I get it, don't mistake that, lol.



Looking at it, it feels like they were trying to allow people to specialize in a weapon type (a couple UE ships even come with ship bonuses towards one or another type if I recall), but in practice it falls apart because any research in the defense against a type of weapon you'll be facing will result in having that weapon; which will end up being better than the respective range setting of whatever weapon you were planning to specialize in.



There isn't any real point, aside from 'because', to go with Long Range or Medium Range Kinetics (as an example) when you're facing Missiles or Beams (to match range for range as best you can) when you will only have Deflection defense modules (which could, arguably, be the only real 'all around Defense module' due to Evasion modifiers assuming it works as straight forward as it sounds). In order to actually stand a chance against opposing weapons, you'd want to research the defense modules against them, which give you the weapon types, which operate better at the range you'd be inclined to set your current weapon selection to, which makes the whole thing null and void (and I just repeated myself, lol).



I think if they're actually trying to give people freedom to choose weapons and defense modules without being shoehorned into having everything anyway, they need to separate defense modules and weapon types within the tree. Let people research, say, Kinetics and pick up Shields, without getting Beams, to counter said Beams, and then you'd have a reason, better than it is now anyway, for going MR Kinetics.



The more I'm dabbling in it though, the more I get the feeling the reason they did it was to allow people to 'oh shit moment' their ship designs.



Example: Your first contact with an alien race ends with the opponent openly attacking, or you attacking, and you realize they've been researching Missiles while you've been researching Beams. You swap over and retrofit your ships to Long Range Beams to have some effectiveness, while researching the proper defense module tech and getting Missiles yourself.



That's the only way I can see it working out. In the end, though, it'd just come down to a throwaway mechanic after you get those defenses, as you'll have the weapon types to match the range as well. Then it's back to doing what you did prior to this range option and trying to simply one up the next encounter with a mix of defense/weapon modules set to the ranges they're 'optimized' at.



EDIT: The sad part, for me, about all of this is that I'm not disagreeing with the changes. I'm disagreeing over the fact that they don't mesh with the game's design as it stands on implementation. Having the ability to 'configure' weapons for long, medium, or short range is an idea I can get behind, it's just that with the way the combat mechanics work, the phases, research trees, etc. it, at best, lasts a few turns after first contact, at worst doesn't get used at all. Now, if you could try to force the phases to resolve in your preferred range, that might give the range options some better merit, but as it stands, I'm with everyone else in saying that it just feels really, really taped on.

Also it looks like the pattern is that incoming damage gets divided by (1 + defense / 100). So 3 defense modules with 100 defense each divide damage by 4 (75% reduction) and 5 divide it by 6 (83% reduction). The level 1 shield has 150 defense instead, so 3 of those divide damage by 5.5 (82% reduction) and 5 divide it by 8.5 (88% reduction). This matches Affinity's experimental data to within 1%.



Honestly I like the idea better than the old system (the old "subtractive"-style defenses encouraged all-or-nothing designs), though the values may need some tweaking.

blurryhunter wrote:
Even the AI appears to always throw on (this is just the few games I've had, mind you) weapons directly akin to the original combat phase benefits.

I've seen MR missiles on AI.

BattleDescriptor.xml says

[code]



















































































[/code]

so it looks like it is indeed damage.

Scrangos wrote:
Also LR does 100% dmg on long phase, 25% on medium phase and 25% on melee phase. Medium does 50% dmg on long phase, 100% damage on medium phase and 50% damage on melee phase. Melee weapons do 25% damage on long phase 75% damage on medium phase and 100% damage on melee phase.

Do you mean accuaracy by this? Because if so I think you're wrong. I think it was LR 100/50/0%, MR 33/100/33% and M 0/50/100% (LR-Phase/MR-Phase/M-Phase). At least this was written in one of the EXP-discussion

when they say "beams work best at medium range" I believe they are refering to damage per tonnage. At least that's how I see it. I touched on this in my earlier post.

/#/endless-space/forum/34-faq/thread/14807-disharmony-need-explanation-of-new-mechanics

So if beams, for example, work best at medium range, does choosing a short or long ranged version change that or does it plug a gap? What I mean is, do they stop being effective at medium range or do they always have that and merely become better at an additional chosen range?

Allendana wrote:
I may be mistaken, but don`t all weapons fire more shots the closer you chose their range? For example, all M ranged weapons fire each and every turn = 6 times during a fight whereas MR fire only every second (reload 1 turn) and LR every 3rd (reload 2 turns) round. So from my point of view M weapons have the advantage to deal their damage before the LR even hits the first targets. What do you think? Am I completely wrong?

Theres 4 rounds per turn, and 3 turns. Long range shoots on first round and takes 3 rounds to reload (and hit) hitting once per turn. Medium Shoots, reload/hits alternating in rounds, so hitting twice per turn. Melee weapons dont reload they just shoot and hit every round. Also LR does 100% dmg on long phase, 25% on medium phase and 25% on melee phase. Medium does 50% dmg on long phase, 100% damage on medium phase and 50% damage on melee phase. Melee weapons do 25% damage on long phase 75% damage on medium phase and 100% damage on melee phase.

