Shields?

[Taqwus]

Crystalline armor seems to contribute to shield regen even before the shield falls. As far as I can tell, it's something like

shield += MAX((shield_max - shield),
(5 * total_crystaline_armor (in levels)),
damage)

That is, I've never seen a hit *increase* the shields to above where the shield was before the hit (but maybe I wasn't testing with sufficiently weak weapons), but the armor still recharges the shield even if the shield held and the armor wasn't touched.

So a Battlestation with, say, 30 Crystalline Armor III components (600 KT if memory serves, but a BS has a LOT of space) and, oh, 4 Phased Shield Gen. V (560 shield pts IIRC, and not pierced by phased weaponry) would be effectively immune to most < 450 pt weapons until the total shield strength < 450. Temporal weapons would work, as would ramming (at least with cobalt warheads; don't know how ramming damage is calculated), but not a whole lot else. Figure Large (2x) is the best that fits on a cruiser, so one needs a base damage > 225 to even reach the armor, which is, er, rather steep. Shield depleters probably won't work, because the regen happens *after* damage is assessed but before the next weapon fires...

I don't recall "lucky" ships bypassing shields, but against such a BS, you'd better hope so. =) Or use an allegiance shifter or bording party.

The only saving graces would be that a) the armor/shields take up a fair bit of KT, so it's not going to have a dozen Massive Shard Cannon X's bLasting everything in sight, b) such a monster is hopefully going to be expensive and slow to build (but crystalline armor is cheaper than emissive, IIRC), c) it can't move, so if you can hit whatever it's guarding from the other side, you might make the BS rather moot.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Taqwus]

Oh, bother. Make that MIN, of course.

[Paladin]

The math seems to balance out, but I Assure you I've seen the shields regenerate completely...
After about 20 turns, I had this little colony in another empire's system, so I wanted to build a Killer defense station there. I took a basic space station, put the requirements, two Shield gen IV, 5 Crist. Armor II, 3 Large Shard Cannons IV (and a capMsl I think), all the latest I had this early in game.
Since my Phong AI "friend" also had crystaline tech, this was going to be rough... Still, they would need to make at least 50 pts of damage to begin to dent the shields... quite impossible this early in game, even with rocket packs...

Suffice to say, each and every attack on my station resulted in total victory, except for the fact that onc the ennemy came from behind and obliterated the colony's population ;-( but left the (endless supplied) Defense Station to hold the planet advitam aeternam...

I don't even bother to watch the cruisers crush on this baby like water on a reef...

Suffice to say, Cristalline armor really is too powerfull... As I said before, maybe if it wern't cumulative, like the combat sensors...

[chagarra]

You forget the equaliser......Massive Shield Depleter......Interesting "special weapon"

[Paladin]

I didin't forget the anti-shield (wich is a good thing, if only the AI could be better ;-) The point is that Crsystal Armor regenerates the shield BEFORE any damage is applied to the internal structure...

Fortunately, there are always ways to deal with this, but it's kind of lame to have Heavy weapons (Light cruiser or better) to destroy a single frigate equipped with Crystaline Armor...

And then There's always the Psychics...
;-))

[Taqwus]

(Battlestation notes -- for 26k minerals, you can get one with a Master Computer III, 30 Crys Armor III, 6 Phased Shield Gen V, 4 Shield Regen V, ECM III, Sensors III, Multiplex III, 3 (M) Shard Cannon X, and 1 (M) Wave-Motion Gun III. For the price, it's fairly hard (for most races) to kill. And, with a MC and pretty heavy shielding, it's going to be hard to subvert/board it, as well. Might serve well as a very tough resupply base for a warp-point defense, especially with a few attack cruisers for backup and a repair ship).

Shields are good if you're going *against* Crystalline folks, 'tho, considering that shard cannons pierce armor. Crystalline vs. Crystalline in a Black Hole sector would be a very, very nasty fight with all damage going straight to components... Shields also stop boarding parties, although I've never seen the AI try.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Paladin]

This battleStation seems a bit extreme, but it is fairly impregnable... (did you see the upkeep costs??)

On the other hand, I once had one of my advanced colonies toasted even if it had an equivalent baby (well, only 3rd generation, but that was more than all oponents ;-)

The station just happened to be on the far side of the planet, so the ennemy fleet just shot the colony to death, and was afterwards obliterated by the station...
I remained with a perfectly invincible defense base with endless supplies above a dead planet, holding off entire armadas of incomming ships... (it was no in ennemy territory ;-))

I can see it would still be feasible to get past one of those stations, like with a massive shield disruptor (say, model II with 2000 shield points) and boarding parties (lots of them, did I hear "SelfDestructDevice?" ;-)
On the other hand, I can barely begin to imagine the glimmers of the kind of AI that would be needed for this and I'm at my desk in an AI Univ. Lab ;-)

A human player could get around if he really wanted to, but a computer would have a real hard time to do so...
Maybe somekind of multiagent system...
(having the ministers as independant agents would be cool, imagine them "argue" over a course of action ;-))

[This message has been edited by Paladin (edited 24 August 2000).]