Depleted Uranium Cannons to powerful!

[Cyrien]

Let me save you some effort.

In fact if your going for nothing but shield damaging then Large Shield Depleters are the way to go. They take up less space fire at the same rate and eat up the same supplies while doing more damage to shields and taking up less material to build. However they are not capable of damaging the ship itself only the shields. And I have on several occassions found that the difference between defeat and victory was the extra 60 damage that each of those guys pumped out.
Finally using the Temporal fits in with the personality of the race I normally play with.

Here are the actual numbers assuming Large Mount:

Temporal - 240 damage to shields - 60 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
45 kt

Depleter - 300 damage to shields - 0 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
30 kt


No damage reduction for range in either of them. Both have range of 7.

[General Hawkwing]

Saben,
As you know, there are more ways to get tech than just boarding a ship. Plus every defensive measure you put on a ship requires space and research points. The problem with specialization is that you limit your ability to surprise the enemy. A balanced task force will survive longer and gain in the long run.
I've seen this kind of "rush" idea in other games and there is always a way (usually many) to counter it. MM has built a balanced game, allowing for many play styles to work extremely well. But I think "history" will show a balanced research approach will over come a single weapon focus one.

[Commander G]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cyrien:
[In fact if your going for nothing but shield damaging then Large Shield Depleters are the way to go. They take up less space fire at the same rate and eat up the same supplies while doing more damage to shields and taking up less material to build. However they are not capable of damaging the ship itself only the shields. And I have on several occassions found that the difference between defeat and victory was the extra 60 damage that each of those guys pumped out.
Finally using the Temporal fits in with the personality of the race I normally play with.

Here are the actual numbers assuming Large Mount:

Temporal - 240 damage to shields - 60 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
45 kt

Depleter - 300 damage to shields - 0 to ship
Fire Rate - 1
30 kt


No damage reduction for range in either of them. Both have range of 7.[/b]

---

I like the Temporal Trait as well, but I like the other weapon they get, the one that ignores shields and armor. It is a nice counter to Organic races. Races can avoid the Shield depleting type weapons by simply using Armor instead of Shields. At low levels, armor is actually lighter and cheaper than shields. I ran into early problems with the Temporal trait against human players becaue my research was going into all the preliminary stuff early on for that trait. I was severly set back trying to defend with poor weapons while researching my special trait ones. Unfortunately, when you meet a race, it shows you their advanced traits so the player knew I had Temporal. I had to make some fast tech trades with other players to hold him off.

[Cyrien]

Yes I also use the Temporal Shifter though generally more as a specialized ship to take out enemies with large defenses in both shields and armor... especially armor though.

[Saben]

General Hawkwing,
I have to disagree. Some weapons can be shown to be clearly superior, and nothing will change those numbers. Meson bLasters cost more, even includeing the extra level of physics, than poleron beams. There is flat no reason to bother with them, period.

Wave Motion Guns are so costly, that unless you have a massive research advantage (ie you were gonna win anyway), sombody who selected a different weapon to go for and placed the left over points into various defensive or production techs would hand you your own head on a platter.

Anti-Proton beams offer the same range advantage the WMG has, for lesser cost and higher efficency. I would consider them a viable research path for sombody with superior engines. On the other hand, sombody with superior engines could go for ripper beams instead. Then, they would have spent far far less (the prerequisites were researched anyway) for a weapon with much higher efficency. The range disadvantage won't matter if you are closeing in on your enemy at a rate of two.

As to defensive measures, frankly boarding is the cheapest way to steal a ship. The defense is available early on in the propulsion tree, and takes only 10 kt. If the enemy is psycic, you will be forced to pay the costs for a master computer. But, even then, you are only looking at about 100k research points. I'm positive it costs alot more than that to get efficive allegince subverters, but I don't have the numbers in front of me.

Other tech takeing measures involve intel ops, which frankly I have never had used against me effectivly. Perhaps my strategies will need adjustment after I play a few games against other humans asside from my local friends.

Lastly, I agree that balance is important. But in my mind that balance is between missile, beam, boarding, AMS, repair, carriers, troop transports, and special case ships. The effectiveness gain for bothering to research down more than one beam weapon tree is not worth the research expenditure.

[General Hawkwing]

Saben,
I agree with your statement:

"Lastly, I agree that balance is important. But in my mind that balance is between missile, beam, boarding, AMS, repair, carriers, troop transports, and special case ships. The effectiveness gain for bothering to research down more than one beam weapon tree is not worth the research expenditure."

That was my point. I did not mean to infer that a player should research more than 1 beam style weapon.
Unless in the full game you would need to reach a certain level in two separate fields to open a new field. EX: MB level 4 and APB level 5 to get "Hull Fracturing Beam of Kluge" field.

[LintMan]

I haven't seen the whole tech tree yet, but it's starting to look to me like there are definite winners and losers in the weapons tree, which is a shame, since all incentive to use the rest of the tree and have a broader tech range goes away.

Something that might fix that would be to add some new parameters to the weapons, making different ones better in certain situations. Perhaps this could be done by making the accuracy vary by weapon-type. Or if certain armors or shields did better against certain weapon types (or vice-versa). (ie: say the next level of shields above the Phased ones only took 50% damage from phased weapons, or say a new armor type that is immune or takes reduced damage from projectile weapons.)

That sort of stuff would make more of a rock-paper-scissors feel to the tech tree, where if the enemy spcializes too much, you could develop the counter-measure.