How come PDCs never miss?

Neo · #1 September 10th, 2001, 06:22 PM

I've been reading some past threads, and people have been saying that missiles have become increasingly useless since the newer AIs all have plenty of point defense cannons. Perhaps a fix for this would be to make PDC have a chance to miss, just like all the other guns do. After all they are shooting against smaller, faster moving targets, which should be hard to hit. The chance to hit would have to not be based on range like other guns, or else you couldn't keep the firing of PDC automatic instead of manual, and in actuality it really should be harder to hit fast moving missiles when they are closer to you than when they are farther away. And it should be harder to hit missiles the faster they move as well. This would make fighters more viable too, because I think they are too easy to defend against with PDCs as well.

Phoenix-D · #2 September 10th, 2001, 06:23 PM

PDCs do miss. They just have a rather large inherent to-hit bonus, and missiles have no ECM to speak of.

Phoenix-D

Neo · #3 September 10th, 2001, 06:30 PM

Well, I don't recall ever seeing them miss altogether AFAIK. The only times I think I have seen them not blow something up, I figured they just didn't do enough damage points to kill the fighter/missile in one shot because the PDC level was too wimpy.

If PDCs really do miss, is their chance to hit something that can be edited and tweaked to make missiles more viable then?

Suicide Junkie · #4 September 10th, 2001, 08:09 PM

PDCs are given a +70% to-hit in the components.txt file.

This means that, barring an accuracy-reducing mount, the minimum to-hit is 71%

If the missile is at range 7 or less, the accuracy bonus cancels the range modifier, and you get 99% accuracy even without experience or sensors. Fighters could reduce that with ECM and fleet experience, but ship sensors or experience would overwhelm it, too.

Neo · #5 September 10th, 2001, 08:42 PM

Well the highest level PDCs only have a range of 5, so I guess that is why they always hit. I think the to-hit % should be lowered a lot.

Slaughtermeyer · #6 September 11th, 2001, 05:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Fighters could reduce that with ECM and fleet experience, but ship sensors or experience would overwhelm it, too.

If fighters still benefit from fleet experience then it's a bug, because one of the old patch's .txt file states:
"23. Fixed - Fleet bonuses were not always being added to a ship during combat. (NOTE: Fleet bonuses do not effect fighter or satellite Groups)."

[This message has been edited by Slaughtermeyer (edited 11 September 2001).]