Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?

[LGM]

[quote]Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Antiproton beams should certainly never be used in any sort of atmosphere

We should be able to use Antiproton (Antiproton s are anti matter are they not?) beams to deplete atmospheres and convert them to None worlds. That would make for more incentive to take None as a gas type. Something like 100,000 KT of damage per size to deplete an atmostphere. Double that for Gas Giants and half way convert them to Rock.

I suppose the destruction of matter would overheat and radiate the world before the atmosphere would be depleted. The game could use some radioativity factors in the game. Use the Environment Resitance factor to reduce the ill effects of radioactivity.

Ever consider what a ramming colonizer would do to a planet? 300 KT of mass hurling right at a city would do nasty things to a fairly wide area.

[ June 27, 2002, 17:49: Message edited by: LGM ]

[LGM]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
My italics. That's the issue. A ship, a WP, even a troop, is a single 'hard' target. You have to hit it directly with a concentrated attack. Facilities are less 'hard' but at least fairly localized. You can see/scan the location of a mine, factory, research lab and bLast it.

Population is a whole other thing. People are not likely to be in one convenient location unless, as Geo points out, the colony is a hostile atmosphere type and everyone has to live in domes. So it's just not realistic to be able to wipe the slate clean on a populated planet with DUCs or even APBs or any other beam weapons.[/QB]

The Baron has a good point, weapons should probably be unable to clear a world. The population drop should have diminishing returns with no affect to 1 million. To completely wipe out a population would require poisoning the environment (overheat the atmosphere, introduce a lethal chemical in the air or eco system, excessive radition). Of course these weapons would have lingering effects making the planet useless outside of domes.

[Suicide Junkie]

OMG! You want to deplete an atmosphere with APBs?!?

You do realize you're talking about matter-antimatter annihilation with all (or at least most) of the atoms in the atmosphere, right?
Annihilating a planetary atmosphere with antimatter would vaporize the entire starsystem!

Check out This amusing thread, about Spoo's sig, and a squirrel made of antimatter

[mac5732]

farther in the one tech tree, can't remember name right now, you have torpedo's etc that target spaceyards, supply bases or other specific targets, problem is that they are so far up the tree that by the time you research them they are basically useless, maybe bring them down lower on the tree so they can be used earlier in the game??

Also defending planet/s troops should be given something like a static defense against assaulting ground troops. Assaulting troops should not always land 100% intact in a planet assault, there would always be some type of ground fire at the assault shuttles, at least in fairly advanced colonies, some casualties should be taken.

Ground assaults need to be looked at closer so their usage would be more beneficial then just glassing a planet, but at the same time not making it to easy to accomplish. Ground troops should have a fairly decent defensive value vs assaulting troops on their way down. Therefore, just because you have more numbers in assault, it wouldn't always be a given that you will take the planet, this could be tied in with the physcial strength of your race....

just some ideas mac

[ June 27, 2002, 19:35: Message edited by: mac5732 ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Planetary weapons has the Smart Bombs for taking out Resupply Depots and Space Ports. They are in the upper half of the field, at tech levels 8, 9, 10 but it's not a very expensive field. You might possibly move them to computers, since they involve 'homing' technology that has to figure out which facility is to be the target. I wouldn't move them down very far in the Planetary Weapons field, though. They can be very powerful. A drone with a 'smart bomb' warhead might be even more effective than a ship armed with the direct-fire weapon. You could send a swarm of drones fairly cheaply (erm, if drones are modded to be cheaper... )

[mac5732]

tks, Baron couldn't remember which one, I agree, moving them would be a better idea, one reason is that a lot of players don't research to far into planetary weapons at first because most of your beam weapons will do the same thing as the napalm etc. so it usually is done later in the game. Moving them so they become more readily researched might be the way to go making their use more important especially for raiding units.
Again, I think it comes down to too many weapons being able to pound a planet, maybe more restriction as to weapons or only certain types??

[Wardad]

MOO2 simply cut beam weapon strength in half for planet attacks. Missles and bombs were not reduced. I just swarmed the planets with missiles.

Anyway, it seems like a nice fix. But I'm not sure if it would be easy to do in SEIV.

It maybe easier to add special WP armor and double planetary weapon power.

[ June 27, 2002, 20:51: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[CW]

Damage Points To Kill One Population := 200

Just increase this number to a hugh amount in your settings.txt and do the same for your planetary weapons. That will mostly solve the problem but your "nuclear" capital ship missiles will will hardly kill anyone.

[ June 27, 2002, 22:44: Message edited by: CW ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by CW:
Damage Points To Kill One Population := 200

Just increase this number to a hugh amount in your settings.txt and do the same for your planetary weapons. That will mostly solve the problem but your "nuclear" capital ship missiles will will hardly kill anyone.

No, that falls onto one horn of precisely the dilemma we are trying to avoid. Planetary weapons will then be able to smash WPs to dust.

We need to be able to damage WPs in a reasonable way with standard weapons without being able to wipe out the population, and able to damage population with planetary weapons without being able to effortlessly annihilate WPs. We cannot 'balance' the system with the available options. Either standard ship weapons are too powerful against planets or 'planetary' weapons are too powerful against planets. The problem is just that.

[ June 27, 2002, 22:54: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Phoenix-D]

"No, that falls onto one horn of precisely the dilemma we are trying to avoid. Planetary weapons will then be able to smash WPs to dust."

Bump the WP's health up then. Fairly simple to add a WP-only mount that adds large amounts of hit points to them (troops too, though that's a bit diceyer). Then only facilities are vulnerable.

Phoenix-D