Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

During combat, I’ve noticed that some of my (missile) weapons platforms do not fire.

The missiles that do fire get hit by point defense at the target while other missiles sit in their silos instead of finishing the job.
My planet would win the battle if it had fired all missiles from the weapons platforms.

Why didn’t they fire?

I’ve run several battles in tactical mode (with automatic targeting selected) to see what’s going on.

It appears that enough missiles are sent to do the job if they all hit their assigned targets.
Apparently, point defense is not taken into consideration.
Half my missiles get destroyed at the target while the other half don’t even get fired from the planet.
The attacking ships live through what should have been an overwhelming barrage of missiles and end up winning a battle that should have gone against them.

I don’t believe that this is a multiplex tracking issue because I have more individual weapons platforms than ships being targeted.

Is there a way to make the automatic targeting algorithm take point defense into consideration?

Or, is there a way to just tell the automatic targeting algorithm to fire everything that’s available?

Please help.
Thanx,
skigrinder

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

As far as I understand:

WP's are always "stacked", including their systems, no matter what. So you really have one planet, with several missile launchers, and several (redundant) multiplex tracking dev's.

The multiplex is trying to hit as many targets as possible with your missiles, meaning that only enough missiles to destroy the target are fired at one target (well, and I think the rest is just idle, as you describe).

The sollution would be to get rid of the multiplex, then you fire all missiles at once, at only one target. The next salvo 3 turns later picks another target, etc ...

Or use direct fire WP's. I think some combined WP's or Sat's that share the same component are pretty good (like "I prey for you", typo intended *g*)

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Oh so many questions ... I don't know where to begin ...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I guess the reason for that is they were built with earlier technology that has less range. The opponents have greater range so they never get close enough.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm... didn't know that missles were ever meant to take point defence into account. That would be a good idea to implement.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't think weapon platforms have this problem. They don't need multiplex, but missiles are funny. I don't think they take into account how many have been fired. While a ship exists, all are targeted on it. And the ship still exists while they're flying to target.

Missile platforms (I like to call them silos) are only good against a couple of enemy frigates or one destroyer. They won't keep a planet safe from a fleet.

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

No Dragon, even though WP on planet are stacked, they will fire on separate targets without any multiplex target system ! During the battle, move cursor over planet, there'll be a small print in planet window "can target N", or something like that, where N is exactly number of WP.
Skigringer, what Version of SE are you playing ? In some older patches, weapon platforms where "acattered" over planet surfice and WP from the far corner could not sometimes target ships

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Earlier Versions of SEIV used to launch all available missiles in one go.

This was unsatisfactory because it made missiles next to useless thanks to the "missile dancing" technique.

For this reason some patch or other changed it so that the game would spread it's missile deployment over the reload period. Hence your problem. I think...

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Could this be fixed by editing the appropriate strategy to increase the % damaged to a high number like 200%? Then the planet will launch enough destruction for 200% of the target. Just a thought.

Slick

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">THis is not exactly correct Oleg. I just ran some tests with a planet with 16 weapons platforms and 16 attacking ships and playing in tactical the most I can target is 10 different ships. Did not try it with multiplex to see if that had any effect, but I didn't get to target the same number of ships as I had WP's. THis was in 1.78.

There is definetly something going on. In tactical you can shoot at a ship and all your weapons will fire from the planet until the ship is destroyed. In strategic combat they will fire till the ship is destroyed, but not all the weapons will fire. It skips many of them and does not fire them at all.

Geoschmo

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Interesting. I never payed too much attention to this issue before. Is it possible that there is an upper limit to the number of targets, say 10.
Then even if there are 16 WP, you still target only 10 ?

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This setting can only be raised to 100%. Tried that and it had no effect. I am not suprised though cause it seems to be doing a fine job of destoying the ships that it does shoot at. It's just that it won't fire all it's weapons that it can fire after it destoys a ships and still has wepons left.

I should say my tests have been with direct fire weapons and not missle sand I am seeing the same things as skigrinder is with the missles. It's like some of the waepons plats just won't fire any of their weapons.

It's also not the range thing. I tested that and confirmed it. Even when the ships are close enough that all the plats should be in rage some of them don't fire.

Geoschmo

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Thank you all for the effort in trying to figure this out.

It sounds like the problem happens even with direct fire weapons.

This is disappointing as I have spent considerable energy constructing planetary defense WP's to deal with large fleet attacks.

Geoschmo, have you tried your direct fire tests with the Talisman?

Thanx,
skigrinder

FWIW: I'm using SEIV Gold 1.78 with the latest TDM mod release.

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh dear, I didn't know it was that important to you. I have some real bad news for you. Do a forum search for "AI innovative tactics" -- it is clear that the AI preferentially attacks planets whose defences it can beat. And can see them without having been there before.

Anyways, a human would just research planetary weapons, and use intel to destroy your weapon platforms.

These little orbiting rocks, snowballs, and gasbags are not homes for people -- they are sources of resources for your grand conquest of space. Research, Intel, Spaceyards and resourse storage are likewse all means to an end.

IMHO you can never defend a planet perfectly. And you will lose the game if you spend time trying. Weapon platforms, mines, sats, fighters, bases, orbiting and patroling ships are all good ideas. But find the sources of the attacks and take them out.

