Thoughts about defense mechanism

[Acheron]

Would just like to share to share some thoughts about defense mechanism in space combat, curious about your thoughts. IMHO, the basic defense mechanism are:

Multiple ships, having the same amount of firepower split over several ships has two effects. On the one hand, as you loose smaller ships (to destruction or retreat), the output firepower suffers. Conversely, if it were all concentrated in one ship and we have no damage mechanics (so a ship is either fighting or it is not), it will pump out the same amount of damage until it is destroyed in its entirety. Conversely, there is the well known Overkill effect. You have a gun that deals 100 damage per shot. However, each target only has 10 hitpoints. So, every hit wastes 90 damage through overkill. This is countered by having weapons that do smaller amount faster (so the same DPS, damage per attack is reduced, but so is cooldown).

Absolute damage reduction works directly in the opposite direction. Let us say a defensive system subtracts 9 points of damage flat per attack. 10 guns doing 10 damage would inflict only 10 points of damage [(10-9)*10]. Conversely, 1 gun doing 100 damage would inflict 91 points of damage (100-9). So here you are better off using weapons that do large amounts of damage slower (for the same DPS).

Evasion is an all-or-nothing defense. With a certain percentile change, you either evade the damage completely or you suffer it in full.

Percentile damage reduction conversely is more like an always-the-same defense. You always subtract a certain percentile amount of damage. Since it is a percentile amount, only the pure DPS matters, not whether it comes by way of a weak quick-firing or a strong slow-firing gun.

As explained, the first two make a difference by whether the weapon deals its DPS in quickly-repeating weak shots or slowly repeating powerful blasts. The later two only make a difference if a weapon has a specified mechanic relating to it, for example one weapon giving a malus to evasion, so it deals more damage to evasive defense, or a weapon ignoring parts of the percentile damage reductor. Without weapons that have such special abilities, these two defensive systems are quite pointless and on average identical to just raising hit points.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

While this is an interesting analysis on game mechanics, I don't rightly know where you're going with this.

Stellaris doesn't have a % DAM reduction. It doesn't even have flat DAM reduction.
It does have % chance-to-ignore, which is already hard-countered by the high fire-rate and high tracking small guns.

 

[sortulv]

I have always favored the absolute damage reduction mechanic for armour - but I doubt we will see it in Stellaris now, too much work implementing it well.

In Stellaris today we have:
- % reduction based on shield/armour/hull
- Chance to negate (evasion)
- Chance to flee (countered by high damage).

 

[Blurb]

OP conveniently forgets the most important defense mechanism in Stellaris: Combat Disengage Chance.
Every ship that is NOT overkilled is effectively a ship that will return to home, where it will repair and shore up the next chokepoint.

While this is an interesting analysis on game mechanics, I don't rightly know where you're going with this.

Stellaris doesn't have a % DAM reduction. It doesn't even have flat DAM reduction.
It does have % chance-to-ignore, which is already hard-countered by the high fire-rate and high tracking small guns.

How do you reach the conclusion that fire rate counters evasion?
If your weapon has a net accuracy of 0%, it'll never hit the target no matter how many rounds are fired.
High rate of fire is a workaround to prevent overkills, it doesn't interact with evasion in any way.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

How do you reach the conclusion that fire rate counters evasion?
If your weapon has a net accuracy of 0%, it'll never hit the target no matter how many rounds are fired.
High rate of fire is a workaround to prevent overkills, it doesn't interact with evasion in any way.

It's pretty simple: the more rolls you have to attack, the more consistently you can roll a hit. Imagine playing Pokemon, trying to land a low-accuracy, high-power, low-pp move on a high-initiative pokemon that's been spamming evasion buffs. You might need only one hit, but that one hit is unlikely to happen, so you should instead use your high-accuracy, low-power, high-pp move.

Assuming a unit has 90% chance-to-ignore and you have two units attacking it with the same DPS:
The unit that can make 100 rolls to attack will most likely hit 10 times.
The unit that can make 5 rolls to attack will be lucky to land one hit.

Assuming that said defending unit has 10 health and said DPS of attacking units is 100:
The 100-rolls unit will most likely kill the opposing unit within 1 second.
The 5-rolls unit will most likely kill the opposing unit within 2 seconds.

It's less a question of overkill, and more a question of consistency.

 

[Acheron]

While this is an interesting analysis on game mechanics, I don't rightly know where you're going with this.

I find myself sometimes musing about Stellaris combat system and thought it might be a good idea to talk some basics first so I get the fundamentals right.

OP conveniently forgets the most important defense mechanism in Stellaris: Combat Disengage Chance.
Every ship that is NOT overkilled is effectively a ship that will return to home, where it will repair and shore up the next chokepoint.

Admittedly, combat disengagement is very important, though in my defense, whether a ship is destroyed or disengaged does not matter for current battle, right? But it is an important mechanic of course as it makes defeat more temporary.

 

[Blurb]

Imagine playing Pokemon, trying to land a low-accuracy, high-power, low-pp move on a high-initiative pokemon that's been spamming evasion buffs. You might need only one hit, but that one hit is unlikely to happen, so you should instead use your high-accuracy, low-power, high-pp move.
It's less a question of overkill, and more a question of consistency.

Far as I know "combat" in pokemon games is a series of 1v1 duels with very limited number of attacks from each combatant.
Combat in stellaris typically features dozens if not hundreds of combatants on each side, each combatant at times making dozens of attacks.
Any alleged advantage of consistency is washed out by the sheer number of shots fired(*), and even if it wasn't, then it would be just as easy to claim that inconsistency is an advantage: An unusually bad result is just as likely as an unusually good result.
Fire rate is not an inherently relevant parameter when picking a weapon to counter high-evasion targets.

*If you doubt me, then I suggest you save a game right before a fleet battle. Let the battle finish, then check the fleet report for weapon accuracy.
Write down accuracy, then repeat the procedure. You will likely find that weapon accuracy does not vary a lot across individual tests.

Admittedly, combat disengagement is very important, though in my defense, whether a ship is destroyed or disengaged does not matter for current battle, right? But it is an important mechanic of course as it makes defeat more temporary.

You could argue that a high combat disengage chance is detrimental to the outcome of an individual battle, as it means ships effectively have lower hull points and "die" sooner - effectively making it a harmful "defense" mechanism.
Alternatively, Instead of considering it as an inherent defense mechanism, you could instead interpret it as a modifier to ship build cost which interacts with the enemy's weapon damage.