Red defence
Red defence has two meanings in the Planetarion universe. The first refers to Asteroid Capture and attempts to spoil an attacker's Roid Cap. The second is in reference to rounds that involved Subversion (typically by the Race of Zikonians) as a ship type.
Red Defence, in the context of spoofing roid capture, is a tactic used when defensive ship availability is low. Since it is possible to lower the number of roids lost by taking advantage of the game rules discouragement of overkilling a target, the roid capture percentage (prior to PAX) of attackers can be lowered by having friends/allies join in on the attack - thereby increasing the Value of the attacking fleet and due to the Roid Cap Formula it would reduce the amount of roids lost. Post PAX; the game mechanics has been altered such that Alliance members and Galaxymates cannot attack you, and the Roid Cap Formula was altered to reduce the effective 'piggybacking'. The current situation is perhaps best demonstrated by an example; Attacker 1 sends a fleet twice as large (in Value) compared to Attacker 2. Attacker 1 will be allocated 2/3 of the maximum 25% cap, whilst Attacker 2 will be allocated only 1/3. However, if Attacker 2 does not send Pods in their fleet, they are unable to capture their proportion of the roids. In this case, the Attacker 1 will still only capture 2/3 of the 25% cap, whilst Attacker 2's cap is 'lost' and the Defender will loose fewer roids. However, this requires the co-operation of an out-of-alliance mate (though sometimes Sister Galaxies may arrange something like this, where members from Galaxy 1 attack Galaxy 2 in order to reduce cap).
Red Defence, in the context of Subversion, was designed to exploit an interesting (and unintentional) quirk of Subversion (introducted in R12). Subversion was a kind of "Stealing EMP", whereby when an enemy ship was stunned, it would be converted to firing on its own side, however as part of the combat engine any unit that had been Subverted was no longer able to be destroyed. This quirk was soon exploited by Zikonian players, who would send an attacking fleet consisting of Subversion ships, in addition to a Defending fleet that would contain ships that would arrive only to be subverted and then fire on the 'real' defenders. This was especially effective when Xandathrii ships were used, as they were easilly stunned and inflicted high damage, and when subverted became indestructible. This 'abuse' of the combat system lead to many insteances where Defenders were worked over in a severe fashion, and ultimately lead to the removal of Subversion and the re-introduction of Stealing for Zikonians.
