I believe that each ship rolls to it total attack each round  U roll a defense agianst each ship each round  he rolls a 0-7 and you roll 0-2

If they have say 4 beam and 3 missile, those roll as separate attacks and the defence gets a roll against each.

Are you sure? Multi-attack ships ar crap then, but computer allways builds them, so AI is crap? I don't think so... Damn, how does it work then?

So that means that defense is bad against someone who attacks with one big ship(with a ton of guns) but good agains someone who attacks with many small ships.

Sorry for double post, i think it's like this:

It's not like that. A ship has ratings in 6 categories: beam, missile and gun for attack, and shield, point defence and armour for defence. There is some uncertainly about whether defence rolls from 0 to rating and also whether different components of defence are rolled separately or not. I'll present one possibility. The others aren't much different.

If a ship with a (8/6/12) rating for beam/missile/gun fires on a ship with a (8/4/1) rating for shield/pd/armour, the attack goes like this:

beam attack:
attacker rolls 1 to 8
defender rolls 0 to 8 (shields) + 0 to 2 (PD: sqrt of 4) + 0 to 1 (armour: sqrt of 1)
damage = max(attacker total - defender total)

missile attack:
attacker rolls 1 to 6
defender rolls 0 to 2 (shields: sqrt rounds down) + 0 to 4 (PD) + 0 to 1 (armour)
damage = max(attacker total - defender total)

gun attack:
attacker rolls 1 to 12
defender rolls 0 to 2 (shields) + 0 to 2 (PD) + 0 to 1 (armour)
damage = max(attacker total - defender total)

Add all three types of damage together and that's the damage reported in the battle log.

Are you sure? Multi-attack ships ar crap then, but computer allways builds them, so AI is crap? I don't think so... Damn, how does it work then?

Putting multiple types of attack on a ship is not advised. An exception would be if the opponent isn't using any defences at all. So squeezing, say, a Stinger and a Laser on a small ship could be helpfulI in the early game when the AI just builds 2-0 ships.

I haven't yet seen the AI build ships with multiple types of attack. You will often see mixed FLEETS, where some of the ships use beams and some use missiles, say. Ships still attack individually in fleets though.

Putting multiple types of attack on a ship is not advised. An exception would be if the opponent isn't using any defences at all. So squeezing, say, a Stinger and a Laser on a small ship could be helpfulI in the early game when the AI just builds 2-0 ships.

Hi Entropy Avatar, I would think that multiple types of attack are also useful when your unsure exactly what types of defence your going to come up against. It may be that your at war with 2 or more civs using different defence types. Ideally though your right, it would be better to have ships with weapon types of the same kind and lots of them.

I wonder how adaptable civ AI is, if it comes across your ships and notices your using a certain type of weapon, does it then shift to building ships with appropriate defences.

Actually ship combat is a bit of an unknown as far as I can see. Has Stardock actually clarified how combat works exactly? If not it would be good to hear from them on this matter.

One thing I would like to see in the combat system is rather than total of each weapon type, each weapon is determined seperately against defences. So for eg if you have two beam weapons with damage value of 3 ea and your going up against shield of 4, damage would be Att(1-3)-Def(0-4) + Att(1-3)-Def(0-4). The current system gives defenders with defences an advantage over fleet attacks of small ships but not attacks by individual larger vessels.

A good analogy I think is current projectile tehnology. If you have a vehicle that has armour designed to protect it from 50mm shells and you use multiple 30mm guns against it its not going to be anywhere near as effective as, say, one gun firing 60mm rounds. (I know this is a very simplistic analogy) This puts more emphasis on higher tech weapons that are capable of bypassing more robust defences.

Edited Actually, Ive been thinking again, this may cause imbalance issues later on in the game with huge defences, unless you increase the size of defences on larger ships, say, as a function of hull size. This would also make sense; the larger the hull the much larger the defence sizes needed to give you the same defence values But this really overcomplicates things. Maybe this isnt such a good idea...

Hi Entropy Avatar, I would think that multiple types of attack are also useful when your unsure exactly what types of defence your going to come up against. It may be that your at war with 2 or more civs using different defence types. Ideally though your right, it would be better to have ships with weapon types of the same kind and lots of them.

I was thinking about that situation when I was writing it, but I'm sure I would just build two types of ship if needed.

One thing I would like to see in the combat system is rather than total of each weapon type, each weapon is determined seperately against defences.

That would be more 'realistic', but would involve changing everything. You would have to allow light, medium, heavy versions of weapons, for instance. I like the simplicity of the current approach.

I think it's true that you can build an effective fighter-killing capital ship, with roughly equivalent tech, as long as the enemy is mostly confined to one attack. However, you could make a large-ship design that would effectively take THAT ship out (even without switching weapon types), by basically reversing the attack defence ratio on the fighter-killer. Of course, if you have a big tech advanatage and the other guy can't build larger ships...