Balancing Point-Defense

[Cordane]

Balancing Point-Defense against Guided Weapons is hard to do “on paper” because of the differences in single-mount or single-ship comparisons versus multi-mount or multi-ship comparisons. For example, a Corvette is capable of carrying a single G-slot weapon and an S-slot direct-fire weapon, or it can carry two S-slot weapons and a single PD mount, or it can go with just three S-slot weapons.

(I’m in the middle of a separate analysis looking at effectiveness of weapons against standard defensive configurations, so I’m going to use some of that data here.)

An S-slot Railgun (Tier-3 basic kinetic), when faced off against a target that has even shields and armor, where the total utility value is equal to half of the target’s hull points (what I’m calling a “Balanced” target in my separate analysis), will average 3.42 points of damage per day across the installed defenses, not counting adjustments for Tracking or Evasion. Similarly, an Antimatter Missile (Tier-3 basic missile) will average 12.50 points of damage, and a basic Sentinel Point-Defense (equivalent tech level) will average 2.50 points of damage against the full-size warship target (versus what it can do against GW).

If one Corvette carries one Antimatter Missile and one Railgun, it would average 15.92 points of damage per day in total, assuming the target does not use PD. The all-guns Corvette would average 10.27 points of damage, so the uncontested MissileVette does more than half-again more damage. But what happens when we add in PD?

The PD Corvette carries a single PD mount, so it can shoot at a GW twice every day (Cooldown 0.5 days), and an Antimatter Missile travels at a speed of 18 over the Range of 30 (assuming the PDVette is the one being targeted), meaning the missile is subject to around 3 shots before it gets to its target. At 75% Accuracy, and then giving back 10% on Evasion-Tracking, and averaging 2.5 damage per hit on an Antimatter Missile, with its 8 hull points, the Sentinel Point-Defense destroys the missile around 16.5% of the time. By carrying a PD mount instead of a Railgun, the time it spends shooting at missiles cuts its damage output against the warship only 1.89 points on an overall average. By shooting at the missile, the expected damage output of the MissileVette drops to just 13.86 points. A 2.06 point (only 13%) drop on incoming for a 1.53 point (15%) drop on outgoing (by not going all-guns) is not terribly appealing, and this explains a lot of the comments I see where people say, “don’t worry about PD, just carry regular guns and soak the damage.”

But what happens when you look at two MissileVettes against two PDVettes? By now having two PD mounts and two G-slots, we run into two situations: a single missile is inbound during a given 3-shot period for the two PD mounts (assuming they have overlapping PD fields of fire), or two missiles are inbound at the same time. The second scenario is easy, as long as we don’t try to account for two early max damage hits on one missile allowing a total of four shots on the second missile – it’s pretty well equivalent to what we’ve already covered. When the two missiles are separated, which I rounded out as being around 2/3rds of the time, both PD mounts can go to town on each missile. When both are allowed to team up, each missile gets shot down around 72.1% of the time. If they’re allowed to team up 2/3rds of the time, then on average the missiles lose around 53.6% of their damage and the MissileVette falls to just 9.23 points total on average, a 6.69 point (42.0%) drop. Sure, if both PD mounts are busy firing at missiles over 40% of the time, then their individual damage against the warships drops the Corvette’s total average to 8.33 points, but that’s only 1.94 points (18.9%) against a much bigger incoming savings. I haven’t run the numbers for a third or fourth Corvette on each side, but the arc doesn’t look promising for the missiles.

This is why overlapping fields of PD fire generate withering deficits for missile damage - unless all GW attacks come in at the same time, each PD mount gets almost 3 full shots against as many as 5 separate missiles (or 14 torpedoes!) in the length of time of a single GW cooldown (or a larger number of shots against fewer GW just passing through their arcs rather than targeting them). Yes, that would take an incredibly weak warship-attacking weapon out of the outgoing damage mix for the entire battle, but it’s a really small give-back.

I’ve had many other threads where I’ve suggested replacements for a layered PD fleet defense, but they’ve ended up being contradictory to each other over time, so I’ll leave linking to them (outside of my signature) or including yet another version for after any discussion here.

 

[Carl_Bar]

This is a lovely bit of maths but IMo misses the issue that there's far more to missle balance than just PD corvettes vs Missile Corvettes. Past the very earliest stage the natural counter to corvette's is DD's. And the natural Counter to missile based one's is PD DD's. They have twice the S mount firepower, more than twice the raw EHP, and 3x the PD mounts for twice the fleet cap. There's only one way that's going to turn out unless missiles are waaaay more powerful.

