massive shield depleter
 

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'

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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.

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

THe Neural Combat Net is not effective, Unless you have a dreadnought at Novice and an Escort at 50% Legendary http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif 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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif where it will do more good.

Re: massive shield depleter
 

"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) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

IMO it really should be a standard tech tree item.

Phoenix-D

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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=-)

Re: massive shield depleter
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>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) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

IMO it really should be a standard tech tree item.

Phoenix-D<hr></blockquote>

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! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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 ]</p>

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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.

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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

Re: massive shield depleter
 

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

Re: massive shield depleter
 

"Religious needs something more to help it on the 'offensive'."

*cough* TALISMAN *cough*

Phoenix-D

Re: massive shield depleter
 

Sure, the Talisman is great, but can you survive long enough to research it? I've yet to manage that in multi-player. (Although the fact that I was fighting Askan in two of those three games had a lot to do with it.)

Re: massive shield depleter
 

The Talisman just means that whatever direct fire weapons you carry will always hit if within range. The default weapon for the Norak is the Meson BLaster, which has a range 2 less than the APB and many other direct fire weapons in the game, not to mention various seekers. This is not such a big advantage as you might think, though it can be nice in certain situations. Popping through a WP to find a bunch of Talisman-equipped ships waiting for you is NOT fun! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif But they can still be easily out-ranged and they still have to break down any shield/armor in order to do serious damage to an enemy. I've changed them to research the PPB and that does make them more dangerous. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]</p>

Re: massive shield depleter
 

Don't picture the AI races for balance- picture a human player. APB, Wave Motion Gun.. engage at max range. Max range on the APB is 8. That means against a fully defended opponent (ECM, stealth armor) with combat sensor III, you have about NIL chance to hit.

+65% (CSIII)
-60% (ECMIII)
-15% (stealth armor)
-15% (scattering armor)

= -25%. Since range 8 = 20% chance to hit and SE4 rounds, you have a 1% chance to hit. Compare this to the Talisman player, who hits EVERY time.

The WMG is better of since it has an inherent 30% bonus. And of course you must hold the range open.

Phoenix-D

Re: massive shield depleter
 

Ya, I have seen talismans deployed in player-vs.-player games and they are up there with the Ark of the Covenant in effectiveness. You can also put them on weapon platforms, satellites, starbases... but even a half-dozen battlecruisers with APB's become able to devastate dozens of opponents and emerge unscathed (and having done so, will become even more invincible thanks to experience).

As for the stock Norak run by the AI, well, ya, I'm sure they need all the help they can get. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: massive shield depleter
 

Very recently, in a hotseat game, the Norak are at war with everybody.
One of their main planets had a rebellion occur, so my brother demanded their surrender and send his fleet of baseships to secure the planet against the true Norak fleet. (He's got a battlemoon, working on a Dyson Sphere, and is wasting $500,000 in radioactives due to storage overflow per turn)
It should be noted that his baseships are all heavily armored with BioCrystal Armor. They are all quite fast.

They denied him.
They vaporized his fleet.

Large Platforms, Talismen, and five Range 13 Massive Meson BLasters each.
They had a quite a few of them, and as soon as he was in range, the planet blew his ships apart two by two.
Those ships took an incredible beating, about 4000 damage points before they finally crumbled, but the planet just kept firing and firing.

The planet apparently took 3% damage, but I believe that was from losing its fighter force, and not from any damage to the planet itself.

I am currently designing some BattleMoon based heavy troop transports to try and penetrate these heavily defended worlds.

Re: massive shield depleter
 

It's fun to play MAX tech games and mix-n-match racial abilities. A talisman with physic subverter + computer virus can be devastating.
All three can be added to SATs for worm hole defense.
Just add OA3 to the SATs to make them more durable, and create a storm that negates shields.


------------------------------------------------

UPGRADES HAPPEN!!!