Wyndstar

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

OK, that test is easy to do. Start a Battle of the Gods scenario. Attack Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 14 blackhole eruptors, and one aereon defense to fill leftover space. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 3120. Total stats: 388 attack and 18 defense. (that's after I give it to the Altarians, it was only 353 attack, 12 defense for me) Defense Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 4 blackhole eruptors, and 21 aereon defenses. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 4320. T

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

See here: WWW Link Reply#4

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Nullspace - I think you understand the value of defense better than anyone. And it is true that YOU have never said that defense is useful in a situation like Rataan's example. But people on these message boards often claim that even under the new DA rules balance is the key to victory. I strongly disagree, and I am trying to show the less experienced people why I disagree. The key is to commit (to either attack or defense) - no middle ground ever. And, as I have said elsewh

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Good job Rataan! Nice to see someone else has also broken down the mathematical weakness of defense in the current system. In your scenario you were very fair to try and give the defensive player the advantage. And let us take his scenario one step further. Say, instead of researching better weapons, defense player instead spent those research points in just going from medium to large hulls. Using the same tech level/miniturization/hit point bonus you were using. For 765

Reply to Best DA race? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Thalans - Super Hive + great economy boost + above average starting planet + great production bonuses

Reply to Attach a Military Starbase to a planet? in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

No thanks, starbases are too easy to kill as it is. If you like using military starbases, better to have one where it's area effect covered a planet, and then use an orbital fleet manager and use ships to defend your planet.

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Entropy Avatar - I had the same experience. I would sometimes use my cargo hull weapons platforms (which I use for transport interception) to attack enemy ships with very low hp, and I would always lose. Do you think it gives the 1 hp not to the attacker, but to the fleet with the highest attack power in cases of mutual destruction? Almost every battle I fight is mutual destruction in the first round, so that little rule difference would give an even bigger advantage to the

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Say what you want about defense, NOTHING in the game can stop this with the current rules. There are no cheats or mods for this, all of this was built within the basic game. If you can't read it, they are speed 25, attack 2870 for the fleet, nothing else.

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

OK, please stop adding experience as a benefit to only defensive ships. I consistently get mid range exp on attack only large and huge hulls (say levels 6-9) because of the one hp rule. Basically if you build (cheaper) ships with an attack power that can wipe out your enemy in the first round of combat (one ship with an attack value of greater than hitpoints plus defense of the other fleet) you will always survive with at least one hp. If you gain a level, sometimes your hp will reset

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Or you can sell them to various AIs, they seem to think they are worth something (I don't know why). Even with a decent speed bonus and weapon bonus to your empire these things are worthless. Congratulations, defense is worthwhile against a really bad ship. But so is offense. Super Dominator Corvettes don't come with any defense, so as long as you have one ship with an attack value that is twice the total hps of a fleet of corvettes, you are invincible. The myth of defense b

Reply to Defense - Devs please read! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I used this same trick again, this time as the Terrans. I researched doom ray, then gave invulnerability field to all the civs that were still alive. Then I went around mopping up their newly weakened militaries (on suicidal).

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

There are two problems with your example. First, the 6 medium hulls that use 4 defense will be more expensive than the pure attack ships, so your model should take into account less defenders. Pure attack ships are roughly half as expensive as ships that use defense in the current cost model. Second is that the attack numbers are almost never that low. You can quickly get to the point where attack/2 >= hit points of target, and then you just mop up. IF attack values were as low as your exam

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Since defending against a weapon is calculated collectively and since the defences are weak anyway, is there still some strategic value of even having three branches of defence? Or even attack, given how either one ends up effective because of the nerfed defences? No, except in a few situations, which is very sad. In my current games I no longer pay attention to what weapons/defenses are used by my enemies. I just rush research the branch of weap