I may be mistaken, but don`t all weapons fire more shots the closer you chose their range? For example, all M ranged weapons fire each and every turn = 6 times during a fight whereas MR fire only every second (reload 1 turn) and LR every 3rd (reload 2 turns) round. So from my point of view M weapons have the advantage to deal their damage before the LR even hits the first targets. What do you think? Am I completely wrong?

Combat_Sheep888 wrote:
Ah what Affinity says makes some sense when cards are mentioned. You could go defence heavy and hit them short ranged or go glass cannon and hit them long range, or jack of all trades medium.

Yeah, I think if you couple it with the idea that you might not have the research to tackle whatever tier of weapon you come across and have to retrofit in order to match their phase, I start to see a picture of what kind of idea they wanted.



Still feels taped together though.



I think the question I'd like answered the most is if they intended for the mechanic to be used constantly throughout a game, perhaps trying to surprise the opponent, or just in the early stages, while everyone is trying to tech into various things, and you can't expect to have the counters to retrofit into when facing a new threat.



Everything I've seen seems to point to it being an early adoption, counter mechanic, until you can get a solid military tech foundation and actually start countering with defenses and cards. The mechanic doesn't seem to hold up when you picture a long game that's gone on enough turns to have most of the weapons/defenses tech unlocked.

Ah what Affinity says makes some sense when cards are mentioned. You could go defence heavy and hit them short ranged or go glass cannon and hit them long range, or jack of all trades medium.

It's that lack of variety that kills me.



As you mentioned, it's trivial to throw on a couple of each defense module. It wasn't really all that difficult to do before either, if you knew what sort of tech level your opponent's weapons were at, but I digress. By default, just getting those modules you now have all the weapons needed to perform better at any range your chosen weapon type doesn't, lol.



Now, unlike the defense thing you mentioned, throwing on every single weapon bit by bit on your ship is probably asking for problems when it comes to damage overall (little bit in each phase sort of thing), but you wouldn't find it too hard to manage it with different ships packing different weapons.



I'm still struggling to come up with a valid reason as to where these ranges would work out other than my aforementioned emergency retrofitting.



Even the card idea you put forth, Affinity, is on shaky ground (which you said yourself basically), because there's little point in it. You'd be better off, as far as I'm aware, just throwing on LR missiles with those M kinetics, and using defensive cards to get to M phase if most of your damage is there, because the LR missiles would still pack enough punch to be better than M missiles, lol.



I don't know. I feel like we're either missing something in this picture that sets it all right, or it really is this skewed.



When they talked about revamping the military tree, I was hoping it was to allow a better variety in your researching, . As it stands, you're still looking at having every weapon type just to have the defenses, as was the case before (though if I'm looking at the tree right and projecting my gameplay correctly, you don't need to focus so hard on your tier level of the defenses).



I still think the game is a good game, but it gets to a point where you just start seeing every ship having all the same stuff on it, because they had to research the whole military tech tree to get the defenses, lol. I don't actually think it's possible to go a whole game limiting yourself to bits and pieces of that tree regarding defenses and weapon types. Actually, maybe now, since you've got the single attribute of Defense attached to them, you can slide with tier 1 in a specific defense. Who knows if Flak still operates on the same principle of chance to shoot down.



Battles just seem to come down to 'watch the shots hit me, take no damage in the phase that doesn't match the weapon'. Rather than before, where you had deflectors throwing the projectiles off, watching the missiles explode (or hoping they would lol; I'd like to see Flak actually fire), and the shields absorbing the beam hits. The fighter camera makes things neat, though. Just wish the defense animations were still there. I like the hands off approach to the combat, but it's like it went backwards in terms of presentation as well as this wrench that is the weapon range types.

The same pairings still apply.



Here's some things i've noticed after playing a more extended game:



Other than the 1CP ships, there is literally no reason why you shouldn't have 2 of each defense mod on your ships. It's easy to get cruisers with this, since it only takes 11tons*2mods*3defenses = 66 tons

2 defense mods like this prevents over 70% of all damage it would seem. There is no reason whatsoever to not put these 6 def mods on, since it makes your ships immune to so much damage. If you build a cruiser that lacks at least 2 def mods of each type, it simply isn't as good.



What's wrong with this? no variety. When I go to design a new cruiser, i just put 2 def mods on first thing, every time. If they happen to be heavily favoring a specific weapon type, maybe add a 3rd mod on for that type. Once more people realize this, there will always be cruisers with 2 def mods. It's so cheap to defend so much damage.





However, I did stumble upon what I believe their reasoning behind the different ranges might be. You take, for example, melee kinetics and melee missiles. Then, when you enter a fight, select a defensive card in the LR and MR phase, and then pick weapon overclock or adaptive strategy in the M phase to utilize the fact that you only have melee. Note weapon overclock has +15% accuracy on M phase.



