PPB is the best weapon in the game. Discuss.

[Rollo]

quote:

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With enough bonuses even a dozen LC's with DUC's can do serious damage, if they are impossible to hit...

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Hmm, I wonder what you are referring to .

Anyway, IMHO the best weapon in the game is the DUC. I have seen empires crumble into dust (others as well as mine) before the PPB became a factor in the game. Of course the best weapon of choice largely depends on your enemy, but if everybody is using phased shields I think a combination of SD+DUC is superior to just PPB.
Otherwise I fully agree with Dragonlord the PPB is the best mid- to end-game weapon choice and if not unbalancing, it is at least redundant. IMHO the PPB needs some tweaking. It should not increase in power so fast. The biggest advantage is that you only need 5 levels to get it to full power. Maybe 8 or 10 would be more appropriate. If you extend the tech field to 12, you could get even better PPB than the current PPB V.

Just my 0.02

Rollo

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Of course the best weapon of choice largely depends on your enemy

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Bingo! Even PBB have weaknesses. If I knew you were relying on them exclusivley, I could beat you even in a one on one ship combat by making a ship designed to defeat it's weanesses. I would use phased shields, or no shields. I would use a weapon with more range than a PBB, like APB, or a Wave motion gun, and I would set my strategy to max range. You would be toast.

No one weapon is the best in the game. Some are better then others in specific areas. Some are better overall, but not as good as others in specific areas.

I've said it before. Space Empires is a great big complicated Version of "rock paper scissors" man.

Geoschmo

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 02 September 2001).]

[geoschmo]

In fact, Dragonlord, or Phoenix or anybody for that matter. He's a challenge for you. Post your best PBB ship design. Or if you have a different Uber weapon, post a design using that. I bet I can come up with a way to beat it at least 5 out of 9 combats. And I'll do it with either an single ship, or an equal total tonnage of smaller ships.

Now the point of this is too prove that there is no ultimate weapon, so don't submit a ship with some PBB's and a bunch of other weapons too, or then you're proving my point. Although I will accept a ship with PBB's and PDC, since PBB's can't target missles. (That would be too easy for me. )

If you are used to putting all your PDC into separate ships, go ahead and list your fleet makeup. I'll beat it again with an equal number of ships, or an equal tonnage of smaller ships.

For the purposes of the challange we will eliminate experience since that is not something you can build into the design, and if one side can do it, the other side can too, so it's a wash.

The point of this is not that I am a better ship designer than anybody else. The designs that I build will be just as beatable, maybe more so cause they will be specifically designed to defeat a particular enemy.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

I have to agree that the PPB can be devastating in most situations. Using it in a solo game against AI opponents feels like cheating. Maybe Phased-energy weapons should be made a racial tech? If it costs some racial development points to be able to use then it will be less unbalancing. Other than this change, I think some improvements in armor technology might help to balance this. I would still really like to see Emissive armor changed to have a "total per turn" limit on the energy it can absorb. Right now, all emissive armor becomes useless when cruisers appear because the large mount doubles all weapon damage and out-classes emissive armor. Setting the limit higher and higher makes ships "invulverable" to more and more powerful weapons which has its own unbalancing effects. This "all or nothing" approach just doesn't make sense. If there were a total damage per-turn limit possible you could set the damage resistance of emissive armor higher without making ships totally invulnerable. Then emissive armor could be a really useful defense against the PPB. Crystalline and Organic armor make good counter-measures aready, btw.


[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 02 September 2001).]

[Rich04]

Sure Dragonlord. Actually in that game PPBs never made any differance except in battles vs NPC,s. Phased Shield V's showed up very quick. The race I didn't give more details on was using Organic Tech which was maxed out so its weapons and armor helped a lot. Another race was using tons of Null Space weapons.
The biggest drawback to PPB's is their range. This will hamper them even in huge 50+ ship fleets. If a game gets to the point when efficient long range weapons show up APB's, WMG's, etc. PPB's ,though still powerfull, can be taken out with the better weapons.
Even Null Space (Which are fairly easy to get) will come out ahead once Phased Shields show up.(Though that fight would be messy).
I got out of the habit of using PPB's because they were so easy to abuse the NPC's with. This had a secondary effect. I got good at beating PPB's.
There are a number of good AI's people have designed using PPB's. Try playing a game without using PPB's and add a number of good AI races (TDM Modpack has several) that do uses them (and some others for spice). It makes things really interesting (especially if you also don't use mines). After a while you start to see ways of beating PPB ships.

I was curious. In SE3 the PPB's had an Achilles heel. Emmisive Armor could totally negate PPB's and APB's (except at point blank range). This would be hard to duplicate is SE4 because of weapon mounts.


[This message has been edited by Rich04 (edited 02 September 2001).]

[Deathstalker]

I have to disagree on the whole PPB thing, for me they are definitly NOT the best weapon in the game. Major weakness is range, IMO the best weapon is the Ionic weapons, destroy a targets engines and he is toast, combine this with either WMG or Grav or Acid Globs (Mental Singularity also works, albit a bit slowly) and the ship is toast. I am in a game right now where my neighbor has religious tech ships, Talisman with Engine destroyers and a few Acid Glob weapons, in sim battles his cruisers toast my BaseShips that have level 5 PPB (they also have 3000+ phased shields, Solar Sail and extra movement racial bonus.)...

