Point Defense - the differences

Well the most obvious thing is thange difference, bomblets have a range of 20 and do stdard damage across it. They are best for shooting down fighters, drones and sats.

The best point defence in the game is the PD Blaster (you get this as an off shoot from Messon Blasters which happen to be the best non-racial trait weapons in the game) as it has range 7 which is OK, but it has a fire rate of .5 seconds against 2 seconds for most other PD guns.

The 2nd in my opinion is the bomblets, that range 20 is great against fighters sats and drones. They also allow your point defence ships to stand off planets and provide flak cover for troop assault ships going in, however they do require ordinance which can be a draw back if you don't want to use ordinance.

As a side issue these forums don’t seem to be all that actively Moderated so I am not sure that will happen.

Back to topic

I think the PD weapons are meant to be layered and have been experimenting with this and have found that each type of PD system seems to fire independently and that the way to get best effect is to use multiple types on the same ship for example id you have six Beam PD’s they will all engage the same target or class of target and blow the hell out of it, and ignore other threats. However if you have say a flack cannon a bomblet launcher and a mix of Meson and cannon PDs you will be able to engage the fighters who launched the seekers as well and provide cover to the troop transport that you are escorting. In lieu of getting back the same strictly turn based tactical combat system you had in SEIV where you could manually target and fire each weapon I think this works

None of the weapons have an area of effect but the Bomblet launcher is the best for range with meson blaster based ones being the best for close in defence. If attacked by seekers fired from long range by stand off vessels the seekers will be engaged by both systems separately giving a better chance of an intercept. The bomblet launcher is also the most effective for killing fighters before they engage even if it uses ordinance most other Pds are short enough in range to be in or close to fighter weapons range

I am convicned of it.

I have developed a spreadsheet on Excel that shows damage vs range for the stock non-race tech PD weapons. The MB PD, because it is half the size of normal 20kt PD, fires at 4x the rate, and does twice as much damage anyway (15 vs 10 base) is 12x as potent as regular PD and blows everything else out of the water. Of course everyone knows this, but when you see MB PD so far in front of everythign else you know something is out of whack. That's the first clue.

The second clue is, with PD firing everything at once at the first traget that comes within range, to make PD effective really requires the layering someone else mentioned already: PD for short range, flak cannon for midrange, and bomblets for long range, all on the same PD cruiser (or scattered throughout your fleet). That is how SE5 PD is supposed to work, not with one weapon being so overpowering.

Thridly there is that funny decimal point in the MB PD reload rate. Per the components.txt relaod rate it is stated as 500.0 milliseconds, and that is wher the big difference is. Remove the dcimal place and make it 5000 milliseconds (consitent with the same form as the noraml 2000 millisecond rate is stated for other weapons) and we have an MB PD that is 1.2x as effective as regualar PD, not 12x, a factor of 10. There is no where else in the game that I know of where a weapon is over 10x as effective as others in its class. If that isn't a typo bug i don't know what is.

If anyone can tell be how to attach part ofa spradsheet to a post I'll upload my table.

I think we should correct the apparent typo Vermithrax describes and set up PD's so they fire rapidly as they are so short ranged say 400-600ms for the close in stuff PDC's PDB's PDP's change that to 800-1200 ms for mid ranged stuff like flack cannon and keep it as it is for the relatively long ranged bomblet launcher.

I would also like to see PD mounts which would decrease the reload rate for the weapons say by 1% per TL and to a max of say 20% and may be boost the weapons range a little, and point defence control computers which would allow the ship to auto engage multiple targets, a bit like the multiplex tracking in SEIV, as a side issue worked out if and how Multiplex tracking works in SEV or does it just give bonuses to hit like it does in Starfury

Elsewhere, I argued that a single large PD ship is nowhere near as effective as 10 or so Frigates each with one or two PDs (preferably Beams as it's instant travel) in tight formation (I've modified my Formation_TaskForces.txt). Alternatively, launch PD satellites around the combat area, during combat.

Mind you, I play on Balance Mod, where all 3 regular PDs have 0.5 sec reload time, which is why I insist Beams are the best PD in BM. Flak and Bomblets add some variety, but 20 Beams on 10+ Ships in tight formation is my way of chewing through the small targets.

Yes, spreading PD out works around everything lighting off at the same target (well, somewhat).

Then Kwok has recognized this issue and resolved it that way in his mod (whihc I haven't tried yet). I still think MM intended MB PD to fire slower than regualr PD, balancing PD even more.

Refitting old frigate and destroyer hulls as pure PD is OK, I tend to fit them out with a couple of each different PD I have available to me.

This more just a way to take advantage of old hulls that have very experienced crews (this helps with your odds to hit, and with a range 20 PD gun every advantage is needed)

I also use those old hulls for sat and mine layers. (Don't use drones personally but no reason you couldn't use to carry those)

The biggest problem I see is that point-defense weapons are supposed to be short-range weapons for close-in defense. The ranges for PD weapons is far too long, especially at 20 hexes. The other big problem is they use no supply and only one uses some ordnance.

Point Defense weapons should be short-ranged last-ditch defense weapons and should use supply/ordnance. I sure hope MM makes these weapons more realistic for point defense.
Omnius

I think these are fine at the moment as we have close in PD we have an intermediate weapon in the form of the flack cannon and we have the relatively long ranged anti missile, missile in the bomblet launcher and even a range of 20 is not that far compared with the 100+ of antiship weapons

How exactly is a range of 20 "too long" for PD? Thats virtually point blank range!
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There are 10 types of people in the world:

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

Range 20 is fine for taking out fighters, drones and sats. In fact I wish it was longer...

One consideration that hasn't been mentioned with PD range is ship size. The larger ships have footprints that are more or less 20 range in size, which nerfs PD completely if it doesn't have at least 30 or 40 range.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

OK, just to define... by range 20, you mean the THIRD range slot, right? 0, 10, 20?
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

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

Myself, I've been thinking of doubling direct fire projectile and seeker travel speeds [to avoid firing a 2nd volley before the first hit] and PD travel & reload speeds. Could also insist upon rapid supply/ordinance consumption this way.

Maybe further tweak PDBlasters such that (at 20kT per component) they do very little damage (and at shorter range), but reload very quickly.

Oh I guess I'd have to increase fighter and drone travel speeds to compensate too... Or reduce overall PD damage and Seeker HP... I'm rambling now, so I'll spare you the details.