Combat System

[Supamand]

I looked at the combat tutorial and a little bit confused by the atk vs. def points. The way Lee described it, it didn't sound a direct ration.

Which brings me to the real question. How many dreadnoughts do you need to take down 400 mil population planet without orbitals?
I figured I would need 63 if it's a direct ration. Could someone please input on this?

Thanks ;)

[ChickenHawk07]

Lee posted somewhere the Attack/Defense of a 400Mu planet. I'll try and find it.

[ChickenHawk07]

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

[shadowkhai]

I think his question was if you were to get enough Dreadnoughts to have ATK > 7200 (barring any other defenses) would that be enough to take over the 400mu planet or are there other things involved in the process?

[Supamand]

Yep that was my question.
Also someone posted before that u can take over an outpost with a colony ship. Well it must only work if other player is non hostile because I just lost a colony ship for nothing, not even a combat report.

Which brings me to second question. What is a default atk/def of outpost planets. And if there is a way to view the progress of the combat.

[Leedot]

ATK is a direct amount of damage dealt per round while DEF is half the total damage that can be taken per battle. So to take a 400mu planet with no other defenses in a single round you'd need 125 Dreadnaughts. (so you'd only loose 1 Dreadnaught.)

[JetJaguar2000]

I'm still a little confused. Does a 400mu planet take permanent "damage" when attacked multiple times? If not, it seems like it would still take a ridiculously large fleet of ships to do 7200 damage before getting wiped out.

[Leedot]

Yes and no. They take damage every round and if the total amount of damage exceeds their DEF x 2 they're destroyed. If they survive the entire battle that damage is then restored. So damage is cumulative but only within the scope of a single battle.

[JetJaguar2000]

So that is true for planets too, then? This strikes me as kind of a strange design choice. I understand that 125 dreadnoughts are required to beat the 400mu planet in a single round, but even if you accept losses, that's still a LOT of dreadnoughts to defeat a planet. It also implies that defeating a planet with lesser ships is effectively impossible. And this is an UNDEFENDED planet.

What are your expectations, as the game designers, about what is required to attack and defeat a planet? If an "undefended" 400mu planet, which takes about 4 hours to create, can beat a fleet of up to about 15 dreadnoughts (if my math is right), what sorts of fleets are you expecting players to amass? For one thing, this makes orbital defenses seem almost pointless. Why would you bother with orbital lasers when the planet alone has that much damage potential? It also makes me wonder what role smaller fleets have in the game. A fleet of 10 destroyers, for example, apparently cannot accomplish any sort of planetary attack, so what are they for? You certainly don't need them for defense if your 400mu colony that you just created a couple hours ago can hold off 15 dreadnoughts. Is there really only a small window of a few minutes after colony ship deployment that you have any hope of conquering it? Again, it takes about 4 hours for a terran or water planet to get to 300 - 400mu.

[AntiHaze]

DEF is half the total damage that can be taken per battle.

What was the rationale behind this? Why not just make the DEF value twice as much and have them act as direct Hit Points?

[Supamand]

Also Lee, if you get around to this could you post the atk/def values of unprotected Outpost.

Thanks ;)

[Supamand]

Jet, I agree with you about orbitals being a waste at least at the early stages. But once the players advance into big army's, then orbitals will be needed.

Because they are not just additional atk/def points, they serve as a way to hit more targets. Because planet can only hit 1 target per round. So in a way you could bring only 50 dreds and like 200 battleships. The battle ships could serve as a means of decoy targets for a planet to waste it's power.
But then I'm not sure how the AI works. If it set to attack strongest ships, than my strategy above is a fail.

[VanderLegion]

Not sure about orbitals early on for how useful they are, but as for usefulness of smaller ships, while they may not do much against a colony, you can easily capture undefended outposts with a small fleet.

