Defence is good in DL, but in DA you can simply play Arcean and you won't need one iota of useless defence.

Defense was useful in DL???

Sure it was. Of course it depends on which build you're talking about, but I used it to great effect in DL. More so than in DA. I hope they give defense its due again in DA, and not just off-type, which really sucks! Defense is one way that you can catch up against an opponent who has vastly superior weapons. I've seen the AI do this to me a couple of times, and I've loved it when they did so.

Just as the Arceans can outmanuver faster opponents in order to maintain first strike, races without the super ability can deny them that bonus with careful manuvering, even if they lack the speed.

Its only worth it when you have a PQ26+ next to the Drengin homeworld. (16bn people, 150% defence) giggity.  

In DL, defense is worth it if your ships are large and the enemy's ships are small. Fleets of huge ships with heavy defense do very well against the fleets of tiny, small, and medium ships that that AI favors. When your huge ship has 100 defense, and their 4 tiny ships each have 30 attack, they'll roll 1-30 four times, and you'll roll 0-100 four times.

In DA, you can make a ship nearly invincible with enough defense if the ship has defense greater than 1/2 the enemy fleet's attack. Say a ship with 100 defense fights a fleet with 200 attack that armed with guns that do 1-5 damage each. The first attack will roll 0-5 against a roll of 0-100 defense, and reduce the maximum defense by the attack roll. So on average, it will take the whole 200 attack to reduce the 100 defense to 0, and there will only be a decent change of doing hp damage on the last few shots of each round. The defense returns to the full 100 at the end of each round, so a ship with lots of defense can last a very long time.

Couldn't this be made somewhat easier by Stardock? Your thoughts on this?