Sorry for the newbie questions but...

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Shoujo:

1) Engine killers can be stopped by shields, but not armor, and a ship with no engines/supply can't fire weapons...? So an organic race would have to rely on shields to counter engine killers? Or would adding supply storage to every ship be enough?

Shields are always a good idea, and will keep your ships from being stranded. It's a good to keep one supply storage on so your weapons still fire, many TDM modpack races do this. Bummer if it gets shot out while you still have weapons. There was some talk of letting weapons have a few shots worth of supply storage.

2) Is multiplex tracking any use? I don't recall multiplex ever being any real use pre-Gold. Threads that I've looked at seem to indicate that at least in strategic combat a ship with multiplex fires on at most two targets if you're lucky .
..

Yeah, that was the latest consensus. But then again, how many targets do you really need. For a few ships, it's nice that it keeps fireing once one ship is dead. But do you have enough guns for a third?

Even on tactical, do you really need multiplex 5? How much piddling damage do you want to spread around? How many big guns does even a large ship have to really do something? I don't even research it, once I've got my ECM III I'm done.

[Puke]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
Even on tactical, do you really need multiplex 5? How much piddling damage do you want to spread around? How many big guns does even a large ship have to really do something? I don't even research it, once I've got my ECM III I'm done.

starbases, and very big ships from some of the mods, live and die by multiplex tracking. if you have a starbase with 10 massive mount weapons, each one could kill a single small ship.

on other designs, you need at least multiplex 2 to make sure your point defense fires after your weapons (or the other way around).

[Grandpa Kim]

on other designs, you need at least multiplex 2 to make sure your point defense fires after your weapons (or the other way around).

Is this something new? For me, PD has always fired irrespective of multi-plex. In fact I often have PD equipped ships before I have any multi-plex and they take out the missles just fine while the beam weapons take out the ships. The only possible exception could be PD firing at satellites. This may restrict the direct fire weapons to firing at the satellites too.... but I don't think so.

Kim

[Andrés]

How do I become a pro?
No one is being payed just to play and answer questions

PDC requires counts like a normal weapon (for tracking purposes) when fired manually.

You'll need multiplex tracking if you're using big ships against small ones.

This may be an extreme example but in my UVS mod multiplex tracking is what limits the firrepower of largest ships, Massive Worldships usually have most weapons unfired after killing 5 targets.
Hmm.. next time I edit that mod I should add stronger MT.

Drones can jump wp but as you can not order them to go to a planet to resupply, and they are destroyed when they run out you cant send them very far.

[rdouglass]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:

quote:

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on other designs, you need at least multiplex 2 to make sure your point defense fires after your weapons (or the other way around).

Is this something new? For me, PD has always fired irrespective of multi-plex. In fact I often have PD equipped ships before I have any multi-plex and they take out the missles just fine while the beam weapons take out the ships. The only possible exception could be PD firing at satellites. This may restrict the direct fire weapons to firing at the satellites too.... but I don't think so.

Kim

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IIRC only if you're targeting them (the sat's) manually in Tactical - I don't think it matters in strategic. If you manually target a stack of units (for instance, if you move into range, then target), it does use up one of your multiplex targets. If fighters or seekers move into range (then PDC fires), it doesn't.

P.S. I was one of the early adopters of the Talisman (been a favorite for over a year now). I used to use it all the time 'cause of the guarenteed hits. However, I think I'll change now......

[ September 06, 2002, 17:50: Message edited by: rdouglass ]

[capnq]

I take it they can't go through WPs either?

Drones can go through warp points if you can see the target when you give the attack command, and don't lose sight of it before the drone catches it.

I'm not sure whether a drone will chase a moving target into another system that you can see, though.

[Shoujo]

Again thanks for the replies. Just one Last question (at least for now ).

How common is it for players to rely on engine killers in the early game? Pre-Gold PPBs were the direct fire weapon people relied on heavily until they could get something better. The counter to PPBs until phased shields was armor. But now with the way engine killers work, relying on armor means a player'd get screwed over by engine killers which are cheap to reasearch and fairly low on the tech tree. (Is it just me or is this a worse combo than PPBs and armor-skipping Crystaline weapons...?) I don't see many options to counter this combo, and the ones I do see don't seem to be too good Have any of you Gold people developed a decent strategy...?

a) Go armor and shields on ships basically splitting your defense half against PPBs and half against engine killers.
b) Go seekers/fighters if the opponent doesn't have a lot of PD
c) Use diplomacy and ask an ally for help or buy off the enemy?
d) Pack a lot of supply storage on your ships

Hopefully I'm just worrying over nothing. Anyway thanks in advance.