Defense is useless. » Forum Post by kingberk

Lets just break the whole game while we're at it with dumb fan-submitted suggestions. Megaships, Dreadnoughts, even just a nice little I WIN button you can punch when you're tired of playing.

I should really get into multiplayer and wipe the floor with all you little whiners because the AI just isn't challenging me and since you all seem to have trouble even playing a 1v1 game I assume I'd just give you a humiliating loss that would compel you to uninstall the game in shame.

Forums: Defense is useless.

(Patch 1.04)

Forums: Offense is useless!

May I ask what strategy you use in a FFA game vs multiple AI in a large map? With only 2 or 3 choke points to defend against it's easy to hold out with a combination of fleet and static defense.

The problem is when your have multiple avenues of entry on several fronts against multiple opponents. At this point by attacking you open yourself to attack from more directions than you can defend against while still being offensive. Against a human player you could perform feints and be more aggressive. Against the AI you will be attacked the second you have an opening and the AI will run the instant the tide turns. You can't pin the AI down in battle to gain a fleet victory that you could turn into an opening for an offense.

Instead at all times you have to keep defenses equivalent to the strongest possible enemy attack within 1-2 jumps of any border world. In a late game with enemy fleets of 6-7 cap ships possible from multiple points at once you tie up your entire fleet cap on defense. Since the AI knows exactly when your ships go on the offense you can't even do a sneak attack and grab. It doesn't really matter how good you are at that point the all knowing AI can exploit any opening you leave instantly and you simply can't produce enough ships to defend and attack in that situation.

Many things could alleviate this. If the tactical cap was higher you could afford more defenses. Defenses already cost more than attack craft so you hurt yourself by defending too heavily. If you change the inhibitor mechanics somehow to allow a defender to pin down an attacker long enough to do some damage you would be able to get a naval victory you can use to press an attack. Or simply make the defenses more potent. Even simply changing the diplomacy to make it easier to make allies so you could limit who is attacking you would help. As it stands they always give impossible missions to attack targets that you can't kill without leaving yourself open in return. This leads to all of the AI's being aggressive towards you.

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While I also, at times, have become frustrated with the poor defensive capabilities around my planet, I would like to point out that if you increase defenses, that also makes it much more difficult to attack the computer's planets. If defenses are made better, I see the comments on here going from, "It's too hard to defend" to "It's too hard to attack".

That said, what people aren't realizing is that Sins of a Solar Empire is not your standard RTS. The map is, indeed, quite epic. On the other hand, the "battlefields" (where the individual fights take place) are not. This has to be done if you want a galactic-sized map. Few computers could handle a map the size of most Sins maps if you had the ability to fly anywhere you wanted to.

That matters because with higher defenses and a large fleet, it would become impossible as things are right now to actually get through those defenses.

On a map where you could go wherever you wanted, then you could at least meet your enemy away from planetary defenses, fight it out, and then after you've decimated the enemy fleet continue on to handle their planetary defenses. Right now, you have to take on both at the exact same time. That's how the battlefield is laid out. And if you have to take on both, then that means the defender is already at an advantage. You don't want to give him even more of an advantage. Otherwise, you'll just end up fighting a brick wall.

In a game like this, if you have defenses that are capable of beating back ships by itself, then that means YOU ALSO GET BEAT BACK. Which means that you die. A lot. And never actually advance.

As the game is, it's actually pretty realistic on a large scale. The more you conquer, the harder it is to hold onto it. Remember Star Wars? "The more you squeeze, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Perhaps increasing the ship cap would be one way of handling this (though I imagine the devs thought of this and worked on it enough to find a good balance), but raising defenses is a BAD idea. What you gain for yourselves your enemies also gain. And in this game, that would suck.

As the game is, I think it's perfectly balanced. Defenses slow, but don't stop. This is a space ship game. You need to use units to really accomplish things. And considering how the maps are built, that's good.

There are a whole lot of things taking place here - not just "bad defenses" - there is big reason why the defenses are the way they are. I'd try looking at why that is before saying, "Ah! My turret won't kill the enemy cap ship - something is horribly wrong!"

This is not the same RTS game as every other game out there. I'm glad for that. If I wanted another "every other game" then I'd go play one. I don't want that. I want this game, and I want it how it is.

Devs, don't help. You did a great job as it is. Thanks!

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Defenses exist to delay and deter, not to bunker up a planet such that it's invincible. They were never meant to stop a moderately determined force, moreso just insurgents or small to medium pirate attacks, and give enemies something to occupy them until you can get reinforcements there to defend.