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh dear, I didn't know it was that important to you. I have some real bad news for you. Do a forum search for "AI innovative tactics" -- it is clear that the AI preferentially attacks planets whose defences it can beat. And can see them without having been there before.

Anyways, a human would just research planetary weapons, and use intel to destroy your weapon platforms.

These little orbiting rocks, snowballs, and gasbags are not homes for people -- they are sources of resources for your grand conquest of space. Research, Intel, Spaceyards and resourse storage are likewse all means to an end.

IMHO you can never defend a planet perfectly. And you will lose the game if you spend time trying. Weapon platforms, mines, sats, fighters, bases, orbiting and patroling ships are all good ideas. But find the sources of the attacks and take them out.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is all very much different in Proportions. defending your developed planets is very important and much more fun than in normal SE !

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

You make valid points Arkcon, at least as far as stock SEIV goes. But if you do take the time and spend the resources building weapons platfoms, it would be nice if they would fire all the weapons they have available to them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Thanx for the comments Arkcon.

I agree with what you say and believe it makes the AI worth playing against.
I especially like 'team mode' where you don't have to spend time on treaties and alliances that are unpredictable. My race accepts that it lives in a harsh, aggressive universe.

In order to successfully defend my population (and resource developments), I must invest heavily in WP's for each planet.

At least one of the TDM AI races (Space Vikings) prefers to skip boundary systems and head straight for the interior. This can be quite unnerving with lots of big fleets around my homeworld planets.

My theory is that one heavily defended (and shielded) planet should be able to knock out a very large fleet (100+) of very large ships.

I've modified the systemtypes.txt file to create more moons per planet (this needs to be done anyway to make things more realistic - i.e. Jupiter with 10 moons). The moons are filled with Cargo Facilities, Massive Planetary Shields, and Weapons Platforms to aid in the defense effort.

I've also created a (WP only) missile weapon component - Planetary Defense Missile Spread - to balance the playing field and make planetary defense possible.
These missiles have maximum range, quick reload, and big punch.
Again, the theory is that a large, heavily populated planet with lots of resources should be able to fire thousands of missiles and overwhelm very large fleets of attacking ships.

It has taken several games, but I've gotten the balance to the point where it's possible to take on six or eight of the TDM AI races in good back and forth battles and games that Last for several weeks.

I reduce the AI Intelligence capabilities (and increase my own) to correspondingly balance that aspect of the game. Again, I've worked out the balance to the point where Intel is a very interesting part of the conflict.

Anyway, that's my philosophy for a more realistic universe.

The only trouble is, I have available WP's that aren't firing in combat.

Please let me know if you can think of a way to fix this.

Thanx,
skigrinder

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Moding the weapon platform weapons was the best solution to this problem I've heard of in a long while. The Proportions mod also tries to defend the planet's population.

Are you sure the planet's weapons aren't out of range? Perhaps a test under tactical conbat to see.

I hate to be stubborn, but if the AI can see what weapons you have, won't it always build a fleet to suit and destroy static defences?

I hate to be cynical. (well that's a lie actually, I often revel in cynicism to everyone around me's chagrin http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

But once I found out how the AI can see a planet's defences -- I've really stopped caring about crafty plans and just started slapping stuff on and hope it works. At least until a ship can get there.

But if a human wants a planet -- they'll get it, or glass it. Eventually.

[ October 02, 2002, 03:42: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

Sorry Arkcon.
I missed a couple of questions from your original post.

My 'Planetary Defense Missile Spread' component has a range of 20 and a reload rate of 1.

I've seen the problem (available missiles not firing in combat) even when the attacking ships are sitting right next to the planet so I don't believe it's a range issue.

It looks like the automatic targeting algorithm is calculating how many missiles to send based on ship size and shield strength. It seems to fail to take point defense capabilities into account.

These missiles get fired, reduced in number by the attacking fleet's point defense, and finally do substantially less damage than was originally intended (because point defense was not taken into consideration). Meanwhile, lots of available missiles sit idle in my WP's.

I agree with your point that the AI should not be able to see a planet's defenses until it actually attacks. This makes for a difficult challenge. I lose lots of planets and the strategic implications become complicated. Fast transports are used to distribute extra WP’s ahead of attacking fleets.

However, WP's are not the only line of defense.
I devote a tremendous amount of energy towards Intelligence.
Crew Insurrection and PPP are very effective ways to persuade the AI toward my way of thinking.
When the game gets big, I build fleets of heavily shielded ships with Allegiance Subverters and Computer Viruses.
Converted AI ships end up helping my defense.
I suspect that this throws off the AI’s calculation of my defenses and they attack with less might than they thought they had.
Very large AI fleets have been defeated using these tactics and it makes for some very interesting battles.

I’ve never tried this philosophy against a human but I believe that it would be tough to beat.

Thanx,
skigrinder

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm... well, have you considered, as a work around until this bug is patched, increasing the defence of the missile itself so it's less affected by point defence. Other mods have done this, sort of an armored missile.

[ October 07, 2002, 19:11: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

I know this thread is based on missiles, but I have experienced situations where the platforms won't fire on multiple ships with DIRECT FIRE weapons. They will destroy one ship, but not fire the rest on another. I've come to the conclusion that there is a bug.

Re: Unused weapons causing me to lose battles
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Geo saw it happening with direct fire as well