Question about Evasion and Pilot

[Mike_the_Great]

Two quick questions about ship and captain stats. Does evasion avoid damage during planetary invasion, and does Pilot do things that Evasion does not do (ie decrease damage and increase counter attack, in addition to avoiding attack)?

[tenbsmith]

1. Evasion plays NO role in Planetary Invasion.

2. Pilot contributes dice to avoiding Gun attacks only. Evasion contributes dice to avoiding Gun and Torpedo attacks.

Here's a quick sketch of the three phases of combat when Xeno is attacking one of your ships (the same basic mechanics apply when you attack a Xeno ship).
1. To hit: The Xeno ship's attack dice pool rolls are compared to your ship's avoid dice pool. If you win this, the Xeno misses completely, no damage is done, and no further steps are taken. If the Xeno wins, continue...
2. Damage: The Xeno ship rolls physical and, if applicable, radiation damage (damage bonus modifiers are applied).
3. Soak: Your ship rolls soak based primarily on Armor rating for physical damage and primarily on shielding for radiation damage.

In my experience, you have to invest a lot of points in Evasion and other to avoid stats in order to build a ship that consistently dodges Xeno attacks.

For example, my Valiant-II fighter has 14 points in Evasion, 1 point each in Pilot and Stealth, The Valiant Auto-Cannon (+2 defense) and Phoenix Defense Pod (+1 defense). This early game design avoids around 2/3 to 3/4 of Xeno attacks from level 1 and 2 Xeno.
 

[Cory Trese]

Great answer, thanks tenbsmith +1 =)

[Mike_the_Great]

Apr 4, 2016 8:40:11 GMT -5 tenbsmith said:

1. Evasion plays NO role in Planetary Invasion.

2. Pilot contributes dice to avoiding Gun attacks only. Evasion contributes dice to avoiding Gun and Torpedo attacks.

Here's a quick sketch of the three phases of combat when Xeno is attacking one of your ships (the same basic mechanics apply when you attack a Xeno ship).
1. To hit: The Xeno ship's attack dice pool rolls are compared to your ship's avoid dice pool. If you win this, the Xeno misses completely, no damage is done, and no further steps are taken. If the Xeno wins, continue...
2. Damage: The Xeno ship rolls physical and, if applicable, radiation damage (damage bonus modifiers are applied).
3. Soak: Your ship rolls soak based primarily on Armor rating for physical damage and primarily on shielding for radiation damage.

In my experience, you have to invest a lot of points in Evasion and other to avoid stats in order to build a ship that consistently dodges Xeno attacks.

For example, my Valiant-II fighter has 14 points in Evasion, 1 point each in Pilot and Stealth, The Valiant Auto-Cannon (+2 defense) and Phoenix Defense Pod (+1 defense). This early game design avoids around 2/3 to 3/4 of Xeno attacks from level 1 and 2 Xeno.
 
So if you don't invest at all in evasion, then investing in Pilot would be pointless correct?

[tenbsmith]

Mike the great asked, "So if you don't invest at all in evasion, then investing in Pilot would be pointless correct?"

That's probably true. With 0 Evasion you probably can't get enough to-avoid stats elsewhere to effectively dodge Xeno attacks. (But, I've never tried to do it.)

To put it another way, the best dodge-based ship designs take advantage of the fact that Evasion contributes to dodging both Gun and Torp attacks.

The Valiant-II has low Durability (4) and Hull (72). This can be offset by keeping it near green squares and starting repairs quickly. The Valiant Autocannon is the least expensive light gun, but does more damage (8-17) than other low-cost light guns. The Valiant Autocannon doesn't have accuracy bonuses, so you have to pump up Guns. The Valiant-II is easy to produce (21cp) with low maintenance costs ($35), so you can afford to build one for each faction early in the game and rotate damaged ships off the front line.

[elwoodps]

Apr 5, 2016 15:49:58 GMT -5 tenbsmith said:

Mike the great asked, "So if you don't invest at all in evasion, then investing in Pilot would be pointless correct?"

That's probably true. With 0 Evasion you probably can't get enough to-avoid stats elsewhere to effectively dodge Xeno attacks. ......

I think you're spot-on in the case of ship-to-ship combat, but not for Invasion Transports during Planetary Invasion.  The Captain Skills points in Pilot serve a different function during Planetary Invasion.  Since v2.3.1 I've experimented with a lot of different Ship Materials and Captain Skills point combinations in my Invasion Transports.  Though I still  won't claim to understand exactly what Pilot does during PI, one of the things that this experience has convinced me of, is that Invasion Transports with very few or no points in Pilot significantly under-perform.

Here's a late game design that has performed very well against >level 50 Xeno worlds, on Hard. 



In the Planetary Invasion Discussion Thread Cory Trese identified the 3 Ship Materials (Durability, Shielding, and Sensors) and 2 Captain Skills (Pilot and Invasion) used by Transports during Invasion.  The main take-away from my point allocation experiments, is that an Invasion Transport design which seriously slights any of these won't be a great performer. 

My Gunship and Torpedo ship designs all have drastically unbalanced point allocations, which allow them to out-perform using tactics that guard their weaknesses while capitalizing on their strengths.  But there's no opportunity for this type of fancy footwork during Planetary Invasion, so Transport designs with balanced point allocations work best.

[tenbsmith]

Nice post elwoodps, I think you should add it to the end of the planetary invasion thread you mentioned.

Can you comment in any more detail on the contributions of the various stats? Do some seem related to accuracy while others are related to dodge?

[elwoodps]

Apr 6, 2016 12:10:25 GMT -5 tenbsmith said:

....
Can you comment in any more detail on the contributions of the various stats? Do some seem related to accuracy while others are related to dodge?

 I seldom built more than 4 of one design, so I had 3 different designs participating in most attacks.  This made the effect of particular stats on Accuracy hard to gauge, since even the Improved Invasion Messages still don't indicate which ship is inflicting the damage.     When it comes to dodge and soak it's a bit less opaque, since every time an Invasion Transport gets hit it leaves "a mark" (in the form of lost HP). 

The thing that most impressed me was the big impact that a 5 point increase Durability (from 6 to 11) in seemed to have:  The reduction in damage incurred more than offset any increase in Radiation damage that may have resulted from the 5 point reduction in Shielding (from 16 to 11).  Prior to this I'd assumed (based on the fact that my Invasion Transports are equipped with the best Armor available, and statements about Radiation¹ and Durability² by Cory Trese ) that it'd be better to put more points in Shielding at the expense of Durability.  This result suggests that assumption was a mistake.

¹ See Cory Trese's statement about Xeno Radiation in the "Planetary Invasion Discussion" thread. link

² In the "Successful Invasion Ship Designs" thread, Cory Trese called Durability a "minor factor" in Soak. link