have a question on Sats

[mac5732]

I know there was a post awhile back on launching sats from a planet where they would not all be grouped together. Can't find it, so if anyone could explain again, I would appriciate it. tks

just some ideas mac5732

[rdouglass]

I think now with patch 1.35, all sats are grouped together - I don't believe you can put them in seperate Groups except in Tactical Combat....

You used to be able to, now you can't (at least IIRC)....

[Baron Munchausen]

This was changed several patches ago. It was a problem with Mines, but it was a FEATURE with satellites. In fixing the problem for mines he wiped out the feature for satellites. We keep asking for the multiple Groups for satellites. No luck so far. Keep asking.

Before the change I launched up to 100 satellites one at a time to provide a buffer zone between my planet and attacking ships. But now I use mines because 90% of the time the AI ignores the sats until the planet has been glassed. It made satellites worthless, except possibly lots and LOTS of missiles targeted manually in Groups in tactical combat. If you are near full on planet storage and mines are being swept too fast, build/launch sats. Otherwise build weapon platforms, or ships/bases if you can afford the maintenance.

P.S. I will complain once again about the lousy missile auto AI. When you have lots of missiles, only 1/3 of them should be targeted each combat turn. That way you avoid the tactic of decoy ships dancing at the range limit of the missiles while a troop ship runs in to capture the planet during reload. I do this myself to capture AI planets, but the AI should know better.

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 01 June 2001).]

[Q]

quote:

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Originally posted by LCC:
But now I use mines because 90% of the time the AI ignores the sats until the planet has been glassed.

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Which is not stupid at all! I would usually do the same.
I agree that sats and IMO weapon platforms too are underpowered in the basic game settings. But it is very easy to change this: make weapon mounts for sats and weapon platforms similar to the mount for bases. The increased ranges of the weapons will shift the balance considerably. I choose an increase of 1/2/3 additional range for small/medium/large sats and weapon platforms but you could go even higher.

[mac5732]

tks for your reply. I do use mines over planets and wormholes, but never used Sats much except for mining and scanning. Playing 1.30 and in current game ran into AI that had 21 sats loaded with Hellbores and only 5-6 pd's. Never saw this before. usually the Ai only had pd's and or scanners. This made me take 2nd look at sats as far as heavier weapons concerned. I remembered reading awhile ago someone mentioned how to launch sats without grouping altogether, I thought it might have only been in tactical, but couldn't find the post. Anyone else run into Ai using hellbores or heaview weapons in standard game no mods on sats?

just some ideas mac