If initiative was based on ship speed, the problem would still be there, or maybe even worse... unless the AI started designing fast ships.

In real space battles, the ones the government hides from us, both sides fire at once. That's more realistic...

Perhaps if attacking a fleet with unused movement points the defenders could be considered to be "dug-in" and less likely to be surprised giving them the opportunity to fire first.

 

The OP makes a really good point.

Personally i have two ship designs, fast ones with no defense for attacking, and ones where i replace the engines with defenses for garrison ships.

f you fire the first shot -- and you will if you are the attacker -- with extreme firepower, you never need worry about receiving damage.

The attacker will not always be the attacker though.

What about including weapen range in the equation. Even different types of weapen and different technological advances of the same weapen had different ranges.

So, one side may be able to get one or two free shots in because of their ship(s) better range.

I find that I am almost never using defence in my ship designs either. Everything smaller then a large hull gets 5pc movement and as many guns as it will hold, and only one type of gun. They send in a fleet with no shields, I hit them with Laser ships armed to the gills. Usually wipe the whole lot out before one ship is even half damaged. With destroyer or larger ships I usually throw in 2, 2, 2 on D guess I just feel I need to use them for something. Also becuase theres no need to waste time on researching defence, you quickly outpace the other civs in weapon tech.
I had an idea that the way you are allowed to load out ships should change. My thought was that weapons\shields\engines should be limited to the size of the hull. So for example you could not use warp engines and photon torpedoes on a small hull. The higher the weapon\engine\shield category the larger the ship you need. You could also make it so that there is a limit to the number of guns you are allowed to place on a hull. The AI ships are real bad too, the defualt ship selection needs way more ships so the AI has more selection, or do they actually design their own ships,

OK. Perhaps this as a way of reformulating.
You may not destroy all of an enemy's ships during the first salvo every time, but it does seem to be the case that experienced players bank on being able to be MUCH more effective in investing in offense + engines without defense, all the time, and this rule seems to work:
Q. If you have some space left in your fast offensive ships, why put any defense on it rather than yet another gun?
If there is no real answer to the above question, then this aspect of ship design becomes a "no brainer".
I think it is a universal law that ANY NO BRAINER of whatever form whatsoever in this type of (strategy) game is detrimental to one KEY ASPECT of the game: its fun.
Let me reiterate: I am not saying it is unbalanced, or whatever -- just that it would be MORE FUN if it were otherwise.
I could imagine that there might be two ways of improving this suboptimality.
1. Rethinking initiative. Many posters gave excellent suggestions above, perhaps some blend could work, with some amount of randomness thrown in. Anything to be able to give a positive answer to Question Q above.
2. Make defense less expensive and smaller than offense, across the board (that is, for tech level Y offense, make tech level Y defense be cheaper and smaller). Perhaps this could also help question Q above.
I am just saying that this would improve the game in the sense that ship design would have more viable options and less no-brainers. No-brainers = no-fun.

I like the idea of combat advantages based on unspent move points. MPs could be used as a resource in combat, by both the attacker and defender, with a "tactics" prompt screen at the beginning of combat. Some tactics could include defensive maneuvering, flanking and fleeing (a reason to leave unspent MPs on some ships).

On another thread, a poster complained about the inability to intercept fast fleets, as they could run past your ships on their turn. Unspent MPs could be used as an "intercept" feature, where MPs could be used to close with passing AI ships on their turns.

I also liked the idea of smaller sizes for defensive components. If they are included in the game, they should have some advantages against adding more speed and/or firepower.

Hi!

Remember that defense and attacks are a number rolled from 1- whatever it is you have

It seems this is not entirely correct: weapons roll from 1 to their max, defenses roll from 0 to their max. Proof: attacks on the ship wihout defenses always do at least 1 damage, never 0. 1-point atacks on ship with 1-point defense do cause damage sometimes.

Q. If you have some space left in your fast offensive ships, why put any defense on it rather than yet another gun?

Because enemy still fires back on one of my ships, and I hate losing ships so cheaply. So if I know what I'm fighting, I put on my ships so much defense to match their average ship. That's quite easy with medium hulls.

Definitely think there should be some sort of initiative calculations here

... and weapons range, and additionall computers for better init/higher accuracy, and combat speed, and
... and you'd get Stars!
My suggestion: don't. Creating a proper (counter)design in Stars! is almost a science - overly complicated for a casual Emperor. I quite enjoy simplicity of the ship design here in GalCiv.

BR, Iztok

I think it's a fairly moot point.

If you are the attacker, you want to have all guns.

If you are the defender and you have all guns, you're dead.

If you have optimalised defense against the attacker, you can survive the initial barrage, possibly with all your ships which then fire back on all those defenseless attackers.

I've had many games where defenses came to play a huge role - even the AI was sporting massive defensive numbers across all three types.

In the early game weapons rule, in the late game with larger hulls, better miniaturisation and cheaper defenses, you cannot leave them out of the equasion... they become relatively much more powerful.

I tend to play for a Cultural or Alliance Victory, but usually one of the evil races will declare war on me.  They usually end up regretting it.  At the start of the war, my ships have less firepower and more defenses, but in fleets they tend to win over the AI ships because not as much damage goes through.  In the meantime, I'm pouring my resources into cranking out more powerful ships that I send to take out the enemy defenses, and escort my transports. This tends to work well on Normal, although it's much harder if you don't have friendly AI players for trading. 

Q. If you have some space left in your fast offensive ships, why put any defense on it rather than yet another gun? If there is no real answer to the above question, then this aspect of ship design becomes a "no brainer".

Because at some point, more guns won't help you, while defenses will. A couple games back I was going against an AI who was using the "swarm" mentality with tiny and small ships. I ended up building huge ships, but didn't have enough of them to fleet them together. Since I was good, however, I got the ethical defenses, and I had a couple military starbases and the defense increasing achievement. So... I ended up fighting battles where my one huge ship took on several 8-12 ship fleets. With a huge ship that had all weapons, the ship died. Fast. His weapons did so much damage that any ship he fired at was an instant death, but with 11 ships firing back and no defense, he soon followed them. The next ship I tried had some basic defenses against their main weapon. It still died, but took a lot longer. After loading the game again, I dumped most of the weapons except for about 20 points worth, then loaded up on defenses, at least 20 points in each catagory. In the process of wiping out their entire standing army single handedly, I think he lost a total of 8 hp. He'd go up against fleets with a combined attack of a bit less than 200 damage, but since it was split into 8-12 parts and he had 35+ cumulative defense no matter what type of weapon they used they just couldn't touch him. Sure it took 2-3 shots to kill some of the larger ships, but if they can't touch him, and neither can their friends, then he had the time to finish them off.

Against small groups of large ships, you're probably better off with going all out attack. Against large groups of small ships, defense is key to survival. Overkilling one ship won't help, and surviving his friend's attacks is critical. Weapons only work against one ship per turn, defenses are active against every single ship he has.

My rule of thumb:
No defense for tiny ships or most small ships. Occasionally I'll put defense on a small planet defender, but its usually best to see them coming and attack first.
Put at least some defense on medium ships, but don't go overboard. 1 of the best defense tech in any catagory is enough for most games. Up it for any planet defense ships or later in the game when you get better tech.
Balance attack and defense for large ships, 1-2 catagories of defense.
Heavy on defense for huge ships, about 3x the defense compared to attack, spread out or concentrated as needed to counter enemy weapons (i.e. if you have 10 attack and are going against someone with beams and missles, at least 15 beam/missle defense. If you don't know what you're facing, 10/10/10 defense.).