massive shield depleter

Tuchukk · #1 April 29th, 2002, 06:08 AM

I am just now getting back into se 4. Its been a while since I Last played. I would like to know what people think of the "massive shield depleter". I just got it from a ruin. It sounds like a good weapon, however, I wonder at how important it really is.

Thanks for the input.
'Tuchuk'

Andr�s · #2 April 29th, 2002, 06:44 AM

Like most ruin tech it sounds impressive until you realize that they are too big and can fire only once per battle, so it's pretty useless except for some special case.

TerranC · #3 April 29th, 2002, 08:06 AM

Ruin techs are all but useless.

The shiled depleter and shied distruptor is so darn big and only fired once, it is realluy unable to fit into staple of ship design and if used, is fitted onto special ships.

Kinda like the Alien shield sapping ship in Wing Command Prophecy; Seems majestic at first, but when you find out it has no defense and only saps shields on capital ships, it becomes your sight for sore eyes, or fingers

THe Neural Combat Net is not effective, Unless you have a dreadnought at Novice and an Escort at 50% Legendary

or something like it.

The Massive Planetary Shiled Generator is probably the most useful of them all. It provides 5000 shileds for combat; not much of an insurance policy against large fleet action but it will help damage lots of ships.

So in turn, you better be hoping that the ruins you do get help you to get Standard sets of tech up at least one level

where it will do more good.

Phoenix-D · #4 April 29th, 2002, 08:45 AM

"THe Neural Combat Net is not effective, Unless you have a dreadnought at Novice and an Escort at 50% Legendary or something like it."

If you're using large fleets and taking losses all the time, it can make your fleets more effective, faster- you don't need to spend time at training facilities, and ALL ships get the bonuses of any ship over 20%. Well, as long as you don't loose the experienced ship(s)

IMO it really should be a standard tech tree item.

Phoenix-D

PvK · #5 April 29th, 2002, 09:40 AM

I think Neural Combat Net is evil when used to good advantage. It allows you to just have one highly skilled ship lending its skill to a whole fleet of ships that don't even need to be trained, which in serious combat with a peer human opponent is a big deal. Personally I like that it's a special tech, because it seems to me you'd need special insight and/or massive research to get something like that to work. I don't quite believe in it. It could make sense to mod in a similar component for the psychics, though. I just made a tweaked expansion of this for Proportions 2.2. If you thought it was useless before, you'll really hate it in this Version.

I also don't disdain the massive weapons so much. The one-shot thing is their main weakness, and in general does make them less effective than the highest tech Version of the standard Versions. If you're playing a game like Proportions or High research cost or limited colonizable planets or some other way where research rates let you burn straight through the tech tree, then these can become very useful weapons, it seems to me, particularly if you get them before you get the choice to invest in research into the regular specific weapon tech of the same type. I agree though that they tend to be good on specialized support ships used in a fleet, and more valuable if you're using tactical combat so you can fire at the best target with a good chance to hit.

If you're playing a game where the research tree gets exhausted really quickly, then ya these are a lot less useful, but the cause is the research rate in the game type you're playing, more than the inherent weakness of the weapons.

I also disagree on the massive shield bases - I think those are pretty bad - the weakest of all of them, I would say. They seem massively overpriced and waste a whole facility slot for 5000 points of protection. Try just building a Cargo Storage facility and filling it with small weap platforms with armor on them, and you will have a much stronger "shield" that will be built at much less expense, if I recall correctly from looking at the numbers a month or so ago. The only disadvantage is that the armor platforms will get destroyed bit by bit instead of regenerating in between battles. Though, it lack the other problem with the Massive Shield Base - that it's not phased, so PPB's will bypass it.

Massive shield bases (better ones) are the ancient tech I'd rather were standard. They used to be, in SE3. It seems more reasonable than the current gamey technique of building little protection platforms to soak up damage.

PvK

dogscoff · #6 April 29th, 2002, 11:28 AM

I find the massive depleters are useful for static defences - especially with the recently introduced extra range mounts for sats and bases. A weapons platform with a massive engine killer can really screw up an invasion fleet=-)

Baron Munchausen · #7 April 29th, 2002, 07:07 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"THe Neural Combat Net is not effective, Unless you have a dreadnought at Novice and an Escort at 50% Legendary or something like it."

If you're using large fleets and taking losses all the time, it can make your fleets more effective, faster- you don't need to spend time at training facilities, and ALL ships get the bonuses of any ship over 20%. Well, as long as you don't loose the experienced ship(s)

IMO it really should be a standard tech tree item.

Phoenix-D

Yeah, I think it makes sense for the Psychic tech tree. The problem is, the two 'racial' tech fields most in need of a boost are Deeply Religious and Temporal. The others - Crystalline, Organic, Psychic -- have plenty of cool toys.

Temporal needs a defense, not necessarily armor like Crystalline and Organic, but something to improve their defenses. I was thinking there ought to be a 'displacement device' that makes the ship 'shift around' and causes a fixed chance for a weapon to miss no matter what the true percentage to hit it. A fixed 30 percent chance to miss, even for missiles, would go a long way towards negating technological or even numeric advantages. An interesting question would be how this would interact with the Talisman!

Religious needs something more to help it on the 'offensive'. The shrines are all very nice but only work in your own systems. Figuring out exactly what would make sense is a real tough question. You can see that the effects of the shrines are supposed to come from their ability to rally the population to do various things that improve the society and environment. Even the 'death shrine' and 'war shrine' could represent excellent training rather than some 'magical' power. I've been trying to think of a 'pseudo-science' (erm, 'pseudo-religious'?) explanation that would make the neural combat net usable in the religious techs...

[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

travislp · #8 April 29th, 2002, 07:34 PM

As far as the massive shield generator just do what I did. I modded it to generate phased shielding instead of normal shielding and bumped up the shield strength from 5000 to 50000. Makes it a much more useful facility. Added a bit more cost. Still takes between 1.2 and 1.7 years to build.

thorfrog · #9 April 29th, 2002, 07:36 PM

Why not just mod the massive shield depleter to fire 3 or 4 times in combat. That makes the most sense.

PvK · #10 April 29th, 2002, 10:42 PM

travislp, yes that's more or less what I did to the shield base in Proportions.

automannj, yes that would help the depleter a bit.

Baron, I don't see Religious as weak, with its shrines and above all the talisman. The talisman is about the most powerful offensive tool in the game, it seems to me.

Temporal also don't seem weak to me - their weapons can be devastating to anyone who uses shields, and those who don't use shields are in trouble at some point, unless they are organically armored.

PvK