New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

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unjashfan
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New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#1 Post by unjashfan »

This idea is inspired by the Eaxaw, which has ultimate weapons, and I thought: "Why couldn't we have species with good/bad defenses?" It could work similar to the ground troop modifiers. What do you guys think?

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Dilvish
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#2 Post by Dilvish »

When I recently reorganized how the defense tech Effects were specified, part of that included setting them up so it would be easy to specify species as having "Good_Defense" etc, so it will be quite easy to do. (Though the only Macro for it I actually made so far was "Average_Defense" since that's what everything is currently; the Acirema defense is handled separately as an extra boost since it's a flat value, not a multiplier like the "Good_X", "Bad_X" things usually are.
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Sloth
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#3 Post by Sloth »

Dilvish wrote:the Acirema defense is handled separately as an extra boost since it's a flat value, not a multiplier like the "Good_X", "Bad_X" things usually are.
I think a flat value has to be considered, otherwise there will be no bonus in the early game (or for natives). Detection Range and Stealth also use a flat bonus (and i think they work quite good this way).
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Dilvish
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#4 Post by Dilvish »

Sloth wrote:I think a flat value has to be considered, otherwise there will be no bonus in the early game (or for natives). Detection Range and Stealth also use a flat bonus (and i think they work quite good this way).
Perhaps a combination of a multiplier coupled with a flat boost might work best for these. As you note, the multiplier is meaningless without tech, but the flat boost would either be overwhelming at the beginning or rapidly become near meaningless. The multiplier would let the defensive bonus still be notable after the species has been incorporated into an empire.
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Bigjoe5
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#5 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Dilvish wrote:
Sloth wrote:I think a flat value has to be considered, otherwise there will be no bonus in the early game (or for natives). Detection Range and Stealth also use a flat bonus (and i think they work quite good this way).
Perhaps a combination of a multiplier coupled with a flat boost might work best for these. As you note, the multiplier is meaningless without tech, but the flat boost would either be overwhelming at the beginning or rapidly become near meaningless. The multiplier would let the defensive bonus still be notable after the species has been incorporated into an empire.
Alternatively, all planets could start with a small amount of defense by default. There is also the protection focus which is available from the start of the game, and which would be be enhanced by a multiplier boost to Defense.
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#6 Post by Dilvish »

Bigjoe5 wrote:Alternatively, all planets could start with a small amount of defense by default. There is also the protection focus which is available from the start of the game, and which would be be enhanced by a multiplier boost to Defense.
I agree, Protection Focus should be shifted to a combination of flat boost and multiplier. Actually, the main reason I had done the defense Effects restructuring was to change Protection Focus over to a multiplier on Shields and Defense as well as troops, but that's left it starting out weak until some Defense Tech is researched. At the time it hadn't crossed my mind to make it a combination flat boost plus multiplier, but I think that would be good to give it a bit more immediate value.

So right now, Protection Focus doubles the 3 planetary combat meters. What if for shields, defense, and troops it were 2*base+10, 2*base+5, and 2*base+2
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unjashfan
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#7 Post by unjashfan »

Protection Focus should be shifted to a combination of flat boost and multiplier
I also agree.
So right now, Protection Focus doubles the 3 planetary combat meters. What if for shields, defense, and troops it were 2*base+10, 2*base+5, and 2*base+2
I'm not sure what 'base' represents. Say I had 100 shields, would the equation then be 2*(100)+10? In that case, then the protection focus won't have any use early game when the base values are 0: 2*(0)+10.

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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#8 Post by Bigjoe5 »

unjashfan wrote:
So right now, Protection Focus doubles the 3 planetary combat meters. What if for shields, defense, and troops it were 2*base+10, 2*base+5, and 2*base+2
I'm not sure what 'base' represents. Say I had 100 shields, would the equation then be 2*(100)+10? In that case, then the protection focus won't have any use early game when the base values are 0: 2*(0)+10.
I'd say 10 is significantly better than 0, particularly in the early game.
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eleazar
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Re: New species attribute: Good/Bad Defense

#9 Post by eleazar »

unjashfan wrote:"Why couldn't we have species with good/bad defenses?"
"Why not?" isn't the question that needs to be answered.

The relevant question is "Why?"

Shields/Defenses seem more like the outcome of technology to me. It seems more of a stretch to have certain species naturally good bad at these meters which you would expect to require little "human" interaction.

If we wanted a starting species to have better Shields/Defenses we can grant them starting techs.

unjashfan wrote: In that case, then the protection focus won't have any use early game when the base values are 0: 2*(0)+10.
Protection focus boosts the troop meter which is non-zero for almost all species without tech boosts. It doesn't need to boost all 3 to be a valid focus choice.

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