Weapon Platforms - Overly Powerful or Just Balanced?

[TerranC]

I have a beef that I'd like to share with the community:

Back when even the smallest moons were like shooting fish in a barrel, and there was nothing that Weapon platforms could do, It was just too darn unfare.

Now, Weapon platforms are fixed, and increased in usage.

I liked at it first, I really did.

But then group of warmongering ships -MY technically advanced SHIPS- was systematically destroyed, one by one, and getting only a few shots even with the best sensor tech.

Does it have any ECM's? No.
Does it have any defensive bonuses hardcoded? No.
Does the race controlling the weapon platforms have better defensiveness or do I have bad Aggressiveness? No.

Does it make shooting HUGE planets seem like shooting F15 with a peashooter? Yes.
Does it make almost every planet invincible?

That's for you to decide.

[ June 09, 2002, 04:26: Message edited by: TerranC ]

[Suicide Junkie]

I am pretty sure that what you were seeing was the following:

The first hits on the planet don't show explosion animations. The damage is calculated, but it is insufficient to destroy a platform (which could have 1000's of shields)
Once enough damage has been done to actually destroy an object on the surface, you see a huge bLast erupt.

The actual damage mechanics are still working properly, but the animations are not intuitive.

[spacefan]

I had a fleet of 15 baseships, with highest tech in the game, graviton hellbores massive mount. Against a large homeworld.

I lost 4 baseships even with that amount of firepower. So they are powerful.

PLaying against the ai with TDM races, my platforms held off 8+ ships easily.

[Baron Munchausen]

Here we run up against the difference between AI and human opponents again.

Sure, a human can design good WPs with complementary weapons and cram a large or huge planet full of so many of them that you feel like your fleet is the little flying saucers in 'space invaders' trying to land on that planet. It might even be possible for a human to build an indestructable/unconquerable planet if they can get the Stellar Manipulation stoppers built on it. But the AI is so dumb that the advantages given to WPs are frankly necessary to make it reasonably able to resist a human player. Until recent patches there was no way at all to get the AI to build regular, definable numbers of WPs on each planet. Even with the new Unit_Construction file I wonder how smart it will be about updating defenses. Probably no change at all in that area. So how dangerous is a heavy mount DUC when you've got ABP 12? Or CSM V?

So, in single-player games I'd say WPs are just fine. In a 'humans only' game maybe it would be fair to cut back their mount-given abilities a bit.

[ June 09, 2002, 05:31: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Alpha Kodiak]

I prefer the weapons platforms as they behave now. It should be exceedingly difficult for a fleet to wipe out a well defended planet. Prior to this change, attacking a well defended planet was not all that tough of an exercise.

The other change that I like is that there are improved range mounts for satellites. Even though they still get clumped in one stack, at least with improved range on the larger satellites, they can become a factor in the battle.

[PvK]

The premise of the post was incorrect - TerranC thought his ships were missing the planet because the animations weren't showing hits clearly, when in fact planets are always hit for meaningful damage, which IMO is actually an issue in the other direction.

Anyway, I tend to think it should be possible to make a tough planet by massing high-tech weapon platforms on it, and the mount changes in Gold allow this. It takes a lot of research and investment and time to do, though, and still only results in a static defense, and planets can't get training bonuses to hit, so I really don't think they're too tough.

PvK