quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
However, point defenses are smaller and cheaper than missles. Which is the main reason it's hard to get enough missles to overwhelm the PDC.
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[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]
If you are using Organic Missles then they are cheaper in build time than Point Defenses because almost every ship design I have ever seen is bounded by Mineral costs. Rarely do Organic races even hit the bound for Organic resources at their shipyard. A beam ship needs to dedicate time in training to fight at optimal level. A missleship can go to battle immediately. I played against an Organic race once that would create massive fleets of Organic missleships and consider trading 3 ships for 2 of mine a victory. Of course he built enough direct fire ships to keep me honest. My ships were costly because I had to put so many point defenses on them. The other nuance about missles is that in a large battle (80 on 80 for example), point defenses are spread out with the ships where as the blob of missles tends to be concentrated. As a defender my ships could not mass close enough to take out all the missles. When you have 400 missles to target, it is hard to get every ship to use its point defenses. I should also add that combat replay for such a battle takes hours (fast mode) as it pauses for each missle launch.