More specifically targeting missiles and bombs wanted

[Seawolf]

Hey guys,

Current target specific weapons attack things that can be reasonably expected to be exposted on a ship/planet. How is a weapon supposed to target a shipyard for example that is in the middle of a base? Or a cloaking device that for certain is in the heart of a ship? Yes this is a game and we just have to mod it but come on war isn't surgical strikes that hit all the time exactly where you want. (i.e. US current 50% hit rate in Iraq.)

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Seawolf on the prowl

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Seawolf:
Hey guys,

Current target specific weapons attack things that can be reasonably expected to be exposted on a ship/planet. How is a weapon supposed to target a shipyard for example that is in the middle of a base? Or a cloaking device that for certain is in the heart of a ship? Yes this is a game and we just have to mod it but come on war isn't surgical strikes that hit all the time exactly where you want. (i.e. US current 50% hit rate in Iraq.)

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How is a Ship Yard any harder to hit than a Space Port or a Resupply Depot? All three are going to be large buildings with identifiable external characteristics. I hadn't thought of how it would work against a space yard in a ship. But it doesn't have to. You can destroy a space yard base/ship very easily. Hitting ONLY the space yard on a planet is impossible except by random chance. As for cloaking devices, by that logic NONE of the specialized weapons should work. The same pseudo-technological explanation that works for shield disruptors or weapon over-loeaders works just as well for cloaking device fryers. Some sort of energy that 'burns them out' without having to hit them by direct line-of-sight.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 07 March 2001).]

[Seawolf]

Baron,

When I think of the specifically targeted weapons I don't think that they "destroy" the weapon as much as make it unfunctionable. Example a beam weapon of any sort need a exit point/targeting system to fire, so these weapon damaging components, to me, are targeted specifically for those items and prevent them from being used rather than actually destroyed. Again this is just my opinion.
So using that type of logic I can see the current set of weapons as "ok". As far as Shipyards go I don't think that they are really 1 location. Currently ship construction is becoming modulized where different sections are being constructed and then shipped to a final assemble point. So is there really a single structure to target, I don't know.

My bigget issue with additional 1 component affected weapon is that it makes the game to predictable and onesided. I.E if there was a SY only weapon and a race got it before another the game would be over cause you would risk a small fleet to attack a planet knowing that if you got in range and destroyed the SY you would have a min of 5 turns until he could build another where you would have 5 turns to build ships to keep this kind of attack going, don't forget that each planet can only have 1 SY and can only build either a ship or a facility not both .I don't think anyone can create an AI smart enough to counter this, the Ai would have focus on this weapon/defense asap since it would be silly not to.
A SY killer weapon would be a game breaker IMHO.

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Seawolf on the prowl

[Codo]

Well, even if the components are built elsewhere, and the parts of the ship then hauled to an 'asembelage' site... I'm sure if you wrecked all the cranes in Newport News VA, they wouldn't be building any new carriers anytime soon. Sooo... Take out the assembelage area, and no more 'shipyard'

[DirectorTsaarx]

To expand on Codo's idea: I can envision a "smart bomb" for shipyard facilities that destroys the ability to launch the ships once they're built; after all, doesn't that portion of the shipyard have to be relatively exposed?

As for this being a game breaker, it's less of a problem if the AI builds more SY bases. Not to mention the fact that the AI leaves lots of the shipyard facilities idle anyway; if they're down to only one shipyard facility, they're toast anyway. I don't see a SY bomb being any more devastating than plague bombs (which the non-organic races have trouble with, as the AI seems to have trouble getting around to building medical ships & sending them to plagued planets). Actually, I would think the Space Port and Resupply Depot bombs are MORE devastating, as the SP bomb gives the AI a major resource hit until the Space Port can be rebuilt; and we all know the AI's problems with resupplying ships.

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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Originally posted by Seawolf:
Hey guys,

Current target specific weapons attack things that can be reasonably expected to be exposted on a ship/planet. How is a weapon supposed to target a shipyard for example that is in the middle of a base? Or a cloaking device that for certain is in the heart of a ship? Yes this is a game and we just have to mod it but come on war isn't surgical strikes that hit all the time exactly where you want. (i.e. US current 50% hit rate in Iraq.)

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As far as targetting cloaking devices, they've done that on Star Trek multiple times. Granted, sometimes it was a boarding action, but they've also forced ships out of cloak by other means (generally weird pseudo-science, but since the cloaking device is generally weird pseudo-science itself...). So I'm willing to accept the idea. Maybe it needs to be an even shorter range than the weapon-destroyers, with smaller damage numbers, but it could still be interesting.

Along the same lines, why not add weapons that burn out scanners/sensors/etc (like Hyper Optics or Psychic Receptors or Temporal Sensors, among others)? The weapons should be linked to the original scanner tech (i.e., if you can't build a particular scanner, you also can't defeat it). This would make it more important to research multiple scanner types.

One big problem with new techs and components is that the AI has to be scripted to research and use them appropriately...

[This message has been edited by DirectorTsaarx (edited 08 March 2001).]

[Triumvir Emphy]

Besides those special techs could be multiplayer only. A lot of games offer more techs/units/abilities and tricks when playing multiplayer (human vs human)only.