Question about stacking for units/fighters/sats/etc.

[Wardad]

Graeme Dice,

Shields do make the fighters tougher, I never said they did not. The shields add damage resistance kt (points) to the red bar, the blue shield bar is bogus.

I also mentioned a shield boost facility that is only available to the Crystaline race. It gives a a shield bonus to ships but not units. It does add to the fighters bogus blue shield bar.

I did my testing with Groups of 1, 2, and 5 fighters against a point defense V.

[ July 31, 2002, 01:35: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Suicide Junkie]

The Crystalline shield facility definitely does help fighters. And it gives those points to every fighter in the stack. I think they still work out as hitpoints, rather than shield points.

[Singollo]

Try searching for SAT and Multi thread.

I did, many times. The problem was that I couldn't sort the pre-Gold material from Gold material, even when posters agreed on what they were saying.

Thanks for all the responses, folks. Let me see if I'm straight on this. I'd appreciate it if someone would run down this checklist and "grade" me as being correct or incorrect.

1. Abilities from ECM, Talisman, etc. do apply to an entire stack if just one unit has the components. So I can equip one fighter/WP with a small ECM (or whatever) and it will affect the entire stack.

2. For combat purposes, units are not considered to have components that are damaged individually. Therefore armor offers no better protection than any other component with the same tonnage (in which case unit armor would seem to be a waste).

3. Unit shields are not treated as shields, but rather as extra tonnage, even though the unit display will show blue shield points. Therefore weapons that will skip shields have no real effect on units, since the shield points count as kT points and must all be destroyed anyway. (Question: does this mean that a shield generator component gives damage resistance both for the component's kT and for the "shield kT" generated by the component?)

4. The Crystalline Restructuring facility does add to "shield kT", either to each individual fighter or to a stack of fighters, depending on whose advice I listen to. Is this also true for other units?

One Last thing: can someone tell me whether the stacking of abilities in number 1 above is an intentional feature or a bug? If it is a bug, I would prefer not to take advantage of it.

[dumbluck]

1. Abilities from ECM, Talisman, etc. do apply to an entire stack if just one unit has the components. So I can equip one fighter/WP with a small ECM (or whatever) and it will affect the entire stack.

Correct.

2. For combat purposes, units are not considered to have components that are damaged individually. Therefore armor offers no better protection than any other component with the same tonnage (in which case unit armor would seem to be a waste).

Close, but no cigar. We're talking about damage structure, not tonnage structure. Armor III, for example has a tonnage structure of 10kt, but a damage structure of 40kt, so one piece of Armor III donates 40kt of damage structure to the unit. Most components damage and tonnage structure are equal, but not armor. Thus the advantage of armor.

3. Unit shields are not treated as shields, but rather as extra tonnage, even though the unit display will show blue shield points. Therefore weapons that will skip shields have no real effect on units, since the shield points count as kT points and must all be destroyed anyway. (Question: does this mean that a shield generator component gives damage resistance both for the component's kT and for the "shield kT" generated by the component?)

Correct. A shield donates both it's damage structure and it's shield points to the total unit damage structure. (Shield points are converted 1:1 into damage structure. Am I correct?)

4. The Crystalline Restructuring facility does add to "shield kT", either to each individual fighter or to a stack of fighters, depending on whose advice I listen to. Is this also true for other units?

I think so. I'm not sure about WPs, though...

One Last thing: can someone tell me whether the stacking of abilities in number 1 above is an intentional feature or a bug? If it is a bug, I would prefer not to take advantage of it.

Not a clue. Sorry.

[Suicide Junkie]

1) Yes. "Brain sats" with Talisman/Sensors/ECM/etc will provide fire control for all the sats in the stack.

2) Yes and no. Armor is still useful, since it is dirt cheap, and provides 5 hp/kt. Modest-level shielding is better, with up to 8 hp/kt. Almost all other components are 1 hp/kt.
The unit remains fully operational until all of its combined hitpoints are gone.

Think of a unit as being one component, and a stack of units as being the ship.

3) Yes. Shields, armor and internals are combined into one unit "component" for the unit stack "ship". All defense strength is treated as physical/armor type hitpoints. The shield points and generator hitpoints add.

4) I only tried it for fighters, but it provided hitpoints to all of the units. I suspect it would work for sats too, and maybe drones, but I doubt it would work on troops or platforms.

Re: #1 intentional?
Well, MM has already fiddled with the unit ability stacking, so I would say that it is intended until told otherwise.

[ July 31, 2002, 14:40: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Singollo]

Close, but no cigar. We're talking about damage structure, not tonnage structure. Armor III, for example has a tonnage structure of 10kt, but a damage structure of 40kt, so one piece of Armor III donates 40kt of damage structure to the unit. Most components damage and tonnage structure are equal, but not armor. Thus the advantage of armor.

D'oh! That's right, of course. Silly me. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: #1 intentional?
Well, MM has already fiddled with the unit ability stacking, so I would say that it is intended until told otherwise.

That's good enough for me. No need to search too hard for something that will deprive me of useful stacking abilities....

Thanks everyone.

[Graeme Dice]

I did my testing with Groups of 1, 2, and 5 fighters against a point defense V.[/QB]

Use a more damaging weapon that a point defense V and you will see the difference between unshielded and shielded fighters. A massive mount anti-proton beam should be able to kill more than one fighter if shields were treated exactly the same as armour.