massive shield depleter

[Tuchukk]

I am just now getting back into se 4. Its been a while since I Last played. I would like to know what people think of the "massive shield depleter". I just got it from a ruin. It sounds like a good weapon, however, I wonder at how important it really is.

Thanks for the input.
'Tuchuk'

[Andrés]

Like most ruin tech it sounds impressive until you realize that they are too big and can fire only once per battle, so it's pretty useless except for some special case.

[TerranC]

Ruin techs are all but useless.

The shiled depleter and shied distruptor is so darn big and only fired once, it is realluy unable to fit into staple of ship design and if used, is fitted onto special ships.

Kinda like the Alien shield sapping ship in Wing Command Prophecy; Seems majestic at first, but when you find out it has no defense and only saps shields on capital ships, it becomes your sight for sore eyes, or fingers

THe Neural Combat Net is not effective, Unless you have a dreadnought at Novice and an Escort at 50% Legendary or something like it.

The Massive Planetary Shiled Generator is probably the most useful of them all. It provides 5000 shileds for combat; not much of an insurance policy against large fleet action but it will help damage lots of ships.

So in turn, you better be hoping that the ruins you do get help you to get Standard sets of tech up at least one level where it will do more good.

[Phoenix-D]

"THe Neural Combat Net is not effective, Unless you have a dreadnought at Novice and an Escort at 50% Legendary or something like it."

If you're using large fleets and taking losses all the time, it can make your fleets more effective, faster- you don't need to spend time at training facilities, and ALL ships get the bonuses of any ship over 20%. Well, as long as you don't loose the experienced ship(s)

IMO it really should be a standard tech tree item.

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

I think Neural Combat Net is evil when used to good advantage. It allows you to just have one highly skilled ship lending its skill to a whole fleet of ships that don't even need to be trained, which in serious combat with a peer human opponent is a big deal. Personally I like that it's a special tech, because it seems to me you'd need special insight and/or massive research to get something like that to work. I don't quite believe in it. It could make sense to mod in a similar component for the psychics, though. I just made a tweaked expansion of this for Proportions 2.2. If you thought it was useless before, you'll really hate it in this Version.

I also don't disdain the massive weapons so much. The one-shot thing is their main weakness, and in general does make them less effective than the highest tech Version of the standard Versions. If you're playing a game like Proportions or High research cost or limited colonizable planets or some other way where research rates let you burn straight through the tech tree, then these can become very useful weapons, it seems to me, particularly if you get them before you get the choice to invest in research into the regular specific weapon tech of the same type. I agree though that they tend to be good on specialized support ships used in a fleet, and more valuable if you're using tactical combat so you can fire at the best target with a good chance to hit.

If you're playing a game where the research tree gets exhausted really quickly, then ya these are a lot less useful, but the cause is the research rate in the game type you're playing, more than the inherent weakness of the weapons.

I also disagree on the massive shield bases - I think those are pretty bad - the weakest of all of them, I would say. They seem massively overpriced and waste a whole facility slot for 5000 points of protection. Try just building a Cargo Storage facility and filling it with small weap platforms with armor on them, and you will have a much stronger "shield" that will be built at much less expense, if I recall correctly from looking at the numbers a month or so ago. The only disadvantage is that the armor platforms will get destroyed bit by bit instead of regenerating in between battles. Though, it lack the other problem with the Massive Shield Base - that it's not phased, so PPB's will bypass it.

Massive shield bases (better ones) are the ancient tech I'd rather were standard. They used to be, in SE3. It seems more reasonable than the current gamey technique of building little protection platforms to soak up damage.

PvK

[dogscoff]

I find the massive depleters are useful for static defences - especially with the recently introduced extra range mounts for sats and bases. A weapons platform with a massive engine killer can really screw up an invasion fleet=-)