OK, I played a game last night that revealed a SERIOUS problem in the current game balance. I was playing a medium map as the Thalans, on Obscene difficulty. The game played out, and through a series of surrenders the game came down to just me and the Korx. (Maybe people liked them because of trade? Everyone just kept surrendering to them). At this point in the game, the Korx controlled maybe 60-65% of the planets, I was outnumbered just under 2-1. In a few turns they went from cool to hostile and then declared war. Our militaries were about even - the Korx were slightly higher, but they had significant advantages in population, industry and economy. I had slight advantages in miniturization and hp%, but I could see the writing on the wall. They were going to grind me to dust, and there was nothing I could do.

We were both using fleets of 4 medium fighters as our combat craft. They were using Anti-matter torpedo II, and I was using Disruptors. They had fleet attack values of about 220 missle per fleet, I had attack values of about 200 laser per fleet. They had hit points of around 22/ship - I had hit points of around 25/ship.

In the initial fighting, our fleets just mutually wiped each other out in one turn, with the attacker surviving with one hp (sometimes 1-3 hp, and sometimes one ship left with full hp). So in any battle between fleet "units" I would lose 3-4 medium fighters.

I was using defense (I just like throwing superior deflectors on my ships, only 30 bc and 1 def is 1 def is 1 def) barely, but I had a lot of defense tech I had traded from minor races earlier in the game. (Note, minor races seem obsessed with defense tech in every game I have played in DA, is this intentional??) And then I had an idea.

I GAVE the Korx Advanced Force Fields (size 5, cost 90, def 5 laser). They gave me a dialogue about how my sneaky diplomacy tricks wouldn't work on them and they still hated me. Only, my sneaky diplomacy trick HAD just worked, I had given them a trojan horse.

Predictably, the Korx started to build ships with laser defense. This had two effects. First, the average time for them to build a Korx Frigate when from 4 weeks per world to 7 weeks per world. Second, their overall attack values per fleet dropped to about 160 missle.

Now, not only were they kicking out fighters slower, the ones they did kick out killed slower. Combat battles would no longer take just one turn, it would usually take me two "rounds" of combat to paste the four fighters, but I was coming out of battles losing only 2-3 ships now... only rarely losing 4 fighters to their four fighters.

Because of increased cost and decreased effectiveness for their frigates, by trading the Korx the correct defensive technology against my weapons, their empire's military effectiveness dropped 60-70%!!! (Taking into account longer build times and fewer of my fighters killed)

Needless to say, I ground out a victory against them, even though their industry and economy should have been able to bury me. Their new military just couldn't keep up. I only won this game because I "tricked" the AI into trying to use defense against me!!!

As far as the AI goes, it would be simple to remove this exploit. Make it so that they never build defenses on their ships. But that doesn't address the larger issue of erosion of combat complexity due to weapon types.

Is there some way I can post a log of a game to you so you can see what I am seeing??

It is a real shame that under the new system defenses are meaningless. It takes out the rock/paper/scissors of matching weapons to defense. Under the current system, you just want to kick out the most damage per bc always, so the one that is highest up (any) of the three weapons tech trees has the advantage. Perhaps you intended to remove weapon types from being meaningful to make the game easier. I for one prefer a system where the different weapons matter - why add depth to other areas of the game (colonization) while stripping depth that already existed (weapons v. def in combat)?

Please know, I passionately love this game. You have done an incredible job and I have rarely had as much fun in any turn based strategy game. I am only trying to help make the game experience more deep and satisfying. I think repricing defense to make it cheaper now that it is less valuable is one fix. I'm sure you can think of other (better) ideas about how to address this issue. I just really wanted you to be aware of what can happen under the new system as it currently stands.