I see your point.. but shouldn't "delay and deter" actually be worth something? i'd say boost the PJI's so it takes a significant amount of time to jump out of a system. say a minute or so. and if defenses cost the same as several capitol ships, then atleast give them the same firing weight.

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Funny to watch people get defensive when folks make suggestions...LOL.

It doesn't really matter how good you are at that point the all knowing AI can exploit any opening you leave instantly and you simply can't produce enough ships to defend and attack in that situation.

Well then, it would seem the a.i. does in indeed cheat.

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Defenses exist to delay and deter, not to bunker up a planet such that it's invincible. They were never meant to stop a moderately determined force, moreso just insurgents or small to medium pirate attacks, and give enemies something to occupy them until you can get reinforcements there to defend.

I just got the game a couple days ago and my first game about half an hour in (30 min learning curve ftw)I just bunkered in and if you want your Defense to hold out VS a real attack use hangar defenses.

Bombers > all

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Maybe the addition of suply lines, or something like supply lines working with culture. That force fleets to only jump at max of

This is GOOD. Culture, as it is, seems weak to me. Yeah, I suppose if I actually invested in it, it would be worth while. But, it seems like too much butter and not enough guns. I say, partially scrap culture, and work it into a supply network.

So lets think: Capital ships are frigging huge. Huge! You should not be able to send them deep into enemy territory. They need to be supplied, or the crew resorts to cannabalism. And while those female advent eyes look delicious, thats not the kind of delicious we're talking here. Smaller ships have smaller crews, those you can get behind enemy lines. Sneaking deep behind enemy lines and blowing up factories and etc should be viable... but small ships only. If you drive your "culture" deep into enemy territory, you should be able to ignore those restrictions.

This way, your planetary defenses are now viable again, since with cap ships, theres no take and hold-- sneak through, bomb a planet, bomb another one... piss off your opponent, etc.

It doesn't make sense that its so easy to ignore a chokepoint. I like orderly empires. If I get raided, thats fine, but raiding is performed with small groups of strike vessels-- not with gigantic lumbering planet destroying apocolyptic warships of death. Thats called "invasion"

And another thing! Does it seem to me that true economic warfare-- the kind of economic warfare where you actually blow crap up-- is worthless? Why go to a planet in the first place if you aren't going to glass the surface and plant a colony on it? Factories-- especially later in the game, are cheap as sin. It seems like I can just kind of put them everywhere willy-nilly if I have the cash and avaliable logistics to do so.

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Humility

Join Date 09/2007

+7

Speak of Novaliths Gun, hu, Those TEC superweapons, I play game but alwasy done with game beforce I have a chance to build those,(due to reseacher, strange, when I click, it's seem petty fast, but when I click many icon plan ahead of reseacher, it's seem slow!) if someone build those gun, do gun keep fire on far, far, far awary planet and make short of work? If in that's a case, is there any way to block that Novaliths Gun shoot? Like if if TEC shield generator will block, if Advent, they eat enery of Novalithos Gun and turn in to more enery in every ship in that planet who Novaliths Gun shooting at, but I yet not test other superweapon too. When I read post, people keep said about Noalithes Gun and sound they are unstopped unless you sneak thoruht planet to destory it somehow.

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Maybe the addition of suply lines, or something like supply lines working with culture. That force fleets to only jump at max of

This is GOOD. Culture, as it is, seems weak to me. Yeah, I suppose if I actually invested in it, it would be worth while. But, it seems like too much butter and not enough guns. I say, partially scrap culture, and work it into a supply network.

So lets think: Capital ships are frigging huge. Huge! You should not be able to send them deep into enemy territory. They need to be supplied, or the crew resorts to cannabalism. And while those female advent eyes look delicious, thats not the kind of delicious we're talking here. Smaller ships have smaller crews, those you can get behind enemy lines. Sneaking deep behind enemy lines and blowing up factories and etc should be viable... but small ships only. If you drive your "culture" deep into enemy territory, you should be able to ignore those restrictions.

This way, your planetary defenses are now viable again, since with cap ships, theres no take and hold-- sneak through, bomb a planet, bomb another one... piss off your opponent, etc.

It doesn't make sense that its so easy to ignore a chokepoint. I like orderly empires. If I get raided, thats fine, but raiding is performed with small groups of strike vessels-- not with gigantic lumbering planet destroying apocolyptic warships of death. Thats called "invasion"

And another thing! Does it seem to me that true economic warfare-- the kind of economic warfare where you actually blow crap up-- is worthless? Why go to a planet in the first place if you aren't going to glass the surface and plant a colony on it? Factories-- especially later in the game, are cheap as sin. It seems like I can just kind of put them everywhere willy-nilly if I have the cash and avaliable logistics to do so.

