Questions about defense modules.

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VIPNasarog

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VIPNasarog

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12 years ago

Apr 7, 2013, 5:38:55 PM

Aureon wrote:
If it was 1:1, it wouldn't even be worth building.

It's 4:1 for flak/kinetic and 2:1 for shields, very roughly.

Is that the ration to offense/defense? care to elaborate?

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NoxMortem

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NoxMortem

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Apr 9, 2013, 10:52:01 AM

And how effective are the hitpoint and repair modules compared to the defense? I do not ecxactly understand the system and if it is better to get 8.000 hitpoints or 4.000.

I know there is a majority of factors but just as a rule of thumb, how good are they compared to the tonnage they need? I mean a big hitpoint ships will take like forever to be repaired after a battle.

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Affinity

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Affinity

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Apr 8, 2013, 7:52:45 PM

Aureon wrote:
If it was 1:1, it wouldn't even be worth building.

It's 4:1 for flak/kinetic and 2:1 for shields, very roughly.

This is an ok rule of thumb, and your analysis shows a good understanding of the combat mechanics

However, be careful with deflect and flak. Reducing the damage by 50 is often just not enough. The 50% that does get through will often times outright destroy your ships. Just a little deflect will keep you safe for the first two phses, but kinetics only needs one good phase to kill everything, especially with damage mods, ship level, an heroes.

I usually strive for a 2:1 ratio for whatever weapon i am trying to defend against.

Basically, dont expect to survive a kinetics blast unless you have extra defenses or good defense bonuses.

Another thing is that ships will be attacked by two enemies if they are outnumbered, in which case bare minimum defenses are completely useless.

As for a ship building idea....

Take optimal defense, make a cruiser with flak and shield and kinetics, and the defense mod. get hero speced into defense. Flak will kill all missiles easily, the laser dmage that does get through can be repaired. Kinetics will make them very sad

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VIPNasarog

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VIPNasarog

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Apr 8, 2013, 11:37:08 AM

Stonebolt wrote:
nerfed eh? Well don't most people already use heros on systems most of the time rather than fleets? If they were nerfed on fleets without a matching nerf on systems, almost nobody would put them on fleets.

They need to be nerfed in the system/fleet. Heroes are too powerful.

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Stonebolt

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Stonebolt

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Apr 8, 2013, 1:06:52 AM

nerfed eh? Well don't most people already use heros on systems most of the time rather than fleets? If they were nerfed on fleets without a matching nerf on systems, almost nobody would put them on fleets.

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VIPNasarog

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VIPNasarog

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Apr 7, 2013, 9:30:20 PM

Hero's need to be nerfed a little.

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Aluzird

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Aluzird

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Apr 7, 2013, 8:39:57 PM

Without heros or a difference in technology, yea it should.

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Stonebolt

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Stonebolt

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Apr 7, 2013, 6:59:13 PM

Aureon wrote:

Still, one quarter of the MP of missiles in flak will reduce damage by roughly 50%, and half of about 80%. That's empirical.

So if my enemy has 100 MP of missiles and I have 25 MP of flak, I should eliminate about half the damage?

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Aureon

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Aureon

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12 years ago

Apr 7, 2013, 6:01:38 PM

Rough example:

300 research cost-tier techs.

Kin weapon: 7 industry, 9 weight, 20 mp - 9 hits per round.

Plating: 3.5 industry, 8 weight, 10 mp - 7 deflected hits per round.

What you have to factor in is accuracy: Kinetic, for example, has 20% accuracy in long range, 40% in medium and 90% in melee.

Going by "Same-MP", if you have 40 mp of guns, it's 18 hits per round, which means 4 hits in long range, 8 hits in medium range, and 17 hits in melee range.

If you get a single plating, you reduce it to 0 hits in long range, 1 hit in medium range, and 10 hits in melee range. Going any further with plating isn't advantageous, since two phases out of three are already nullified (out of 29 total hits, only 11 remain)

Flak: Flak throws three interception "Chances" at incoming missiles. The formula is currently unknown, and that's the problem. I'd say it's probably ({Accuracy}/{Evasion})*50%, but i couldn't say.

Still, one quarter of the MP of missiles in flak will reduce damage by roughly 50%, and half of about 80%. That's empirical.

Shields are less efficient, because they scale badly against damage bonuses of any type, so they're balanced at 4:1 reducing 60% or so, before damage bonuses, which everyone has (Heroes and power modules), so more realistically it's 2:1.

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Stonebolt

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Stonebolt

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Apr 7, 2013, 3:37:46 AM

I'll need to get this figured out if I'm ever going to design good ships.

My first question is, do defense modules protect the entire fleet, or just the individual ship that they're on?

