem if the larger ship uses a lot of missiles. In this case, the large ship fires a single salvo at one small ship, which overkills it, and in the meantime both smaller ships are doing damage (missile or otherwise). However, overkill is not a factor for beam or kinetic weapons. These fire multiple times, and as soon as one small ship is killed the large ship switches to the remaining target.



IMHO, omnitank BS are the best approach, although I do look forward to proof of this by a number-cruncher more talented than me. Furthermore against the AI, laser armed ships are the best approach, since the AI usually ignores shields, and also beam research is on the same path as deflectors so you get higher kinetic defense "for free".

There is another problem with overkill. Every weapon above that needed to kill the target may as well not be there. That's another advantage for smaller ships over larger ones - they actually negate a LOT of the larger ships' firepower that way. (The flipside, of course, is that the fleet with the smaller ships does less damage each round as they die off, while the big ships keep firing at full strength until they're dead.) Yes, there are four salvos at each range (other than for missiles), but the small ships waste a lot of the larger ships' firepower with each salvo.



That said, personally, I'm with you - I think laser-equipped omni-tanked battleships are overall the best design (although the exact numbers for the tank depend on what you'll be facing), but I'm nowhere near the kind of number cruncher it takes to actually mathematically determine it. That said, once my fleets reach size 15, I like to start including a single dreadnaught in my offensive fleets equipped for planet busting. It makes invasions go a LOT faster, without sacrificing a ton of firepower. My defensive fleets, though, tend to remain all-battleship (once available) regardless of size.



ETA - Just to keep the AI (or my opponent) honest, I do usually mount two weapon systems. I'm just partial to lasers due to their efficiency at all ranges. That means that my designs are usually 1/2 to 2/3 lasers, the rest missiles. If the opponents start putting up tons of flak, I'll switch the missiles for kinetic weapons, but I HATE kinetics in this game. They just don't do enough at long range. I used to go all lasers, but then had a bad experience against the AI where it stacked heavy shields against my fleets. Ouch.

I'm having the exact opposite result compared to liquid against the AI.



I can best fleets with twice my military power with destroyers when they are packing dreadnoughts.



The key is heavy weapon offense (I use beam weapons myself). If my fleet has enough offense to break through your dreadnought, then I can kill one ship for every one you kill. And then numbers are very much in my favor.