Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

I haven't seen small DUCs in use in 1.35 yet, but in previous Versions they worked great. They are typically my weapon of choice for fighters and troops.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Nethog, just curious. There is another thread describing a problem with percentages to hit fighters being ridiculously low for all weapons except point defense. Looks like its a bug with 1.35.

Are you sure your fighters are being shot down by his fighters and not by PDC on his planet or other ships? That would make sense if that bug is as reported.

Geo

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

I used them on some fighters and they worked, although the defensive/offensive bonus stacking bug caused the engagements to have some qwerky differences.

A large group of fighters seems to be able to crush the same number of fighters broken up into smaller Groups, but the single invincible group also wastes a lot of firepower and doesn't cover as much area to protect your fleet. It gets wierd. Hope this gets fixed.

[This message has been edited by nerfman (edited 15 May 2001).]

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

What are the fighter group sizes? The bug is related to fighter group size: The larger Groups will be extremely hard to hit and have a higher chance to hit the smaller Groups.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

What do you have against DUClings? They're such cute little things... http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Do Small DUCs suck?
 

I attacked a Cryslonite planet with a bunch of ships and a Carrier loaded with 44 Small Fighters each configured with 2 Small DUC IIIs. The Cryslonites had around 25 fighters with Small Shard Cannons I. The Cryslonite fighters seem to hit my fighters on average every other shot. My fighters rarely seemed to hit the Cryslonite fighters (the hit chance displayed 1% at 1 square distance). So do Small DUCs have an inherit disadvantage when targeting fighters?

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Nethog

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Don't think so.
Did the other fighters have any ECM or Combat sensors?
Also, there appears to be a bug with fighters, the attack and defense modifiers of all fighters in a group seem to be added together. Were the Groups about the same size?

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Both the Cryslonites and my fighters (Terran) were grouped in 5's. Neither the Cryslonites nor my fighters had ECM or Combat sensors, just the standard small fighter compnents, engines, and weapons as indicated in my original post below. By the way I am using SEIV v1.35. I went back and used a save game to replay the battle several times and have concluded that the fighter/fighter hit chance *does* appear to be the same for my fighters and the Cryslonites. The first time I did the battle I had a few escort class ships mixed in with my fighters (which when look almost identical in tactical mode using Terran), so I mistakingly thought that the Cryslonite fighters were hammering my fighters butts.

HOWEVER, one thing that IS clear to me is that the hit chance for small fighters at a range of 1 is still *very* low making small fighter/small fighter battles unnecessarily
tedious IMHO. The game displays "1%" for my fighters for a hit chance, however I think that the hit chance is actually a little higher. But most of the battle between the fighters is spent watching each fighter miss each other. Has anyone else experienced this or agree with this?

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Nethog

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

This is probably related to the bug in the fighters with the to hit/miss modifiers stacking.
Try removing these abilities from the hull and give them to the cockpit. See if the numbers change. Remember that ECM and Sensors won't be added unless they increase the chance above the cockpit rating, as they "should" not stack.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 16 May 2001).]

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Nethog I observed the same things as you and it is defenitely a major bug, which affects all combats with fighters involved.
Im your example the low hit chance is due to the difference of the offensive (= 50%) and defensive (= 80%) modifier for small fighters. And I also observed a higher hit rate than indicated (in my experience something about 10% effective hit rate when 1% is displayed). I don't know what causes this but it seems not to be the racial characteristics because it's also happening with races that have no bonus in aggressivenes or defensivenes.
I don't see that we can fix this ourselves. The proposition of Nitram Draw to transfer the combat modifiers to the cockpit is excellent, but even this will probably not eleminate all problems. So we have to wait for the next patch.

[This message has been edited by Q (edited 16 May 2001).]

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>And I also observed a higher hit rate than indicated (in my experience something about 10% effective hit rate when 1% is displayed). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Q, that's because its a 1% chance for each weapon on the fighter group!

with 5 fighters, and 3 weapons each, 15 guns @ 1% give you a:
(0.99) ^ 15 chance of missing,
or: a 86% chance of missing with all = 14% chance to hit with any one gun.

2 weapons per fighter would give you roughly 10% chance to hit with a group of 5.

When you hit with just one or two guns, the damage should be lower than the total of all the weapon's damage Ratings. ie. 5 to 10 damage (1 or 2 hits) instead of all the weapons (15x5=75 damage)

If your fighters had 100 guns between them, at 1% each, you get a 63% chance of at least one hitting. (out of 100!!!)

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 17 May 2001).]