But honestly given PD DD's are the natural missile counters and DD hull size is the natural corvette counter missile corvette's really shouldn't be beating PD DD's any way you cut it. So on the one hand it's working as intended.

Conversely on the other hand however the way Missle vette's have by far the best missile per fleet cap ratio means that anything that can cope with them will also render any other missile platform completely worthless.

And that, (and the fact that non-missile vette's are trash after the early game), inherently makes it nigh impossible to balance missiles vs PD, (or PD in general), because missile balance and corvette balance are so interlinked. Get them decoupled and both can start working out nicely.

My idea:

Replace the L slot on DD@s with a G slot.

Replace the G slot on current corvette's with an N slot. N Slot weapons exist for every type that has the full S/M/L setup ATM have the damage of L class weapons, but 0 tracking and medium weapon range. The balance them via damage numbers from there based on testing.

That gives us an effective mid-late game corvette without having it interlinked with PD balance and then we can start working on actually balancing missiles vs PD because where no longer screwing with the effectiveness of an entire ship class when we do.

 

[Cordane]

I indicated earlier that I wasn't wanting to get started on solutions, but one of the ideas I ran out before was not to somehow make GW more powerful to compensate even more for how unbalancing PD is, but to remove PD as a defined fleet defense system. PD does not easily get to a balance point with the way that it's currently built, it is either overkill or woefully inadequate. While removing it entirely seems like a severe change, I want to at least get the conversation going in a way that doesn't hamstring us from looking at all the options.

 

[Cordane]

The whole point of working with the slots found on a Corvette was to work with something simple, not to work specifically with Corvettes. Going with missile Cruisers might have also worked, but would have potentially required showing more of the variations in Cruiser loadouts, and Cruisers with PD mounts aren't well suited to defending against missile Cruisers, due to limited PD slots. Destroyers also have unbalanced weapon slots when compared to a Corvette, both in Gunship or Artillery bows (where you have to factor in size-increase bonuses) and in Picket Ship bows (which have a higher ratio of PD slots and far fewer S-slots).

Separately, I'm not in the best position to update or add to any of my numbers, as my Excel file is on my work PC and I'm not going to be in front of it for a three-day weekend (Labor Day on Monday here in the US).

 

[Carl_Bar]

I indicated earlier that I wasn't wanting to get started on solutions, but one of the ideas I ran out before was not to somehow make GW more powerful to compensate even more for how unbalancing PD is, but to remove PD as a defined fleet defense system. PD does not easily get to a balance point with the way that it's currently built, it is either overkill or woefully inadequate. While removing it entirely seems like a severe change, I want to at least get the conversation going in a way that doesn't hamstring us from looking at all the options.

You could remove PD completely and missiles would still be in an awful place on anything but corvette's because anything that makes them useful on anything else makes them hideously OP on corvette's because the corvette missile hull is so out of whack compared to everything else in the game in terms of slots per Fleet cap. (this isn't an issue with the other corvette hulls as S slots just aren't as valuable except vs corvettes, and DD's hold their own here so nothing breaks).

 

[Tamwin5]

The way Stellaris and missiles tend to work, the ships tend to fire in waves, and even more so for torpedos. The death ball of corvettes flies forward, they get into trance at almost exactly the same time, and send a wave of missiles/torpedos forward. They recharge at the same rate, so every x days you get another volley. This behavior would make balance point defense vs missiles hard... if missiles were at all actually viable.

So in tandem with buffs to missiles and torpedos, I suggest making the time to fire on guided weapons have a range, say of 0.7-1.3 of the current recharge rate. This would make every progressive wave of missiles more spread out, and make it easier for smaller amounts of PD to shoot down some missiles.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

I think the most elegant solution to the problem of missiles and PD is to make Electronic Counter Measures a recharging defensive utility system, like shields and armor.

 

[Dragatus]

Similarly, an Antimatter Missile (Tier-3 basic missile) will average 12.50 points of damage, and a basic Sentinel Point-Defense (equivalent tech level) will average 2.50 points of damage against the full-size warship target (versus what it can do against GW).

Sentinel PD isn't equivalent tech level. Sentinel PD is what we start with. The equivalent tech level is Barrier PD which does 1-6 damage (3.5 avg) and has 20% tracking.

When both are allowed to team up, each missile gets shot down around 72.1% of the time.

This would be true if the missiles came in one at a time or if somehow each PD was able to shoot at multiple missiles simultaneously, but as far as I know each PD weapon can only shoot at 1 target at a time and the missiles will likely be launched together, enter PD range together, and while one is getting shot down the other will be proceeding towards the target unhindered. The way to think of it is that the two PD get 6 shots and if they manage to do 8 damage they disable one Fusion Missile and if they manage to do another 8 damage with the remaining shots they disable both.

