PD Weapons are still a bit odd....bug?

[Talenn]

Has anyone else been doing extensive amounts of tactical combat? We have a had a few hotseat games where the conflicts start very early and massed missile ships rule the day. To counter, PD weapons are high on the research list and there are a LARGE amount of tactical combats involving missiles vs PDs.

I've observed some odd behaviour again concerning the timing of the PD firings. For the longest time in our game, they would fire on the owning player's turn, and then again as the missiles moved towards them. Then, all of sudden, they stopped firing more than the one time on the owner's turn. Needless to say that this resulted in the destruction of one player's entire fleet as he had done all his planning based on the 'double firing'. For the next few battles the missiles seemed to not trigger the 'second fire' as well.

I'm not exactly sure yet what conditions cause it to not get the 'second fire'. It seemed to be sporadic. It became more difficult to track as PD weapons eventually got to the point where the missiles were completely useless and thus 'second fire' was unnecessary.

Has anyone else noticed anything odd about the PD weapons in 1.19? I KNOW it was working differently at different points in the game and there are no differences in the PD weapons descriptions or in the missiles. In fact, the costly battle was using the exact same PDs vs the exact same missiles as a previous battle a few turns earlier in which the missiles were all easily intercepted by the 'second fire'.

I'm hesitant to report this one as a bug as I'm not 100% sure on the specifics. So, just FYI, watch for this one in your games and see if perhaps we can get a solid grasp on when or why or how this effect occurs.

Thanx,
Talenn

[Daynarr]

Well, I have been playing lots of tactical combat (almost all my battles are tactical), and I did notice something like you described.
However, I have noticed another bug in the tactical combat. When a player (Human mostly, but not only)) loses a fleet or a planet, he cannot move his ships for entire combat turn, meaning that the other side gets to play 2 turns in a row. I have first noticed this in the 0.51 demo, and then in all game Versions afterwards. This can make some serious damage (and irritation) to one side in a critical moment of the battle.
This doesn't happen every time, but it is fairly regular. I just hope the Beta-testers know about this one.

[Talenn]

Daynarr:

Yes, I think I have seen that as well. I was just never able to actually confirm that someone had lost a turn but it had certainly seemed that way once or twice. I'll have to start watching for that one a bit more carefully too now that I know its not just a figment of my imagination...

Talenn

[Tomgs]

I have seen that point defence problem before in this Version and earlier ones too. Also there is a chance that if the missles are fired close to your ship (within the range of the point defence) and if you don't move they will hit you reguardless of how many point defence you have. It seems point defence triggers off your movement and the missles coming into its range if neither of these two things happens sometimes the point defence dosen't fire. Sometimes also it looks like the computer gets an extra firing of point defence but it may be because missles sometimes come in waves and it is firing during the missle movement phase and then again in its movement phase.

[AJC]

It was noticed by the testers... its been rather hard to pin down an example of it happening though. It doesnt reproduce very often and when it does its always a suprise... Send the save game to Mm if you saved it before the tactical fights - especially it if has reproduced in several battles in a row.