quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
Something else with the planetary defense missles. The reason you have to make a new component instead of using a weapon platfom mount is that mounts dont work right for seekers. You can extend the range with a mount, but it will only appear to extend the range. The missle will still disapear at the limit of the range set down in the component file.
But there is something you can do that is interesting in this regard. The absolute range limit for any weapon in the component file is 20. You could make a planetary defense missle that has a range of 20, and then make a +15 range weapon platform mount for seekers. The missle will still only do damage out to 20, but it could target and launch against anything on the combat map. If effect it could "lead" the target, since the ship will be moving in towards the planet. By the time the missle runs out of gas the target may have closed the distance and be in range.
I can see a possible problem with this though in strategic combat. If the attacker designed a large, powerful ship and gave it orders to not get hurt, the planet may send waves of missles after it without doing any damage while the rest of the ships move in and bLast it.
Geoschmo
[ 05 February 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]
This is a problem with combat strategies in general. It's not specific to the situation you describe. I haven't gotten into a major combat situation with a fully equipped 'multi-function' task force in my current games yet, but up to the Last major game I played it was still possible to play 'bull fighter' with the AI by teasing with PDC cruisers. It would mindlessly target the PDC ship because it's total firepower was higher than any other ship -- even though it was only usable against missiles & units...
Just keep the PDC cruiser a ways behind the main combat ships and the AI ships charge right into the teeth of your best fighters, while firing at the distant PDC ship. You get free 'point blank' attacks for your whole battle fleet at the possible expense of a PDC cruiser or two. Or maybe not even that if they don't manage to hit it very often.
As far as seekers and mounts, I think seekers need a change. With mounts it's now possible to have beam weapons that reach very nearly the range of missiles. This takes away one of the primary advantages of seekers. We need to either let missiles have a second row of range boxes (max range 40) or we need a special kind of seeker that acts like the SE 3 seekers -- same damage at all ranges without needing to set it in all the boxes and it just keeps running until it hits or gets shot down or combat ends. I'd favor the latter, actually. Drones are nice but far too expensive for mass use. Let's change missiles to be like drones that cannot move strategically.
[ 05 February 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]