Reply to Comments on the DA Campaign in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Iztok, I agree with your analysis of the campaign, and a lot of issues carry over into sandbox and metaverse games as well. There are currently several threads discussing the decreased value of defense under the new system. I feel the decrease is pronounced. And yes, what you want to do is make a single ship with huge attack values. I recently finished a game where I was playing as altarians, and I made a huge ship with no def but 350 attack power. Wiped out everything in the game a

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm not sure what you are talking about. The AI ALREADY does this, in fact I count on it to get the AI to declare war on me. If relations are very good to start off with, sometimes it takes a little more for me to make them suspicious enough to declare war, but that is why the strategy works at all. If they never declared war, then I would have to do it myself, and suffer negative diplomacy modifiers. What I do is make it look like I'm always defending myself by manipulating the AI into decl

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

But look at the current cost of the increased health, it is cheaper to just build more ships.

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Also, under the new system, mixing defense types on a single ship (beyond 1 point) is utterly pointless.

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Nullspace is right and brings up a good point. A complaint under the old system was that sometimes your behemoths would disappear because they depended on def, which would sometimes roll a "0". Under the new system, law of averages is taking over, and you can predict (almost) any combat result ahead of time. A ship (or fleet) with an attack value of 200 will consitently do 95-105 pts of damage. Sure, it COULD do 200, but if you had say 20 weapons that each did 10 damage, the chance o

Reply to Defense - Devs please read! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Frogboy: thanks for listening and taking a look. I love that you guys take the time to listen to players. To the other responses: I think the value vs. cost of defense has been argued plenty on these forums already. But when you can use it to crash the AI, it has gone too far (in my opinion). The value of defense changed a LOT under the new combat system, but the prices to build did not. I have heard a couple different versions of the new combat formula. In either ca

Defense - Devs please read! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

OK, I played a game last night that revealed a SERIOUS problem in the current game balance. I was playing a medium map as the Thalans, on Obscene difficulty. The game played out, and through a series of surrenders the game came down to just me and the Korx. (Maybe people liked them because of trade? Everyone just kept surrendering to them). At this point in the game, the Korx controlled maybe 60-65% of the planets, I was outnumbered just under 2-1. In a few turns they went from cool to hos

Battle of the Gods Tech Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Tested a battle of the gods game. The new techs do not start out researched. That is, xeno biology, space mining, fusion power plants etc. were all sitting there waiting to be researched.

Reply to DA new combat system: are right defenses really right? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I agree completely. Defenses were always expensive, but in some specific situations worthwhile. Now defense is expensive and always pointless. Your defense needs to equal the attack power of a combined enemy fleet, and that just isn't going to happen. I do like to put 1 defense of something cheap (30bc ish) on my medium ships and larger, because 1 def in anything = 1 def in all three catagories (1 being the sqrt of 1), so you get 0-1 def from all kinds of weapons. For 30 bc I'm will

Reply to Research Strategy Question in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Well, your strategy might be do-able, it is not the most competitive strategy for you in the long run. Some of the more expensive technologies are worth taking the extra time for, depending on your strategy. If you only go for the fastest research, you will end up with a slew of low level weapons and defense techs, some basic diplomacy, sensors, etc. You will be handily beaten by an AI that focuses on just one weapon tech, for instance. Also, all of the new colonization techs are quite expen

Reply to Economic collapse during wartime - why? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Another way to avoid the wartime econ hit is to have long ago replaced your population. I typically have two phases to my empire, one where I buy people buy "spending" money on a lower tax rating to keep my approval at 100%, and one where I max out my income by taxing and leaving approval at 50%. Transport ships can really help you out in the "buying people" phase, because certain worlds that breed quickly will start to drop off the 100% morale mark. But if you build transport

Reply to Need to have minimum military ? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

If you don't want to put much into military, go with a Spin Control Center. It will make the military ships you have on one planet "look" five times stronger to the enemy. Depending on the size map you play, this can go a long way to giving you a respectable military rating without putting almost any effort into a military (you could buy a few ships from someone else and then base them on your spin control world, for instance) Spin Control gives you another powerful tactic if you have