Defence vs. Attack and other Combat related questions...

I don't think being the defender makes a difference unless you are palying some mod with facilities that do stuff like give you extra shields or skill. (Edit: missed you had shrines. No wonder you hit him more)

Ships can retreat. It dpeends on what strategy you were using. It could be something like retreat: When 75% of force is destroyed.

I haven't made much use of experience as I usually just go with swamping the enemy but I think experience would make a difference. Say they have +20 due to experience, I think this means your attacks are +20% better to hit, and you are +20% harder to hit.

Your friends ship may not have been firing at point blank range with those ripper beams. Those are VERY short range weapons and your early shots may have made a huge difference.
So ... your friend should look into the ship strategies, me thinks.

~Myrath

That's one of the advantages of psychic tech. You can get the training facilities sooner.
Damn strait those bonus's make a dif.

~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

I've found that fleets and taskforces have their uses, but what you must consider is that the AI is being told what course to follow and won't change due to circumstances. You need to consider what strategy to give them.

For example if your friend, who I believe had high energy weapons, left his strategy as optimal or maximum then they will not be getting up close like they're supposed to to make use of their weapons.

In your case all your ships have been told, just each do what you think is best (which granted is whatever strategy they have as default), while your friend has it as do what I'm saying and don't you dare think you know better. So the strategy may be flawed for the situation but the AI isn't going to know this. Then when he removes the fleet stuff his ships will do what they each think is best and swarm over you.

I will use an example I have used recently. My enemy uses Plasma missiles. I stick to a taskforce strategy whereby all my ships stay in fomationa and don't wander off, they have a united PD front that easily handles his missiles as I close. If they didn't stick to formation some might wansder off and then they fall prey to stronger numbers as small groups of ships go off.

If you have lots of missile ships stick with maximum range and make sure you outrange him. In his case with HE weapons I'd go for a taskforce with point blank or short range. If he has better engines he'll get in close and blast your ships.

Let your friend try this one:
- Set fleet attack & defense strategy to WALL
- Make 9 taskforces, devide ships evenly. (for equal speed and configuration)
- Set all 9 taskforces to strategy Wall on attack & defense.

This should allow his slower ships to arrive at the same time as his faster ships and should allow his fleet to use it's full power.

Takes a bit of work But it does work!

~Myrath

I wish the combat simulator would revert to the set of ships you chose before a fight is played, rather than the leftover forces - that would make testing ship / task force / fleet strategies a lot easier! It's seriously click-heavy to simulate many variations of a large battle.

There's clearly a lot of fun to be had with playing with custom strategies, but in my experience there's quite a lot of risk too. You could make a formation with Ships Break Formation Immediately set to False, which could have point defence or massively armoured ships in the front lines and a second wave of damage dealers behind. This is likely to fare well against a seeker-heavy opponent (and would be a thing of beauty) but if you choose this and actually meet a direct fire-heavy enemy fleet set to break formation immediately, then you are looking at catastrophic losses. The enemy ships bunch together and concentrate fire on the edge of your formation, you have a lot of ships on the distant end of your formation who are too far away to return fire. The mass of enemy ships gradually works its way through your fleet and you probably lose 4 or 5 ships for each kill. With no area effect weapons available, there is little disadvantage in bunching up like that and training concentrated fire is almost always a good thing.

The simulator leaving left over forces does have its use. I am defending a WP, I can test to see how things will go as reinforcements arrive, and how many fights it takes to destroy all the enemy.

AFAIK the experience bonuses of fleets and ships add together.

I've seen the simulator do all kinds of weird things. Simulation of two ships versus three drones went like this: drones and ships clash, two drones and one ship get killed. Then the last drone runs away, even though it had no damage to weapons and still had plenty of supply/ordnance! Go figure ...
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See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

Does the simulator still give different results based on the speed it is set on?

The real combat gives different results based on the speed & tactical/strategic it's played.