Tired of not having room on those escorts? =) - Page 2

Courageous · #11 December 23rd, 2000, 01:33 AM

One idea would be to have larger weapon mounts have increasingly higher difficulty targeting smaller ships. For example, a "spinal" weapon mount might do enormous amounts of damage, but be very poor at targeting escorts and destroyers, and be utterly incapable of targeting fighters and satellites.

C//

Daynarr · #12 December 23rd, 2000, 01:45 AM

I was thinking about the same thing. In MOO2 player could only shoot ships and planets with large mounts. If you give negative chances to hit with those mounts in SE4 you can make fighters almost impossible to hit by large mounts.

However, I dropped the idea when I remembered that AI uses mostly maximum size ships and maximum mounts on them. It would make human fighters even more deadly against them.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 22 December 2000).]

Tomgs · #13 December 23rd, 2000, 02:21 AM

One quick solution to that is to require the AI to put a few more point defence on their ships. That would take care of the satelites and fighters. Heavy mount weapons and point defence its a lot like MOO2 designs then. Now all we need are MIRVed missles to overwelm the point defences.

Courageous · #14 December 23rd, 2000, 02:37 AM

Yeah; I'm with that idea. Perhaps it's just me, but as it is right now, the PD weapons make missile technology a dead end. For that matter, PD ought to be a mount, IMO. This is sounding more and more like MOO2 all the time.

BTW, am I the only one who really likes Null Space weapons?

C//

Baron Munchausen · #15 December 23rd, 2000, 05:00 AM

You know, this discussion of "small" mounts reminds me of something. Wouldn't it be nice to have a "minimum size" restriction for all components? As it is, you can only set the requirement for mounts, not for the component as a whole. Maybe the "Capital Ship Missile" should not be mountable in a destroyer at all? Maybe the "Null-space" weapon should not be mountable in anything smaller than a cruiser? Things like that. There are such things in RL as recoil effects (with projectile weapons) or reasonable balance/maneuvering tolerances fo the ship carrying the weapons.

Baron Munchausen · #16 December 23rd, 2000, 05:05 AM

The "to hit bonus" for Point-defense weapons is set in the components along with all the other standard weapon characteristics. It's called "Weapon Modifier" and for point-defense cannons it's:

Weapon Modifier := 50

Fifty percent boost cancels the fifty percent loss at a range of five (the PDC max range at it's final level). So, it still has 100 percent accuracy (discounting ECM or any bonuses that a seeker or fighter might have) at maximum range! Might be an interesting experiment to remove it, and see if this considerable loss of accuracy restores more "balance" to the effects of point-defense. Remember, it DOES still get the benefit of any combat sensors or crew bonus that your ship has, anyway.

Tomgs · #17 December 23rd, 2000, 05:54 AM

The biggest problem I would have with reducing the accuracy of point defence is that the higher level point defence automatically go off at a longer range therefore making the lower tech point defence more accurate. So if I changed this I would also increase the accuracy as the distance and level goes up.

Talenn · #18 December 23rd, 2000, 08:53 AM

Adding larger numbers of PD weapons to the AI's ships brings problems of its own. It then gives them a distinct disadvantage when dealing with players who dont use missile or fighters at all. I dont think there is a 'right' answer to this as long as the AI is going to be scripted and with no 'reaction' ability.

Personally, I would have no problem with an AI 'cheating' to see what ships a player has and then choosing some 'counter ships' to build. It would make the game far more challenging IMO, but would negate the 'AI doesnt cheat' aspect of the game altogther. So at this point, its pretty much deciding on which is the lesser of two evils. And I think MM is more inclined to go with the 'no cheating' option.

Barring that, its possible to insert a few 'PD ships' into the AI's queue and hope that it bothers to keep them close to the main ships. I havent experimented with things like that quite yet, though.

Talenn

Tomgs · #19 December 23rd, 2000, 12:41 PM

Another problem with decreasing the accuracy of the point defence weapons is that the fighters have an inherent defence bonus and the point defence needs a bonus to make them better to fight fighters than beam weapons. Is it possible to give the missles and satelites defence bonuses in line with fighters to balance out the accuracy of point defence? This would have the bonus of making point defence the prefered method of taking out satelites and make them harder to fight with beams.

Worgaus · #20 December 27th, 2000, 12:58 AM

Well, over Christmas weekend I had the chance to test my mounts out. I hadn't realized the damage would be rounded up, so 50% ends up being too much. So I went with DirectorTsaarx's suggestion and reduced it to 40%. This seemed to work out better, and seemed more balanced/fair. Without the Standard Mounts I made put in, the AI, as a few have stated, would put these on their ships all the way up to the destroyer.

Messing with this has really given me some thoughts on custom mounts. Personally, I think if there is more than one type of mount available for the weight, the AI should compare the numbers rather than just sticking whatever on, you might be able to really screw the AI over by making some mount that has all penalties and does next to no damage, and it would mindlessly stuff its ships with them. Barring that, though, I like the idea of having a lower limit as well as an upper weight limit.