[JetJaguar2000]

If combat in this game is about amassing fleets of hundreds of dreads or battleships, that seems nuts to me. If what I've read so far is to be believed, an undefended planet can hold off unlimited fleets of up to 15 dreads at a time, and that's with all attacking ships destroyed in the process. That means that attacking colonies is going to require maintaining fleets of literally hundreds of the strongest ships, which in turn means dozens of shipyards (assuming the ship limit is eventually enforced), etc.

It is currently day 6 or so on Aruru, almost a quarter of the way through the scheduled game time. I don't know about anyone else, but I am nowhere close to fielding that kind of power. In light of this, I'm not super thrilled with the progression of the game so far. I apparently can't even hope to take over the home system of a player who hasn't logged in since day 2. Oddly enough, a month is actually way too short a game time to have any meaningful interaction with other players. How many wars can you hope to maintain with those kind of fleet requirements?

This seems to justify my biggest concern about the game, which is that the easiest path to victory is to just hole up in your corner the galaxy and persue the largely "solo play" win conditions. Why would I waste resources trying to battle oth players when I could just focus on getting solar taps and nuking 12 stars without ever interacting with the other 150+ players in the game?

[VanderLegion]

The game lasts 2 months, not 1.

[JetJaguar2000]

Haha you're right, for some reason I thought it was June currently. That certainly helps, but I think my point still stands.

[AntiHaze]

That means that attacking colonies is going to require maintaining fleets of literally hundreds of the strongest ships, which in turn means dozens of shipyards (assuming the ship limit is eventually enforced), etc.


Aren't you forgetting the Advanced Shipyards skill in the Fleet skills tab? That will increase your cap by 10 * number of shipyards. Each rank up in this skill only takes 12 hours to complete, so if you have 3 colonies with shipyards now, you could increase the number of ships you can build by 60 in only one day.

Don't forget, we are all in this game facing the same decisions. What you choose is a trade-off for something else you could have, for better or for worse. You have to consider the opportunity cost of each option and make a decision based on that.

[Tsagoth]

Because planet can only hit 1 target per round.

That's not true. The planet will attack as many ships in a single round as it can with its attack value.

[making numbers up] So if a outpost has an attack of 11 and a probe has a defense of 1, then -each round- the planet will destroy 11 probes. Target selection continues until the attack value is all assigned.

[Supamand]

Aha! So is that a fact that outpost has 11atk? What is def of outpost? :D

[Tsagoth]

I think it's 35.

[Supamand]

Because planet can only hit 1 target per round.

That's not true. The planet will attack as many ships in a single round as it can with its attack value.

[making numbers up] So if a outpost has an attack of 11 and a probe has a defense of 1, then -each round- the planet will destroy 11 probes. Target selection continues until the attack value is all assigned.

That makes no sense if what Lee said is accurate:


ATK is a direct amount of damage dealt per round while DEF is half the total damage that can be taken per battle. So to take a 400mu planet with no other defenses in a single round you'd need 125 Dreadnaughts. (so you'd only loose 1 Dreadnaught.)

Because if the planets attack is continuous to all ships, you would actually loose ~20 Dreadnaughts (2800/137).

[JetJaguar2000]

Well, I just lost another fleet of 9 destroyers to this "undefended" outpost, and I'm done messing around with combat until I hear a reasonable explanation for why the combat system is so absurd. Destroyers and cruisers are useless units if they can't take an undefended outpost.

Also, the fact that damage to an outpost or colony does not appear to be cumulative after multiple attacks seems lame to me. The fact that you lose your entire attack force every time you don't bring enough to win is just silly. If the game is going to be set up that way, it should just tell you flat out before you attack that you won't win, so you don"t waste endless numbers of ships because you're one damage short.

[VanderLegion]

Well, I just lost another fleet of 9 destroyers to this "undefended" outpost, and I'm done messing around with combat until I hear a reasonable explanation for why the combat system is so absurd. Destroyers and cruisers are useless units if they can't take an undefended outpost.

