Fighters are tractor beams
 

Yep, realllly!

Frustrated that your baseships (or dreadnoughts) can't catch those BBs or BCs or others using a max range strategy?

No problemo! Just tuck a fighter bay into the design and load up the 2 or 3 fighters that will fit.

Now, when the enemy ships try to open the range, their PDCs won't let them!

Yep! Even Wave gunned ships who would like to stay out of range while they reload ("max range/don't get hurt" strategy) will instead lunge into the jaws of your slow, lumbering baseships just for the privilege of potting a fighter or two.

They get a sacrificial fighter, then join it on the pyre themselves.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

That is like an exploit. But I like the cut of your idea... Never tried that...

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Hmm... If you modded a 'small tractor beam' and made a lot of fighters using it, would a group of fighters of sufficient mass be able to move a ship? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Or do you suppose it only checks the size of the individual units and not the total mass of the group?

10 small fighters = 150kt -> enough to move an escort!

20 large fighters = 500kt -> enough to move a cruiser!

[ July 31, 2002, 03:43: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

T. S. -

It's more than an exploit.

It is a basic problem for simul battle planning.

What it means is that any ship with PDCs simply cannot ever be trusted to follow it's individual strategy. It almost means - and I mean "almost - that one needs to mandate remaining in formations! That is, to have confidence that your fleet will follow a "max range" strategy, one must require remaining in formation AND must designate as a flagship one that has ZERO PDCs!

I only deduced this problem when I noticed my Talisman Max range BCs with Wave Motion guns kept getting run down by slower ships. The reason was that my BCs had PDCs and there were fighters launched against them. Instead of running, they died as I described. I had to watch several battles before dumb 'ol jim worked out what was going on!

Soooo, I tried the "exploit" in my original post as a test mechanism.

One major tenet has been always to direct fleets "to break formation." Now, if the intent is anything but a close range action, the possibility that your opponent has fighters can make one change to the otherwise less optimal strategy of staying in formations.

Of course, the corollary, especially if one is fighting a Religious race with the Talisman is ALWAYS to have some fighter platforms in every battle to prevent Talisman LR sniping.

In summary, I think it is a bug. PDCs should not be that way against fighters, or maybe even sats.

[ July 31, 2002, 04:11: Message edited by: jim ]

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Does changing strategy setting
"Do not fire on fighters = true" helps ?

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Then what, if someone actually uses fighters against your fleet, instead of using them to lure in ships, will your ships just sit there? Or possibly chase down the carriers ignoring the fighters tearing them apart.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

PDCs will always fire ontargets of opportunity as they fly by.
Your ship just won't use its main guns on the fighters.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unfortunately, that can be a problem in the case of a mass fighter assault. PDC alone may not be adequate to deal with a lot of fighters. It is always good to set the fire on seekers to false, otherwise the ships may charge a mass of seekers that would otherwise run out of range, but fighters are a different story.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

I wonder if telling the main guns to not fire on the fighters would even be enough though to help this. Would the ship with PDC not close to PDC range and get pasted as Jim says even if you have the main guns set to not fire on fighters?

Geoschmo

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

If the fighters have longer-range weapons than your ships, you must be so far behind in tech that you've already lost the game!
When the fighters move in to attack, the PDC fires automatically.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

No, I am not saying the fighters would have longer range weapons than the ships.

The original point as I understand it was Empire A has long range weapons and sets strategy to max range to take advantange of their greater range. But Empire B launches fighters. Empire A's ships in an effort to attack the fighters with their PDC, which are shorter range than there own Long range weapons approach into range of Empire B's weapons and get shot.

The workaround suggested was to set Empire A's ships to not fire on fighters and count on the opportunity fire of the PDC alone to take care of the fighters. But my question is will that work? It will likely keep empire A's main guns from firing on the fighters, but will it keep the ships from moving to get the PDC into range? If so why would they have moved to begin with? They would have stayed at max range and shot the fighters with the main guns and only used the PDC when Empire B's fighters strayed into PDC range.

Does that make sense? At least my question I mean. I may be making an incorrect assumption, but you get what I am asking?

Geo

[ July 31, 2002, 16:33: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

geo that makes sence to me.

I am still trying to figure out why the ships would move into pdc range when they have longer ranged weapons.... Is the PDC weapon first in the order of fire ???

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

It seems to me the only counter is to not use point defenses on your ships. That really sets you up to be vulnerable to missles since point defenses are the only thing that stops them. You need to utilize PDCs off-ship:

Launch Satelittes with Point Defenses as you widthdraw with no point defenses on your ships. The fleet will leave behind Satellites as it moves back to max range. This will work somewhat against missles. You want to have more storage capacity than lauch capacity. Use a single Satellite Bay with one or two Cargo Storage III components. Sat Bay III + Cargo III is 370 KT. That would be 3 large Sats or 4 smalls. For 50 KT on every ship, you can spread a lot of point defenses out there. Of course, you take on the micromanagement of building hoards of satellites to do this and you have to stop and gather them up after every battle. You could have supply ships to transfer satellites to the warships between battles and leave some behind to gather up those deployed. This will probably work better at warp point battles. Otherwise, you could increase to 2 cargo components so that you can launch for 5 to 7 turns before your run out of sats to launch.