Not too fond of the engine destroying missiles but the beams IMO are the best weapon....In fact I think they are too overpowered, ROF maybe needs to be 2 instead of 1, and the Weapon destroying weapons are quite good as well, the major bonus of these is that they skip all shields and armor and just destroy their target, unlike Null-space that has inferior range, too high cost and just takes out random components.

Just my usual ramblings......

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"And what the hell would you know about sanity?" demanded Beatrice. "There are depressed lemmings on the edge of cliffs who've got a better grasp on reality than you have. And more common sense."--Simon R. Green 'Deathstalker Rebellion'.

"We are all...the sum of our scars"....(paraphrased) Matt. R. Stover-'Blade of Tyshalle'.

"Memory," the old man said softly, "is tricky. I have learned two things from it. One: That without meaningful memories, there is no life. Two: that we are desperate for our lives to make sense, to have meaning,--and at a great enough remove , all memory is malleable." -Michelle West 'Sea of Sorrows', SunSword book IV.

[This message has been edited by Deathstalker (edited 02 September 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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If there were a total damage per-turn limit possible you could set the damage resistance of emissive armor higher without making ships totally invulnerable. Then emissive armor could be a really useful defense against the PPB.

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quote:

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I was curious. In SE3 the PPB's had an Achilles heel. Emmisive Armor could totally negate PPB's and APB's (except at point blank range). This would be hard to duplicate is SE4 because of weapon mounts.

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In SE3, Emissive armor negated the first X points of damage per hit, and if the first piece of armor was destroyed, the next one negated another X points of damage.

A stack of EA 5's in SE3 would have the following effect:
1 DMG: no damage, 1 pt ignored
2 DMG: no damage, 2 pts ignored
3 DMG: no damage, 3 pts ignored
4 DMG: 1 Armor Destroyed
5 DMG: 1 Armor destroyed, 4 pts ignored
7 DMG: 1 Armor destroyed, 6 pts ignored
8 DMG: 2 Armor destroyed, 6 pts ignored.

Those were the days...

It was like Crystalline armor, but didn't require shields, and only the components that were damaged stacked their bonuses.

For a "damage-per-turn limit" use organic armor with unlimited regen. It will "emiss" all the damage done to it (rounded down to the nearest segment) unless you destroy all of it. You'd need to limit the amount on a ship while still having more than one component, but it could work.

The "holes in the armor" effect was pretty cool too. There was a chance that weapons fire could go through a hole left by a destroyed armor segment, and hit internals.

[Phoenix-D]

What bothers me about PPBs is this:

APB research cost to max:
1,677,500
PPB to max:
290,000

That's with the extra level of physics included.

Making it worse is the cost of shields. At max normal shields, you have good effectiveness against the APB, but nothing against the PPB. To get maxed shield protection against the PPB, you have to go through multiple layers of weaker shields, or take armor. So a player that researchs PPB V and Shield V is going to be significantly better off research wise against a player that uses, say, APBs.

Other weapons like Wave Motion Guns, you say? Well, to get WMGIIIs you need 4,212,500 research points! Then, just for the icing, if the PPB player can close to short range..he'll OUTDAMAGE you over time (so will the APB ship, for that matter). Ripper beams do decent damage, but are outranged- Ripper IVs do 50 damage out to range 3, PPBs 60-50 damage out to range 6. So 2 PPBs vs. 3 Rippers.. 120 damage vs 150 damage. That's at point-blank range.

Missiles are easily countered by PD weaponry. Torpedos? Decent, but like the WMGs are outdamaged.

Meson BLasters? 30 damage at max, so for 3 mesons vs 2 PPBs: 90vs120 damage at point blank, 90vs100 damage at max. Mesons will set you back 510,000 research points, as well.

Null-space? Very cheap (187,000), decent damage, skips everything. Decent alternative, but the fire rate is still nothing to write home about, and not at all cheap to build. Plus for every 3 Null-space cannons, you can mount 5 PPB/APBs, which goes a long way to offsetting the null-space's advantages.

Phoenix-D

[Puke]

its all in the ballance. i always thought the temporal thing that did 4x to shields was cool.. it did a fair ammount of damage, and you didnt have to worry about buying shield depleters AND regular weapons, and then ordering them properly, and being screwed up when you change targets..

ppbs are fine early on, but as soon as phased shields come into play, or if there are organic races out there, they dont help much. so you will have to switch to another kind of weapon if you want to cause any hurting, which means reasearching another tree. so you are paying the research cost of the ppbs PLUS that of whatever you are going to switch to. as opposed to the guy that started out researching towards WMGs or fighters or something.

you have 4 basic kinds of attacks as far as im concerned, thats not counting long range / short range and movement tactics. you can go for the high damage early on, and bLast with a slow recharging WMG or psychic singularity or something. or you can go for smaller dammage that pays off over time, compensating with numbers of ships or higher protection values. Third, you can go for saturation attacks where you load up huge ammounts of missiles and fighters, and stand off at your max range and hope to overwhelm their PD.

Lastly, you can blow up their sun and/or planet

but i find a balance is best, having capital ships with heavy hitting weapons. also having lighter ships or fighters that can move in and inflict damage every turn while the big guns recharge.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[Phoenix-D]

The thing is, PPBs are so cheap- and almost as effective as APB XIIs- that you really don't need another direct fire weapon. Certainly no reason to research APBs or Meson BLasters..

Phoenix-D