Unused weapons causing me to lose battles

[skigrinder]

During combat, I’ve noticed that some of my (missile) weapons platforms do not fire.

The missiles that do fire get hit by point defense at the target while other missiles sit in their silos instead of finishing the job.
My planet would win the battle if it had fired all missiles from the weapons platforms.

Why didn’t they fire?

I’ve run several battles in tactical mode (with automatic targeting selected) to see what’s going on.

It appears that enough missiles are sent to do the job if they all hit their assigned targets.
Apparently, point defense is not taken into consideration.
Half my missiles get destroyed at the target while the other half don’t even get fired from the planet.
The attacking ships live through what should have been an overwhelming barrage of missiles and end up winning a battle that should have gone against them.

I don’t believe that this is a multiplex tracking issue because I have more individual weapons platforms than ships being targeted.

Is there a way to make the automatic targeting algorithm take point defense into consideration?

Or, is there a way to just tell the automatic targeting algorithm to fire everything that’s available?

Please help.
Thanx,
skigrinder

[Dragon of the void]

As far as I understand:

WP's are always "stacked", including their systems, no matter what. So you really have one planet, with several missile launchers, and several (redundant) multiplex tracking dev's.

The multiplex is trying to hit as many targets as possible with your missiles, meaning that only enough missiles to destroy the target are fired at one target (well, and I think the rest is just idle, as you describe).

The sollution would be to get rid of the multiplex, then you fire all missiles at once, at only one target. The next salvo 3 turns later picks another target, etc ...

Or use direct fire WP's. I think some combined WP's or Sat's that share the same component are pretty good (like "I prey for you", typo intended *g*)

[Arkcon]

Oh so many questions ... I don't know where to begin ...

Originally posted by skigrinder:
During combat, I’ve noticed that some of my (missile) weapons platforms do not fire.

I guess the reason for that is they were built with earlier technology that has less range. The opponents have greater range so they never get close enough.

It appears that enough missiles are sent to do the job if they all hit their assigned targets.
Apparently, point defense is not taken into consideration.
Half my missiles get destroyed at the target while the other half don’t even get fired from the planet.

Hmm... didn't know that missles were ever meant to take point defence into account. That would be a good idea to implement.

I don’t believe that this is a multiplex tracking issue because I have more individual weapons platforms than ships being targeted.

I don't think weapon platforms have this problem. They don't need multiplex, but missiles are funny. I don't think they take into account how many have been fired. While a ship exists, all are targeted on it. And the ship still exists while they're flying to target.

Missile platforms (I like to call them silos) are only good against a couple of enemy frigates or one destroyer. They won't keep a planet safe from a fleet.

[oleg]

No Dragon, even though WP on planet are stacked, they will fire on separate targets without any multiplex target system ! During the battle, move cursor over planet, there'll be a small print in planet window "can target N", or something like that, where N is exactly number of WP.
Skigringer, what Version of SE are you playing ? In some older patches, weapon platforms where "acattered" over planet surfice and WP from the far corner could not sometimes target ships

[dogscoff]

Earlier Versions of SEIV used to launch all available missiles in one go.

This was unsatisfactory because it made missiles next to useless thanks to the "missile dancing" technique.

For this reason some patch or other changed it so that the game would spread it's missile deployment over the reload period. Hence your problem. I think...

[Slick]

Could this be fixed by editing the appropriate strategy to increase the % damaged to a high number like 200%? Then the planet will launch enough destruction for 200% of the target. Just a thought.

Slick

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
No Dragon, even though WP on planet are stacked, they will fire on separate targets without any multiplex target system ! During the battle, move cursor over planet, there'll be a small print in planet window "can target N", or something like that, where N is exactly number of WP.
Skigringer, what Version of SE are you playing ? In some older patches, weapon platforms where "acattered" over planet surfice and WP from the far corner could not sometimes target ships

THis is not exactly correct Oleg. I just ran some tests with a planet with 16 weapons platforms and 16 attacking ships and playing in tactical the most I can target is 10 different ships. Did not try it with multiplex to see if that had any effect, but I didn't get to target the same number of ships as I had WP's. THis was in 1.78.

There is definetly something going on. In tactical you can shoot at a ship and all your weapons will fire from the planet until the ship is destroyed. In strategic combat they will fire till the ship is destroyed, but not all the weapons will fire. It skips many of them and does not fire them at all.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

Interesting. I never payed too much attention to this issue before. Is it possible that there is an upper limit to the number of targets, say 10.
Then even if there are 16 WP, you still target only 10 ?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Slick:
Could this be fixed by editing the appropriate strategy to increase the % damaged to a high number like 200%? Then the planet will launch enough destruction for 200% of the target. Just a thought.

Slick

This setting can only be raised to 100%. Tried that and it had no effect. I am not suprised though cause it seems to be doing a fine job of destoying the ships that it does shoot at. It's just that it won't fire all it's weapons that it can fire after it destoys a ships and still has wepons left.

I should say my tests have been with direct fire weapons and not missle sand I am seeing the same things as skigrinder is with the missles. It's like some of the waepons plats just won't fire any of their weapons.

It's also not the range thing. I tested that and confirmed it. Even when the ships are close enough that all the plats should be in rage some of them don't fire.

Geoschmo

[skigrinder]

Thank you all for the effort in trying to figure this out.

It sounds like the problem happens even with direct fire weapons.

This is disappointing as I have spent considerable energy constructing planetary defense WP's to deal with large fleet attacks.

Geoschmo, have you tried your direct fire tests with the Talisman?

Thanx,
skigrinder

FWIW: I'm using SEIV Gold 1.78 with the latest TDM mod release.