Depleted Uranium Cannons to powerful!

[General Hawkwing]

First let me say that I appreciate all of you for looking into these weapons so throughly. This forum is one of the best I have been a part of and I look forward to engaging any/all of you in a multi-player game. My questions/comments are:
What about CSM's and torps?
Have you looked into the smaller Versions for the weapons you listed?
When all is said and done, balanced weapon research will win over specialized weapon research, (at least human vs human).
I believe at least 1 other person noted this, you can always steal/capture tech higher than yours. So please specialize your research and 'share' with the rest of us.

[Baron Munchausen]

General Hawkwing:

A much more interesting question about missiles in general (all types) is how they are affected by point-defense weapons. A flat calculation of "damage per kt" or "point of research per damage per kt" is just not going to be useful with missiles due to their vulnerability to interception. Against an opponent with no PDC they could be devastating, but against an opponent with maxed-out PDC (and lots of them mounted in their ships) they could be totally useless. I'm not even sure what sort of 'formula' you can use to calculate their usefulness thanks to this complicating factor. I've just got a general 'rule of thumb' that 1 PDC seems to counter 2 missile components and try to have that ratio when attacking someone who has missiles. I'm very interested to hear what our "researchers" might come up with, though.

[Taqwus]

Hrm. I think the fact that we're having this discussion is a DARN good sign.

I wonder if it's possible to have a ship-design tournament (excluding race-specific techs). Might be interesting to see what ships people would design given a tech/resource budget.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Commander G]

With regard to missles, it seems they are useful to force your opponent to research and deploy Point Defenses. However, they will probably do so anyway to take out Fighters. Large Mount Weapons are overkill for Fighters and Missles ignore fighters. I recently ran a simulation with one carrier with something like 3 point defense destroyers and a three organic beam destroyers (cannot remember which beam they had). They went up against a fleet of 8 Missle Light Cruisers (a design that the AI seemed to like in that game). My fleet ate the Missleships up for lunch, destroying missles quickly. The beam destroyers killed one or two cruisers until the fighter swarms closed in and took out the rest. Only one of my ships sustained damage. Of course the AI fleet was total one sided, with only Missles for weapons. My ships also had a movement value of 7, which I think is four squares in tactical combat. I was letting the AI fight the battle for both sides in Tactical (keept hitting end turn). If the AI had built beam light cruisers with point defenses, I would have been annihalated. I think the key to fighting missle ships is to have beams that can fire more than 3 squares (and fighters) so that your point defense have enough time to react to the incoming missles. I tend to think that 8 beam ships is better than 4 beam and 4 missle ships, providing the defender has Point Defense capability. Missles also make sense for Satelites, forcing the enemy to come in with enough Point Defenses to attack a planet.

[This message has been edited by Commander G (edited 30 October 2000).]

[LintMan]

This is all great stuff. Saben, that was a great idea to look at the damage/kt/round as a way to make direct comparisons between the weapons.

Some thoughts I'd like to add:

- This is all analysis based on the tech levels available in the demo. I'm assuming that some/all of these techs will have higher levels or more powerful replacements above them (like Wave Motion Gun replaces Incinerator Beams). Perhaps as you put more research in, past what's available in the demo, some of the less-useful weapon trees will blossom into some more desirable choices.

- What about emissive armor? I haven't seen much discussion about it, but I think the top-end absorbs any shots with 30 or less damage. I assume that means 30 or less from any single weapon. If so, the meson bLaster, which does 30 damage, may be completely ineffective against it. Perhaps at higher tech beyond the demo, the armor's absorption could go to 50, which would similarly negate DUCs and APBs and make the slow high damage weapons like the WMG, etc more appealing.

- Might the larger weapon-mount sizes change things a bit? I don't know the exact numbers, but for instance, I think the large mount doubles the damage, for 50% extra weight? And I think the heaviest mount quadruples damage for less than a quadruple weight (I think). Something like that could make the slower heavy-duty weapons more appealing. Anyone car to run the numbers?

- The big slow guns like the WMG and Hellfire also might be good when placed on stationary bases and satellites where you lack mobility to chase your target so you want to maximize your punch when you can get one in. For example, the AI attacked a lone starbase of mine, and danced its ships in and out of my range, so the slower fire rate wasn't as much of a problem, and the extra damage was a big benefit.



[This message has been edited by LintMan (edited 30 October 2000).]

[Taqwus]

Emissive and crystalline armors are one reason to favor the slower but heavier guns, methinks. A WMG will cut right through Emissive, and hopefully your target lacks the Crystalline Armor to regen more than 280 pts of shield/hit (Large WMG III)...

If your targets use shield regenerators or organic armor, with per-turn regeneration, you may want to do a *large* hit in one turn rather than battle the regen over two or three. ISTR that the best shield regenerators in the demo give 25 pts/turn each -- that isn't much for their size when put in a ship, IIRC, but it COULD matter on a station with capacity to spare, and I suppose there may be better Versions in the full release.

Also, if you can do enough damage to knock down the shields AND armor quickly, you may be lucky enough to hit a critical component next -- take out a Master Computer or Bridge, for instance. In that max-tech aggressive/bloodthirsty game of mine, I'd sometimes paired up CAs, each with a pair of large WMG III's and a Talisman; not too many, if any at all, of the AI ship designs had more than 280 x 4 = 1120 in shields+armor, which meant that the pair firing on one ship would be able to damage components immediately. If the victim lost engines, that could be enough to ensure that it *never* got within range to counterattack...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Instar]

In my games, I usually go for Meson BLasters and AP Beams. Incin beams are good too. (However I also usually have crystal tech, those weapons rock!)
For me, researching MBs isnt too hard, I play a research heavy game.
In my opinion no ship can be considered the best.
Hey Ive got an idea
We can all design ships, post the designs and then have them compete, in a set of matches, under varying conditions (1v1, 1v1v1, 2v2, etc etc etc)
Im a beta tester so I could run the matches if you want