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

suicide_junkie, what about the +50% to hit offenseive bonus and -80% defensive bonus for small fighters, i.e. net -30% to hit? This would make the hit chance even lower still? Or does the 1% already reflect this?

Anyway, regardless of the numbers don't you think that the hit chance should be higher when two equal sized Groups of small fighters are engaged in combat? Like I said earlier in this discussion thread it gets tedious fighting a battle between small fighters.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Nitram, I was going to suggest that myself, but is has a flaw.

The AI will put a LOT of cockpits on the fighter. Not bound by the "one per ship" restrictions, rememeber..

Phoenix-D

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Suicide_junkie, what about the +50% to hit offenseive bonus and -80% defensive bonus for small fighters, i.e. net -30% to hit? This would make the hit chance even lower still? Or does the 1% already reflect this?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The uneven fighter bonuses force the minimum 1% to hit.
This applies to all the weapons on the stack of fighters, but they fire seperately. So, it rolls a 100 sided-dice. if it comes up one, the first fighter's first DUC hits. roll again for the first fighters decond DUC, and so on.
So, with 15 fighter weapons, you get 15 rolls to win the one-in-a-hundred chance of hitting. If any one of the stack's weapons hit, then the animation shows a hit, while doing one weapon's damage.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

I think the only way to find out how fighters work is to remove all bonuses from the fighter and sample target ship and start observing the hit % of different size Groups.
If fighter weapons work like standard weapons then the lowest to hit for 1 fighter with 1 DUC will be 90% at range 2 and 99% at range 1.
Then start adding fighter to the group and adding bonuses.
There is definately something different about fighters.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Back to original topic:

Cannot say a lot about DUCs, as i prefer the organic stuff. I never even reach the DUC/S. DUC III as i immidiately go on beams, and shortly after that to the organic tech, and then plasma, parasites & electricy effectively replaces any other weapons.

Belive me, small Electricy gun is much more powerful than the S.DUCs...i think..maybe its just because i like Organic tech very much

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Emperor Klis't of the Taera Republic.
Proud member of the League of Empires.

E-Mail -
Ora Planet - Taera Republic - League of Empires

[This message has been edited by TaeraRepublic (edited 17 May 2001).]

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
When you hit with just one or two guns, the damage should be lower than the total of all the weapon's damage Ratings. ie. 5 to 10 damage (1 or 2 hits) instead of all the weapons (15x5=75 damage)

If your fighters had 100 guns between them, at 1% each, you get a 63% chance of at least one hitting. (out of 100!!!)

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 17 May 2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I made a test with two Groups of 100 fighters each, 2 small telekinetic projectors per large fighter.
The displayed hit chance for each group on the other was again 1%. However first shot was a hit and destroyed 52 fighters of the other group. So the damage made was 5000kT or the complete fire power of the fighter group. As I continued the fight I had the impression the the effective hit chance is really correlated to the fighter group size or the number of weapons as you suggested. However the damage made is definitely the damage of all weapons in the group together.

This adds even more the the bug effect, because the larger fighter Groups are harder to hit, have themselves a higher chance to hit and make more damage per hit!


[This message has been edited by Q (edited 17 May 2001).]

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

Maybe the ability won't stack if it is attached to a component.
I did a little test of it Last night and got more variety in the "to hit" numbers, both for the fighters to hit and a ship to hit fighters. I did not see an increase in the "to hit" if the fighter Groups were different sizes. I didn't do a thorough test but maybe I can this weekend, or someone else can sooner.
I think it will work as a short term solution.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

The way fighters are now is really screwed up. The offense plus and defense plus of each fighter in the group stacks. Worse one additional multiple is added to every stack. A group of 10 small fighters has 880% defense plus benefit and a 550% offense plus benefit. No wonder nothing can hit a large group of fighters except PD. Even the same size Groups of fighters can't hit each other.
Fighters can be sort of fixed by giving the cockpit the bonus normally applied to the fighter hull. This makes it tough to differentiate between fighter sizes but it beats the alternative, fighters always having a 99% weapons to hit, and eliminates the benefit of large fighter Groups over small fighter Groups in fighter to fighter combat.
Fortunately you can only add one cockpit. If you try to add more you get a warning.
I guess if you were really dedicated you could try to create a small, medium and large cockpit but I don't know if that can be done.

Re: Do Small DUCs suck?
 

You could make different cockpits, but the AI is always going to use the one with the best bonus so I guess it's kinda moot. The AI seems to be able to break all kinds of rules. In my most recent game I've seen space yard ships with two space yard modules. I tried using the restriction one component per ship for the cybernetic interfaces that give offensive and defensive combat bonuses in my mods and the AI still adds two.