Early weaonry?

[tbontob]

My experience has been the same.

Put missiles on Maximum Weapons Range (Primary) and Don't Get Hurt (Secondary) and watch the carnage begin in strategic combat.

The only drawback is going through a warp point and finding the enemy next to you or facing a vastly superior fleet (then they run out of space before they can shoot off enough missiles to destroy them).

[ August 20, 2002, 20:49: Message edited by: tbontob ]

[Krsqk]

PPBs cost the same amount to research, total, as Meson BLasters.

Oops. I stand corrected. I was thinking PPB was 10000/lvl.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Lord_Shleepy:
I have found that missiles often have a devastating effect on the AI very early in the game. A common AI ship design is the DUC I escort/frigate...which is completely ineffective when faced with missile fire in tactical combat...and can be very deadly in strategic as well if you have been careful of your combat strategy. Even against other missile races they hold their own - especially if you research Point defense early, which many AI races do not.

Bhaa, several TDM AI with medium/high bonus, Colonials for example, are missile-impregnable after turn 20.

[Fyron]

Don't scoff at the disruptor out of hand, if the opponent has shield regenerators or crystaline armor, you may want to take out shield generators as well as drain the shields, or theyll be back up again the next combat round

Shield regenerators are not very useful in the normal game. 1 LM Shield Depelter V (300 dmg, 30 KT) will drop the shields regenerated by 12 Shield Regenerator Vs (300 shield points, 240 KT). That is no reason to use Shield Disruptors. As for Crystalline Armor, the Shield Depleter knocks out the shields that the previous APB hit raised up. By the time you have APB XIIs, CA isn't much of a threat, esp. with large and heavy -mounted APBs.

[oleg]

I disagree wholeheartly. You praise LM depletor that can drain 300 shield points but dismiss out of hand a weapon that for twice size can kill once and for all 3 generators - up to 1100 shield points ! And when you fight CA ships, how do you design ships for startegic combat ? Every APB is preceded by shield depletor ? That's very ineffective use of weaponry in all the most important earlier rounds of battle when shields are still high and you will waste several APB.

[Growltigga]

Originally posted by oleg:

Bhaa, several TDM AI with medium/high bonus, Colonials for example, are missile-impregnable after turn 20.[/QB][/quote]

Too right and this means you need to revert to using DUCs/APBs and armoured ships against them. It means you are going to take casualities going toe to toe with them.

It is a pity that more of the TDM AI are more adaptable. The Pyrochette are buggers to a missile using race as they also use missiles and pack in PDCs. DUCS and PDCs work nicely against them and I wish they would react to being whomped this way by going the same route, ie replacing CSM's with APBs/DUCs whatever

[oleg]

Originally posted by Growltigga:
The Pyrochette are buggers to a missile using race as they also use missiles and pack in PDCs. DUCS and PDCs work nicely against them and I wish they would react to being whomped this way by going the same route, ie replacing CSM's with APBs/DUCs whatever[/QB]

When Master Belizarius made Pyrochette AI, he wanted them to be different from other races, to make game more interesting. Thus Pyrochette' thematic weapononry are Temporal weapons. Unfortunately, low level TDB are very weak and Pyrochette has to use CSM for rather long time. But eventually they will have some dangerous ships with TDB, shield accelerators and tachion cannons.

[ August 21, 2002, 11:33: Message edited by: oleg ]