Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaiba
I believe the difference the way you build fleets between ST and MT stats hampers the less organised defensively alliances. People in these alliances have to dilute their builds into more ships because they cannot rely on defence from others meaning that overall they have their defence ships spread thin over more members.
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That's reasonable, however, there are other factors that make me uncertain whether a strategy that relies exclusively on exchanging defense would work out in practice.
First, defense fleets require a return journey whereas the home fleet does not, so all else being equal, it is twice as efficient to rely on your own ships than on those of others: 7--9 ticks staying home vs. (7--9) + 1 + (7--9) ticks defending. Additionally, you can make some use of your ships in the time between the attacker showing and landing. You could use it to fake attack with, or leech defense for a few ticks, or cover incomings on galmates with ships you need yourself, with time left to return home in time to fight your own incs (if they recall prematurely or do not do their research). Someone who has the fleet slot busy defending you cannot do any of these.
Second, if you get 3 waves of incomings, your own ships work against all 3 waves, but defense from others can only help against 1 wave at a time. Essentially, with a balanced fleet, you basically get a free defense fleet on every wave: your home fleet. If you have gaps (as opposed to mere weaknesses) in your defense, you give up that home team advantage, requiring more defense than you would if your fleet were balanced.
Third, if you rely exclusively or nearly-exclusively on defense to cover certain incs, attackers can send more waves than they otherwise could, because they don't have to worry about countering your own ships.
You make a good point, but I don't think it outweighs the 3 factors I listed above.