I'm definitely not the first person asking about how any of this works and it looks like a good portion of, if not, everyone is trying to figure this all out at the same time. Thought I'd put up some thoughts on the whole thing now and see what others think. Some questions, some observations, and what have you.



Prior to this, as we all know, the types were straightforward and even showed their own animation/graphic when countering their respective weapon type. Deflectors showed bullets being blocked, Shields showed a visible shield coming up when beams were about to hit, and Flak, well, it showed missiles exploding. With the current changes, I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at anymore. It doesn't seem nearly one to one and, while I'm not disagreeable about the changes, I'm definitely at a loss as to where to begin putting it all together.



I went about reading the tech trees and came to the conclusion that all the defense modules were 'identical' minus the flavor text and 'special' bonuses. They all give defense, but you gain/lose things like evasion, accuracy, hp/hp-repair, etc. Unfortunately when it came time to actually test anything, the Cravers, as my opponent, decided to move around a bunch, couldn't catch them, and then showed up with a myriad of different weapon systems instead of the Kinetic they were originally packing; it all went moot. I did, however, have an interesting moment with some pirates that outnumbered me heavily and the one fight with a Craver fleet I actually got showed something interesting as well. No clue where these pieces fit in, if they fit in, but I'm dropping them here because I'm sure not getting anywhere tossing it about in my brain.



During the fight with the pirates, I had Melee Kinetic and 30 (300 defense I believe) MP worth of Deflection to their Long Range Kinetic and 0 defenses at all. Their five ships destroyed one of my three during Long Range, they did absolutely no damage at all in Medium, destroying two of theirs, and no damage to me in Melee, and destroyed a third before the fight ended. Both sides visible hit each other in all phases with no signs of the usual deflection animation (more on that in a moment). There are a few reasons this fight stands out. Prior to this expansion, the same scenario of a five pirate fleet vs three of mine, with both Kinetics, Deflectors on my side, nothing on theirs, would always result in a resounding defeat for me, with me being lucky to take a single one with me. Second, the sheer lack of damage show in any other phase minus the 'matching' phase for the weapon type struck me as odd (there are so many reasons that could be for this I couldn't begin to mention anything other than it looked strange seeing a ship completely decimated with what looked to be the same number of hits in Long Range as Medium, but have absolutely nothing meaningful happen to it in Medium). Third, and final, the post-battle screen showed that they had an Average Defense Efficiency of 74% (to my 52%), with Best Defense being Deflectors that they didn't have (and I did).



The fight with the Cravers was a resounding defeat largely because of the sheer mix of weapons they had verse the defenses I had, but one thing stuck out. They had one ship with Medium Range beams (my fleet all had two shields; 300 defense worth)and, on occasion, I would see a shield effect go up around my ships when a beam impacted. Not always, but twice or thrice, I saw it.



The effect display baffles me because I've never seen kinetic deflection at all post Disharmony, but now, occasionally, I'll see the shield defense effect on the occasional beam impact. What in the world does this signify?



I, unfortunately, haven't been able to test my idea that defense, the number, is completely universal, with the special modifications (such as +Evasion, -Hull Weakness, etc.) being the only difference. On the one hand, it makes zero sense, because why would Flak protect against bullets or beams? On the other hand, I'm at a loss as to why you'd ever mix half of these because the pros/cons of the special modifiers would actually cancel themselves out; or worse. I always thought it was odd that when researching a weapon type you got the defense for that weapon type, which did you zero good if the enemy was researching a different weapon type. If I went Kinetic and my enemy went Beam, I now have to research Beam to get the defense, so why not just use Beam? Even more so now that some ships are straight given special attributes towards specific weapon types, within the same race even. You're almost shoehorned into researching the whole tree just to make sure you're capable of defending against anything. Seems weird to have the option of choosing to research a specific weapon type, but still need to research every other weapon type, because you need the defensive measures; feels like the illusion of choice since you're going to be forced into researching the whole damn tree anyway for the defenses.



