some combat questions:

[SixDaysShort]

1) I don't think I'm understanding the actual bones of combat. I had an orbital shipyard get destroyed by 4 destroyer's. I would've figured that, with a much higher atk and defense, it would've been fine. but, apparently, that's not true? On a related note, then, how many fighters would it take to kill a single destroyer -- how much of that answer has to do with the fact that fighters can't fleet-up?

2) what all can you attack? planets, orbitals, and ships? which defend the others? Is it only ships that will defend things in its orbit? I can't expect orbitals to defend ships or orbitals to defend the planet? I can't expect the planet to defend ships/orbitals? But I can expect ships to defend both orbitals and the planet?

3) I had someone park an outpost ship in orbit around my star. I sent 4 fighters after it, which were all summarily lost. I wasn't seeing or getting reports on combat. Was this just my fighters losing fights? or is there some kind of restriction on what fighters can orbit?

[ChickenHawk07]

All very good questions. I too would like to know the answers to these questions. Preferably before I get attacked for the first time.

[SG7]

Yes, what is DEF and ATK value for startup 400Mu planet?

[ChickenHawk07]

More importantly, how do you defend a new 1Mu Colony from attack, when you're a Trader or Researcher and don't have any attack ships? You can't move orbitals (maybe you can with the Matter Transporter, but that's like a super high skill), and you can't build anything at the Planet until it reaches 100Mu Population. From the looks of it, that's going to take 12 hours or so.

[Corinthian]

Yeah, I need all these questions answered as well! I woke up this morning to find one of my outposts gone. There was no mail or notice generated to tell me what happened or who did it. One player in the list is now set to embargo, so is that who hit me?? Why wouldn't it be set to war if that was the case.
Is me not getting notification of the attack a bug or is that the norm...
Damn... So confused...

[SG7]

Notification system was not working properly and it is disabled now. When my outpost was attacked I received 20 messages that I am loosing then 300+ messages that I am winning every 10 seconds. Even after the attacker went away messages and animation never stopped till cold start.

[SixDaysShort]

outposts have no natural defense, i don't think. so, i THINK they need to be supported by leaving ships in their orbit to defend against someone taking it. Colonies will have an inherent defense based on population. But, i think they should be defended as well. To partially answer SG7's question -- in the "how combat works" tutorial, I remember seeing some values. an 850mu planet had like 6000 atk and 12000 def. And a 1mu planet had stuff in the teens. So, you know...somewhere between that for our starting planets? lol.

chickenhawk -- i waited to colonize until i could build destroyers (so that i could transport and defend the colony). If you don't want to wait for destroyers, one possibility is to use outpost ships. They're super expensive. But, they have an atk/def of something like 9/7...which is better than any 1 destoyer (maybe more, i still don't know how combat works, exactly). If it survives long enough for your colony to start building its own ships/shipyard, you can deploy it to a planet while you build some fighters (be careful, though. I lost something like 8 fighters to 1 destroyer.

If there's one bit of advice i could give you at this point (i'm not sure if it's a bug or not), but defend the shit out of your shipyards. fighters can't do a thing to defend against destroyers. And, if destoyers take out your shipyard, not only do you have to rebuild it to increase your limit. But, you're no longer able to build destroyers -- while your opponent can very easily keep doing so. You're at an insurmountable disadvantage assuming he wants to finish you.

[ChickenHawk07]

Yeah I hear ya. I'm not worried about my current shipyard (at least I don't think I should be worried, as I have 4 Orbital Laser Platforms defending it and my Homeworld). But it's my new colony, which is naked out there right now. I went the route of trading and defense, rather than build destroyers. Hope it doesn't bite me in the butt.

I like your idea about outpost ships, but they are definitely expensive and I'm currently replacing all my mini-harvesters with Resource Harvesters. So I'm broke.

[SG7]

I have seen those values but something is broken. For testing purposes I have attacked a 400Mu planet with destroyers. Besides fireworks nothing happened to the planed or to the destroyers. I waited 20 minutes and went away.

[ChickenHawk07]

Interesting...