I haven't calculated the exact odds, but the most likely outcome is that one missile gets shot down and the other survives. Barrier PD will typically require 2 or 3 hits to disable one missile (2 hits do avg 7 damage, which is only 1 damage away from the required 8), so that's a typical 4 to 6 hits to disable both. With 75% hit chance the 6 shots will tend to result in 4.5 hits which is much closer to 4 than to 6, which suggests it's unlikely both missiles will get taken out, though it is possible.

The weaker Sentinel PD will also tend to produce the same result, but less reliably. It'll typically require 3 or 4 hits (3 avg hits are 7.5 damage, just half a point short of the required 8) and with 65% hit chance it'll get in 3.9 hits on average. So typically it will shoot down one missile, but it's less certain that it will succeed at that task while the Barrier PD is almost guaranteed to shoot down one and just unlikely to shoot down the second.

 

[Alesh]

Now stop me here but...

What if point defense went into utility slots (and didn't fire at ships)? Then you have to balance shields to stop energy, armour to stop kinetics, hull to stop disruptors, and PD to stop missiles.

 

[Dragatus]

The issue with that is that Stellaris is a game that shows the weapons mounted on ships and the graphics system expects them to be mounted on specific spots. That said, having a third utility slot be a counter for missiles would've made balancing easier indeed. Maybe some sort of ECM (electronic counter-measures) that messes with missile targeting and gives you a chance evasion bonus that only works vs missiles.

 

[Cordane]

Sentinel PD isn't equivalent tech level. Sentinel PD is what we start with. The equivalent tech level is Barrier PD which does 1-6 damage (3.5 avg) and has 20% tracking.

OK, then it's even worse, because now the single Barrier PD hits 75% of the time (Track matches AMM Evasion), 2 hits have a pretty good chance (42%) to take down an 8 hull point missile, and you get 2 hits 86% of the time, so a kill happens 36.3% of the time (really rough math - again, don't have my file).

This would be true if the missiles came in one at a time or if somehow each PD was able to shoot at multiple missiles simultaneously, but as far as I know each PD weapon can only shoot at 1 target at a time and the missiles will likely be launched together, enter PD range together, and while one is getting shot down the other will be proceeding towards the target unhindered. The way to think of it is that the two PD get 6 shots and if they manage to do 8 damage they disable one Fusion Missile and if they manage to do another 8 damage with the remaining shots they disable both.

A guaranteed kill on one missile and most likely the other gets by (i.e., averaging over 50% of missiles killed), when two PD mounts fire on the same of two missiles, is actually a preferred outcome for the defender, unless the single mount is capable of killing a missile on its own at a similar rate. A pair of Sentinel PD do a pretty good job of that on an AMM - moving up to the Barrier PD almost guarantees it.

 

[Cordane]

The issue with that is that Stellaris is a game that shows the weapons mounted on ships and the graphics system expects them to be mounted on specific spots. That said, having a third utility slot be a counter for missiles would've made balancing easier indeed. Maybe some sort of ECM (electronic counter-measures) that messes with missile targeting and gives you a chance evasion bonus that only works vs missiles.

The problem with having a utility that only works on GW is it's a wasted choice versus the other two weapon groups. The other suggestions that I've made that were to replace PD with a utility slot system proposed something that worked better versus GW but was also somewhat useful versus the other two. My latest suggestion moved an Accuracy debuff on GW to a core component. All of the systems were designed to make GW less effective, but weren't capable of completely nullifying GW, like shields won't completely shut down lasers or even plasma and armor won't totally shut down kinetics.

 

[Tamwin5]

The problem with having a utility that only works on GW is it's a wasted choice versus the other two weapon groups. The other suggestions that I've made that were to replace PD with a utility slot system proposed something that worked better versus GW but was also somewhat useful versus the other two. My latest suggestion moved an Accuracy debuff on GW to a core component. All of the systems were designed to make GW less effective, but weren't capable of completely nullifying GW, like shields won't completely shut down lasers or even plasma and armor won't totally shut down kinetics.

The thing is, Shields are completely useless against Guided weapons. I can actually see a overhauled system that works.

• PD is very good against Guided, ok against Kinetic, and does nothing to Lasers.
• Shields are very good against Lasers, ok against Kinetic, and does nothing to Guided.
• Armor is ok vs Lasers and Guided, but bad against Kinetics.

