abusive ways/aspects of attacking

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Game version: 0.95.152

These aren't technical bugs, but problems that will especially matter in 
multiplayer human vs human.

1) "rocket draining": Attack an AI planet with space stations with a single (or 
more) ships and quickly retreat once all the rockets in the stations have been 
launched. Without flagships in the fleet, the retreat is finished without any 
rocket being able to hit. Repeat until AI has no more any rockets (at which 
point a further attack can be launched).

As making AI more intelligent is very hard, this could be offset by AI getting 
always full rockets in space stations for free (and making it clear to the 
player that this is the case).

2) "moral bashing":
In the process above, it seems that the planet's moral is every time set to 
40%. Doing this constantly on several planets thus costs the defender and 
abundance of money. This could be avoided only by no planetary space defenses 
taking part in the pseudo-battle; AI cannot decide whether the battle is 
"pseudo" however. It even could be a full fleet with tanks and rockets that 
could just as well attack but still just retreat, so a human could neither.

I suggest that the moral reduction should only happen in case that a planet was 
actually conquered (or at least not happen in case of a successful space 
defense, planetary space defenses involved or not) This would make a successful 
defense much more worthwhile. The moral loss is the real problem for the 
defender - lots of money and population growth lost for several days. It would 
also solve the problem that *not defending at all* but instead instantly 
reconquering (as recommended in walkthroughs) is an attractive strategy, as it 
doesn't come with losses of ships, ground units and buildings.

3) "defenses deactivated":
Instead of bombing planetary shields and projectors completely away, it is much 
more worthwhile to just damage them until they are at 51% damage, then retreat 
and attack again. Great, we just saved a lot of bombs for destroying the 
defense completely as it just cannot be taken online this time.

4) "incite a revolt":
Oftentimes this was the only way I could conquer Garthog planets, as they had 
an abundance of rocket wagons there and I couldn't even research those yet. No 
chance with the tank number being limited by flagship number and their troop 
capacity.
So, it's often much easier to not conquer the planet, but attack in waves and 
each time quickly destroy ~2 buildings the population needs. Together with the 
moral reduction due to the attack this quickly results in the planet revolting.
I'm not sure about whether this should be considered a problem though. If the 
moral reduction is removed even in case of a ground battle (see (2)) it should 
become harder.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by anonymis...@arcor.de on 20 Jan 2014 at 7:21

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Thanks for the use cases!

1) I guess the AI can see if the enemy is retreating and stop firing rockets.
2) Yes, just a space attack shouldn't reduce the morale that much.
3) This could be changed that damaged ground defenses will still participate in 
the battle.
4) I don't see this as a problem, but the morale reduction should be less, 
especially in hard.

Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 20 Jan 2014 at 7:30

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Type-Enh, Component-Logic
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

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I have to add
5) "hunter draining"
Similar to 1); probably happens if the AI has superfluous hunters available/all 
fleets are full. If a planet with space stations is attacked, the hunters 
stationable at the stations come to the player's fleet and are of course easily 
finished without losses and without any fear of getting into the range of space 
stations and planetary guns. This is the extreme case of the usual AI battle 
behavior, due to the stations/guns being unable to move.

Original comment by anonymis...@arcor.de on 20 Jan 2014 at 10:08

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Made changes to the space battle:

- Morale reduction is less intrusive and difficulty dependant. On Easy, you'll 
lose 5% of the morale, on Hard, you'll lose 20%. If you defended your own 
colony or conquered another, you lose half of the previous values.

- Fighters defending a planet won't run towards the attackers on Hard, but 
remain where they are. Still, they might get lured away. Let me know if the new 
behavior is enough or not. Also please check if ship kamikaze still behaves as 
before.

- Damaged, but otherwise operational defensive buildings will participate in 
space battles until destroyed.

- AI won't shoot at fleeing enemies. Still, you can trigger a rocket shot and 
then flee and drain the AI, but at a much slower rate.

Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2014 at 10:26

• Changed state: Fixed
• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Enh

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Issue 781 has been merged into this issue.

Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2014 at 11:53