My second question is, if defense modules can't protect the entire fleet, and each module can only protect against a single weapon type, why use them at all? In this case, wouldn't it be better just to devote all that tonnage to weapons? My logic for that is this: For each defense module, there is a one in three chance of every point of damage it comes across being the type of damage it can intercept. However for each weapon module, there is a two in three chance of every point of defense it comes across being a type it can bypass. With such an obvious disparity, why not maximize weapon tonnage, and minimize damage by destroying your enemy as quickly as possible?

Also, are there any repair modules that repair ships fleet-wide? And if a repair module notices its ship it completely undamaged will it repair another ship in the fleet?

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Aureon

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Aureon

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12 years ago

Apr 7, 2013, 12:58:23 PM

If it was 1:1, it wouldn't even be worth building.

It's 4:1 for flak/kinetic and 2:1 for shields, very roughly.

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NoxMortem

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NoxMortem

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Apr 7, 2013, 10:46:33 AM

How do i find exactly out how many defence i need. I always thought its about 1:1 with weapons but from the fittings i read here even 1 kinetic armor is sufficient to survive against the early pirates.

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The_Quasar

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The_Quasar

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Apr 7, 2013, 8:57:18 AM

Stonebolt wrote:
Cool, cool. Thanks for the help. I've been looking around here and a lot of people seem to be saying kinetic weapons are underpowered. Are they expected to get a buff in the upcoming expansion or a patch?

Only to begin with in a game, and that's mainly because, at the start, battles rarely get to the third stage where kinetics are the most powerful... kinetics in the late game are very deadly, perhaps even the most deadly weapon.

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KingJohnVI

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KingJohnVI

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Apr 7, 2013, 4:38:58 AM

No problem. I will tell you that combat will be getting a significant overhaul in the expansion pack (for example, fighters and bombers will be included). Beyond that, you'll have to read the dev posts for addition info. Good luck!

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Stonebolt

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Stonebolt

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Apr 7, 2013, 4:26:43 AM

Cool, cool. Thanks for the help. I've been looking around here and a lot of people seem to be saying kinetic weapons are underpowered. Are they expected to get a buff in the upcoming expansion or a patch?

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KingJohnVI

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KingJohnVI

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Apr 7, 2013, 4:07:44 AM

Yes, you can get more information by asking here. Plenty of people like myself are happy to help. There are also wikis, in game tutorials (the pop-ups when you first play), and pop-ups when you hover over a technology or any item inside that technology.

As to your follow-up question, maybe. Each defense works differently. There are 3 phases, each with 4 rounds. With flak, there is a % chance to stop a missile every round of combat. As their are 4 combat rounds per phase, it means that your ship with flak could stop up to 4 missiles that are incoming prior to the impact on your ship, and the better research into flak defenses that you have, the higher that probability is. Again, you'll want to hover over the techs in game to get more detail on the actual numbers.

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Stonebolt

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Stonebolt

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Apr 7, 2013, 4:00:46 AM

That does help a lot. Is there a place I can get more information like this?

Also, let's say I'm up against an enemy whose weapons are exclusively missiles and they have no defenses. My ships have lasers and flak. Will my flak absorb more units of damage per unit of tonnage than the amount of the units of damage per unit of tonnage dealt by my lasers? I've thought to myself that this might be how Amplitude Studios compensated for the one-in-three/two-in-three disparity mentioned in my OP.

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KingJohnVI

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KingJohnVI

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Apr 7, 2013, 3:47:31 AM

Great questions. The answer is that each ship's defenses work only for themselves individually.

As to your second question, generally you should not put on all three types (except perhaps on dreadnoughts), however, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use defenses. More weapons allows you to kill enemies faster, but 1 additional weapon is not going to be as effective as one defense if you are using the right defense. This means that if your opponent is using all kinetic, use only kinetic defenses. But if they are using only missiles, use missile defenses. You will often find most opponents like to specialize in a single weapon type in their research tree. Use this to your advantage, and design ships based upon the weapons they are using. If you have no idea, you could use armor, but its effectiveness isn't nearly as high as the correct defense. Occasionally, people will use a small amount of two types of defenses (usually flak and shield) in the event the enemy diversifies their fleet.

Note: Its good to have some sort of armor or defenses so that you can make it to the next round of combat. If you have 8 missiles firing twice, its a lot better than 10 firing once.

In short, use the defense that fits the enemy weapon. If you don't know the enemy weapons or they diversify too much, you can use armor or larger ships. Hope this helps, and good luck!

Edit: As to your last question, there are later repair modules that repair fleet wide. Those that do so state it specifically in their module description.

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