That way both Shields and PD have a weapon type that completely ignored them, while Armor is a middle ground that defends everything, but at less efficiency. Armor would also be the only one that needs to be repaired after battle, and is more expensive in terms of alloys. Both PD and Shields would require energy to run, meaning that putting all shields/PD on a ship would require a reactor boosters auxiliary slot, so most ships would have some amount of armor.

Alternatively, if you want a Rock-Paper-Scissors system:

• PD is very good against Guided, ok against Kinetic, and does nothing to Lasers.
  
• Shields are very good against Kinetic, ok against Lasers, and does nothing to Guided.
  
• Armor is very good against Lasers, Ok against Guided, and does nothing to Kinetic.

OR

• PD is very good against Guided, ok against Lasers, and does nothing to Kinetic.
  
• Shields are very good against Lasers, ok against Kinetic, and does nothing to Guided.
  
• Armor is very good against Kinetic, Ok against Guided, and does nothing to Lasers.

This way makes a lot less sense in terms of lore (armor does nothing vs kinetics, or PD coulters lasers?), but will always be balanced.

---

If PD was going to be turned into a utility slot, I'd go with suggestion one. Personally though, I think that the current system for PD is fine, although things like fire rate, damage values, range, etc. can be tweaked.

What I do think would be interesting to add is an auxiallry slot item: "Electronic countermeasures" which lowers the accuracy or tracking of any guided weapon launched at the craft by a significant amount, say 20% accuracy or 30% tracking.

 

[Cordane]

OK, then it's even worse, because now the single Barrier PD hits 75% of the time (Track matches AMM Evasion), 2 hits have a pretty good chance (42%) to take down an 8 hull point missile, and you get 2 hits 86% of the time, so a kill happens 36.3% of the time (really rough math - again, don't have my file).

A guaranteed kill on one missile and most likely the other gets by (i.e., averaging over 50% of missiles killed), when two PD mounts fire on the same of two missiles, is actually a preferred outcome for the defender, unless the single mount is capable of killing a missile on its own at a similar rate. A pair of Sentinel PD do a pretty good job of that on an AMM - moving up to the Barrier PD almost guarantees it.

Have my file, ran the numbers:

A single Barrier PD kills an AMM on three shots 52.9% of the time. Two Barrier PD mounts attacking a single AMM kill it 94.6% of the time. If they fire at a pair of missiles, one at a time, the first two shots (one apiece) kill the first missile 23.4% of the time and take four shots 74.9% of the time. Those early kills allow shots on the second AMM, netting another 29.6% of those; combined, the two mounts take down 62.1% of the incoming AMMs.

When both PD mounts fire at the same time, they only lose 15% of their outbound damage, yet they reduce the inbound damage by 48.7%; if they can both fire at each missile, they lose 18.9% outbound and reduce 65.7% inbound (when averaged 2v1, 2v1, 2v2).

 

[GloatingSwine]

The thing is, Shields are completely useless against Guided weapons. I can actually see a overhauled system that works.

• PD is very good against Guided, ok against Kinetic, and does nothing to Lasers.
• Shields are very good against Lasers, ok against Kinetic, and does nothing to Guided.
• Armor is ok vs Lasers and Guided, but bad against Kinetics.

This can't be implemented the way weapons currently work in Stellaris, because kinetic weapons are not a projectile and so point defence cannot interact with them.

Large scale changes to how weapons work are not likely at this point, so any changes to weapon balance has to use things the way they currently are.

Things may actually be made worse by having weapons ignore any defences as well. Because it means those weapons can't synergise with weapons that don't get to ignore the same defences.

That's also why G slots are only really good on corvettes where they can make up most of the DPS, the fact that the rest is lost to antisynergy matters a lot less than on, eg. a G slot cruiser which can have less of its DPS in G slots.

What I do think would be interesting to add is an auxiallry slot item: "Electronic countermeasures" which lowers the accuracy or tracking of any guided weapon launched at the craft by a significant amount, say 20% accuracy or 30% tracking.

Also impossible, you can have an ECM aura that reduces the accuracy of enemy ships, but aura effects can only affect a whole ship. (Auras kick the hell out of performance though)

 

[Tamwin5]

This can't be implemented the way weapons currently work in Stellaris, because kinetic weapons are not a projectile and so point defence cannot interact with them.

Large scale changes to how weapons work are not likely at this point, so any changes to weapon balance has to use things the way they currently are.

Things may actually be made worse by having weapons ignore any defences as well. Because it means those weapons can't synergise with weapons that don't get to ignore the same defences.

