CompEnhancement Discussion.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Deathstalker:

"Gatling weapons wear out after significant use (how to accomplish this; I don't know)"

This is simulated in the game by maintenance cost. It's true that military hardware of all sorts 'wears out' very quickly and is replaced. A jet engine is only good for a few hundred hours, for example, even at normal (non combat) performance and with perfect maintenance record. I've heard that the planes on a carrier end up costing many times as much as the carrier itself.

Anyway, gatling mounts should have a much, much higher than normal increase in cost/peformance ratio if you want to simulate a technology pushed to its limits.

[capnq]

I read this in a review that damage is inflicted right to left?

That only applies to mixed Groups of satellites, IIRC. (Mixed troops go left to right). Ship damage (after shields and armor) is random, with the chance of a component being hit a function of its size.

[Baron Munchausen]

Damage is random in ships and bases, in satellite stacks, and in WPs on planets. It used to be you put components into your ship 'left to right' and they were destroyed 'right to left' in SE II, NOT III or IV at any time! In the earlier Version of IV you did indeed see WP stacks and satellite stacks destroyed in a certain order. That has been changed. There is a tendency for smaller units to be destroyed first but even that is not absolutely predictable.

[Suicide Junkie]

destroyed 'right to left' in SE II, NOT III or IV at any time!

Actually, in SE3, the damage from each shot started at a random spot, and from there procceded left-to-right. A good strategy was to space out your weapons so they would not all be destroyed by a single hit.

In SE4, the components are hit randomly every point along the way.
HOWEVER:
- For Armor, the ones with FEWER hitpoints are hit more often, though not exclusively.
- For internals, the ones with MORE hitpoints are hit more often. This seems to approach a "one lottery ticket per hitpoint" type scheme, but the larger components absorb slightly more than their fair share.

And that's probably more than you wanted to know

[tesco samoa]

I really like the ranged enhancement.

But there was an unbalance on a race that had religion and Psychic.

Ranged ship with both virus and the psychic weapon became a hard ship to beat.

I do like the compenhancement on WP's Sat's and Bases. They balance planets against ship asualts.

Ships are a little too powerful in the current game.