Neither.

As mentioned on this forum several times, no bonuses affect Fireships, so points 1-3 and 5 are useless for them (good for normal attacks, though).

As for 4, there is no "heavy defence" def. You'll lose 12.6k worth of def, calculated in basic points (so, again, all relics/items/upgrades/... ignored).

If I Fireshipped you and got a def-only report, I'd continue hitting you until you're either out of units or I'm out of FS attempts. Don't care which def. I get my 315 points per FS either way.

What you can do is turtle. Send your units to the harbour and spend down. Then every hit against your haven is useless to the attacker.

If you want to "defend" against Fireships (why would you want that?!), then Marauders are a better choice. You still lose the same in strength, but they are trained more quickly for the same strength and all off units that a Fireship kills give only 1/6 of the usual PvPs to the attacker. Of course, anyone with a few brain cells who Fireships you will see that it's only (or mostly) Marauders and will quickly raid you with units, which you won't like one bit, making this approach also a bad idea.

So, like I said: turtle, don't defend. Defending only makes sense if you're present and see the incoming raid (not even a block!). Then unturtle 20sec before the hit (they take 15sec to get from the harbour to the haven) and then turtle again right after the hit (don't even look at the report first).

Navigator said:

Well, than why don't they create a FireShip Protection option,...

315 marauders will absorb all damage from one fireship

315 x 40 offense = 12,600 fireship damage

note that offense units are allowed to cheat by using their offense stats instead of defense stats

More game imbalance to protect offense units, but NOT protect defense units ... these usually suffer heavy losses because they use baseline average def stats and losses are always rounded-up

Snowgoon said:

More game imbalance to protect offense units, but NOT protect defense units ...

Not sure I agree with this. If def was better than off against Fireships, then it would always pay to either defend with def only or to turtle. This way, it gets tricky: if you defend with def, it gets wasted with Fireships; if you defend with off, they get overrun with other off.

This may have been done intentionally, to make it more "fun" to plan your defence (although, I think I'm being too optimistic here; it\s more likely that someone didn't think much about this). However, the one true result of Fireships and their mechanics is that hardly anyone defends their haven, because it's simply not worth it.

I am obviously ignoring ShadowDA's taunt here because "I know a mysterious secret, but I'm not telling anyone" is a useless piece of non-information. However, IF his words are true and IF there is indeed some ingenious way to handle Fireships, then my conclusions might be wrong.

I agree turtle is the best defense against FS.  Offense defending is a second choice .  With upgraded infirmary you get 50% recovery.

The only real reason to even defend imo is cannon vanity.  GL with that.

Personally I turned them into a "bounty" system.  I give myself 500 points for each one I receive.  :D

Keel D. Haul said:

I agree turtle is the best defense against FS. Offense defending is a second choice . With upgraded infirmary you get 50% recovery.

Also, maxed off discoveries give pretty decent def. strength. If you add haven defence bonus, relics, etc., your off can handle the defence of your haven from raids/blocks quite nicely, while giving lousy PvPs to the attacker for any kind of hit.

However, all that is costly, so the question remains: why defend?

Keel D. Haul said:

The only real reason to even defend imo is cannon vanity. GL with that.

I pretty much agree with this.

Also, for newer players, it could be emotional. "My haven got raided". Older players will say to that: "If you lost no units and just a bit of res, why would you care?". It takes a bit of time to accept that being blocked or raided or FSed is no big deal.

So, to conclude: play only with off. Def. is good for Presidios, for Bastions, for your own haven when you happen to be here to unturtle them seconds before raid/block and then turtle them back right after the hit, and - possibly - for your blocks, depending on what kind of player is hitting them.

The Fireship's mechanism:

1 Single fireship kill a fixed value = 12.6K power points
BUT it's not related to defense power points, it is related to Offense power points.

However, If you want a low or no impact the answer is hide all at harbor. Impact will be 0k (zero kills).

But, if you don't want loose the royal canon, then put offense troops while the "FS attacker" is on you... IMPORTANT: Hide your offense troops one time you see incoming attack, because there is probably your attacker will wish catch your offensive army by regular attacks one time he saw your offensive troops at FS report. This way is no recommended because you need to be present during the FS attacks, use under your responsible.

Placing defensive troops defending against them it's not recommended as someone said here, the attacker can continue until you fall or until the attacker don't have FS to launch, whatever occurs first.

NeoDevas said:

The Fireship's mechanism:
1 Single fireship kill a fixed value = 12.6K power points
BUT it's not related to defense power points, it is related to Offense power points.

No. It's off power points for off units, but (average) def power points for def units.

NeoDevas said:

Placing defensive troops defending against them it's not recommended as someone said here, the attacker can continue until you fall or until the attacker don't have FS to launch, whatever occurs first.

There is the limit of 10 FS parties, similar to 15 (until recently 10) raids.

ok guys / plarium .. how do you justify this ... when someone has a haven Defence set at 25k & puts on a 20% haven Bonus, & has all their troops to lvl 30 + that (for argument sake) a lvl 40 player sends 10 Fire ships to your haven & your Loses are greater than his .. 

it costs him 5k to buy 10 Fireships yet the defenders cost to replace his troops are 7931 ? & thats after his 30% infirmary recovery ... 

yet to buy 5k worth of jugs you get 30 .. send them at the same haven & you get nothing back & the defender losses maybe 1 sub ??

getting real tired of Plarium thinking we are so wrapped up in the game that we forget about costs .. what a waste of money buying lvl 5 walls & improvements only to find that a lvl 40 or 50 or whatever kills more than HE SPENT .. Fcking joke.. just about ready to call it a day .. over being the sucker that Plariums obviously thinks that I/we are ..

having just read some of the response's .. he's a thought, the reason we defend our havens is because its ours .. thats what the game is about, defending whats ours, . weather its havens , Blocks, or Presidio's & bastion .. so you guys are suggesting we hide or turtle as its know, let us get hit, bringing down our royal cannon (another thing we had to pay for) & then leave ourselves open to a raid ... so what . we can return the favour? get a grip, so then it becomes a game of attack only, with Fireships the order of the day , followed by a quick raid .. 

Patch, that's mostly correct. Except the FS price: if your attacker is planning at all, he bought them for 3750 rubies during a global 25% discount. As for your revival, I would suggest you wait a bit. We're likely to get a global revival discount in an hour and then you can do it at half the price.

The walls and improvements are useful against traditional attacks (raids and blocks). Sadly, Fireships all but invalidated that and buying them now is almost useless.

Haven hits are not interesting, IMO, because of Fireships and, more specifically, because they ignore all the bonuses. So yes, I stand by my suggestion to turtle and spend down (and build up your harbour). This is especially true on Portal's s2, where Fireships seem far more popular than on s1. I don't know about s3 nor FB.