That's also why G slots are only really good on corvettes where they can make up most of the DPS, the fact that the rest is lost to antisynergy matters a lot less than on, eg. a G slot cruiser which can have less of its DPS in G slots.



Also impossible, you can have an ECM aura that reduces the accuracy of enemy ships, but aura effects can only affect a whole ship. (Auras kick the hell out of performance though)

It wouldn't be an aura, it would only effect a ship aiming at it. Similarly to how show can get the evasion of ships they fire at, this would simply add a flag so that if the firing weapon is guided, it loses X accuracy or the target gains X evasion vs that shot.

 

[GloatingSwine]

It wouldn't be an aura, it would only effect a ship aiming at it. Similarly to how show can get the evasion of ships they fire at, this would simply add a flag so that if the firing weapon is guided, it loses X accuracy or the target gains X evasion vs that shot.

Again, there's no mechanic like that in Stellaris and this far out from release there isn't going to be one added.

Ships do not know that they are being aimed at so they cannot apply an effect to things aiming at them at all.

There also isn't a way to selectively apply effects to only certain weapon types.

 

[Cordane]

Again, there's no mechanic like that in Stellaris and this far out from release there isn't going to be one added.

Ships do not know that they are being aimed at so they cannot apply an effect to things aiming at them at all.

There also isn't a way to selectively apply effects to only certain weapon types.

I don't agree with Tamwin5's suggestion (more the specifics than the general nature of the whole post), but your counter-arguments aren't particularly convincing:

1. The Stellaris dev team has been making significant changes to other systems all along, and any attempt at putting in, for example, an expanded Diplomacy system as a major update is certainly going to add mechanics not currently in Stellaris. So I don't consider this a barrier to entry - combat mechanics may not need immediate improvements like some other systems, but I'm sure the devs will make another pass through that area.
2. The ship being fired on doesn't have to know anything, it's a rating on the targeted ship that the attacking ship reads and has to abide by. Similar to Evasion, a modifier (separate from the Evasion - Tracking sub-equation) that acts as an Accuracy malus just requires an extension to the Accuracy equation.
3. There certainly is a way to apply an effect based on weapon type, with a perfect example being the damage bonus/penalty based on defensive layer. Again, the targeted ship doesn't apply anything, only the attacking ship does, per weapon and type. You wouldn't be able to handle it entirely as an Evasion modifier that way because Evasion is a single value that is read off the target, and having only a part of that value that is modified means you have to present it as a separate value. Also, depending on how you view the justification for the Evasion/Tracking sub-system, an ECM (/ECCM?) system may not have the same kinds of justifications and would likely need to be countered differently/separately rather than lumped into Evasion/Tracking.

 

[Tamwin5]

I don't agree with Tamwin5's suggestion (more the specifics than the general nature of the whole post), but your counter-arguments aren't particularly convincing:

1. The Stellaris dev team has been making significant changes to other systems all along, and any attempt at putting in, for example, an expanded Diplomacy system as a major update is certainly going to add mechanics not currently in Stellaris. So I don't consider this a barrier to entry - combat mechanics may not need immediate improvements like some other systems, but I'm sure the devs will make another pass through that area.
2. The ship being fired on doesn't have to know anything, it's a rating on the targeted ship that the attacking ship reads and has to abide by. Similar to Evasion, a modifier (separate from the Evasion - Tracking sub-equation) that acts as an Accuracy malus just requires an extension to the Accuracy equation.
3. There certainly is a way to apply an effect based on weapon type, with a perfect example being the damage bonus/penalty based on defensive layer. Again, the targeted ship doesn't apply anything, only the attacking ship does, per weapon and type. You wouldn't be able to handle it entirely as an Evasion modifier that way because Evasion is a single value that is read off the target, and having only a part of that value that is modified means you have to present it as a separate value. Also, depending on how you view the justification for the Evasion/Tracking sub-system, an ECM (/ECCM?) system may not have the same kinds of justifications and would likely need to be countered differently/separately rather than lumped into Evasion/Tracking.

I also don't agree with my suggestions, but it was an interesting thought exercise to do. Often the best way to see how good an idea is is to actually hash it out and see how things stand.

The way I envisioned it working is a flag on the evasion of the ship, so you could have Evasion: 30 or Evasion: 30(c). The (c) would lower the accuracy or evasion of specified weapon types by certain amounts (Scourge Missiles from the Prethorian would be immune/less effected, due to being biological).

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

I don't think PD is even the problem here. IMO, whole concept of 'delayed' weaponry is the problem and has to go: it's way easier to balance combat when all weapons have instantaneous damage delivery. Easier on CPU, too.