Newbie Question...Weapon Platforms ?

Claymore · #1 January 5th, 2001, 01:49 AM

Please help me understand Weapon Platforms. I know there are various sizes. for planet protection..how do you implement them ? On satelites how ? on the ground on planets ..how ? Are there other ways to use them.Can they be sent with a colony ship to provde instant new colony protection ?
Thanks.

Puke · #2 January 5th, 2001, 02:11 AM

they sit on the ground and kill anything that comes near the planet. you can load them as cargo just like you can load population.

God Emperor · #3 January 5th, 2001, 02:18 AM

As a recently graduated newbie, I know where you are coming from but can help.

Think of weapons platforms as planetary defence bases.
You build them on a planet and they take up cargo space. Ships with cargo bays can move them around (use transfer cargo command). Therefore, a colony ship with a cargo bay could carry a certain number of WP's.

You design them in the Unit Create menu.
They cost no maintenance but cannot be upgraded. When you want to get rid of them (to replace them with new ones), you use the jettison cargo command.

Early models should be equipped with missiles until you get decent projectile or beam weapons. Fitting them with sensors and armour is useful, but, I'm not sure about shields.

Their only use is defending planets. They are very useful at supporting defensive fighters and ships. On their own though, they are not so good as enemy ships can move in, fire weapons and retreat out of WP weapons range. Individually they are more useful than satellites and bases for defending planets, although satellites can be better if you have dozens of them (which is possible because once launched into space, they dont have a cargo limit).

Hope that helps.......

God Emperor · #4 January 5th, 2001, 02:41 AM

As final note, I must admit that I dont use them very much. I prefer ships and fighters (if point defence hasnt become prevalent) to defend planets. Later on in the game you should be defending warp points so planetary defences become somewhat academic....

Early on in the game I use my Explorer class small transport, which has two satellite bays and can hold 10 satellites. During tactical combat, it can launch the satellites at sufficient distance from the planet to make attacks by one or two destroyers class ships or lower, suicidal in the case of the AI or stalemate against a human opponent.

Usually resource stocks and shipyard capacity are not so tight that you cannot have at least one or two ships in each of your border systems that has colonies....

Nyx · #5 January 5th, 2001, 06:40 PM

I find that WP with several PD weapons and missiles can stalemate or win against any ship that tries to duck in and out of weapon range. Especially if you have missiles with a range of 10 or more as no direct fire weapons can fire from that range.

With regard to transporting them via colony ships, the smallest WP is 200kt in size so colony ships can't move those puppies until late in the game. The transports you normally load with population can. However, even the smallest world can build a cheap WP in one turn, so there's no real reason to transport them around.

A more advanced question is how do they effect damage distribution? For example, a planet has a facility, 10M people, and a WP. It gets his with a missile for 100 points of damage. Do the people die, the facility takes 100 damage, and the WP takes 100? Does it get eveny distributed? Does it hit first WP, then Facil, then population? Or, as I think, does it get randomized like components on a ship?

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Baron Munchausen · #6 January 5th, 2001, 07:53 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Nyx:
I find that WP with several PD weapons and missiles can stalemate or win against any ship that tries to duck in and out of weapon range. Especially if you have missiles with a range of 10 or more as no direct fire weapons can fire from that range.

With regard to transporting them via colony ships, the smallest WP is 200kt in size so colony ships can't move those puppies until late in the game. The transports you normally load with population can. However, even the smallest world can build a cheap WP in one turn, so there's no real reason to transport them around.

A more advanced question is how do they effect damage distribution? For example, a planet has a facility, 10M people, and a WP. It gets his with a missile for 100 points of damage. Do the people die, the facility takes 100 damage, and the WP takes 100? Does it get eveny distributed? Does it hit first WP, then Facil, then population? Or, as I think, does it get randomized like components on a ship?

ALL CARGO on a planet must be destroyed before facilities and population is damaged. This is the only way the game could work. Think about it. You can build "Cargo Facilities" to increase your storage capacity. What if one of these got destroyed before all the cargo was gone? You could have more cargo than your planet has capacity for, which makes no sense.

So, not just WPs, but troops, sats, or even mines, act as "armor" for your planet. The only exception is "Smart Bombs" which hit the targeted facility type immediately (Resupply Depot or Space Port -- Dang, I want a SPACE YARD smart bomb!)...

I have considered, but not yet tried, building WPs crammed full of the highest value armor (or best shield generators) I can come up with just to protect the planet and the other WPs that are shooting back at the attackers. The problem is that cargo seems to be damaged "randomly" just as components in a ship are, so there's no special order to build them in and put the "dummy" WPs in line for damage first.

I find that taking the TIME to build WPs on new colonies, even small ones, can be very costly. If you are expanding quickly you want to have a resupply depot in each new system as quickly as possible. So, I prefer to send WPs by transport. I wish the AI was smart enough to send them that way, too. it would make new AI colonies much less predictably easy targets.

nweaver · #7 January 5th, 2001, 08:18 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Nyx:
I find that WP with several PD weapons and missiles can stalemate or win against any ship that tries to duck in and out of weapon range. Especially if you have missiles with a range of 10 or more as no direct fire weapons can fire from that range.

Unfortunatly, this dies to dedicated bombers: Back when I was actually building ship fleets against the AI, I'd have to deal with some rather tough planets, full of weapons platforms, and the AI has a "thing" for such weapons platforms.

Dedicated bombers, a few in each fleet, chassis with only point defense and bombs (+ armor/shields), tended to shread these planets. They would have enough point defense to knock down most of the missile swarms, and one or two bombloads tended to be enough to eliminate the platforms.

Nyx · #8 January 5th, 2001, 10:14 PM

They also tend to be unable to stop plage ships. I like making escorts with plague bombs and sure the enemy will kill it, but it only has to fire once.

But I tend to get very good results from my WPs against the AI, and I usually play with strategic combat only. Against a human, I'd prefer a combined defense, or larger platforms. Smalls are still wonderful in the early game and useful in many cases in the mid game.

As for them taking time, I find that I have so many worlds with 1-5 facilities that I can stick them on emergency build and get everything done plenty fast, then they just sit around doing nothing. Why not tack on one more item and build some maintenance-free defence before pumping fighters and/or sats? Gotta be careful on the smaller worlds though becuase they might make it unable to fit any sats.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

God Emperor · #9 January 6th, 2001, 12:25 AM

NWEAVER, I agree entirely. I assault planets with mixed missile/beam weapons regularly in Tactical mode and wipe out WP's with hardly a scratch. I usually do it with around four ships which allows me to keep zipping in and out. This limitation with WP's is not purely a function of AI players, human defenders will have the same problem too....

As I said before, I only build them to back up ships if I'm hard pressed early on....

God Emperor · #10 January 6th, 2001, 12:30 AM

One other trick I get up to is to use my Explorer class ships to move into missile range of enemy planets and deploy missile satellites. Early on, no planetary based weapons can target the satellites at range 8+ so the ten satellites I deploy, just bomb the crap out of the planet unopposed. Try it and see what I mean. Its a little tedious but very effective.....and will work against human players who fail to defend their planets with ships...