Possible issue with Pirate ships

from GalCiv2 Forums
Got a pirate event going on in my current game of DA, but getting some weird results on combat.

Let me lay it out.
My fleet: 3 Cruisers @ 27 HP each.
Weapons: 15 points in Missile tech.
Defense: 8 points in Armor.

Pirate Fleet: 3 Cruisers @ 28 HP each.
Weapons: 7 points in Mass Drivers
Defense: 16 points in Armor.

Off hand, what do you think the result should be? A pretty certain victory for me, right?
Problem is I was doing almost no damage to the Pirates and they were punching through my armor pretty well.
Final result: I lost all 3 of my ships while doing only 10 points of damage to the Pirates.

And that was not just a bad luck run, I have lost several ships to opponents they should have been able to kill easily, this was just the worst example so far.

Has anybody seen badly skewed results like this? Or is somehow my game corrupted. I suddenly noticed that any planet that does not have a starport on it, now does not appear to have the option to build one. I thought it might have occured after the subspace tear mega-event that limits your speed to 5 pc/week, but when I went back to saved games from before that, was seeing the same thing. So not sure of the cause there.

Hopefully the new build of DA will fix some of these lingering issues.

Thanks.
Jarod Silverstar
3,654 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi Jerod. Yep, the Pirates! can be a real pain in the neck. I get them in pretty much every game I play, (at least it seems that way), and yes, I have seen results similar to those you describe. What may be causing your confusion is a simple lack of information. Any race that is created is given certain starting bonuses. I suspect that the Pirates! receive them also. A bonus in attack, or defense, or Luck, even, would make battles turn out much differently than you expect. Of course, there is no way to check this in-game, because there is no way to gain intelligence on them. But, since...
I have lost several ships to opponents they should have been able to kill easily


You will be able to see all of their stats (with a high enough intelligence rating). Look for combat related bonuses and compare them to yours. You may find your answer right there. Remember, in GalCiv, perhaps even more so than in real life: Knowledge is Power. Good luck.
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Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The combat system has changed in Dark Avatar. Let me explain:

1. Luck affects minimum damage. If you were to have a luck score of 20, and a ship with an attack of 10, the ship will deal 2 points of damage in combat (10 x 0.2 = 2). This is assumes no defenses, otherwise defenses will apply (see below).
2. Each weapon a ship has provides it with 1 attack per turn. So if a ship had 3 weapons, it would be able to fire up to 3 shots. Normally a ship will fire all of its shots at once, but if it doesn't need to use all its attacks against a target to destroy it, it will aim the remaining shots at the next ship. If the next ship is destroyed and the attacking ship still has shots to fire, it will target the next ship until it runs out of shots... or targets.
3. Each attack weakens defenses regardless of weather or not it did any damage. So if a ship had a defense of 16 armour, and it was hit with an attack of 5 mass driver, it would have an effective defense of 11 armour against the next mass driver attack. So another attack of 5 mass driver will reduce the defenses to 6 armour, and so on until the ship ran out of defense, at which point it will suffer the full brunt of the attacks. This resets every attack round, so all defenses will be at full power next round.

I hope this helps.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I had wondered about the luck factor, that could be part of it. However, I took luck as one of my racial bonuses on the custom race I am playing so I should not be hurting that badly.

DivineWrath,
Your explaination is all well and good, but I thought armor was to defend against mass drivers, right? So when I am using missiles against their armor, I understood the defensive value was the square root of the value, thus 4 instead of 16 on those ships.
Can you explain how a defensive value of 4 can stop a 15 point missile attack for next to no damage? The combat lasted serveral rounds, there were 25+ shots on both sides.

Would luck really account for that difference? Consistently? I can see them avoiding damage on one or two shots, but not all of them.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Would luck really account for that difference? Consistently? I can see them avoiding damage on one or two shots, but not all of them.


Luck ability does not affect defense, only the minimum attack of the one that has it.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I seemed to get skewed results like this too, especially when my ships had multiple defenses (starbase bonus) - the pirates totally wiped me out (and everyone else too) until i advanced my tech well beyond theres (and found 4, count 'em 4 lucky rangers)
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
DivineWrath,
Your explaination is all well and good, but I thought armor was to defend against mass drivers, right? So when I am using missiles against their armor, I understood the defensive value was the square root of the value, thus 4 instead of 16 on those ships.
Can you explain how a defensive value of 4 can stop a 15 point missile attack for next to no damage? The combat lasted serveral rounds, there were 25+ shots on both sides.


I was creating examples to explain the new combat system, not to explain why your ships were destroyed. I wasn't actually explaining the fight.

Without actually seeing the fight in question, I can't say for certain what happened. Maybe the pirates were lucky and were doing max damage, while you were rolling a lot of 1s.