[Leedot]

Outposts have a small amount of defense but it's really only enough to take on one or two destroyers. It's definitely recommended that you deploy some ships / defensive structures to protect them. As for what you can defend them with other than combat ships you have a couple options. 1. Mine Emplacement (T1 Trade) allows you to create a ship that you can move to any location and then convert it to an immobile mine field.
2. If you have both Cruisers (T2 Fleet) and Orbital Defenses (T1 Combat) then you can convert a cruiser into an Orbital Beam Array at an outpost. There's a similar combo with Advanced Orbital Defenses (t2 Combat) and Armed Command (T3 Fleet). It looks like the the description of those combos weren't included in the tech description so I'll correct that in the future versions of the client.

One important thing to keep in mind with how the combat system works is that currently ships can only attack one target per round so a large number of weaker ships can still take down a target with much higher defense / attack simply because the large ship gets worn down while trying to weed through all the smaller ships.

Also, on the front of what you can attack keep in mind that you're not really choosing to attack a specific target so much as initiating war with that player. One you've told your ships to attack they'll attack everything belonging to that player that's in the same planetary orbit. Also after you've attacked someone twice you'll automatically be flagged to 'war' status with that player and your ships will begin fighting automatically when they're in the same place.

[Leedot]

Also, the ATK / DEF of a 400mu planet would be ATK 2800 / 7200. (basically 7/18 per 1 million u of population.)

[ChickenHawk07]

Awesome Lee! Thanks for those tips and that explanation! I didn't know that about the Cruiser/Orbital Beam Array combo.

[ChickenHawk07]

One more question Lee, when you get a moment. Someone just posted that an enemy's Colony Ship converted their Outpost without a fight. So I assume a Colony Ship has some firepower? And is this a good strategy to attempt, or was this just a ballsy move that happened to work?

[SG7]

Also, the ATK / DEF of a 400mu planet would be ATK 2800 / 7200. (basically 7/18 per 1 million u of population.)
Great! Thank you for the info. With such defensive power it is not easy to take it down.

[Leedot]

Chicken - Colony Ships are actually pretty tough compared to the early tier ships so it make sense that someone could pull it off. It's definitely a bold move but if it doesn't have any backup it's going to be very vulnerable to counter attack while it establishes a population as it's actually weaker as a colonized planet than it is as ship before it gets any sort of population built up.

[ChickenHawk07]

Wow, ok! Great to know!

[JetJaguar2000]

Leedot, there is something entirely unclear about combat based on the tutorial video: does combat explicitly involve per round target selection as implied by the diagrams in the tutorial video, or is combat completely automated?

I have been expecting to see a "combat screen" where I select targets for all my ships, but in the only instance where combat was successfully initiated, all I saw was a battle animation around a planet, and an outcome with no description of what happened in the battle "rounds." I am now starting to think it is entirely automated, and the specifics of the battle are not shown to the user. Can you clarify?

[ChickenHawk07]

Oooo, good question. I'd love to see an After Action Report or something summarizing the battle.

[Tsagoth]

Leedot, there is something entirely unclear about combat based on the tutorial video: does combat explicitly involve per round target selection as implied by the diagrams in the tutorial video, or is combat completely automated?

I have been expecting to see a "combat screen" where I select targets for all my ships, but in the only instance where combat was successfully initiated, all I saw was a battle animation around a planet, and an outcome with no description of what happened in the battle "rounds." I am now starting to think it is entirely automated, and the specifics of the battle are not shown to the user. Can you clarify?

First off yes, the combat is entirely automated. It's also not strictly a per round fight. Ships are assigned their own targets and they fire independently from all the other attackers/defenders. We had a plan to show the battle itself but it was very complex to implement and we don't have all the artwork. It's certainly one of the things we want to bring out in a future update.

[SG7]

SixDaysShort said that 4 destroyers took down his shipyard. Something has changed since 4 cruisers could not take shipyard today. What is a defensive value of the shipyard. I thought it is 0?

[Tsagoth]

Shipyard has a DEF of 100. I don't think that's a recent change.