Doomsday weapon in Proportions

[oleg]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.

But it is not easy to kill population on homeworld that absorb damage ! Given low damage of NSC, SB is a monster.

BTW, why do you think NSC skips weapon platforms and units ?? In all my tests NSC happily attack units before proceeding to civilians ! Even when I tried to attack undefended homeworld with NSC cruiser, in 30 turns it managed to kill only 40M people without damaging ANY structure. It took only 13 turns for the same cruiser to drop shields and wipe out homeworld clean ! No, NSC is fire cracker compared to SB.

[ September 27, 2002, 00:53: Message edited by: oleg ]

[PvK]

NSC's and other shield-skipping weapons have an advantage against Proportions homeworlds because they skip the homeworld's intrinsic shields (12,000 or so). However the 12K shields aren't really all that hard to bring down, with appropriate weapons (napalm, shield depleter, neutron bomb, drones, etc).

So, I'm currently most concerned about neutron bombs and smart bombs. I'm thinking of lowering neutron bomb damage, and making smart bombs large components with Reload 30 and a new description about being designed to wipe out developed continents (and incidentally, spaceports ) - then maybe rename them and make them precusors to tectonic bombs. The existing smart bombs would be replaced by some more generic bomb, perhaps able to skip shields (but not take out CC's in one hit) would be a good compromise.

Opinions? Ideas?

PvK

[Rollo]

Sounds like good ideas. I like the shield skipping bomb.

Rollo

[Q]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.

As far as I have seen it null space weapons will not skip weapon platforms and they will not even skip armor and shields on weapon platforms, because units don't have armor and shields for SE IV combat calculation: armor and shield points are just added to the total damage resistence of the unit and only if more damage than the total damage resistence of one unit is done the unit will be destroyed.

[minipol]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.

Wow, this is something i have to try out vs. TDM ai. That's one of the great things about SEIV: always something new to try.

[oleg]

Originally posted by PvK:
NSC's and other shield-skipping weapons have an advantage against Proportions homeworlds because they skip the homeworld's intrinsic shields (12,000 or so). However the 12K shields aren't really all that hard to bring down, with appropriate weapons (napalm, shield depleter, neutron bomb, drones, etc).

So, I'm currently most concerned about neutron bombs and smart bombs. I'm thinking of lowering neutron bomb damage, and making smart bombs large components with Reload 30 and a new description about being designed to wipe out developed continents (and incidentally, spaceports ) - then maybe rename them and make them precusors to tectonic bombs. The existing smart bombs would be replaced by some more generic bomb, perhaps able to skip shields (but not take out CC's in one hit) would be a good compromise.

Opinions? Ideas?

PvK

Yes, it would be a pitty to lose SB alltogether. Just make them almost as expensive as tectonics bomb with reload 30 and large size. Assigning NSC ability to planetary napalm will make one nasty antiplanet weapon ! May be make it a cross-over tech between null-space and planetary weapons ?

[PvK]

[quote]Originally posted by oleg:

Yes, it would be a pitty to lose SB alltogether. Just make them almost as expensive as tectonics bomb with reload 30 and large size. Assigning NSC ability to planetary napalm will make one nasty antiplanet weapon ! May be make it a cross-over tech between null-space and planetary weapons ?

Actually, I'm leaving napalm as-is, adding two new Small Tectonic Bombs, and giving shield-skipping to the new Smart Bomb and Smart Missile weapons, which have new research requirements and abilities.

And, I'm toning down the ability of the Neutron Bombs. Their unique ability to wipe out the population of a planet but preserve the facilities is particularly useful in Proportions (since it can mean capturing years of colony development work intact), so they don't need to have the extreme strength they currently do, to be worthwhile.

PvK