Plasma vs cap ship missle

[Baron Munchausen]

That's amusing, Phoenix-D. Yes, you can set it higher, but then you can just set the PDC damage higher, too. I meant some way within the game to scale damage. Like a MOUNT setting that lets you make seekers stronger. Currently, mounts do not affect seekers. I suppose we could make a very involved tech-tree for missiles with "armored" missiles available for a combined tech requirement of missile tech with armor tech. And maybe make faster missiles available as higher levels of propulsion are researched. But if you multiply the levels of propulsion by the levels of armor you'll end up with a HUGE grid of missile types. That's a lot of bloat in the components.txt file. There must be a better way.

[Phoenix-D]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
That's amusing, Phoenix-D. Yes, you can set it higher, but then you can just set the PDC damage higher, too.

---

If the idea is to fix a problem, WHY would you do that?!

quote:

---

There must be a better way.

---

Or if you think it's imbalanced..

..just fix it. Boost the missile damage resitance, leave the PD alone. PD isn't affected by mounts either, I think.

Want a mount for missiles? How about one that kicks the range up?

Phoenix-D

[dmm]

Been fooling around with Star Trek: Starfleet Battles lately. I like how they handle missiles. (Yellow Alert: STSB has a strategic component but mainly is real-time tactical. So it is a bit opposite to SEIV. But I still think this may be helpful.) Anyway, in STSB, missiles do a lot of damage if they hit, just like SEIV (but maybe even more so). There are fast, medium, and slow missiles. The slow ones are free, but ships at full speed can outrun them. And there are small and big ones. You can carry twice as many small ones, but of course they don't do nearly the damage of the large ones (half?). Your launchers can only launch a certain number of missiles at each load, regardless of type. Missiles reload FASTER than most other weapons, even faster than PDC. (HUGE difference from SEIV.) Ships will automatically use tractor beams to hold missiles off if they are charged. Ships will also automatically use phasers as backup PD if they are charged. (You can probably turn that auto-defense off, but I don't know how yet. Anyway, I like it.) Missiles run out of fuel and disappear after a certain amount of time. Like SEIV, they never simply miss.

In practice, a well-rounded ship will be able to beat off the first attack from a same-size missile-dependent ship, and do some damage as well. But she'd better get away fast, otherwise the next wave of missiles will hit before her PDC and phasers recharge. Turning on tractor beams will stop some but not all of the next wave, and will slow down phaser recharging. Also, that's risky, because then if you lose the tractor beams before the missiles die ... BOOM! It's loads of fun to knock down the shields and beam marines on to such a ship, with orders to destroy the tractor beam! ("Beam us back, and I mean NOW!") Of course, it's also fun to hold off missiles with your tractors and then bLast a missile ship at point-blank range with full overloaded phasers that the enemy thought you'd need for backup PD. ("Taste my vengeance, you fool!")

Does anyone else like the sound of this?
What could be done to implement this in SEIV (as much as currently possible)?
Has anyone already made a mod like this?

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

Want a mount for missiles? How about one that kicks the range up?

---

If you do that, you can launch the missiles from farther away, but the missiles still run out of fuel and vanish at the same distance.

EG. a +10 range mount on a CSM 1 will let you launch from range 18.
The missile will still travel 8 squares, then die.

[Taqwus]

Aaron could always add Mechwarrior-style weapon temperature rules...

Hrm. A pity that missiles aren't implemented as very cheap non-retargettable units, and missile launchers as bays. That'd allow for fast, large salvos as well as customizable missiles, but gives you the reasonable drawback of having a finite supply.

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Atraikius]

dmm - if you try the Mirak (Kzinti from the SFB board game) you can see what the missiles (actually called drones) can really do. The reason for the fast reload rates is that the drones are fired from racks, which either carry 4 or 6 single space drones, or 2-3 double space drones. One of the 4 space racks has the capability to fire two drones per turn, the other can fire 1 drone per turn. Once all drones located on the rack have been fired, additional time is required for reloading the drone rack. An additional feature of the drones in the Star Fleet battles board game is that there are additional types of warheads, including one shot phasers, and that drones can be custonized with each different component assigned a size (in half-spaces) and also assigned a speed setting, allowing you to use armored drones, ecm drones, etc... Personnally, I would like to see SE4 drones implemented similar to them, essentially customized and build like fighters, but fired from special 'drone rack' components.

[dmm]

Taqwus and Atraikius -- Thanks for the good thoughts. I wonder if it is possible to mod SEIV fighters in such a way. You'd have to change the tech tree, of course, but that is do-able in principle.
Good: You could get the limited launching per turn. You could have the number limited separately from general supplies. You could restock at any planet. (Is that right? You don't need a spaceyard to make fighters, right?)
Bad: The problem that stumps me is how to limit their range during combat (ships don't use fuel during combat), and how to keep them off the strategic map (unlike real fighters).
Somewhat bad: The AI wouldn't know how to use them.
Possibly bad: Players could retarget them in midflight. (Personally, I like that.)

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

Bad: The problem that stumps me is how to limit their range during combat (ships don't use fuel during combat), and how to keep them off the strategic map (unlike real fighters).

---

Just give the drone rack 1 fighter launch in combat, and zero outside combat.
There may be an entry in settings.txt to control how may fighters a planet can launch, too.

------------------
The latest info on Pirates & Nomads (forum thread).
-<Download V2.3>- (just extract to your SE4 folder)
-<Download P&N Classic>- (The final release of P&N v1.x, just extract to your SE4 folder)
-<Download compatible EMPs for P&N v1.2 through v1.7>-
-<Download SJs latest AI Patcher>-
Visit My Homepage

Other Links:
-<Play By Web>-
-<Schlock Mercenary>- (great space-based webcartoon) -<First Strip>-
-<8-bit Theater>- (fun comic with the pixellated FF1 characters)

<SE4Code>
MpN R*-A RM(L) RP+ TCP- Fq++ FR!++ P? A+/- Sf+ Nd- L $ M++++ Pw!+
</SE4Code>

[dmm]

The previous Posts got me thinking about mines in combat. Is it hard-coded that mines have zero movement, or can that be modded? If moddable, then that would make mines very interesting for tactical combat.
I guess you could also mod a missile to do that. The range is limited by hard code. A moving mine could be a max-range "missile" that is hard to destroy, does damage like a mine, moves one/turn. The ship component would be the size of a minelayer component (or maybe smaller since multiple mines can be laid each turn, but only one missile fired), would use up supplies slowly, and would fire every turn.

[Atraikius]

Star Fleet Battles includes a cruse drone variant for long range bombardment, from that standpoint having them move outside of combat would be fine.