Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I did not say missiles were a bad example, I said that gravitic weapons were a bad example.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Pax,

I'm glad you like the grav. tech tree http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
It's good to know that somebody is using it. I personally thought that the slower the missile, the more PDF fire it would take... so the obvious method to increase missile value was to make 'em faster! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

I have to admit that I haven't really tried out the bombardment missiles yet - they looked to massive to be worthwhile. Have you found them to be significantly useful (i.e. how does it compare vs 2x normal missiles; how do the normal and bombardment missiles compare when using the grav. tech tree)?

cheers,
jimbob

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Gee, I keep making you so busy releasing all these Versions when I notice yet another bug... but this isn't really a bug, more of a design decision - perhaps Natural Merchants should be more expensive since Spaceports take so long to build on fledgling colonies?

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, here's the thing. Comapre identical levels of missile -- without gravitic tech.

CSM versus HBM, you get 2 CSMs per HBM. Against unshielded targets, therefor, theCSMs do twice as much damage.

But each HBM takes FOUR times as much damage. If the enemy can shoot down 1 CSM per turn, teh HBM catches up in damage immediately. If they can shoot down 2 or 3 CSMs per turn, but not four, the HBM wins, period.

And that ignores the quad-to-shields trait of the HBM. In the same PDC/PDL environment, the HBM is superior to 2 CSMs against shielded targets, at ALL points of comparison.

...

Now, with Gravitic Technology, you get the G-Spike Versions. +10kT mass per launcher, and somethng close to 50% extra speed.

G-CSMs mass 60kt, G-HBMs mas 110kt. So, the comparison isn't quite 2:1 anymore; now it's 11 G-CSMs to 6 G-HBMs. The G-HBMs have the same damage resistance as twenty four G-CSMs ... for slightly better than half-damage, you are MUCH more likely to get a missile through. That only compounds with the higher-speed-means-less-PD-shots-taken benefit of the G-Spike launchers.

...

With all that said, however ... I don't know how effectvie it will TRULY prove to be, Ihaven't tried it out against humans yet. However, if nothing else, it should force opponents to devote MUCH more tonnage to PD weapons than they would otherwise. Especialy using G-Spike HBMs.

G-Spike alone helps tweak missiles better. HBMs alone are very useful when you consider how many get through as of chief importance.

G-Spike HBMs are just pure gravy, IMO. 8)

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">VEry VERY good point ... !!! Saving thirty+ turns is a BIG help.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Hmm, it looks like the ship mounts are showing up when you design bases... while this could be useful in certain situations (there's no equivalent of the Large Ship Mount for bases, for instance - the Large Base Mount is equivalent to the Heavy Ship Mount plus a range/tohit bonus - and you might not have enough space for another Large Base Mount weapon), it would get kind of cluttered... how about doing something similar to what you did to keep the base mounts off ships - make duplicate entries of each ship mount - Large Ship Mount would be 400-449 kT, 451-1749 kT, for instance (given that there are no 1750+ kT ships)

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

One thing you missed was the supply usage, and the rads cost of the G-spike "addons"

Two questions about natural merchants:
1) Do people actually use natural merchants that often in the regular game? IE: Will this simply help balance its use?

2) Is it really that advantageous? The scale of all building is altered by the same factor; IE even though the spaceport takes longer, the resource facilities take longer (about 7 turns), too.

I imagine you would place all the extra population immigrating to the new system on the spaceport planet first, so your spaceport will see a higher build rate, and by the time your other colonies actually need the spaceport, it should be almost done.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Okay! New component mounts file.
Ship mounts are not an option for bases, and supply use multipliers follow a nice damage^1.5 curve.
That also means you will have a lot of trouble finding ammo for your Core Mount Polaron Torpedo Launcher http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Be sure to carry a couple of hawking reactors and have supply ships standing by, or just use more conservative weapons.

Of course, by the time you've got battlemoons, you probably couldn't care less about such trivial matters as practicality http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

P&N3.1c R5.zip

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

IMHO, natural merchants is now underpriced. That's why I took it for my empire! "I shouldn't have told you that..."

PS: Bonus points if you can name that character/movie quote.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yep, all the time.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Put it this way -- I take Natural Merchants, you don't; we have the exact same culture, and Construction rate, etc. we each build one colony in a new system.

Your colony will have it's first resource center built and functioning ... sending resources to the capital ... in 37 turns.

In that time, I will have FIVE resource facilities -- with 2 entire turns to spare.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Or you build OTHER stuff faster. Research labs, maybe, tog et better tech -- meaning better pop transports ... meaning better immigration rates ... meaning better empire-wide construction rates.

Plus, all those OTHER colonies, which leapt right to building resource facilities, contribute THEIR utput to the empire right away too. Take the above example -- we each plant FIVE colonies. Assume you immigrate to teh SP first, and I psread it out. Assume that means you get 7 turns per colony world per resourcer, and ~20 turns for the SP. By the time you have the SP done, with 2 resourcers per off-colony ... assuming I immigrate evenly, and get 5 turns per resourcer per world, in those 20 turns, each of my four worlds has 4 facilities.

20 facilities producing for me, and some of them have BEEN producing (5 for 15 turns, 5 more for 10, and 5 more for 5), to your 8 facilities, which JUST came Online.

Trust me; the longer ALL build times are, the better not having a SP becomes. Especially with 30-turn SPs.

In P&N ... NM is worth 1500 to 2000, IMO.