Also, the fact that damage to an outpost or colony does not appear to be cumulative after multiple attacks seems lame to me. The fact that you lose your entire attack force every time you don't bring enough to win is just silly. If the game is going to be set up that way, it should just tell you flat out before you attack that you won't win, so you don"t waste endless numbers of ships because you're one damage short.

Are you sure it was an outpost you were attacking and not a colony? What type of planet was it? The first time I killed an outpost I'm pretty sure I only had like 5 destroyers. Since then I've had larger fleets so I can't say for sure, but I've definitely never had an issue killing an outpost. Haven't tried any colonies yet, not nearly a big enough fleet for THAT...

[Tsagoth]

I wonder if this is your fight I'm looking at. 9 somethings of ATK 5 going in on an outpost and getting flamed. It's a bug. I can see the attackers shooting but for some reason the planet is not taking the hits correctly.

I'm actively working on this now.

[JetJaguar2000]

Ok, I guess that is good to hear. Yes, 30 minutes ago or so I sent 9 destroyers there. Prior to that, 4 cruisers and 3 destroyers. All ships lost.

It is an outpost on a jovian world, zero population (got a chance to scan as my latest fleet was getting slaughtered).

[Supamand]

I wonder if this is your fight I'm looking at. 9 somethings of ATK 5 going in on an outpost and getting flamed. It's a bug. I can see the attackers shooting but for some reason the planet is not taking the hits correctly.

I'm actively working on this now.

Oh thank you, I had a similar thing where I lost a colony ship attacking an outpost...

[Tsagoth]

It looks to be some bad math in the modifiers being applied by skills. Although the destroyers are doing double damage, the same error is increasing the planet's mitigation and reducing the damage to 2.

I'm still working through the trace, but I'm thinking this will be patched tomorrow, assuming I don't uncover any other problems.

[Tsagoth]

I was wrong about the mitigation. Small ships do less damage vs a planet by design. This would predate the introduction of the Mining Outpost ship. So I'm going to change it such that if the colony is < 100Mu people, you do full damage. Otherwise the planet will mitigate most of the attack damage.

[JetJaguar2000]

Tsagoth, can you let us know when this is patched? I would like to continue my assault on this hardened fortress of a mining outpost.

[Tsagoth]

Yes, I will. Just been very busy looking into the push problem and it's worse than I thought.

[ChickenHawk07]

So as of right now, there is no point in attacking planets, correct? I've been messing around in Aruru attacking someone's Colony to no avail. But I'm doing it more just to learn how the combat system works, rather than actually trying to acquire the colony. I mean, if I do acquire it, all the better, but no hard feelings if I don't.

[Leedot]

Supamand - It turns out that my understanding of the combat system was flawed in a few pretty important ways so I've been spreading some disinformation. There are some systems in the game that I had a more direct hand in designing (trade / tech progressions / resource production) but combat isn't one of them. Anyhow, the big thing that I misunderstood was that an attackers ATK is distributed amongst targets until all it's damage has been dealt. For example if a ship with an ATK of 18 would destroy 9 ships with a DEF of 1 in a single attack. Previously my understanding was that attackers could only choose a single target per round so the ship with an ATK of 18 would only destroy 1 ship per round.

If you've ever played Magic the Gathering it's like the difference between how regular creatures attack and block vs. creatures with trample. In EotE ships attack as though they're all creature with trample.

Clearly I'll need to revise the tutorial, since there's demand for a written manual I'll create that first with the updated information and then go back and revise the videos.

[ChickenHawk07]

Oh wow, ok. So because of this trample, a colony attacking with a large ATK would spread that damage down the line, like a domino effect, correct? Once one ship is killed, the remaining damage just moves on to the next target, and so on?

[ChickenHawk07]

No wonder we're all losing so many ships when attacking planets.

[JetJaguar2000]

Haha, come on. So in the previously described scenario, 125 dreads could kill the planet in one round, but you would lose ~10 dreads in the process, not just 1.