You are right about Capital ships, thought, they are very hard to taken it down, it's no small feat! and may or may has lot of firepower, but if many crew, more Capital ship is powerful, if everyone is not a lazy or sit and talk while battle go on! There should be time limited before they has to get back to thier empire homeworld for food supply unless they taken food on planet, but doing that make planet rebel them back after they took over the planet.

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I think a simple solution would be to add a "Defensive" tech tree, but then limiting your tech to 1 full tech tree and perhaps only lvl 1-3 of the others (bassically limiting them to only 3 tech buildings etc), this would make more of a tactical influence to the game, aggressive player? max your attack tree but you still get the first levels of the other trees, meaning you dont completely miss out on some needed tech in the game, Economic player? Max your economic tree and you still get some needed military and defenses, such as some of the frigates and some slightly better defenses, this could mean that the real advantage of a military player (aggressive) is that you get cruisers, while other players (defensive, economic) dont.

'Turtle' players will be most benefitting from this, as there arent much in the game at the moment that a turtle player can have compared to any other player, going defensive can mean that your defense capabilties are more balanced out with your assault abilities, better defenses but less ships compared to a military player, without making defenses tottaly overpowered or taking away a players ability to attack.

Personnaly I think it would be a really big improvement to the game at large by just limiting the tech a bit, in long games it is perfectly easy for players to get both tech trees maxed out, meaning theres not much point in going one way or the other, besides early advantages.

In response to the last post, I completely agree, but still feel this idea is balanced, 'turtle' players can get a good balance of defense and offense, but an offense player is perfectly able to overcome a turtle player, and vica verca, because a military (aggresive) player gets a much more powerful attack, but a weaker defense. An economic player can get alot more out of pirate raids and resources then other players, meaning he can probaly advance up the tech slightly more quickly, and can make alot more defenses and ships then the other players, but without having strenghs in one or the other, he will have strengh simply in numbers! Many, many, many ships could take out a upgraded fleet by simply outnumbering them 3-1, while the upgraded fleet could take out the larger fleet through tactics and sheer supreriority. While a balanced force of strengthened defenses and ships could be overrun by the sheer mass of an attacking fleet, but still prevail against them due to cunning designs in defenses and tactical defense positions, all in all I think this could easily be balanced out with a little work.

Also, culture would favour the defensive tech tree (or simply, the 'Culture' tech tree!) while the other focus on economics and military might, but still balancing the game out by letting any player push back a culture player's culture without damaging how effective or ineffictive culture is, basically making culture more easy to win a game with, but on the same token making it possible for a different type player to prevail over culture.

Lol, I said "In response to the LAST post" somewhere here, however the post I am reffering to is a couple posts up.

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Join Date 09/2007

+7

That's would be good for trade off, if want a good defense, you has to weaker offense in that rest game.

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woah cant believe I kept mis-spelling "strength/s" in my post

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I really like the idea of Culture acting as a supply line for capital ships and/or fleet(ship) efficiency. Devs take a look at this one.

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Culture gives advent increased shield mitigation, vasari extra damage, and tec better antimatter regen with the proper research.

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Ok i see guys making suggestions that hangars and turrets will fend off an attack while you get your fleet back to help out the planet, or some have even suggested that it will fend of ANY attack. I call BS on this, in my past 2 games, normal AI (random) on a medium map, by about the 5th hour, two or all AI's are allied together and i get attacked by no less than 2 big fleets on a forward planet. OK that's fine, just fall back, regroup and take them out with a better, more powerful fleet right? WRONG! I get attacked on the OTHERSIDE by the OTHER PLAYERS. I can't imagine trying to do this game FFA online, it would tempt me to throw my laptop out the window in frustration. Yes this game is about startegy and planning but how can you really plan anything if one is constatnly having to plug ships into your most vulnerable flanks? Why am i the only one making this an issue? Perhaps i am "speacial"?

I'm dealing with the same thing. Getting ganged up on in this game just doesn't work - no balance for it at all, and the last 2 games I played the AI ganged up on me with huge fleets. I didn't have a chance in hell. For example, if you get a bad starting layout (surrounded by void space, junk, etc.) and the enemy has a bunch of plants, you're screwed.

I'm thinking the right way to play next is locked teams FFA. That way the AI won't just focus on me and make "nice" with each other.

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reply 84 - hellfires - i reallly like this sort of idea - make some bigger defenisve structures maybe further up a defensive tech tree while if you go that path then some economic or offensive abilities are missing for u - this will really cause an emphasis on teamwork in the bigger games!

