Offensive/Defensive bonus

[Dakaka]

I am not sure if this idea has been posted before and as there are at minimum 7 pages to sort through please forgive me if this idea has been posted before and shot down. Well that out the way.

It's an old saying that a man defending his home is worth two people trying to take his home (not sure who said it or how "old" it may be)
Now not suggesting a doubleling of deffensive strength but at least a little bit of a bonus for defending your planet .... like your "home" defense has it's intiate lowered by one point on all it's ships .... I mean it is home field advantage is it not ... your pilots would be well familiar with the gravity wells and debris fields etc etc orbiting yer planet and you have advanced notice so could deploy your forces to their best effect right? It's not like you've seen the enemy coming for 8 hours and just pulled all you ships out of dry dock as the enemy was coming in the front door

Now for an offensive bonus ..... If a person attacks with their entire fleet structure maybe they should also have a 1 point reduction in their intiative ..... Look at the damage the "destroyed" japenese planes known as kamikaze did when they realized all was lost .... or maybe an alternate attack command that would reult in a 2 to 1 loss of the enemy forces ... Like commited assault ........ where everything from a frigate on down doesn't come home .... but yer capital ships and pods still come out like normal.

Really fond of the first part (defensive), second part (offesive) I could live without. But, I realize there are people who would want a counter to the defensive bonuses

[Ultimate Newbie]

I think defensive bonuses because of home turf (and i think some spacial geography, like a home fleet hiding in a nearby nebula to gain defensive advantage etc) have been discussed before, and the conclusion was that any special advantage for the defenders would lead to stagnation in the game.

I think i have to agree with that.

And besides, if you give a defence bonus to defenders, and an offensive bonus to attackers, where do you end up? If the bonus were equal, right back where you started :\.

[Tis]

there is already a defensive bonus.

its called 'salvage'

[Dakaka]

well the defensive bonus would be in place with or without your input .... the offensive bonus would be a result of a special attack resulting in heavier losses to the attacker (and the ability to offset the defensive bonus)

as for salvage being a defensive bonus ..... yes it does soften the blow considerably ... however, if you're the victim of all out attacks cause of an alliance war (and they happened to have found yer coords from a previous attack ya did) that salvage will very often not be enough to keep you from loosing yer shirt in a sustained attack since the attackers come faster then ya can produce the ships

[Tis]

and what exacltly is the point of the game if its impossible to make an enemy 'lose their shirt' in and all out 'alliance war'?

[Dakaka]

True that true that. Good thing i'm not a game designer eh

[Makhil]

what if your ships are considered defending your planet only if they are in a fleet slot. The ships in the home slot meaning they are under some shelter, waiting to be deployed (they can't def and can't be attacked).
Meaning if big planets send their 3 fleets on small gals they can be countered, meaning also that ships coming out of production the tick an attacker lands are protected.
another option I once proposed was to be able to set def missions to the ships in the home slot:
- patrol = initiative bonus (but higher capping for the attacker)
- concealed = armour bonus (damage minus)
- kamikaze = Damage bonus (armour minus)

[wakey]

On your offensive idea I actually find your view on this a little strange. You see if history tells us one thing its that having significantly more troops than your opponent is as much (if not more) of a hindrence than a help.

Yes a smaller force rarely wins when significantly outnumbered but theres something that seems to happen when your greatly outnumbered that sees the small force become highly efficient and sees them kill a significant higher percentage of the attackers forces than the attacker kils of theire. Why this happens i'm not 100% sure, someone versed in Military studies could probally give you the exact reason but id personally say its one of the following

1) 10 targets are easier to hit than 1. Fire at a group of 10 and you have 10 chances of making the kill, shoot at 1 and you only 1 chance. As such a smaller force has a much higher potential to make kills thus appears to put up a much greater fight than their numbers suggest is possible

2) 10 people are harder to co-ordinate than 1, the more people you have to control the harder it is and as such orders are harder to be carried out to the letter which makes them slightly less organised thus giving the smaller group an advantage

3) Over confidence by the attackers, they know they have more numbers so should overrun them BUT the over confidence makes them a little lax and makes them less efficient

4) Fighting to the death, the defender knows they are almost certainly going to die due to the sheer numbers so they decide if they are going to die they will take as many people as they can with them. Adrenaline kicks in and they become a bit crazy taking everything in their path out as they now have no fear of death

Its probally a combination of all these plus perhaps a few other factors but the outcome is something the game does ignore, the game simply allows for it to be a case of greater numbers are better. Now if anything based around this idea was implemented id almost certainly say it has to be the reverse of your idea, if someone sends all their fleet at you (and most likly outnumber you as a result) either they should get some kind of penalty or you a bonus or again perhaps a bit of both.

II would also say that perhaps it should also take into account not only the number of ships sent but also the value of the ships that a planet has in total and not just what was sent. After all even if a big planet sends a small fleet at a small planet theres still that 'underdog' mentality in play which while maybe not as obvious or have quite as much impact as the effect of sheer numbers would have an effect on both the attacking fleets attitude and the defending fleets attitude.

For example

Planet A 5 Mill value
Planet B 2 Mill value

Planet A attacks Planet B. No matter how many ships A sends B is already the underdog in the minds of the fleets of both A and B. A is overconfident while B gets ready to fight to the death as such Planet B's fleets should get an attack bonus or Planet A's an attack penalty to show this

Now if Planet A sends 5k of ships and Planet B only has 1k of ships again B is the underdog so once again B should get a bonus or A a penality.

If however Planet A only sent 1k of ships then there would be no such bonus or penalty as there isnt an underdog when it comes to numbers sent.

This you see leaves attackers with choices to make. First the target you choose, the lower down you go the more of a bonus your giving the defender thus your giving yourself more lost ships so now its no longer the case of finding the smallest planet possible with the most roids because its no longer a case that they give the best return, in fact you could find that someone closer to your size could now weild better returns for fewer losses.

When you have decided your target you then have to decide how do you attack, you can play it safe and go for overkill but you will lose more ships in the process (which means more salvage for the defender, which btw id like to see the amount of attackers salcage a planet gets raised slightly) or you can go low, risk your attack not coming off BUT lose fewer ships and potentially get a better return.

The 'mental' effects would obviously have alot less impact than the 'physical' one as quit simply seeing 3 times the amount of ships heading at you is alot more scary than knowing they have 3 times the number of ships that you have at base

Also I havent really thought about the effects of defence from elsewhere and how it fits in, potentially a simerlar system could be put in place for defence so you overkill your defence you make the attacker the underdog and give the advantage to them but I will have a better think of this later on and add it then

[pablissimo]

A feasible alternative idea would be to have home units more likely to get hit and survive (but be excluded from all other combat ticks). Back-story could be that since the ships are at your planet, if they get seriouly 'damaged' they can limp home and get repaired whereas attacking ships would have too far to travel and die on the way back.

Pros:
Lower ship losses for the defender whilst not affecting capping or a fleet's effectiveness for the attacker
- Less people getting totally wiped, increased likelihood of retalliation since ships would be available

Cons:
Would need a rethink for subversion/stealing
<Insert cons here>

You could adapt the idea so that ships from smaller classes have a higher probability of limping home than larger ships so that the defensive advantage isn't too great. Just off the top of my head, haven't thought too much into it.