Conversely, an undefended planet wipes out any attacking fleet of defense equal to 10 dreads in a single round (factoring in 2x DEF rating). That's ~470 destroyers, or 155 cruisers, for those of you following along at home. That's just to SURVIVE a SINGLE ROUND of combat against the "undefended" planet. Of course every subsequent round that many ships get wiped out again. If there are actually defenses in place, who knows.

So obviously planets are not meant to be attacked by conventional means. I admit, it's still early in the game, but I still don't see how anyone is going to amass those kind of fleets by the end of the game, and that's not even taking in to consideration that planets will be much more populated and well "defended" as the game progresses.

I'll reserve final judgement until I've played through a game or two, but this sounds crazy to me. Theoretically, it seems like this guarantees no meaningful early to mid-game interactions between players, since early to mid-game ships are not capable of being a threat to anyone. I suppose outposts are still relatively vulnerable (once the bugs there are fixed), but stealing someone's outpost is not going to have much of an effect at all in this game. To really hurt someone, you are going to have to take out their shipyards and colonies, which you simply won't be able to do conventionally. Fifty bucks says the guy who wins the games is the guy who played almost by himself until he hit the victory condition. Trader win seems most likely, but I can imagine a guy not having any conventional encounters with other players ultimately coming out of nowhere with a planet killer or solar tap and just quickly blowing up 15 worlds unopposed.

[VanderLegion]

I'll reserve final judgement until I've played through a game or two, but this sounds crazy to me. Theoretically, it seems like this guarantees no meaningful early to mid-game interactions between players, since early to mid-game ships are not capable of being a threat to anyone.
I don't understand why you're so convinced that killing colonies is the only meaningful interaction in this game...

I suppose outposts are still relatively vulnerable (once the bugs there are fixed), but stealing someone's outpost is not going to have much of an effect at all in this game. To really hurt someone, you are going to have to take out their shipyards and colonies, which you simply won't be able to do conventionally.
Really? Look at your homeworld. How much mineral production is it getting you, 1k CO and maybe a little RO? I don't care how many shipyards/defenses you have, colonies alone aren't going to make you NEARLY enough ore to actually build anything. If you kill all of osmeone's outposts, they're pretty much going to be dead in the water unable to do anything with just their colonies.

[ChickenHawk07]

^ Agreed. But I do see the point Jet is trying to make. If his math is correct, and I'm pretty sure it is, 470 destroyers to take a planet sounds crazy. And 125 Dreads is ALOT just to one shot a colony. If you think about it in real world terms (not that we have dreadnoughts in Space capable of doing planetary bombardments). It would probably only take 50 or so to completely obliterate the civilian population of an entire planet in a relatively short amount of time. Think of Halo and the Covenant "Glassing" whole planets in less than a day.

What makes these planets so special that they can take such a beating? I don't want people taking out colonies with a small band of Dreads, but if someone put their mind to it and really wanted to put together a planet killing force, I think it should be easier than 150 Dreads. You would need 900,000 units of RO to make 150 Dreads. Even with trading, that sounds like a lot.

[AntiHaze]

You would need 900,000 units of RO to make 150 Dreads. Even with trading, that sounds like a lot.

It's not a lot. Trust me ;)

[JetJaguar2000]

You don't have anywhere near 900k RO, and if you do it just proves the game is even more bizarre than I thought. I'm not just sitting here twiddling my thumbs, and I have literally 500 RO. If there is some secret non-exploitative pathway to increasing that output by 3 orders of magnitude, the game can't be taken seriously.

[AntiHaze]

You don't have anywhere near 900k RO, and if you do it just proves the game is even more bizarre than I thought. I'm not just sitting here twiddling my thumbs, and I have literally 500 RO. If there is some secret non-exploitative pathway to increasing that output by 3 orders of magnitude, the game can't be taken seriously.

Haha my bad, I thought he said 900k CO. I should have read that more carefully. Yes, 900k RO IS a lot.

Good luck.