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Yes, defenses need to be improved BIG time to make this a tactical battle at all. I agree with the above post that the battles are a cluster F. My biggest concern is the inablity to make a real push on someone's planet when holding more than just 2 fronts. Maybe i'm not getting the game right, but i haven't finished a game yet, and i've but almost 20 hours into the game so far. I always get to a point where there is just too many choke points for me to cover, i can't rely on defense to hold up any corner of my empire, so i have to dedicate an entire fleet to that planet. It never fails, the AI allies with themselves and i get ganged up on, every time. That's not THAT bad, i do enjoy a challenge, but when it means i can't progress, what's the point of playing? Something must be done about one of two things; 1) Make defense more reliable. Having reliable defense DOES NOT MEAN TURTLING WILL BE A HAMPER, if anything it will make ppl who do that lose. Try turtling in Company of Heores against someone who is even remotely good and you will get owned. This is supposed to be a RTS, let's get some proven RTS qualities in here. Defensive strategies are a must for planning attacks and setting up structures on key planets.
2) Fix the phase jump inhibitor. It is worthless for defense. A counter to it would be to add a ship that can Jam it long enough to get a colony through that lane or have so sort of long range weapon that can home in on the signal and take it out.

My grievances stem from the same problem, the inability to dedicate my hard earned fleets for a push forward. Devs, please respond with some recommendation if i am wrong.

This is exactly how I feel, excellent post.

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I have to agree. As a turtler, the defenses are quite poor. Maybe they were never meant to withstand proper attacks, but they are not even delaying moderate fleets, which carve through them like butter as if they were not existant. And as a turtler, this fact greatly saddens me.

Buff the defenses up, please. Or at least provide us the checkbox to greatly buff them so they could at least do some damage. Maybe even add a heavy planetary ion cannon to planets so they could better defend themselves, or something similar.

These are not demands, of course, they are merely requests. Please reconsider the defenses, Ironclad/Stardock.

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That matters because with higher defenses and a large fleet, it would become impossible as things are right now to actually get through those defenses.
In a game like this, if you have defenses that are capable of beating back ships by itself, then that means YOU ALSO GET BEAT BACK. Which means that you die. A lot. And never actually advance.

Perhaps increasing the ship cap would be one way of handling this (though I imagine the devs thought of this and worked on it enough to find a good balance), but raising defenses is a BAD idea. What you gain for yourselves your enemies also gain. And in this game, that would suck.

I strongly disagree. Defenses cost A LOT of resources, which take away your ability to create larger fleets. There should always be an option to go all defense or to go all offense, and walling-up should be a viable strategy. And besides, not every planet is worth the bother. In fact, very few are, maybe at a chock-point and the home planet, but nothing more. Yes, breaking through defenses will be HARDER for the human player as well, but that's very good. A chockpoint that leads to the enemy's homeworld should cause you to break a sweat and strategize to the max, with multiple hit and runs, reinforcements from many sides, baiting the enemy fleet by attacking another key planet and then swoop in for the kill and the like.

I really don't like the fact that I have to keep my key fleets ready to respond to an attack, so I can't even move them far from my chokepoints.

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This 'Stationary Defenses are Useless' thread reminds of GC2's 'Strengthen Starbases' thread where it was argued that stationary defenses(starbases in GC2) are so weak that a single huge dreadnought can kill a fully fortified SB. Same thing here, that gun turrets can't stop attacking fleets. Only, here, the Phase Jump Inhibitor is also useless, while the GC2 equivalent, the Warp Field Disruptor, is quite useful.

Poor Stardock. They screw up stationary defenses every time.

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Im playing a 10 player game as Vasari (102 planets). Without my missile turrets i'd lost the game already. Though i did build a defensive fleet to support them and another attacking fleet that can jump to help out if the enemy doesn't take the hint.

Of course thats with full NMA high-grade missiles (full tech). You have to even more balanced about what you build on larger games. Dont build too many towers or too few, back them up with hangars (again balanced number of fighters & bombers). I usually support them with 3 repair platforms placed so that they can reach all the structures.

Again, racial tactics differ. TEC gauss turrets are enough for initial defense but later on you should build more hangars instead. As a tec my initial research always goes to defense. Advent beam cannons excel at taking out frigates but their damage is kinda low but range is good though that's hard to research early. For advent having more hangars are probably your best source of planetary defense.

