PD to Powerfull?

[Theonlystd]

With how good PD is 1Pd unit per ship is basically enough to give you total immunity to missiles and fighters from what i've seen.

Put 5 Ships with a Cap missile vs 5,4 ships with a Pd,DUC its highly unlikely a missile will even get threw and the missile Ships have no chance ..

Or is it just meh?

I thought of editing the PD firing Rate myself.

[Devnullicus]

This does get somewhat better in BalanceMod. PD vs. missiles is decently balanced there, but PD vs. fighters is still a slaughter (bye-bye, fighters).

The only solution I've been able to come up with is making PD not affect fighters and have a new anti-fighter type of defense that makes fighters viable in swarms.

As it is now, a swarm of fighters against a decently armored frigate with 1 PD will die a quick death and not do a lot to the frigate. The frigate CAN be overwhelmed with enough fighters, but it takes a lot of them.

I haven't played stock in a while, though, so I don't remember how effective PD vs. missiles and/or fighters is there.

[Possum]

Way back in the day, in Starfire, (the board game that the SE-series is modelled on), there were regular PD systems, that were highly efficient against missiles, and less so against fighters. And then there were also "improved point-defense" systems, that were highly efficient against fighters, and less so against missiles.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Possum said:
Way back in the day, in Starfire, (the board game that the SE-series is modelled on), there were regular PD systems, that were highly efficient against missiles, and less so against fighters. And then there were also "improved point-defense" systems, that were highly efficient against fighters, and less so against missiles.

Speaking of which I couldn’t model this since you can’t use two separate to-hit formulas. But I did find a good middle ground.

[Ed Kolis]

In SE5 each weapon can have its own to-hit formula... or are you guys talking about SE4?
Also, another SE5-only PD idea is to give fighters emissive armor, and tweak the numbers so that the anti-seeker PD does more raw damage per second to unarmored targets such as seekers but less per shot so the anti-fighter is more effective vs. fighters since it has penetrating power...

[President_Elect_Shang]

StarFire uses one weapon with two separate to-hit values, one is the type you are familiar with in the SE series and the other is a flat rate at range zero. The SE series to-hit is verses fighters and the flat rate is verses missiles. I had never though of doing it with emissive armor as you suggest. Unfortunately it is far too late to go back and re-write the PD and fighters. Even doing that it wouldn’t work without also adjusting various weapons and more than a few non-fighter and non-seeker units.