Shield Generators

General Hawkwing · #1 December 6th, 2000, 06:54 PM

Been gone for awhile so I'm not sure if this has been covered. Still playing the demo til Christmas since my lovely wife won't let me open my present early.

I (somewhat foolishly) designed a ship capturing ship wih Phased Polarian Beams as the main firing weapon. I had a small fleet of these and went out attacking AI ships. Well needless to say I couldn't drop the shields since my weapon skipped them. However, I noticed that the AI ships stayed shielded during the combat even after the shield generator was destroyed! Was this fixed in the V1.02 or V1.11?

Psitticine · #2 December 6th, 2000, 08:04 PM

Yes, a "chunk" of shielding disappears now when a generator is fried.

Shield depleting weapons and boarding parties are a nice combo!

Taqwus · #3 December 6th, 2000, 08:18 PM

Hmmm. How successful is boarding? For instance, will a boarding raid most likely succeed on a ship w/ no security stations, or are the odds as nasty as Moo2 marine raids (where it takes many attempts to whittle down the enemy crew, especially if they're Antaran)?

I might have to try it sometime, but it runs a bit counter to my current style (fast ships + long range for fighting at a distance, rather than risking serious damage by closing).

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Shadow99 · #4 December 6th, 2000, 10:18 PM

1 boarding component of any type will capture a non-defended ship (aka no security station). Psychic tech gives the easiest way to capture non-computer controlled ships though with allegiance subverters...

Talenn · #5 December 7th, 2000, 01:12 AM

Ive never even bothered with Boarding. The Techs for boarding are FAR more difficult to attain than the easy 'cure all'...the Self-Destruct. And IMO, its TOO effective.

Its bad enough that the Marines are one use AND that the Self Destruct prevents the capture, but to kill the ATTACKING ship too? Seems kind of silly to me to want to invest in boarding...

Am I missing something? Does the Destruct not work 100% of the time or somesuch? As it stands now, I dont see that it is practical at all.

Talenn

Cryptotec88 · #6 December 7th, 2000, 01:35 AM

Self- Destruct devices do prevent capture while they are operational. 100% of the time to my knowledge. The trick is slow but it does work. Fire one shot at a time until the device is destroyed, then board. Its slow and the device has a tendancy to not be destroyed until down to the Last third of the ship is left, but it does save the effort of researching new techs if the enemy already has then. Just take them! (Grin!)

Another trick is to have multiple repair ships or one big repair ship in your Pirate fleet. By the next turn, the beat-up hulk is newly repaired, ready to be analyzed or retrofited! And yes, it does repair the techs you don't currently have. A minor bug in my opinion.

Noble713 · #7 December 7th, 2000, 05:53 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Cryptotec88:
And yes, it does repair the techs you don't currently have. A minor bug in my opinion.

Well, it depends. I had the Cue Cappa surrender to me and some of their ships were damaged. One of them, a light cruiser, hasn't had one of its Telekinetic Rams or whatever repaired, and its been in a fleet with repair ships for several years now. I figured it was b/c I don't have the Psychic race trait.

Psitticine · #8 December 7th, 2000, 06:25 AM

Yep, if you don't have the tech, you can't make the repairs. I believe that goes for ordinary components as well as the special stuff like Psychic and Temporal equipment.

I think that you can still analyze a destroyed component (shifting through the wreckage?) and have a chance to discover the tech which builts it, but I'm not sure about that.

Jubala · #9 December 7th, 2000, 01:02 PM

I agree that boarding tech is too hard to come by. I've been toying with the idea of moving it up one level in military science tech area so it's available at once in a medium tech start game.

I also agree that the selfdestruct device is to powerful. The description says it destroys the ship by overloading the weapons. So logically I thought, then destroy the engines and it won't work. So I researched engine busting weapons and proceeded to test my theory. No go. The self destruct device works even if all the engines are destroyed which makes no sense imo considering the description of it. I wonder if it's possible to create a weapon that only targets selfdestruct devices?

Shadow99 · #10 December 7th, 2000, 01:51 PM

Well it would be nice if the engines being offed would end the auto-destruct, but I think they truly mean the power core for the engines blows (using the self-destruct). & while yes it would be nice if you could simply have say a 'explosion containment field' weapon that would nuke the self-D it's not currently possible (no ability for it). As is I've been trying to get a large fighter item which is a boarding unit or maybe make an even larger 'fighter' hull which I'll call shuttles... it would be a large ship (say 60 kt?) & the boarding unit would be 40 kt (but the rating would be higher than ship ones). That way you risk a 'shuttle' instead of your precious BC...