Weapons Prospects

[bearclaw]

Wouldn't having different PD weapons having different ranges fix that issue of all firing? In theory, the longest range would fire first then the shorter ranged ones should fire at the next and so one. Problem is that you would need to have a varity of PD weapons on a single ship. That could easily be overcome with something like:

1st Perimiter PDC: Range 15
2nd Perimiter PDC: Range 10
3rd Perimiter PDC: Range 5

[Suicide Junkie]

If you have multiple PD weapons on your ship they fire in a stagger pattern.

If you increase the shot speed of the PD, then the first shot will have a chance to hit the target before the second PD cannon fires a fraction of a second later.

[Phoenix-D]

I've had a hard time doing that without making the PD overpowered or hitting the "magic speed" where projectiles tend to randomly explode.

That's why I was going for PD beam weapons..

[Siirenias]

Well, you could have long-range countermissiles, then medium and short-range point defense guns.

[Suicide Junkie]

The easiest way is to just use very-rapid fire guns that do very little damage.

Then if you waste a shot firing at a missile that is about to die from a previous shot, its no big deal... only 1/5th of a second and 2 damage points wasted, rather than 1-2 seconds and 30 damage.

[Siirenias]

Ehhhh...Usually I wouldn't mind, but HW2's Point Defense Systems told me what would happen if you used a bunch of them (framerate cries for mercy). Plus, the tired system is a harder challenge

Of course, using a few wouldn't hurt. The concern may lie that it could be too effective.

[Suicide Junkie]

I suppose it depends on your video card, but the pirates in my P&Nism mod use 200ms, 6 damage meson blasters as anti-ship weapons.

Looks somewhat like a starwars battle, and dosen't even dent the framerate. Each bolt is only 2 polys.

I also don't see how a tiered system will help very much.
All the weapons will still be firing on the nearest incoming seeker. You only get an advantage if the Tier X weapons kill the first missile before it reaches Tier X-1, AND if the Tier X PD has a very long reload time, such that the second missile reaches X-1 range long before Tier X can fire again.

You still need to make the shots move very fast, which solves much of the problem with stock PD already.