[ChickenHawk07]

Maybe by the end of two months you could get 900K even with Trading, but it still doesn't negate the fact that 1 Super Capital Ship could take out a force equal to its attack rating in One Shot. I like how Lee described the way combat works before he realized there was a Trample function in all combat. Just think about like this, for a mental reference:

Let's say a Super Dreadnaught has an attack of 200 and a Defense of 250 (I don't know what is is, as I'm a Trader and can't build them) and he's attacking a force of Destroyers. The Super Dread would be able to one-shot 66 Destroyers if he fired first and not take any damage. If combat is simultaneous than he could one-shot 49 Destroyers and not be Destroyed. 50 Destroyers all firing simultaneously would Kill a Dread in one round, but there would only be 1 left standing if battles are simultaneous. If it is in Rounds, then you would need 50 Destroyers to get the first shot to kill a Dread without retaliation.

[ChickenHawk07]

I think this Trample function needs to be looked at, as it doesn't make sense Logically. I don't know what type of weapons these units use as their main guns, but it just doesn't seem right that damage dealt to one unit which is destroyed should travel to the next unit in equal proportion. I understand fusion reactors going critical and taking out nearby ships, but even then, the damage dealt there would be more like Shrapnel and not focused on the next ship in line. As it stands right now, is that it's basically like the larger attacker (Planet or Super Dread) has a really high powered rifle and his targets are all lined up in a row. It can kill as many of those that are in a row as their defense stacks to, 66 in the case of a Super Dread with a theroretical ATK of 200.

The way I think it should work is this, the attacker can only one-shot as many weaker ships as he has guns to bear. Not sure how many that is in the game, but it would make sense logically.

[VanderLegion]

The way I look at it: in pretty much any sci-fi anything, capital ships don't just have 1 big weapon, they have lots of em. Look at star destroyers in Star Wars, they have tons of turbolasers. Basically, the crew of the ship know about what it takes to kill an enemy ship, so they can spread their fire across multiple targets instead of just focusing everything on one at a time.

[JetJaguar2000]

Yeah, don't think about it so literally. The ATK rating is just a measure of damage output per round. The specifics of how the damage is dealt are not relevant, except that they don't "waste" any attack power.

One simple way to imagine it is that they have a number of missiles to fire every round equal to their ATK value, and they only use as many missiles against a single target as it takes to destroy them.

[ChickenHawk07]

Right, but you're talking about a weapon built to destroy whole planets in one shot, versus a capital ship that could probably land in one of the Star Destroyers Bays. I can understand a planet having a crap ton of ground bassed batteries, but it still doesn't explain the Trample function. Damage shouldn't domino. There should be a formula for each ship that takes into account how many weapons they have and for ease of calculation make each weapon deal the same amount of damage, and apply that to the opposing force. It made sense when Lee originally stated that 1 super capital could be overwhelmed by a bunch of smaller attackers. That's the function Fighters are supposed to play in this game, getting in close where the super capital main guns can't be brought to bear on them, and relying on their small anti-fighter weapons. As it stands right now, Fighters have a base ATK value of 4 and no Defense rating. So if that is the case, any ship attacking a fighter group could kill an infinite number of fighters, because there is no defense to subtract from the Base ATK of the Dread. Even if they had a base Defense of 1' a Super Dread could one shot 200 fighter groups if they attack first. If its simultaneous then it would take 62.5 fighters to destroy one Ship with a defense of 250.

[ChickenHawk07]

One simple way to imagine it is that they have a number of missiles to fire every round equal to their ATK value, and they only use as many missiles against a single target as it takes to destroy them.

I don't think that's right. They attack 1 ship with all that power, and anything left over is applied directly to the next ship and so on and so forth down the line, until the total attack value has been used up. Just like Trample works in MTG.

[JetJaguar2000]

How is that functionally different than my model? They fire all their missiles every round, and only use the exact number of missiles against a target that it takes to destroy it. If something with ATK 10 is battling 2 ships with DEF 5, it shoots 5 missiles at the first target, destroying it, then 5 missiles at the next one. There is no concept of a target receiving more "attack power" than they have defense.