Phase inhibitors well, mmm. I rather like the others instead that can jam weapons & drain antimatter of attackers etc. Though i use inhibitors on choke point planets, it will cost ships for the enemy to attack it. I agree that other defensive turrets should be brought up to Vasari damage. Just add a new tech tree for them

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I like the idea of having 3 seperate styles of play, aggresive where a major fleet is your main weapon, defensive, where you get either less ships, or less effective ships but added defensive weapons, or economic, maybe a play style of both, you get a few added defensive elements, though, their not as good as a defensive style, and you get a more effective attack fleet then the defensive player, and slightly better defenses then the assault player, but everything costs double the amount.

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I think the real problem might not actually be the defences, but the diplomacy. I'm almost sure the AI is (after an hour or so) totally allied against me. This means you have no reserve fleets to plug gaps, since they are all fighting losing battles waiting for anything you can spare to help clean out a system.

If the AI had to fight itself a bit, then it couldn't commit every single ship in its armada to attack you, and count on 6 allies to do the same thing. I've seen capitol ships sit in gravity wells regenerating faster than 10 squadrons of bombers could damage them (4 vasari ships, 2 great big blob dudes, and 2 battleships) and that was with me manually focusing the bombers on them one at a time, and 4/6 possible bomber damage upgrade techs

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Lets just break the whole game while we're at it with dumb fan-submitted suggestions. Megaships, Dreadnoughts, even just a nice little I WIN button you can punch when you're tired of playing.

I should really get into multiplayer and wipe the floor with all you little whiners because the AI just isn't challenging me and since you all seem to have trouble even playing a 1v1 game I assume I'd just give you a humiliating loss that would compel you to uninstall the game in shame.

Forums: Defense is useless.

(Patch 1.04)

Forums: Offense is useless!

You have just broken the record of the most patronizing post in the forums, while also easily achieving the "Stardock forums' greatest @$$hole" award. I'm terribly sorry for my non-contributing message, but I just couldn't ignore this dreadful post.

At the moment, the game rewards your style of play (aggressive), but defensive players should be entitled to enjoy the game more as well. You're being quite an egocentric jerk here.

Frogboy himself said that if we have a problem with the game, we should state our case in the forums, and it will be considered. Whether this is whining or not, and whether this will break the game or not is not for you to decide.

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I have to agree, its frustrating as hell not being able to go on the offensive at all when you are in a big FFA. I was in a Multiplayer FFA tonight, and the ONLY reason I was able to survive was that I was Vasari, with extra jump point lines. Even then, I spent literally an hour chasing an enemy fleet through my own systems.

I have a couple of suggestions

First - Greatly increase how much PJJ slow jumping. I mean really for most ships they spend most of their time aligning, not actually generating the jump point.

Second - Give all the races techs which slow enemy jumping and warping inside your own systems. Any spacelines completely covered in your culture or something, or between two systems you own (I realize magnetic clouds make that a bit trickier, but could be dealt with) That way deep strikes are risky, as you will be slow to get out, but still feasible.

Third - Give us some defensive structures that can actually hold out against the enemy, but use fleet resources? (they have to be manned after all) and are more effective for the cost than mobile units. This would make planetary defenses very effective, but only worth using on key systems, otherwise you get overwhelmed in detail. And if you overdid defenses, you would burn your fleet cap, thrus preventing the problem of rich players just spamming defenses.

Any thoughts?

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I think the real problem might not actually be the defences, but the diplomacy. I'm almost sure the AI is (after an hour or so) totally allied against me. This means you have no reserve fleets to plug gaps, since they are all fighting losing battles waiting for anything you can spare to help clean out a system.

If the AI had to fight itself a bit, then it couldn't commit every single ship in its armada to attack you, and count on 6 allies to do the same thing. I've seen capitol ships sit in gravity wells regenerating faster than 10 squadrons of bombers could damage them (4 vasari ships, 2 great big blob dudes, and 2 battleships) and that was with me manually focusing the bombers on them one at a time, and 4/6 possible bomber damage upgrade techs

I have seen the same thing many times as well. Around stars or wormholes where different races tend to cluster you will often find clusters of supposedly enemy units just doing nothing. The second your ships appear they attempt to attack you.

Given that the enemy almost always gives missions in the late game that require you to be offensive against opponents you are nowhere near it's very difficult to become friendly enough with an AI to make an alliance. You can't attack because you will instantly be attacked on multiple fronts, yet by not attacking you can't make friends with the AI's. It leads to a situation where while they may not all be allied together they are all against you.

I personally find that it's not a resource problem. If I had the unit cap I could afford a large enough fleet to defend and attack. But in a large map as it stands you just don't have enough units to build a defensive fleet in enough key areas to react to attacks while also having a large enough fleet to press your own attack.

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