Are some techs/wepons useless?

[Triumvir Emphy]

The point of different weapons is also cost, nobody here in this thread has said anything about cost, just how effective one weapon is compared to an other.

If you are metal heavy but have a severe lack in organics and radioactives, maybe Duc's are the best weapon for you, if you are radioactive heavy maybe nullspace weapons are it.

this game still is a game of economics, hence so many weapons that seem to be useless.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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phased shields only add protection against Phased Polaron Beams

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Still, PPBs are fairly easy to research, and they absolutely devastate normally shielded ships.

My bro, had a fleet of 4 Baseships with 2.5K shields, and 500 ablative armor. Unfortunately, with one standard shield in the mix, his legendary 50% fleet got wiped out, and even after three Save/Reload Tactical tries against a smaller force, he was defeated badly.

Losing a bit of shield strength is well worth protection against PPBs, but if your enemy is into other weapons, you can get better defence using (my modded) normal shields

I really wish there were shields that could block the specialty weapons. Then you could have low hitpoint protection against everything, or high hitpoint protection against some.


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As for cost, the reason why nobody cares about weapon prices is that the cost of engines, ship control & defences greatly outweigh the price of weapons.
Using a cheaper weapon system will only save you a modest percentage of the total ship cost, but your slightly larger & cheaper fleets will end up impotent and die in droves.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 20 March 2001).]

[Marty Ward]

Also one of the beauties of this game is that for every defense there is a counter and vice versa. I have yet to see the perfect fleet.

[Jourin]

One defense is armor. It is cheaper to research than shields and offers more protection per space (a level III generates 150 points for 40 tons while 40 tons of armor protects 160 points). It also cost less. 4x50 armor is 200 while a shield generator costs 300. Armor is also good against all shield skipping weapons especially the phased polaron beam. The disadvantage is that shields regenerate while armor needs to be repaired. For smaller ships through destroyer, armor is a better defense than shields. Battles are not long with smaller ships so shield regeneration adavantage is not that important. A 40ton shield generator limits your design flexiability where 4x10 armor lets you build in the weapons and protection mixture you desire. Factor in the lower research, build, and maintenance cost than shields and armor is a good choice. In larger ships the best design is a mixture of armor and shield generators. Armor is for more than just filling in that remaining 10ton space.

[Suicide Junkie]

Do you realize how pointless considering cost is?
-you're talking a 100 mineral difference on a ship that costs more than 2000 minerals for the control & engines!!!

Also, at mid-game tech, Armor maxes out at 4Hp/Kt, shields at >8Hp/Kt.

That's why I also added "Ablative armor", which gives up to 16Hp/Kt, but takes up one space.
That means you can easily lose 75 components (1200hp) of armor in a battle, and spend the next year in spacedock

Big tradeoffs there, works great.
Emergency defence forces get all armor, since they only have to win one battle, and can afford 20 turns of repairs. Attack ships usually get a mix of shields & armor. Long-Range Missions will go All Shields, since they can't repair.

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Now consider the fact that these are BASESHIPS, so tech cost is not an issue. shields provide twice the HP of unmodded armor, so phased shields are much better against BBPs that armor is.

Ablative armor was layered on these baseships, about 70 tiles thick (1100 hp), but they couldn't have all armor, since they only had 16 repair per turn, and needed to be always on the attack.
One ship's armor got ripped through on the first volley!
Putting 500 tiles of Ablative Armor on would have given them 8,000 hp, but they would never be finished repairs, see?

[Lucanos]

Suicide_Junkie:
"That's why I also added "Ablative armor", which gives up to 16Hp/Kt, but takes up one space."

Smart... Very smart...