Shard Cannon too weak???

[Daynarr]

Well, I was wondering if anybody else feels that Shard Cannons are too weak since 1.19 patch. I had lots of encounters against AI players that used them and I would be able to take them down with much weaker forces (no missiles) just because of their slow rate of fire. That would happen even if I didn't have shields, just because they wouldn't have time to finish off my ships.

I have posted a data files in mod section that will increase Shard Cannon rate of fire and make them more useful, but I would like to hear (read ) your thoughts about it.

[Puke]

possibly. a big drawback to armor skipping weapons, is that they keep firing on the same ship untill all the armor is gone, even if the ship has been disabled.

the real question though: is crystal tech as a whole unballanced. increasing the power of shard cannons increases the power of the entire tech area - which should be balanced with their other weapons and armor, and all their ground facilities for all stages of the game (early, mid, end).

[Baron Munchausen]

Yep, I think that the Shard Cannon is too weak when it fires every other turn like a torpedo. I've restored its 1 shot per turn rate in my custom techs. Now, if another HUMAN player were to be using the entire crystalline tech tree against me I might have to worry about this. But the AI doesn't make effective use of standard facilities let alone the nifty additions available for crystalline technology. So, the other advantages of this tech tree don't really count for the AI.

Personally, though, I would take the "Energy Dampner" from the crystalline techs and give to to the Temporal Knowledge tree. This field needs more abilities to make it worth as much as the others. Organic and Crystalline are plenty powerful and have been from the start. Psychic was OK, and is really pretty good with the new facilities added in the latest patches. Temporal Knowledge is still pretty wimpy.


[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 January 2001).]

[Talenn]

Yes, I also found the Shard Cannons to be completely lacking and altered them in my set. This is especially true given the fact that in the stock tech set, Armor is fairly uncommon.

Talenn

[Nyx]

The damage on the shard cannon is too low, but I've found that it has a very nice bit of range, so that you can really whittle down someone who isn't as fast as you, even though you don't do much damage per hit.

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