[ July 31, 2002, 18:27: Message edited by: LGM ]

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Hi, I always figure that when u use max range weapon type attack, they alway pick the max range of the shortest range weapon your ship has, does that make any sense. Highest common range. To fix this all we have to do is mod pdc with longer range, made up damage numbers

50 50 40 40 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
or
want would this do ?
50 50 40 40 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

Just think out loud http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Another counter would be to change weapons to more effective weapons like Null Space and hope that your better speed allows you to fire first.

Personally, I think that Long Range weapons like Wave Motion guns are for non Talisman players to be able to hit better at long range (-30 modifier). I tend to use Null Space with the Talisman and that matches up nicely with the max range of Point Defenses (both range 5). If you do not have the Talisman, you want to get as close as you can to increase to hit chances.

Asside from using missles early on, I have found it very difficult in SEIV to use a Range advantage to stay out of the enemies range effectively. I figure that Range Advantage helps me get the first shot, which is big in SEIV. However, a Range advantage can be bad if weapons fire slow and miss a lot at long range.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Crimson's mod looks like a good idea. Of course, many of us typically play standard set games.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

The main problem with crimson's method is that PDCs will waste all their shots on the first missiles/fighters to move, doing 1 damage. The closer missiles can then thrash your ships with impunity.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

What about "Use Type before Targeting Priorities", with fighters near the bottom of the list? Would that make any difference?

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

who else is seeing this.... and what are the ship configurations and stragety settings ...

Lets see if there is a trend or just an unlucky combination ....

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

I am not sure if I understood this correctly:
You are saying that the strategy "maximum weapons range" is overridden if the ship faces fighters and has PDC. Then it will move into PDC range.

That's something I have never experienced and I made a small test with an attacking ship that has anti proton beam and PDC against a group of ships and fighters. The attacking ship stayed at maximum distance (= range of the anti proton beam) and never came to use its PDC.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

It seems to be a problem connected to the reload time of the main weapon:
I repeated the test with an attacking ship that has wave motion gun and PDC. The ship fired its WMG at range 8, but during reload of the WMG it attacked the fighters with the PDC at range 5. When the WMG was reloaded it moved again to range 8 and fired! Not very clever, but it obeyed the order of "maximum range" if you consider that during the WMG reload the PDC were its only weapons available.
But if you use an attacking ship with WMG, anti proton beam and PDC? The ship will keep a distance of 8 fire the WMG and anti proton beam but not use the PDC.

Therefore you have two options:
1.) As already suggested don't include PDC's in the design of the ships with high range weapons and maximum range strategy.
2) Include at least one weapon in the design with a reload time of 1 that has a high range.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Yes, I think Q is correct. I think the only reason a ship will close to PDC range rather than max weapon range, is if the longer-ranged weapons can't fire that turn (reloading).

I also suspect (not sure) the "don't fire on fighters" setting also will not prevent a ship from using its main weapons on fighters - I think it only prevents them from moving the ship to attack fighters. If fighters happen to come in range of main weapons, and the main weapons have no other targets that turn, I think they will fire at the fighters.

PvK

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

For Max Range strategy with the Talisman, a variety of ranges might be useful. Put a Missle III and a Missle V on with your Wave Motion Guns. Each weapon could come into range a different times, setting you up to reload out of phase. Then when you are reloading your WMGs, it will move back to Missle III range. If both the WMG and Missle III are reloading, it will pull back even further. Just in case the reload thing does not work right, put one APB on the ship to establish a Max Range of at least 8 all the time. Then your PDC ranges will never qualify as the max range weapon (unless you take damage).

I shall have to try this in a PBW game I am in.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

LMG: the APB would overrule the longer range missles. It's max range of all available weapons, so your ship would always stay at range 8 for the APB.

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

LGM -

Using Null space weapons does not seem to solve the basic problem. That is, the ship will NOT try to stay out of range while the Null Space reloads. Instead, the ship will remain in range (or even close) with its PDCs.

To others -

I have had erratic performance when using just APB s and PDCs and max range. Assume one puts the APBs first and they fire first. It seems that, if the ship begins at the "max range" and does not move before shooting, then it will shoot all the APBs, then CLOSE to engage fighters. That obviously defeats a Max range strategy. Assume one puts the PDCs first, this gets odd, also. I have seen cases where the ship will move to shoot the PDCs, then will fire APBs. Then, having moved, cannot move again after firing APBs.

I must be missing what the key pieces are, because I cannot always repeat the above.

[ August 03, 2002, 01:12: Message edited by: jim ]

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't think so. On turns when the missiles are loaded, it would move to the max missile range. While the missiles are reloading, it would move to max APB range.

PvK

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Jim, part of it is affected by whether the strategy says to target seekers and fighters (and drones) or not (assuming there are any to target). If you set those to "no", I think you will not see the ships moving to use PDC's on those types. They will however still use the PDC's on seekers and fighters (and in the upcoming patch, on drones), if/when they move within range.

PvK

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

perhaps a request for the next patch.... Max range is set to the range of the greatest weapon.. Ie. if you have 7, 5, 3 as weapon range... the ship range is 7. The secondary weapons are used as such... secondary weapons. As it should be... When the enemy gets past you big gun... the smaller ones come into play....

Another combat bug....

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

Why have such fuzzy ranges? How about being able to select a range from 1 to 20?

Re: Fighters are tractor beams
 

PDC's on drones.....

Ok so the current work around is to select not to target units or seekers then the max range will work... is this correct and has it been tested to work...