Settlement Combat

[Darakhoranon]

Well, I noticed something that seems a bit weird. My settlement (lvl 5) has only 550 offense/350 defense, and STILL the pirates can't even scratch it (I have 2100 ground combat as a security cushion). I'm doing everything but rolling out the red carpet for them - just to actually see ground combat for a change.

Has anyone else experienced similar things? And why exactly would you "waste" precious energy to set up strong defenses if you never need them? Or do the pirates suddenly get serious at lvl 6 (which would make the "joke attacks" at the earlier levels a somewhat... suboptimal... learning experience)?

[Pablem]

settlement level isn't enough because that measures your "seniority"....it's also how many goodies you have stored. And the pirates seem to measure that by the size of your settlement as measured by its HP. So how many HP do you have?

[Sparky]

Ok, joining in,
I have 250kHP
level 5 set
29k shield too
Last time the buggers attacked me...
They went strait through th eshiled like water, and trashed me down to 88k hp before they smegged off.
I have offencive rate of over 3000 too.
Defence is 900 roughly, I think.

[jcheung]

if i remember my lore correctly, defense will reduce the damage you take, offense... kills them faster? i dunno...
my question is though, did you only plot one fight dara? i've noticed that damages can and will vary greatly sometimes.

[Darakhoranon]

My settlement still sits at 20k hp, Pablem, and the average pirate attack does around 5-7k damage. Since I have a repairer 3 running, that's perfectly safe...

No, jcheung, I've been keeping an eye on it for some time now. And while the damage a given pirate attack does is indeed variable, at least most of the time they don't even come close to being an actual threat.