Space Stations--Pros/Cons

[wingte]

Ok,, it is clearly an imbalance when a small ship with a realitivly low power weapon can defeat a space station.

One part of this problem stems from the turns base nature of the game. In a "real time battle" the advantage of the dance in and out tactic would be significamtly reduced.

Another part of this problem is that the game doesn't spread the space stations (or satalites) evenly arround the planet allowing the small ship to dance in and out of range or attack the planet without even facing the space station. The ability of space stations to change orbit is a great idea since it would at least give the player the ability to spread the stations (and satalites) properly arround the planet.

Another part of the problem is the lack of really effective planetary weapons. Planets should always get at least a 2x multiplier on the range and speed of missle weapons.
An additional problem is that ships get unlimited supplies of missles (and bombs) to fire.
Someone made a partially correct observation that weapons in the absence of an atmosphere should show little range difference just because of mount size,, but this should only apply to "beam" weapons. Missle weapons should get better range since the "heavy mount" Version should mean "greater fuel capacity" resulting in greater range. Weapons such as plasma torpedos should also get improved range since a larger mount shoud translate into higher starting energy levels and by extension ,, longer ranges.

But,, we must remember. There is no single ultimate weapon. A properly defended planet would require a mix of ground and space based weapons. I suspect that in the gold Version we would find that simply adding 5-10 medium or heavy fighters to the planet would stop the single small ship problem. The fighters are cheap, don't seem to require any maintanence, dont take up much planetary space and might at least fill in the range gap of the planetary and space station missle bases.



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Wingte