Point Def. too tough against missiles-change it.

[Deathstalker]

check out the new 1.33 list, #25 &27, speed for seekers is up but the bonus for pdc has been increased to. I find that my crystal torp are useless as it is (to easy to shoot down) with a rof of 2, this may hurt seekers even more.

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

[Suicide Junkie]

As long as the PDC can't shoot down more than 1 at a time, you're in the same boat as any other missile system, but you get 50% more shots! If you're really stuck, try flying towards the enemy firing. You can almost keep up with your missiles, so you can get two loads of them to hit at the same time.

[Nitram Draw]

I think we are in a viciuos cycle; faster seekers, more accurate PD, more damage resistent missles, smaller size, faster reload etc.
If seekers were affected by ECM 3 , -60% to hit, would you build lots of missle ships?
If PD missed 70% of the time would you build PD ships?
I think they can be balanced but not necessarily by mods. Can you change seeker or PD accuracy?

[Suicide Junkie]

What I think we should do is take the seekers, take the PD, and compare them to beams & shields+regenerators.

Perhaps, One PDC should be very roughly equal to enough regenerators to recharge the shields in 3 turns from the missile damage.
The missiles' damage should be set to get a damage factor of about 1.0 (average), since they have long range & 100% accuracy, but can be stopped by PDC/shields)

given a missle damage of about 120, we need a regeneration of about 40 pts/turn. With regenerators, you need 2 SRIVs so the PDCs would be 2x the size they are now.
given a missile damage of about 120, and a shield with 360 (rounded) hitpoints, you need 1/3rd of a shield to block 1 missile, making the PDC a one-shot deal @ 13kt

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Ok, clearly doubling the size of PDCs to match them up to regenerators & shielding is not ideal. Since they only protect against missiles, and not beams, they should be reduced in size compared to regeneration.
Thus, we end up with PDC like they are now.

Answer: use strategic genious to outwit the enemy.
Ie. If the enemy has no PD, use missiles. If the enemy loads up on PD, then he skimped on weapons and/or defences, so rip 'em a new one with beams.
With a mixed fleet, tell beam ships to attack PD ships, and missile ships to attack beam ships.
With mixed ships, going extreme either way can get you the win.

[Arralen]

Another thought:

- make PDC have range 1 .. this way they'll only protect the ship they're mounted on, any maybe a neighbouring ship. With enough missiles you could still flood the defences and do some serious damage .. but you'll only be able to do this every 3 turns ..

- make PDM which have range 5..8, and reload time of 2; tell the AI to build "Aegis Cruisers"

Have tested this setup with the Olesen Techset in SE3, and it worked quite well !!

A.