Ship Defenses?

[Arkanin]

I'm a Galciv 2 newbie (I guess we all are to an extent since the game is fairly new) and while I love the game, one of the few things that bothers me is the way armor, shields and ECM techs have been implemented.

I guess that if you expect to go to war with one particular race that you've espionaged and so know their ships mostly use one particular weapon, the defenses could be good. But otherwise, is there much of a point to placing them on ships that you plan to use as your "General Military" fleet if you have several different factions with different weapon styles and don't know who you could end up fighting?

Also, how is the damage absorption calculated? Let's say that the enemy ship has 5 10-damage laser weapons. My ship has 5 1-point shield units. Would my ship absorb 5 damage out of all 50, or 5 damage for each laser weapon that hit it (e.g., would it take 45 or 25 damage)?

Also, Armor, ECM, and Shields also don't contribute any protection against the other weapon attacks they don't counter, correct? All things considered, I'm a little disappointed by how this one thing has been implemented -- it would have been neater if Armor added hits, shields a few hits and some damage reduction, and ECM an effective missile defense, maybe giving shields and armor respective bonuses against lasers and mass drivers -- but at any rate, are they still useful if you don't know who you'll be fighting next?

 

[Vizzini]

Also, how is the damage absorption calculated? Let's say that the enemy ship has 5 10-damage laser weapons. My ship has 5 1-point shield units. Would my ship absorb 5 damage out of all 50, or 5 damage for each laser weapon that hit it (e.g., would it take 45 or 25 damage)?

The attack and defense values are not straight "absorb X amount of damage" - they are instead modifers to your attack and defense rolls. Having more than one defense type -is- helpful as well, as they add the square root of their value to your defense roll.

Your example isn't workable really, since a ship capable of mounting 5x 10 damage weapons would utterly flatten something only capable of mounting 5x 1 point defense mounts.

Something more realistic: A ship with 4x 2 damage guns vs a ship with 2x 2 defense armor and 1x beam defense. (Each weapon attack is added separately)

Attackers roll: 0 to 2 + 0 to 2 + 0 to 2 + 0 to 2 == (0 to 8)
Defenders roll: 0 to 2 + 0 to 2 + 0 to 1 == (0 to 5)

As you can probably guess, this is gonna be a long fight.

The square root of 1 is still 1 so the 1x beam defense adds nicely to your overall defense even tho you're defending against the wrong type of attack.

Damage: If the attacker roll totals higher than the defenders roll, damage is dealt equal to the difference. So in the above if the attacker maxes out at 8 on his roll and the defender maxes out at 5 on their roll, the defending ship will take 3 damage. If the defender roll is equal to or higher than the attackers roll, the attack fails completely and no damage at all is dealt.

In summary: Defense is indeed neater than you described and works exactly like you hoped it would.