Unification Wars Guide - Defence

If you have been following this series on Unification Wars online game so far and trying it out in the game, congratulations! The boring bits are over and done with. Let's get to the more fun parts about fighting. There is no point winning planets if you do not keep them long enough to enjoy them. That is unless you want to be a suicider, in which case you don't keep any of it anyway.

To manage a strong and effective defence in Unification Wars, you need to understand what is involved. A successful defence in battle is determined by the following conditions:

• You, the defending empire, must lose less ship pr than the attacker. So there are two variables here - how much your defending fleet damages his fleet and how much the attacking fleet damages yours.
• The attacker must do more than 2% damage to the defending fleet or else, even if the defender loses more ship pr, the defender wins.
• To successfully defend, you must lose enough ships. Damage protection is achieved after you lose 8 DP tokens. You lose 1 token if your defending fleet loses >=2% and <5%>=5% of ship pr. So clearly it is not just about winning the battle.
  

What are the factors that affect your defence?

1. System defence
2. Minister
3. Outpost reinforcements
   
4. Fleet

System Defence
This is the main reason why most people go for the single main system and as many dark systems as they can squeeze in, ideally nine for the maximum defence using non-paid systems. while it is not clear precisely how the system defence bonus affects the outcome of the battle, it is clear that it is in effect and having a high system defence at your main makes you tougher to beat on your main system. You should have all your systems done before start gaining planets.

Minister
Two of the biggest variables affecting the outcome of any battle is the two ministers. I have done tests with different ministers attacking the same defending minister, same attacking minister vs different defending ministers and the outcome can vary by a huge margin. This will be the subject of an article at a later date. So to begin with, if you are defending, put an appropriate minister. When selecting a defending minister, it certainly does not mean that you must have a minister with all hull increasing and damage limitation traits to defend successfully. A look at the victory conditions and damage protection conditions clearly indicates that losing some ships (about 5-6%) won't hurt as long as you do not lose more than the invading fleet. Whatever minister traits you choose, it should complement the ships that you pick in your fleet. I have a balanced fleet that is flexible on the attack and defence, so I tend to use a balanced to slightly aggressive war minister with warmonger, aggressive, anticipation and foresight traits that strengthens the fleet overall and presents little weaknesses to exploit.

Outpost Reinforcements
The single biggest reason for joining a fed is for the outpost reinforcements that is given to you by your fed mates. You will also get outpost reinforcements from your lord and vassals. How does outpost reinforcements work?

• Outpost reinforcements only come to you when it is 25% of your pr or less. So if you are at 100m pr when you are attacked, you will only receive outpost stacks that are 25m or less. This is a rough indicator as I have noticed that outpost stacks above 25% by a little are also called. However, I am not sure where the absolute limit is. So I suggest a little lower than 25% is safer.
• When you get hit, the three stacks with the highest pr that meets the 25% requirement arrives from your fed mates to join the battle.
• After outpost reinforcements from your fed mates are resolved, the system checks if you qualify to receive reinforcements from your lord or vassal. From observation, the criteria for reinforcements from lord or vassal is the most recently built stack, regardless of pr.
  

So how do you use outpost to your maximum advantage?

1. Always be aware of how much outpost is available in your fed before you head out of dp and stay up to date by checking on the outpost status frequently, especially if another fed mate is out of damage protection at the same time or when you get hit.
2. Do not be overly conservative and stay at precisely 4 times above outpost stacks. A good rule of thumb is to be about 10%-25% above your lowest safety pr. So if you take the previous example, if fed outpost stacks are at 25m pr, your lowest safety pr is at 100m pr. You should stay at 110 to 125m pr to give allowance for taking damage when you attack and when you get hit a few times in rapid succession on your main system in an attempt to drive you below outpost level, ie. you get tagged by two or more players.
3. Learn to conserve your use of fed outpost and leave some for your fedmates after you are done. Just as you do not want to be waiting to go out of dp and find out that the previous guy had used up all the available outpost in the fed leaving you with none, do not do the same unto your fed mates.
4. Have your fed mates who are online post higher than the offline fed mates and refresh actively whenever you get hit. This way you preserve the outpost in your fed. Likewise, when you are online and there is a fed mate out of dp, do the same.
5. Use the toughest ships you can deploy on outpost but do not fall into the trap of posting only one ship type.
   

Fleet
There are several schools of thought on fleet make up in Unification Wars. I personally do not think there is a right or wrong answer here and I suggest that the best way to do this is to try for yourself and experiment. Every race is equiped with a range of ships with different characteristics. The first thing one must do is to download the ship list from the manual. Spend some time understanding and experimenting with various ships and do not be afraid to try out everything regardless of what anyone else tells you. There is no better guide than experience and you will learn even from the losses if you take the time to review the battle records and see what went wrong. A reasonably balanced fleet composition to have would be to have the top 3 ships with either high hull to pr ratio (greater than 2.5) or have a decent hull to pr ratio (1.75 to 2.4) and have long range (6 or better). The bottom three stacks should be reasonably strong attack ships with weapon to pr ratio greater than 20 and having the long range attribute so that they will flank without taking damage. Discussions about fleets and stacking will be discussed in later articles.

Armed with this basic knowledge, you will be able to do reasonably well in the game and have some success in defending. Have fun playing!

Note: This is a revised post from my original article in Tinker's Sojourn.