More questions, part 2

Silent Sorrow · #1 July 8th, 2002, 05:45 AM

1. Can point defence cannons shoot down energy-based missiles/torpedoes?

2. What is the difference between meson and anti-photon bLasters? All I see in the descriptions is slightly varying amounts of damage. ...

3. A massive shield depleter is showing up as doing only "1K" damage. Is that a misprint of some kind? Also the fire rate is showing as 30, as in thirty. That can't be right.

4. If stealth armour is described as "only one component per ship effective" does that mean there's no pint adding more than one of them? Same for the other armours or do they stack?

5. What is the difference between fleet and ship training? That is, is there any reason not to build fleet training facilities only and keep all ships in a fleet, even if it's a fleet of one?

6. How does multiplex tracking work exactly? I watched some of my ships in action and it appeared that they didn't attack a second target after the first was destroyed even though they had weapons that had not fired yet.

Captain Kwok · #2 July 8th, 2002, 05:55 AM

Answers, part 1:

1 Point-Defense can shoot down units and any "seeker" weapons.

2 Meson BLasters have shorter range and less damage, but are cheaper to research and are smaller in size. Anti-Proton beams have larger range, more damage, more tech levels, but are expensive to research.

3 1k = 1000

4 You can add more - but there defense bonus won't stack. ie...1 gives 15%...but 2 won't give 30%

5 Ship training gives crew experience for each individual ship and fleet training gives experience for all ships in a fleet which are combined in combat. ie...ship with 5% ship experience and in a fleet with 10% fleet experience has overall 15% more experience

6 It depends on strategies and stuff. People have noted some inconsistenicies with it when the computer uses it. If you're in tatical combat, once one ship is destroyed, you must target the other ships you want to attack yourself.

Phoenix-D · #3 July 8th, 2002, 05:55 AM

"1. Can point defence cannons shoot down energy-based missiles/torpedoes?"

Yes

"2. What is the difference between meson and anti-photon bLasters? All I see in the descriptions is slightly varying amounts of damage. ..."

Keep watching. Meson is in the end cheaper to research, and 10 KT smaller, and it's damage does NOT vary with range. APB gets out to range 8 with higher starting damage, higher research cost, and a damage dropoff.

"3. A massive shield depleter is showing up as doing only "1K" damage. Is that a misprint of some kind? Also the fire rate is showing as 30, as in thirty. That can't be right."

1k. Correct.. one THOUSAND points of damage. Look a little better now?

30 is correct. Like the rocket pods, one-shot weapons.

"4. If stealth armour is described as "only one component per ship effective" does that mean there's no pint adding more than one of them? Same for the other armours or do they stack?"

The armor effect stacks; the 15% ECM bonus does not.

"5. What is the difference between fleet and ship training? That is, is there any reason not to build fleet training facilities only and keep all ships in a fleet, even if it's a fleet of one?"

They stack. Ship+fleet = total bonus

"6. How does multiplex tracking work exactly? I watched some of my ships in action and it appeared that they didn't attack a second target after the first was destroyed even though they had weapons that had not fired yet. "

Multiplex is.. odd.

Phoenix-D

Suicide Junkie · #4 July 8th, 2002, 05:56 AM

Point defense can shoot at seekers and fighters automatically. The direct fire weapons are resolved instantly, and cannot be shot down.

Mesons vs APB differ in research costs, build costs, size and damage/kt. The major difference is that APBs increase in damage at shorter range, while meson bLasters are equally powerful at all ranges.

Massive shield depleters are designed to be one-shot weapons. The 1K is because there is not enough space in the summary to write out the full number.
1K means anything from 1000 to 1999 damage. If you check the component, you can see exactly how much it does.

For Stealth armor, it is the ECM ability that is one per ship effective. Adding more armor segments will increase the hitpoints of your ship, but there are other armors that do a better job of that anyways.

Ship and fleet training have the same effect, and stack with each other. A ship with +50% in both will have a +100% bonus to both attack and defense. Placing ships in trained fleets, even if alone, is a good idea.

Multiplex allows the ship to fire on multiple targets in the same turn. Whether your ship does or not and how to make it do so, is a question for the AI guys and Strategic Combat Strategists of the forum.

Captain Kwok · #5 July 8th, 2002, 05:57 AM

Ha Ha Phoenix...

Beat You!!! I guess cutting and pasting the questions did you in!

Captain Kwok · #6 July 8th, 2002, 05:57 AM

and Suicide Junkie too!

I'm on a roll!

Pax · #7 July 8th, 2002, 06:08 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Silent Sorrow:
1. Can point defence cannons shoot down energy-based missiles/torpedoes?

AFAIK yes.

Quote:

23. A massive shield depleter is showing up as doing only "1K" damage. Is that a misprint of some kind? Also the fire rate is showing as 30, as in thirty. That can't be right.

Yes, the weapon does "1K" damage -- as in, "1,000" damage.

And yes, the weapon has a reload/fire rate of 30 ... meaning, it will fire only once per combat --- make it count!

Quote:

4. If stealth armour is described as "only one component per ship effective" does that mean there's no pint adding more than one of them? Same for the other armours or do they stack?

The "only one" is referring to the special abilities, otherwise 5 stealth armors would make the ship utterly, permanently immune to most scanners .... and provide more defensive % benefit than an ECM module.

Scattering armor, IIRC, similarly doesn't stack it's special abilities. Nor emissive armor, apparently.

Their hitpoints do, of course, stack.

Crystal and Organic armors' special abilities most certainly do stack. Unless their enemy is using armor-penetrating weapons (i.e. Shard Cannons), Organic Armor kicks posterior like nothign else (picture a dreadnaught with twenty Organic Armors and a few peashooters ... w/o armor-penetrating guns, you will never destroy it ... ever).

Quote:

5. What is the difference between fleet and ship training? That is, is there any reason not to build fleet training facilities only and keep all ships in a fleet, even if it's a fleet of one?

Build both. They stack (that is to say, a 20% ship in a 20% fleet, has a net of 40% benefit ...!).

Quote:

6. How does multiplex tracking work exactly? I watched some of my ships in action and it appeared that they didn't attack a second target after the first was destroyed even though they had weapons that had not fired yet.

Probably the other targets weren't in range, or the chance to hit was too low -- an issue of planning.

oleg · #8 July 8th, 2002, 03:54 PM

I am afraid that by "energy based missiles/torpedoes" Silent Sorrow means anti-matter and plasma torpedoes. In that case the answer is NO, they are direct fire weapons and are not affected by PDC.

There is a principal difference between Plasma missiles and Plasma torpedoes !

Ed Kolis · #9 July 8th, 2002, 05:51 PM

I didn't think there were plasma torpedoes in SE4... just plasma missiles...

geoschmo · #10 July 8th, 2002, 06:02 PM

There are Anti-Matter and Quantum Torpedos. Both are direct fire. There is no "Plasma Torpedo" per se. There are a couple of Organic Tech "Plasma" weapons, both are direct fire. There is also the Planetary Napalm which is described as Plasma. That is also Direct fire.

"Plasma Missles" are seekers and can be hit with PDC.

There is also a "Crystalline Torpedo" which is a seeker. That's the only Torpedo that is a seeker that I could find.

Geoschmo

[ July 09, 2002, 14:12: Message edited by: geoschmo ]