Hey Endless Space Experts,



I encountered a very strange space battle some minutes ago in a late SP game: Own and enemy fleet maxed out (both in tech and command points), hero level 20 on my and level 14 on the computers side. As the strength of both fleets was fairly equal, I decided to play it out manually.



Despite me countering all enemy cards and the AI only using non-hero cards, my fleet was almost never able to hit the enemy, while almost all of his shots were perfectly acurate (I did about 700 points hull damage overall, which is ridiculous at this point). I tried some other fleets and cards, but the result was always comparable.



Now, is this some strange kind of bug or am I missing some superhero ability? Any information or advice would be appreciated.

What difficulty-level was that on and what Level did the enemy ships have?



In my opinion the reason for that outcome is found in the combat-mechanics themselves, where defenses allow complete negation of damage instead of just reducing it. A combination of hero-boni, fleet-level-boni and difficulty-level-boni can push defenses to such an extreme level, that it turns the fleet absolutely invincible.

There really isn't enough information here. You will do zero damage if the enemy defenses are present in larger numbers than your weapons. For example, 10 beams will be completely absorbed by 12 shields, given equal tech levels. Similarly, you will take huge damage if the enemy weapons are present in larger numbers than your defense.



If you feel that neither this, nor ship level are causing the problem, please zip and attach a save game to a post (using the instructions in the sticky welcome thread of the tech support sub-forum) and we will take a look.

Thanks for your answers so far!



I am not into the details of calculating weapon damage, but guessing from the numbers I see in the savegame, I don't think that ship levels or tech differences and so on are responsible for this outcome. I attached the savegame using winrar to this post. The enemy fleet in question is the big one at 'URSA' (around center of the map), a comparable one of mine for testing is in 'AINAE' (southwest of URSA).



Hope this helps, thanks for the responses again.
enemy superfleet problem.rar

I loaded the save and tried the battle. The main problem you have is, your fleet isn't maxed in tech. Here's what happens...



Your fleet is composed mainly of 5x 4CP omni-ships, each having approximately equal amount of all weapons and all defenses, no support modules benefiting the whole fleet, no armor. Also, your weapons and defenses are NOT the highest upgrades. There's 2 better modules for each of your weapons and defenses, so your fleet isn't maxed out in techs. Even support modules are not highest-tech ones. They look like obsolete ships...



The enemy fleet is mainly composed of 7x 2CP kinetic-omni-ships, each having kinetic weapons and approximately equal amount of all defense, plus a lot of additional armor. They are probably of highest tech too, meaning more effective than your own.



In combat:

-Your weapons are all countered equally by the enemy defenses.

-Only 1/3 of your defenses are useful in countering the enemy weapons.

-Enemy has more, smaller ships, spreading your shots over many resilient targets.

-Your ships are initially damaged, which doesn't show in the Military Power value.

-His hero is Pilot and Commander, he might have more offense and defense bonuses than your Pilot hero, possibly the mighty -15% enemy accuracy reducing your weapons effectiveness.



Possible bug : on the galaxy map, your ships have 2767 MP in each weapon MP, while in combat reports they have 1134 MP only. Same effect with defenses. Maybe the hero offense/defense bonuses are not taken into account?



Still, there's a solution. When you get to his location, be quick and attack before he does. You'll fight his smallest fleet and crush it. As for his hero fleet, you're better off designing ships using highest-tech modules, focus mainly on 1 single weapon (beam works wonders), then upgrade your fleet and go for it.

The MP calculations are not strictly correct. They do not take hero boosts/faction traits into account at all and to a lesser degree weapon tech. This is most likely so invasions are not affected by these things, since invasion speed is calculated on MP. Eg.For the tech to MP shift, the 2nd laser does twice as much as the 1st one, but a full upgrade does not double MP. If it did, by the 4th tier of weapons, no amount of defence will slow invasion to more than 4 turns.



Even so in this case, the player ships should be technically "more armed" (which is what MP calculates) but will lose because just happens that you are using omni-weapons against omni defence + armour, whereas he is using kinetic (the strongest weapon type if battle goes to melee, and since you do 0 dmg, it will) weapons against omni defence.

Creating fleets from only the largest ships actually makes you voulnerable to destroyer-spam (Cravers are a real adept at this). If you have 4 ships and they have 11 even if you have greater firepower you're likely to get torn to ribbons since most of the enemy fleet will attack you uncontested. Not unless you can really cut them down with strong lasers and kinetics which (at least as I understand it) can switch targets on each salvo. So if you have efficient weapons like these your larget vessels can shutdown such a wave of smaller ships. If you have for example 4 missiile barges and you face of vs 11 destroyers only 4 targets will effectively be destroyed by the end of phase.



With that in mind I tend to use destroyers early game - obviously, then when available switch to battleships sporting only all manner of defenses and kinetics as a primary weapon. 5 of those can be very efficient at taking down typical mixed enemy fleets (as long as you're not too far behind in weapons tech).

Omni-Weapons really is a no-go against AI Battleships and Dreadnoughts as those always are equipped with Omni-Defense.

As has been said before: Concentrate on one weapon-type and you'll do much better.

Dear All, thanks for the responses. Good to hear that it does not seem to be a bug - will work on my ES skills with your suggestions. Thanks again!

take note that these suggestions are only for against AI.