Planetary weapons problem.

[Krsqk]

I've had fleets of PN-only ships just mill around like you've described. When I added a lowly DUC I to each ship, they all descended on the planet like the plague.

[Q]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
The 'Damage to Kill One Population' ratio does NOT affect damage to cargo on the planet. It affects ONLY the population. This is the problem with planetary weapons that we have discussed before. You should not be able to kill large amounts of population with anti-ship weapons, AND you should not be able to pulverize planetary defenses with anti-population (area effect) weapons. The current system in inadequate.

But you can do this:
1.) Increase the damage value to kill population.
2.) Increase the damage of the neutron bomb in the same extent but leave all other weapons including planetary napalm unchanged.

[geoschmo]

Yes, well I hadn't really intended to start a debate bout whether incresing the points to kill one pop was realisitic or not. THe fact is with the mod I am using that is the way it is. Because of this it does make it much harder to kill the weapons plats with standard ships weapons. That is why I wanted the Napalm, and I was just taken off guard by their behaivior.

Thnaks for confiming the problem Krsqk. Perhaps it's some kind of bug.

I can say for certain there was nothing unusual about my strategies. My Napalm ships and my DUC ships all haad the same strategy, optimal range. SO if it was the stratgy none of them would have closed on the planet. There is something about having only planetary weapons on a ship that makes it not close with the planet if there are any other non planetary wepoans available apparently. I think that's a problem.

Geoschmo

[capnq]

This sounds like the same thing that requires point-defense ships to have at least one non-PDC weapon.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by capnq:
This sounds like the same thing that requires point-defense ships to have at least one non-PDC weapon.

I thought that too, except that DUC ships will close if there are fighters or missles that they can target with their weapons. Napalm can target the planet. I guess I will have to stick a DUC on them.

Geoschmo

[dumbluck]

Hmm. I have not seen this problem. In a recent PBW game, the 5000 RP I invested in Planetary Weapons was the most productive (so far); I've reduced the enemy to just his homeworld and one other colony (both protected by minefields for the time being. THAT was an unpleasant surprise!)

The ships were your basic design: escorts with just enough room for 2 PNs. No ducs, and everything worked just fine.

EDIT: Granted, this is v1.49. Maybe a Gold patch introduced this bug???

[ August 19, 2002, 10:10: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[DavidG]

My question is does this work in a ver 1.49 game? It sounds similar to the problem of ships not obeying their "don't hurt me orders". This worked fine in ver 1.49 but does not work in Gold.