Tactical Use of Various Weapons

[Alpha Kodiak]

I just learned a nasty quirk of engine destroyers (and probably of weapon destroyers and shield destroyers - not drainers, but destroyers) while testing the AI for a new race. Level I and II Ionic Dispersers only do 15 damage if not in an upgraded mount. It takes 20 damage to destroy an engine. The damage doesn't seem to accumulate, so if you put level I or II Ionic Dispersers on a destroyer or smaller, they are essentially useless and just taking up space.

[Baron Munchausen]

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Originally posted by Alpha Kodiak:
I just learned a nasty quirk of engine destroyers (and probably of weapon destroyers and shield destroyers - not drainers, but destroyers) while testing the AI for a new race. Level I and II Ionic Dispersers only do 15 damage if not in an upgraded mount. It takes 20 damage to destroy an engine. The damage doesn't seem to accumulate, so if you put level I or II Ionic Dispersers on a destroyer or smaller, they are essentially useless and just taking up space.

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Logically, since a deployable weapon system is supposed to be effective, the thing to do is mod them to do 20 points of damage minimum. This might make them extremely powerful in standard propulsion model games, since all ships have only 6 engines max, but in a QNP game they would still be relatively balanced.

[capnq]

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The damage doesn't seem to accumulate

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AAMOF, damage does accumulate; the engine should be destroyed on the second hit.

However, if a component doesn't take enough damage to be destroyed before the combat ends, it automatically goes back to full strength.

[Suicide Junkie]

For most weapons, including normal, skips X, etc, that is true.
However for the Only X weapons, any shot that does not do enough damage to destroy a component will not do damage at all, and the partial damage is not stored.

[Wardad]

Good thing to know.I'm playing a high tech cost game, I'll just have to wait before using Ionic Dispersers.

[LGM]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
For most weapons, including normal, skips X, etc, that is true.
However for the Only X weapons, any shot that does not do enough damage to destroy a component will not do damage at all, and the partial damage is not stored.

Partial damage is not stored between combats, but it should be between rounds. My understanding is that during combat, partial damage gets stored until the next hit on the vehicle at which time the damage is added to that hit. For example, suppose you hit 100 point piece of organic armor for 45 damage. If the next hit is a null space weapon for 60 damage, the net effect is 105 points of damage that skip armor.

Thus, you should always add damage based weapons in the following order: normal, shield skipping, shield and armor skipping.

If an engine zapper hits for 15 damage and the next hit is a DUC, then the 15 damage SHOULD get added to that. However, if things work as Suicide Junkie suggests, then you cannot use the cheaper ones as noted earlier unless you have larger mounts. Players need to be careful about Weapon killing weapons as well since Large and Huge Mount weapons take more points to take out. In affect, small ships cannot take out the weapons of larger ships using this. Good think to know.

Another thing that will probably happen is that surplus damage will be lost if you do 25 to a ships engine. You will need to design Engine killing ships to always do a multiple of 20. At least Religious races do not have a shrine that reduces damage to their ships, just to hit and damage done to enemies.

[ 09 May 2002, 17:59: Message edited by: LGM ]

[Alpha Kodiak]

Originally posted by capnq:

quote:

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The damage doesn't seem to accumulate

AAMOF, damage does accumulate; the engine should be destroyed on the second hit.

However, if a component doesn't take enough damage to be destroyed before the combat ends, it automatically goes back to full strength.

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It's possible that it accumulates, but in destroyer vs. destroyer fleet combat, it is hard to get multiple hits on the same destroyer in time to make up for the fact that the other guy is hitting you with weapons that are actually doing damage. Also, there may be an issue where the accumulated engine killing damage would get pooled with the next normal hit against shields. I'm not sure how that works and haven't had much time to try further tests. Others have done some analysis of that in the past, so someone may be able to shine more light on that. At any rate, it seems at least fairly ineffective to use level I or II Ionic Dispersers in normal mounts, even if the damage might eventually do something.

[E. Albright]

I've tested this in tactical [2 or 3 ity-bity engine-killing (I) destroyers along with a cruiser] and found to my dismay that SJ is absolutely, positively correct. I manually shot a given foeman with 2 or more engine killers sequentially and saw no effect...

E. Albright

[ 09 May 2002, 20:27: Message edited by: ealbright ]

[Alpha Kodiak]

Ok, here is the complete scoop on Ionic Dispersers, at least as run from the simulator. There is no carryover of damage from shot to shot, even in the same volley. I set up a group of 5 sats armed only with a single Ionic Disperser II each. Brought a target ship up close and let fly. No matter how many hits, there was no damage done. I switched to Ionic Disperser IVs which do 30 points of damage per hit. In the first volley, there were three hits. That should have caused 90 damage, enough to destroy 4 engines. However, only three engines were destroyed, one per hit. I then switched to Ionic Disperser Vs which do 40 per hit. As expected, each hit destroyed two engines.

My final conclusion, which causes me severe grief in trying to build my latest AI, is that it is a total waste to put unmodded level I or II Ionic Dispersers on destroyer or smaller ships, as well as small satellites. That is tricky enough, but it also means that it is a waste to put Ionic Dispersers that individually do anything other than even multiples of 20 damage when modified by their mounts. Getting the AI to recognize that will be just about impossible.

[Taera]

Anyone has anything interesting about other weapons? I just like to hear otehr people's strategies.