PD to Powerfull?
 

With how good PD is 1Pd unit per ship is basically enough to give you total immunity to missiles and fighters from what i've seen.

Put 5 Ships with a Cap missile vs 5,4 ships with a Pd,DUC its highly unlikely a missile will even get threw and the missile Ships have no chance ..

Or is it just meh?

I thought of editing the PD firing Rate myself.

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

This does get somewhat better in BalanceMod. PD vs. missiles is decently balanced there, but PD vs. fighters is still a slaughter (bye-bye, fighters).

The only solution I've been able to come up with is making PD not affect fighters and have a new anti-fighter type of defense that makes fighters viable in swarms.

As it is now, a swarm of fighters against a decently armored frigate with 1 PD will die a quick death and not do a lot to the frigate. The frigate CAN be overwhelmed with enough fighters, but it takes a lot of them.

I haven't played stock in a while, though, so I don't remember how effective PD vs. missiles and/or fighters is there.

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

Way back in the day, in Starfire, (the board game that the SE-series is modelled on), there were regular PD systems, that were highly efficient against missiles, and less so against fighters. And then there were also "improved point-defense" systems, that were highly efficient against fighters, and less so against missiles.

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

Speaking of which I couldn’t model this since you can’t use two separate to-hit formulas. But I did find a good middle ground.

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

In SE5 each weapon can have its own to-hit formula... or are you guys talking about SE4?
Also, another SE5-only PD idea is to give fighters emissive armor, and tweak the numbers so that the anti-seeker PD does more raw damage per second to unarmored targets such as seekers but less per shot so the anti-fighter is more effective vs. fighters since it has penetrating power...

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

StarFire uses one weapon with two separate to-hit values, one is the type you are familiar with in the SE series and the other is a flat rate at range zero. The SE series to-hit is verses fighters and the flat rate is verses missiles. I had never though of doing it with emissive armor as you suggest. Unfortunately it is far too late to go back and re-write the PD and fighters. Even doing that it wouldn’t work without also adjusting various weapons and more than a few non-fighter and non-seeker units.

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

Maybe this is something that could be done by creating a new DamageType?

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

Or....
What about a sort of checks and balances system like most components in the game? This would work nicely for fighters...not so much for missiles. What about setting the range of the pdfc cannons short enough so that fighters can attack from outside pdfc range? Higher level pdfc extends the range, higher level fighter weapons extends the fighter range. this way the more advanced system wins.

Re: PD too Powerfull?
 

Personally, I've just made PD weapons unable to hit fighters. That way fighters have to be taken out by normal weapons. In my tests so far, it works great. Fighters are a threat again, but not so powerful that they're overwhelming. In fact, I'm still thinking about raising the defense of the fighter hulls even more.