Anyhow, bit of a rant there at the end, but I got the information out I wanted out. I just don't know anyone I can actually go one to one for and test these things in a controlled manner. I want to see someone not test Deflector vs Kinetic, as is the normal way of looking at it prior to this, but test Shields vs Kinetic and Flak vs Kinetic. Same defense total (first level Flak is 100, Kinetic is 100, and Shield is 150, per module I believe), just to see how it stacks up. Seems odd that you couldn't use evasion to dodge Beams, because Evasion is only for Kinetic, or, more likely, the defense number is only applied to Kinetic; thus making no sense to try to use +evasion for anything but Kinetic. Or even Shields, with the +HP/HP-repair, because the defense number would only apply to beams.



Something I have gathered, though, is that all defenses apply against fighters and bombers if what the tooltips say are anything to go by as what I've gathered (not gotten to the point of actually trying to counter fighters/bombers; again, no control partner) is that point defense applies directly against fighters/bombers in relation to taking them out in a fight. What I don't know is if you have to have the point defense module equipped or not to benefit. The module itself seems to state that it gains bonuses from defense modules on the ship, but no clue if the defense modules have inherit point defense or not without the module.

Hello,



maybe this post helps you. I didn't even realize that you can now change the range of your weapons until I stumbled upon it.

It is ambiguous from the tool tips, but deflect only works against kinetic, etc.



Yeah, the primary weapons/defenses in the tech tree are pretty stupid. there are more tiers of bombers and fighters than there are PRIMARY WEAPONS.



The animations I couldn't care less about, but it's certainly silly that they took a step backward with them.



Bottom line: as the game stands now, putting 1 or 2 of each defense mod on your ships is ideal, since that will prevent over 60% of the damage. 3 mods if you know what the enemy is building. armor mods are very good, especially on destroyers b/c it is only 5 tonnage. Don't build bombers, they do very little damage.

Not sure what to make of it, but I had a pirate fleet pop on my head (I'm terribly unlucky) with kinetic and missiles, and watched my Shields (all I had for defense modules at the time) block incoming kinetic shots.



Now, while I know the animations are of little concern to some, it should be a concern, because as far as I can tell, that's the only idea I've got as to whether anything is working or not, because I sure as hell can't trust the post-battle screen to tell me jack all, lol. It's saying people have defense modules they don't, so who knows what it's doing there.

To be honest Disharmony is a giant frustration for me at the moment, I simply dont get how the new modules work. For one the AI swarms me with ship designs I simply dont get. Zero weapon stats, zero defense stats, no siege power, no bombers, fighters or troops yet they deal damage and can even survive versus my fleets.



Just a few minutes ago I was sending a 8000 MP fleet (16/16) against a 2500 MP AI fleet (9/9) and he wiped me out without a single loss even tho he had no defense modules installed. He countered me twice but with such a power difference cards shouldnt matter that much IMO. If it all comes down to battle cards now the AI always has a strong advantage simply through the numbers he throws at you. Even if you manage to get 80% or all card battles right the remaining 20 will cripple you.



Maybe I should sit down and try to read the stuff more. So far I didnt understand anything by "just" playing it.

Affinity wrote:
It is ambiguous from the tool tips, but deflect only works against kinetic, etc.



Yeah, the primary weapons/defenses in the tech tree are pretty stupid. there are more tiers of bombers and fighters than there are PRIMARY WEAPONS.



The animations I couldn't care less about, but it's certainly silly that they took a step backward with them.



Bottom line: as the game stands now, putting 1 or 2 of each defense mod on your ships is ideal, since that will prevent over 60% of the damage. 3 mods if you know what the enemy is building. armor mods are very good, especially on destroyers b/c it is only 5 tonnage. Don't build bombers, they do very little damage.

Wouldn't it just be easier to just make 4 types of ships in a fleet. One with 8 Kinetic/4 Deflectors, one with 8 Beams/ 4 Shields, one with 8 Missles/ 4 Flak, and one specifically for invasion? It's impossible to stop that kind of fleet.