Storms as a defense?

[TurinTurambar]

I'm in a lengthy drawn-out monotonous never-ending PBW game with some bloke who parks his fleet on a warp point, has a giant storm-creating ship create 72 storms around it and then just sits there...

WTF?

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[narf poit chez BOOM]

Sometimes, it'll randomly create damaging ones, I think.

I dunno.

[TurinTurambar]

That's kinda what I thought. If I go in there and whoop up on his parking arse, the storms will damage me when I go in.

But why does he get to park there with no damage? Cuz he's not moving into the area and a game-bug kinda "grandfather's" him?

It's mostly just that it's sorta kinda been annoying me for like 10 turns... ish...

[Slick]

Storm damage only takes effect when moving into a sector. Sitting there, exiting, or being built there does not trigger the damaging effect. Prior to a patch or 2 ago, you could use a storm creator ship to build lots and lots of storms per turn; this was abused. Now the component gets destroyed on use and I think also requires at least 1 remaining movement point on the ship to activate. Creating storms as a defense can still be formidable but not nearly as bad as in previous versions. Storm damage bypasses shields, so load up on the armor. Better yet, open another warp point into the system and bypass that sector altogether.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Like Slick said. Take a warp creator into a different system and hit him in the rear afore he has a chance to react. Glass his homeworld before his defense fleet has a chance to git the hill outta that storm sector.

[TurinTurambar]

Storm damage only takes effect when moving into a sector. Sitting there, exiting, or being built there does not trigger the damaging effect.

That's the information I was looking for, thanks.

Uh, there will be no warping into back systems on this game methinks. We're all into building ringworlds and such, and I think almost every system has a Grav-shield.

Ever get into one of those games you just wish would end? ... lol

Again, thx for the info.
[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif[/img]T[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img]

[AMF]

Hmmm...I thought for sure I was the offending player TT was referring to. I am using storms as a defense in two games, on e of which I used them without knowing of the bug mentioned above and before it was fixed (a DevNull game). So, actually, I have a Temple World that has 527 storms around it. It's an RP thing. But it's also quite defensible now, obviously.

There are at least three bummers with storms:

1) Ships only take damage when they move into them. Not very sensical to me. And allows massive fleet defense given enough time

2) Not realistic: I have an empire with storms around ringworlds. I can concievably keep building up storms and facilities on my ringworlds, lose all my other planets, and yet, somehow, the trading of goods and services continues in my empire. Storms that cause damage should also blockade anything in their sector.

3) Are unbalancing: the above empire, if left unchecked, will eventually be undefeatable: If I have, say, twenty or more turns storms over my richest ten planets, then odds are I will be a hard nut to crack. Give me another twenty turns, and its even harder, and so on until I have ten planets with 100 storms over each, and as long as I have some weapons on those planets, any fleets that try and come in will get devastated by the storms and then shot like fish in a barrel. Using storms as WP defense is just as nasty.

I don't like storms anymore, for these reasons. Although, I am still using them in two games. And approaching problem #3 above in one of them.

Tks,

Alarik

[Kamog]

The type of storm that gets created seems to be random and only some of the storms are damaging. Is there a limit to the number of storms in one sector? Can you have more than 100? If there's a limit, I guess you can destroy the non-damaging type of storms and only keep the damaging ones.

[Alneyan]

The other storms can also be very mean, if they stack: they will work all the time, unlike damaging storms that you might avoid. Less shield and/or less accuracy can be relatively nasty, and if you happen to have the Talisman... Well, let's just say nobody will bother you anytime soon.

I do not think there is any limit on the maximum amount of storms over one sector, so go stack'em!

[Ed Kolis]

It seems that if you create one storm and destroy another on the same turn in the same sector, though, that the new storm will always be of the same type as the old storm.... Or maybe that's just my bad luck