Depleted Uranium Cannons to powerful!

[Cyrien]

I also have used similiar strategies with WMG... with the add on of using Time Distortion Burst weapons from the Temporal Mechanics tree to get rid of the shields. Love that quad damage to shields. With that I take out the shields and then destroy the armor and components with the WMG.

Also I have found that generally CSM are a much better deal early in the game than later on when everyone has had time to either develop PD or steal it from someone who has.

[Seawolf]

Bye the way where do you get phased shield? That tech tree? level?

------------------
Seawolf on the prowl

[Saben]

I love the numbers on those Polaron beams. As efficent at max range as the Anti-Proton is a point blank, with a close range efficency outpaceing everything else short of the ripper beam. And it ignores sheilds, forceing your enemy to persue the expensive level 6 plus sheild research. Not to mention how incredibly cheap it is to research, compared against the other offerings for post DUC weaponry.

I think I have a new favorite.

[Comar]

Phased shields are the six level ( I believe ) of the shield tech tree.

[Saben]

Going to go down the list here and reply to people.

Seawolf: Research level 2 physics, and then phased weapons will be available to you to research.

Cyrien: I mostly play without special tech, and am not near a computer with SE4 right now. I am fairly certain, however, that high end sheild depleters are more effective for the weight, with a longer range, than time weapons in the demo. I can look for sure later, and will post specifics.

Instar: It seems strange to mix abp and meson weapons, as well as incin. Do you rely on theft from the computers for the apb techs?

Taqwus: Emisive armor is worthless in the .99 demo. No test I've ever run has shown it working. Crystaline I haven't checked since the new demo, and organic is flat broken. With organic, if any ONE peice of armor survives, all the armor will regenerate, leaving the ship with 60 points unhealed damage. Start with 14 plates, destroy 13 of them. The Last peice will cause all the others to reform, and the ship will be listed as 60 out of whatever ungodly ammount.

LintMan: When I get the full Version, I will run more and better comparisons. Working on a computer program right now to extract all the data from components.txt and display these values. Will hopefully be a good tool for mod makers, so they are fully aware of relative balance.
As to emmisive armor, I stated above that it is completely broke, and absolutely worthless in the .99 demo.
Large mount weapons are a fixed alteration to the numbers, and so all weapons will retain their same relative place on the hierachy. A large poleron will still be more efficent than a large meson bLaster.
Agreed. Stations are probably the best use of some of these weapons. Also, putting WMG3 on satilities is a damn good way to block a warp point. As I noted in the results, WMG has the advantage of packing more than one turns worth of damage into the first shot, and there are going to be times when it is worth the loss of overall efficency.

Commander G: Your results might be off on account of the beam destroyers being organic. As I stated above, the armor is broken. If even one peice survives, all your armor will regenerate in one turn, leaving your ship at 60/whatever.

Taqwus: I agree fully.

Baron Munchausen: I agree and, time permiting, I would love to figgure out just how PDC works.

General Hawkwing: Torps are just direct fire weapons, can do the exact same calculations. Missiles are a whole new ball game. As to theft of research, if I played a human with a tendancy to board, you can bet your *** I'll start mounting self-destruct devices. In regards to smaller weapons, meson bLaster is the only one with a range of three, and of the remaining weapons the small DUC3 is the most efficent. it has a ratio of 5 damage per kiloton. More efficent by far than big guns, twice as efficent as the ripper beam.

[Cyrien]

Let me save you some effort.

In fact if your going for nothing but shield damaging then Large Shield Depleters are the way to go. They take up less space fire at the same rate and eat up the same supplies while doing more damage to shields and taking up less material to build. However they are not capable of damaging the ship itself only the shields. And I have on several occassions found that the difference between defeat and victory was the extra 60 damage that each of those guys pumped out.
Finally using the Temporal fits in with the personality of the race I normally play with.

Here are the actual numbers assuming Large Mount:

Temporal - 240 damage to shields - 60 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
45 kt

Depleter - 300 damage to shields - 0 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
30 kt


No damage reduction for range in either of them. Both have range of 7.

[General Hawkwing]

Saben,
As you know, there are more ways to get tech than just boarding a ship. Plus every defensive measure you put on a ship requires space and research points. The problem with specialization is that you limit your ability to surprise the enemy. A balanced task force will survive longer and gain in the long run.
I've seen this kind of "rush" idea in other games and there is always a way (usually many) to counter it. MM has built a balanced game, allowing for many play styles to work extremely well. But I think "history" will show a balanced research approach will over come a single weapon focus one.

[Commander G]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cyrien:
[In fact if your going for nothing but shield damaging then Large Shield Depleters are the way to go. They take up less space fire at the same rate and eat up the same supplies while doing more damage to shields and taking up less material to build. However they are not capable of damaging the ship itself only the shields. And I have on several occassions found that the difference between defeat and victory was the extra 60 damage that each of those guys pumped out.
Finally using the Temporal fits in with the personality of the race I normally play with.

Here are the actual numbers assuming Large Mount:

Temporal - 240 damage to shields - 60 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
45 kt

Depleter - 300 damage to shields - 0 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
30 kt


No damage reduction for range in either of them. Both have range of 7.[/b]

---

I like the Temporal Trait as well, but I like the other weapon they get, the one that ignores shields and armor. It is a nice counter to Organic races. Races can avoid the Shield depleting type weapons by simply using Armor instead of Shields. At low levels, armor is actually lighter and cheaper than shields. I ran into early problems with the Temporal trait against human players becaue my research was going into all the preliminary stuff early on for that trait. I was severly set back trying to defend with poor weapons while researching my special trait ones. Unfortunately, when you meet a race, it shows you their advanced traits so the player knew I had Temporal. I had to make some fast tech trades with other players to hold him off.

[Cyrien]

Yes I also use the Temporal Shifter though generally more as a specialized ship to take out enemies with large defenses in both shields and armor... especially armor though.

[Saben]

General Hawkwing,
I have to disagree. Some weapons can be shown to be clearly superior, and nothing will change those numbers. Meson bLasters cost more, even includeing the extra level of physics, than poleron beams. There is flat no reason to bother with them, period.

Wave Motion Guns are so costly, that unless you have a massive research advantage (ie you were gonna win anyway), sombody who selected a different weapon to go for and placed the left over points into various defensive or production techs would hand you your own head on a platter.

Anti-Proton beams offer the same range advantage the WMG has, for lesser cost and higher efficency. I would consider them a viable research path for sombody with superior engines. On the other hand, sombody with superior engines could go for ripper beams instead. Then, they would have spent far far less (the prerequisites were researched anyway) for a weapon with much higher efficency. The range disadvantage won't matter if you are closeing in on your enemy at a rate of two.

As to defensive measures, frankly boarding is the cheapest way to steal a ship. The defense is available early on in the propulsion tree, and takes only 10 kt. If the enemy is psycic, you will be forced to pay the costs for a master computer. But, even then, you are only looking at about 100k research points. I'm positive it costs alot more than that to get efficive allegince subverters, but I don't have the numbers in front of me.

Other tech takeing measures involve intel ops, which frankly I have never had used against me effectivly. Perhaps my strategies will need adjustment after I play a few games against other humans asside from my local friends.

Lastly, I agree that balance is important. But in my mind that balance is between missile, beam, boarding, AMS, repair, carriers, troop transports, and special case ships. The effectiveness gain for bothering to research down more than one beam weapon tree is not worth the research expenditure.