[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by asmala:
I have couple of (newbie) questions.

1. Is it enough to have one weapon platform containing combat sensor and ecm (do they count as stack)?

2. Is it worth to put ecm, stealth armor and scattering armor to weapon platform when there is -200% defence bonus by planet?

3. Is multiplex tracking needed in weapon platforms (I recall someting that planets can automatically shoot 10 targets)?

4. Am I right that the weakest cargo is destroyed first (usually mines first, then troops, satellites, weapon platforms) thus it's not reasonable to put decoy weapon platforms containing only armor/shields.

5. What is the order how the mines are swept/exploded? Is it first-layed first-swept?

6. What is the order how satellites are destroyed? First-layed first-destroyed or weakest first?

7. Is shields in fighter/satellite count as hitpoints or as shield? So how shield depleter and phased-polaron beam works against them?

8. Is there any way to tell ships not to clear orders when go through damaging warp point? It's very annoying when there is black hole on the other side of the warp point and the warp point is two squares away from black hole... You can guess what happens, it's impossible to go through that system.

9. How the race trait happiness actually works? If I have 20% happiness bonus is my natural decrease -20 * 1,2 = -24?

OK, thats all what I have in mind this time

1. Yes, all unit stacks function as a single 'ship' so having one unit with combat sensors in the stack benefits all of them. It was my impression that ECM had no effect in planets at all. This is in addition to the -200 modifier to hit planets. They are huge, after all. How could you miss a planet? Except on purpose, of course. Going into orbit means 'throw yourself at the ground, and miss' as Douglas Adams said.

2. I answered this on #1. As far as I know defense modifiers aren't even checked for planets.

3. You recall correctly. Planets have a default multiplex of 10. Since the best component multiplex in the default game is 5 there's no point in adding it to weapons platforms. OR satellites. They also seem to have a default multiplex of 10.

Would modding some huge multipex (20 or so?) work for planets? I dunno.

4. Up to now, yes, the smallest items in cargo get hit first. In the forthcoming patch this will be changed so that Weapon Platforms are always hit first, and then damage will be distributed randomly in the remaining cargo when they are gone.

5. Apparently mines are destroyed in the order they were deployed, yes.

6. It used to be the same for satellites. But this was exploited by people putting down heavily shielded sats first, then weapons sats. So now it's randomized sort of like components in a ship. Smaller sats tend to get destroyed first but this is not absolute.

7. Shields on a unit just add to hit points, but as testing has shown, the PPB does skip the shields on units. (Very good! )

8. There is a game setting to not clear orders when encountering enemy ships but I don't know of any setting for getting damaged by 'terrain' features. I think you are stuck with this one.

9. I really don't know anything about the math behind population 'happiness' calculation. I never have any problems with it so I haven't studied it.

[ January 25, 2003, 20:52: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]