Fighters and point defense

PDB Fighters would be awesome. Who doesn't want Interceptors? Problem is, they'd probably run off instead of hanging around their escortees.

And no, all PD weapons don't appear to target the same seeker, but they will tend to aim for a certain preferential level of targeted overkill, which may result in the appearance of aiming at the same seeker. PDBs are the only PD that doesn't suck, though.

Did they get that piece of code working at last?
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There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Not really. The PD works halfway decently...but only if you leave auto-target on. Otherwise they sit there and nothing on Earth can make them fire, but if you leave auto-target on, they invariably do things like slag your intended capture target. And I can't really find any combination of target priorities that tells them to shoot at targets until the target's engines are crippled, as opposed to ignoring it and letting them flee merely because they've lost their weapons, which are typically on the front of the enemy ship and therefore die first, but at the same time not try to be avoidant of those and hang back, instead pursuing enemies and simply mowing the cripples down before they can flee in passing.

I've been having a fair amount of problems with point-defense. It seems that when I have a ship engaged in combat with another ship, the point-defense will not attack incoming seekers or fighters.

Several factors contribute to that: First, point defense has a limited reaction rate. If you are too close, the missiles will impact before PD can autolock. Second, if you have ordered manual firing of weapons, autotarget will disable and PD will cease to function. Third, non-PDB defenses can easily saturated, since they typically get one, maybe two chances to engage an incoming seeker or fighter, and it tends to take 3-4 shots to kill. In a close range engagement, even a PDB may only get two shots. This means that for every incoming seeker, you can expect to consume 3 turrets per volley fired shooting at it. Unless the number of PD turrets vastly outnumbers the numbers of seekers, you have long engagement range, or you're using PDBs, you're going to get hit and die. As AI fleets typically horrifically outnumber yours, there are going to be a LOT of incoming missiles. Fighters may chew up 8-9 shots due to misses before dying, too, but fortunately move slower and can be defended against with +eva, whereas seekers ignore your +eva when they reach you so kill really quickly, the only defense being to shoot them down before impact.

I would consider yourself lucky to have found an AI race that is stressing your PD . Not that really helps you thou, try having a couple of dedicated PD ships in your fleet (or grouping) Just make small cheap and cheerful ships and load them with no offensive fire power just as much PD as you can Jam in there.

Also research meson blasters as they give you a point defense cannon that is short range (7 I seem to remember off the top of my head) but fire every 0.5 seconds and have decent damage that doesn't reduce over range.

I'm working on a rather extensive mod that is looking to take advantage of the wide ranges of weapon capabilities. I'm looking at enabling a wide variety of point defense technologies. However, I'm wondering if the targeting routines work serially, instead of in parallel.

By this, I mean: If a ship is attacking another ship, and is then attacked by fighters, will the ship
a) Continue to attack the ship until it the target is destroyed? (serial)
b) Engage the incoming fighters with all available PD, as they come in range? (parallel)

I have found a way to better work multiple PD systems defending a host ship. Now I want to make sure that the weapons will be employed properly.

Good a sensible multi targeting system for Point defence is I feel essential to having them work properly. I have so far found it far too easy to be swamped by fighters and seekers and to swamp others with them. Neither is at all good

Hmmm I miss multi targetting from SEIV, yes I know you can do it now, but its such a faff in real time combat, and putting "turns" into the real time combat just feels to much like microcheatingmanagement to me. That said we really do need the game to handle PD a bit better.

Just make sure you develope Messon Blasters cos they come with the best PD gun in the game for close up defense the PD cannon with its .5 second fire rate and consistant damage out to range 7. After that it has to be bomblets, even thou they use a point of ordinance, range 20 and decent damage make them good anti fighter weapons as long as you have the combat sensors and other bonuses to make em accurate.