Unfortunately, I hardly think that such a ploy would really amount to much since those melee missiles have such a poor damage per tonnage compared to LR missiles. I think there need to be MORE bonuses to specific ranges, like weapon overclock has, in order to make these range choices more viable.



As it stands, I can count the number of range bonuses on one hand:

Weapon Overclock

Short Circuit

Camouflage (but not really, it's +40% evasion -20% melee damage)

Target Locked



There are too few of these effects, and they are too small to have any significant impact that would justify taking M missles over LR missiles, or MR kinetic over simply M kinetic.

All of the above assumes that the same pairings are still valid... Is that the case? I'm really confused with the new descriptions as well.



So, at the very least we are assuming that its still kinetics/armor, beams/shield, missile/flak? Makes sense but the tool tips with the defense values were a bit confusing =)



Anyway more information on the combat systems (both space combat mechanics and the new invasion/ground mechanics) would be nice for sure.

Where can i find an explaination on the game mechanics changed / added in Disharmony ?



It's fine for me to do some trial and error on the new faction-techs and traits and explore them on my own, but I really want to have some information on

the new combat system and design choices.



For example:

whats up with the new defense moduls and all those new attributes they add

whats up with the new weapon/phase decision, especially concerning the accuracy in different phases .

why does longrange kinetics lvl 1 say 5 projectiles / shoot, yet i only see 3 in the animation (and the accuracy seems to be less than 0.7, too. so whats the interaction with enemy's evasion here ?)

and many more small things like that

blurry that was the whole point of the mess of tests I did earlier in this thread :P The main reason to try and figure out the difference between ranges. 2ndary reason to confirm how the defenses work.



And yeah, as far as I can tell M and MR missles are worthless, and M beams are worthless. LR kinetics and beams might be worth using b/c they hit first....but that just makes 3 weapons that are the same with different categories of defense. Except that missiles are the best, especially with the whole flak-requires-titanium fiasco. Derp.

Igncom1, here's what's got me tangled up;



Why have the special modifiers on the defense modules?



If the intent is to end up having to spread the modules out to counter someone spreading weapon types out, the special modifiers largely cancel out, for better or worse. If the idea was to stack one type to get greater, say, Evasion, what's the point if that defense module serves no purpose against non-Kinetic weapons? The evasion, hull weakness, and bonuses as such seem to be completely out of place. I can understand squeezing things down to a simple Defense attribute, but there seems little reason to even take into account anything else offered by Deflectors, Flak, and Shields when the only option you have is equip the defense module that matches the weapon type you're facing.



This is all shooting off what I'm seeing in game at the moment, mind you. It just seems like it didn't do anything to fix the already black and white defense/weapon match-ups to begin with; minus bringing the number of module tiers to three, putting kinetic in the middle, moving beam to the left, and putting flak on the right of the tree.



That brings me to...



Why have range 'tuning' options on weapon modules?



Now, while I was on my way to type this in here, I did have a bit of an epiphany of sorts on the matter, which I'll mention near the end, but the option seems largely like an illusion of choice; even to the AI thus far.



Why pick any other range of weapon type other than the one that matches the pre-patch phase system anyway? LR, MR, M, Missile, Beam, Kinetic respectively. Even the tool tip seems to encourage this by giving you tool tips that read 'optimized for long range, though beam weapons are least effective here.', 'optimized for medium range, where they're most dangerous.', and 'optimized to target at melee (short) range, where their effectiveness is only average.' What was the original intent on this range idea? As someone put it, you can't choose to force an engagement, or try to, at any one range. Even the AI appears to always throw on (this is just the few games I've had, mind you) weapons directly akin to the original combat phase benefits.



As for my epiphany; I was thinking that this range option gives you the ability to retrofit ships into a different range in the event you're coming up against someone with, say, missiles, and you know you can't make it to medium range, or melee range, with your respective weapons. However, even this falls apart, because in order to counter missiles, you'd end up researching missiles, so their doesn't seem to be a point to bother swapping to LR Kinetics, if you're just going to research the defense to missiles, which hands you missiles that are better at LR.



I haven't even tried to throw fighters and bombers into the mix yet, but this is all looking like a horrible illusion of choice, which is always a terrible notion to me. There's no point in having options if you don't really have options, because in practice, you need them all anyway.



All of my above aside, I still like the game. Disharmony didn't do anything that I didn't already find odd to begin with (the illusion of choice bit on weapons/defenses, for example), but it definitely seemed to throw more choices that make little to no difference when trying to stack it up to anything else I knew about the game before, lol.

i'm talking about ranges.



Is it better to have medium beams with medium missiles? Why not use medium beams with long range missles?

As far as I can see, there's no reason why you would ever use medium missiles, or short range missiles, long range missiles will always do more damage, and earlier, for less tonnage.

Well if you have to build more then one defence type, the overall effect of blocking damage is harder to achieve.

hmmm so you think that having 2 types of the same range "overwhelms" defenses? I thought that they were independent, like your shield defense reduced lasers, regardless of whatever else was happening.



as for how many mods, it seems like 3 is about all you need to reduce 80% of the damage