Storms and tricks with 'em

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Those storms don't nullify shields completely, they just subtract 5000 or so from the max.
If you have more than 5000 planetary shields, or a starbase full of shield generators, you can still have shields left in combat.
A shielded planet vs a bunch of shield-disabled ships will be quite quite devastating to the attackers...

Oh ok, I thought it negated any and all shields that are present in that sector. I didn't know there was a 5000 limit. I learned something new today, my day is complete.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Loser:

Do PBW games stay competitive long enough that Stellar Manipulation can be realistically used to a strategic advantage?

Depends on how many players are in the game, size of the map, starting tech level, and starting tech cost. But normally in most games with more then 6 players stellar manipulation does become a factor, you have warp point openers flying around and star destroyers, etc.

[Ruatha]

Originally posted by Laurus:
NO KIDDING!?! any type of storm over a star and the enemy can't see my ships in that system??

Amazing! are you sure? wow.

And I do belive he meant small storms, obscuring their sector, not the entire system (A sector is one of the grids if you turn on the gridnet in the system display.)

[Fyron]

Do PBW games stay competitive long enough that Stellar Manipulation can be realistically used to a strategic advantage?

Most of the games with huge maps (255 systems) and lots of players stay competitive enough for one side to get SM, and then crush the other with their WP openers.

Actually, I am one of those people that researches SM 3 early to get Monoliths going. So I usually use other SMs relatively early anyways.

Originally posted by Ragnarok:
Oh ok, I thought it negated any and all shields that are present in that sector. I didn't know there was a 5000 limit. I learned something new today, my day is complete.

You can mod the 5000 limit quite easily.

[ May 06, 2003, 18:53: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[DavidG]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
If you build a storm over a star, it will obscure any ships in the sector. I forget if it obscurs the star too or not.

Oooo, no it won't. The star will be visible, and will always be on top in the system view. So unless you happen to notice the little number 2 that showed up on a certain turn next to the star, or happend to click on the star for some reason, you wouldn't even see the storm. Slick trick.

Geoschmo

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In a current PBW came (paranoia) this is not so. I was much confused when looking at some systems and seeing a storm in the middle. Clicking on the sector revealed a star underneath but is was the strom the showed in the system view.

[ May 06, 2003, 20:07: Message edited by: DavidG ]

[geoschmo]

Ok, guess I was wrong. I thought that the sector storms acted like the system nebulae. In those the star and warp points are visible. Normally you don't have a star in a nebulae, but they can be added in the map editor.

Geoschmo

[Laurus]

My bad, I thought you meant that ALL ships in the system would not be shown not the SECTOR. My fault,, I got all excited there.

Yes an opaque storm over a star renders all ships and the star invisible (unless maybe you click on it) Does an opaque storm in the middle of normal space render ships invisible or do they HAVE to be over a star?

[Slynky]

I thought only storms that interferred with sensors rendered ships (etc.) hidden. I thought (and think I have seen) ships that "park" in a storm, say that renders shields useless, can still be seen.

[Laurus]

ya, the trick is to make sure you are hiding behind an OPAQUE storm. In the definition it will say 'this storm appears opaque to most scanners' or something like that.

Only opaque ones (in my experience) have been able to hide anything! It is kinda a chore flying around the universe with a ship to create storms AND a ship to destroy storms when the storm you just created isn't the type of storm you wanted..