Weapon and Defense Choices

[bovine cannibal]

There's little information in the game's tech tree. Given your choice, do you head for lasers, mass drivers, or missiles?
Do you find there is any significant difference between deflectors, point defense, and armor?

If I play as Drengin, I put missiles and medium hulls as priorities. Missiles are more expensive and larger, but more powerful, and complements an attack bonus and war party.

Mass Drivers are the least expensive, if you have a struggling economy or are interested in quantity over quality.

I tend to pick lasers simply because it complements the preceding techs.

So, what are your preferences?
If you want, I can share a link to weapon and defense charts.

[Gufnork]

I generally get whatever hurts the other races the most. I don't reasearch weapon tech until very late, at which point I can see what the other races have and adapt. But if I had to choose, it would definetly be Mass Drivers for one reason only. Nano Ripper. A super powerful weapon found early in the tech tree with only one weakness, it's dang expensive. But in this game the biggest gun wins.

[tetley]

I tend to pick lasers because they take up less space, but I need to start resisting that temptation and going Mass Drivers.

[Peets]

I mostly go for missiles. You can easily get to Harpoon and they rock! I haven't got much further yet lol. I only played on small and medium maps. First time playing on large, it's very interesting to see what will happen. I went for missile this time and the AI can't do a thing against it. (Playing on normal) I might have to raise the AI next game.

[Kekkonen]

Originally posted by Gufnork
But if I had to choose, it would definetly be Mass Drivers for one reason only. Nano Ripper. A super powerful weapon found early in the tech tree with only one weakness, it's dang expensive. But in this game the biggest gun wins.

The Nano Ripper is also a good reason NOT to totally ignore armor research if your main foes go for the mass driver weapon line.

[Shadowlord]

Have any of y'all tried putting at least level 1 of each defense on your ships?

My reason for this is that, assuming your defenses are mainly against one type, doing this would boost your defense against other weapon types without harming your main defense at all. For example, making a ship's defenses 6/1/1 instead of 8/0/0.

The reason for this is because of the way defense is calcuated. According to the GalCiv II wiki, "defense operates at the square root of strength against weapons of other classes." So, a ship with shields/armor/PD 8/0/0 would have the same defense against lasers (8.0) as a ship with 6/1/1 defenses, BUT the 6/1/1 ship would have a better defense against missiles or mass drivers (4.45) than the 8/0/0 ship (2.82). The question is, how much more would it cost to reduce your primary defense by two points and place a 1-defense item for the other two defense types? And, if it does cost more money and/or space, would it still be cost-effective? If your opponents have a few weapons of the off-types, then it would certainly help your defenses a bit, hm?

(Just to note, I don't have the game yet, since I'm waiting for the demo to come out. I normally won't buy a new game without trying a demo first. But I'm reading a lot about the game and thinking, and that's good.)

[Gufnork]

That would depend on your tech level. At low tech levels then sure, it's worth going 6/1/1. But at higher tech levels you can get a level 4 shield the same size as a level 1 armor, for instance and only nominally higher cost.

[Kekkonen]

While the 6/1/1 ship gets better defense, I strongly suspect the 8/0/0 will be the overall better ship. This is to a large degree due to the way miniaturization is handled in the game.

To those who don't have it yet, it's not a continuous process like in MOO2, where every new level of tech made the inventions in the previous levels a little bit smaller. In GalCiv2, miniaturization is a tech to itself. IThe numbers here actually work backwards; all components have constant size, but every new level in miniaturization makes hull sizes bigger in comparison.

New tech levels in weapons and defense (and engines too) either give you the previous level of performance in a slightly smaller package, or an improved level of performance in a gadget that is the same size or only marginally bigger than your previous top-of-the-line product. Construction costs generally either stay the same or increase by a tiny bit, so they're a secondary consideration.

What this leads to is the fact that you'll never get a really tiny strength 1 armor or point defense. Your best strength 1 armor or PD will take about the same amount of room as your most primitive strength 2 shield (and your most primitive strength 1's will take almost twice that). So, if you compare the 6/1/1 ship to the 8/0/0 one, you'll probably find that you can fit an additional gun or an extra engine in the latter -- and you can get it earlier, since don't have to research the first few techs in the armor and point defense lines.

[ben_sphynx]

If one believes the manual, then one gets even better defence with 6/1/1 than with 8/0/0, even against lasers (the 8 defence is shields).

Having one type of defence, one would roll 1->8 for defensive score.

Have 3 types one would roll (1->6)+(1->1)+(1->1), ie 3->8

I've not however worked out how to test this - anyone got ideas?

[Gufnork]

The manual is inaccurate, you can always roll a 0, so it's 0->8 for both scenarios. Otherwise a battle between two ships with laser 1 shields 1 would last forever.

[Peets]

Actually you never roll a 0 for attack.
Well, I have never saw it. I only managed to get a 0 when the other ship had defence, so actually blocking my attack.
So in my opinion having three kinds of weapons is more chance of getting hits.

[Gufnork]

The problem with having three kinds of weapons is that every weapon is defended against individually from what I've heard. So if your opponent has any form of defense, that defense will be thrice as effective against someone with three types of weapons.

[Hansolo88]

You can roll 0 for an attack, but when that happens it is not shown in the log on the battle screen. So the only shots you see that are listed are the ones that roll at least a 1.

This has been verified by Cari, the lead programmer.

[Peets]

I have seen 0's a lot and I always see all my ships firing...

[Hansolo88]

I think when the attacker rolls higher than zero but still less than the defense roll, it displays a zero since the defense deflected the shot and no damage was done. But when the attacker rolls a zero himself it is masked regardless and doesn't show up, that is what Cari was refering to.

So you will see zeros when attacking, but not in some circumstances (such as firing at a ship with no defenses).