Opening up the Battle Formula

We can finally start diving back in here. I tested a baseline where both the attacker and the defender were the following:

  • no military bonuses of any kind
  • 1000 figs

This is just a basic, equally matched fight. The results:

125 fighters lost dogfights against the defending fighters
55 defending fighters were shot down by the attacking air forces

@Darrk’s assessment is close, but it’s even more than large fleet disparities: any matchup inherently favors the defender by more than a factor of 2x. This is because battles are turn-based. In each stage:

  1. All of your target’s defending units fire first, taking no damage.
  2. Your attacking forces take losses.
  3. Your remaining forces fire, your target takes damage.

The result is a dramatic mismatch on its own, with bonuses compounding the issue. This is why it’s so dramatic when Wardancers defend; their “attack bonus” is actually a bonus on their defensive units’ attacking stat, not an “attacking only” bonus.

So bonuses themselves aren’t the problem, they just exacerbate the root imbalance.

What’s worse is, defender-first makes it incredibly difficult for smaller players to fight back. If a smaller player is able to muster up enough fleet to match their opponent, they’re going to get smacked around anyway. A smaller player has to support a larger fleet than their larger opponent before they can even break even.

Solution A: Attacker-First

Attacking-first would also be a problem, because farming would be cheaper. However, as farming cost is not much of an existing factor as it is, the impact would be less dramatic.

Solution B: Randomize Order

Turn-order is determined randomly on a per-battle basis. This could be something that is influenced by ops, research, etc.

Solution C: Replace Turn-Based Entirely

We replace turns with direct match-ups, with neither attacking nor defending having any inherent advantage.


The great news is that we can now build support for all 3 of these (and/or others), and swap them in and out as galaxy settings.

As always, feedback and ideas are welcome.