combat that don\'t make sense
 

Hi,

I'm playing a solo game with sequential turns ON (I want to play the tac battles).

I saw twice the following behavior, so I think it means it is either a feature, or a bug:

a) I start the battle with some fighters in space, and some on the ground of my planet.
b) battle commence, I launch my fighters. The ones already in space fight
c) i loose my first wave fighters.
d) new turn, none of my second wave fighters exists any longer, and I can swear you they have not been hit.
e) combat ended.

I even replayed the turn, and I have the saved game. This do not make sense.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

If you had fighters on the planet and it was hit with weapons fire the fighters can be destroyed. Weapon platforms will give you some protection, because they are hit first. You can fill them with shields if you just want protection, but I've found that about half shields and half weapons are a good mix. I've also noticed that fighters will help the targeting ability of the weapons platforms. They get a built in offensive modifier and it seems to stack with weapons platforms. I would call it a feature since, if it was up to me, I would taget fighters on the ground before they were launched. The game just does that automatically.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

but they were already launched, this is the problem: they disapeared from the screen at a moment, without being fired upon.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

If your scroll around the tactical map while ships are moving, their images may not be erased until the screen updates next turn. That might be what's happening. Are you sure they weren't hit by point defense?

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

some times it doesn't show the fire or damage being caused if the attacker is off the screen. So if your'e fighters are just in range of the enemy and they fire PD from off screen they will appear just to dissapear.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

ok, thanks.

slightly diverging from the topic, I will dare, in all my glorious newbiness ask this question:

are all beam weapons capable of spreading damages on several units? I see that some weapons are capable of shooting down 3-4 of my fighters at once (not only PD).

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

Multiplex components allow a ship to fire on up to 5 targets at once (planets can fire on 10 targets in a given turn, if memory serves). So, a ship with 5 weapon components can fire on 5 different targets.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

A group of fighters is treated as one target and the individual fighters in that group like components in a ship for the combat damage calculation in SE IV. Therefore if you fire at a group with weapons that do more damage than one single fighter has hit points you can destroy several fighters or even the entire group with one sigle shot.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

BUT if you deal more damage than..... wait, lemme give you an example.

An enemy fighter group has a HP total of 150. Next to it is a group with HP total of 100. You fire a weapon at the 150 group, with a total damage of 250. The group is destroyed. HOWEVER, the remaining 100 damage does not spill over to the 100 HP fighter group right next to your target, despite the fact that the remaining damage was enough to destroy them.

"Beam" weapons are no different from torp weapons, except for their animation. A beam weapon displays a beam; a torp weapon a pulse or torpedo. Game-mechanically-wise, they both work exactly the same; beams cannot strafe, lightning rays cannot jump from ship to ship. You cannot attack more than one (1) target per weapon, at least until it's reloaded.

One more thing; Units (i.e. fighters, weapon platforms, sats, drones, troops, basically anything that isn't a ship or a base) do not take partial damage, i.e. you cannot destroy the components on a fighter unless you destroy the thing outright. If a fighter has 500 HP, and you fire a weapon with an attack power of 495 at it, it'll work just fine..... until you supply the remaining 5 damage, that is.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

is it possible to have a seeker which target units? if so, does this weapon would be able to kill several fighters?

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

Seekers don't target fighters at least not if you play unmoded game. They are capital ship missiles and can't target small and agile targets as fighters.

Some mods may have such seekers probably as a version of point-defense system.

Re: combat that don\'t make sense
 

Seekers work just fine targetting fighters.
Seekers work just fine targetting other missiles, too. (Needs v1.94+ in simultaneous mode)

Never EVER make them point defense, however. In such a case, every single PD missile in your fleet will be launched at the first fighter/seeker to move. Really bad tactics.

Instead, let your ships all fire on random targets manually. Instead of 150 missiles pasting a single stack of 5 fighters, you can have a beautiful wall of seekers popping fighters throughout the enemy fleet in a massive bombardment.

Note: this also presumes that you do something to fix PDCs, so that missiles are worth using, yet at the same time not overly powerful.
Turning off the auto-fire is one of the best things you can do.