Weapon Platforms - Overly Powerful or Just Balanced?

[Gandalph]

And even with large platforms and massive mount, greatest range is 14. CSM 5 is 16. You can still sit outside range and pummel them with missiles.

[Taera]

I've voted that they are overpowered, but...
A specialized force of several destroyers or LCs, all powered with a Solar Sail, Stealth & Scattering armors, ECM and perharps a little racial bonus and training could easily wipe out your best planet unless you have 200 WPs all with missiles. then they wont _wipe_ it but will damage it a lot.
Think about it - planetary napalm V with damage of 600 is a considerable enemy for the planets. WIth larger mount each napalm shot does as much as 1200, 2400 and 3600 damage. Thats a lot for one shot, overpowering even the WMG and whatever else you can think of.
OK, so say you have 12 LCs all armed to teeth with Large mounted Napalms.
Without use of PDC the described above LCs have as much as 4 Large Napalms.
1,200 x 4 x 12
this is 57,000 points of damage _per shot_.

Important to note that planetary defenses do not have multiple targetting ability.

OK, your defenses wiped out three, say four.
Two misses.
(1,200 x 4 x [12-4]) - (1200 x 2) = 36000
That should wipe out most of the defenses.
Huge, well settled planets would be considerably more difficult to destroy, but hey, its a war and its a HUGE+BREATHABLE+SETTLED
If you lost 20 LCs to such a planet it is nothing when compared to a HUGE, fully settled planet.
Just imagine this was a mining colony....

Anyway you get my point.
without use of the expensive armor (=more time to build) you could build even more of those ships. You might lose them, but it will hurt to the enemy much more than it will hurt to you.

Also important note is that Planetary Napalm V is a cheap early-game weapon with small size and low cost. WPs are NOT overpowered.

(Hmm... my habit of putting a planetary napalm on anything bigger than a cruiser might be handy when i finaly get Gold)

EDIT: spelling

[ June 09, 2002, 21:13: Message edited by: Taera ]

[Mephisto]

Taera, you are quite right about the relation between the loss of 20 ships and a huge world. Only thing, IIRC planets can target multiple targets in a turn but don't do it always, don't ask me why. I'm fairly certain that I have seen a planet taking out several ships in one turn.

[Batman]

Can't a single Weapons Platform only target one ship, but multiple WP's should be able to target multiple ships. Unless they all have the same targeting priorities, and all make the same choices.

One person I play regularly with makes lots of weapons platforms specifically tasked with targeting troop transports above all else, because I had a phase where I went a bit troop crazy.

[Batman]

Also, don't anti-planet drones work really well for attacking well defended planets. Provided, of course, you use a lot of them. Attacking with a combination of drones/ships/fighters etc is a good way to overwhelm planet based PDC and missile defences I think.

[tesco samoa]

I do not think that they are over powerful.

Planet assalts should be expensive.

I would rather have powerful wp's than an escort with a missle destroying a planet.

Makes planetary naplam a worth while investment.

[LGM]

I just started playing gold, so I cannot comment about whether they are overpowered or not there. In 1.49, they are good for defending against a small fleet picking off planets. Deployed minefields count against your In Space unit limit and are limited in how many you can put in a square, so Weapon Platforms are certainly useful. I would suggest Null Space or Napalm to attack weapon platforms. The former will skip phased shields and take out platforms quicker. Also, since weapon platforms are static, you can make your secondary movement strategy to be Do not get Hurt so they will withdraw after firing.

If a player is spending all his resources to fill up every huge world with WPs, than he is not building offensve weapons (Fighters and Drones). It may be costly to take out the WP worlds, but you can blockade theminstead. Once you take out orbital shipyard bases, he can only build at most one ship there, so you can keep a Huge world blockaded quite cheaply with a small fleet. At least a huge reserve of fighters could overwhelm the blockading fleet.

[Wardad]

If a stack of weapon platforms act like a stack of SATs then the targeting is not by individual platform, but by platform design type.

ex..

1. All 5 SAT1s target 1. 2 SAT1s kill it, so 3 SAT1s don't fire until next round.
2. SAT2s fire on next target 2, depleting shields.
3. SAT3s are shield depleters, so a new target 3 is picked.
4. SAT4s are missles, all SAT4s fire at target 2.
5. SAT5s damage target 2.
6. SAT6s are missles, al fire on target 2.

note: (first laid, first to fire, all SATs use first startegy)

Stack Mulitplexing is helped by changing the (only X) weapon type, the design name, or killing the target.
I don't know how this affects a WP with multiple weapon types.

So a swarm of small ships with planetary weapons could easily overwhelm a planets defenses, esp a missle defense. Throw in a few RAD and Plague bombs and just blockage for a while.

------------------------------------------------
Rock, Paper, Sissors

[capnq]

In Tactical Combat, if you right-click on a planet, one of the tabs on the info window will have a "Maximum number of targets" for the planet.

I only discovered this today, so I don't remember which tab it was.

[Taera]

Um, never seen such a thing. interesting.