Anyways, you are looking for a physical model of the combat behavior, but there's no real reason for it. Just like in any game like this, you abstract certain concepts to make it simpler.

[ChickenHawk07]

Your model just sounds more complicate and scrambled my brain. In essence, we are saying the same thing I believe. Where we differ is that you seem to be fine with the Trample function, whereas I, am not. And I understand abstracting a concept, but to make small targets attacked at the same accuracy of a larger target just seems counter intuitive. Why use fighters at all, if they can be targeted by a super capital ship just as well as a Battleship. You'd be silly to use up your Unit Cap with fighters (that in the description say are better suited for fighting Capital Ships) than with larger heavy hitting units.

[JetJaguar2000]

Well, I assume there are modifiers to this system based on ship type, etc., as implied by the description of fighters and a couple of other ships and techs. Tsagoth mentioned a damage mitigation aspect to the equation, I'm guessing in some cases it is possible for a ship to "miss" the target (ie. in capital ship vs. fighter scenarios). One would hope there are at least some modifiers/randomness thrown in, so that combat isn't such a deterministic "rock-paper-scissors" affair.

Also, that would leave the door open to features like "hero" ships that have unique bonuses, etc.

[ChickenHawk07]

That's true, I suppose I did forget to take into account any modifiers that may be in place. Well, that makes me feel a little better about the Trample Function at least. I'd still like to see how the formula works for combat on all ships and their modifiers/mitigators. I think it would help paint a clearer picture as to how best utilize your fleets.

[Tsagoth]

Jet, try your destroyer run again.

[Tsagoth]

I'm guessing in some cases it is possible for a ship to "miss" the target (ie. in capital ship vs. fighter scenarios).


There are no misses. For some situations there are skill-controlled opportunities that appear that might not be used, but I don't count those as misses. If something gets a shot off, it will land, even if it only does 1 damage.

[ChickenHawk07]

SomTsagoth, how are Fighters supposed to help take on a Capital Ship?

[Tsagoth]

Triple damage, although I have to say we never really had much in the way of Capital ships fighting so it's a bit unknown how viable they are.

[ChickenHawk07]

Ohhhh ok, so they actually do 12 points of damage per round to a Capital ship, interesting.

[JetJaguar2000]

Jet, try your destroyer run again.

I will assemble an identical force (9 destroyers), it'll take me an hour or so to get them in to position. Will post again with results then.

[Tsagoth]

I will assemble an identical force (9 destroyers), it'll take me an hour or so to get them in to position. Will post again with results then.

P1860 appears to be yours with the loss of 3.

[JetJaguar2000]

Yeah, took me longer to set up than I thought and couldn't get back on for a while, but yes, the attack worked. Thanks for getting that worked out for us!

[ChickenHawk07]

It's been a lot of posts since I read what the Planet was, and I don't feel like re reading. This was an Outpost, not a Colony, correct?

[Tsagoth]

Yes, a destroyer killing outpost.

[ChickenHawk07]

Ok, thanks :-)

[banjankri]

That's not true. The planet will attack as many ships in a single round as it can with its attack value.

[making numbers up] So if a outpost has an attack of 11 and a probe has a defense of 1, then -each round- the planet will destroy 11 probes. Target selection continues until the attack value is all assigned.

You know this is the only place I've seen this written, and this is COMPLETELY contrary to the description of combat in the existing combat tutorial?

Is there some definitive source of documentation for this game that I'm not aware of?

[ChickenHawk07]

You know this is the only place I've seen this written, and this is COMPLETELY contrary to the description of combat in the existing combat tutorial?

Is there some definitive source of documentation for this game that I'm not aware of?

No, unfortunately they weren't fully aware of how combat truly behaved. Three heads, not all talking to one another. They're in the process of redoing the tutorials because of misleading or incomplete information. And don't blame the Devs, they went through two code rewrites (Thank Apple for that) within the span of two months, so you can imagine some things were overlooked.