Targeting WP's

PDs in the Balance mod no longer target troops.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

IIRC one of the updates in a recent patch was that the "shoot it until its weapons are gone" strategy now works against planets with WPs ie once the WP has no weapons the attacking ships will stop targetting the planet.

I'd really appreciate something along those lines; the current planet targeting system is fairly broken.

A targeting priority type each for "surface units" (WPs, troops, grounded fighters), "facilities", and "population" would be one way to handle it. Perhaps even split it further, into "combat facilities" and "noncombat facilities", or more detailed yet... it might be fun to send in a cloaked surgical strike targeted only at a captured planet's happiness facilities, for instance

Another option would be special weapon types; there are already different sorts of bombardment weapons, is it possible to add one that only (or mostly) damages defenses? There's the Smart Bomb (Resupply Depot) and Smart Bomb (Space Port), why not more? Ultimately, having a separate Smart Bomb type for everything seems unwieldy.

After some poking at the files, it appears the real "work" for special weapons is done in DamageTypes.txt, requiring a special damage type. Some of these checks call built-in code functions ( Is_Component_Weapon() for instance), and new functions probably can't be added except by MM. However, some use capability tests ( Does_Facility_Have_Ability("Supply Generation") for instance), and I don't see why you couldn't set up a damage type targeted against any of the existing values that appear in Facilities.txt next to "Ability # Type". (Adding new values probably requires code from MM.)

For example, setting a damage type to test for Does_Facility_Have_Ability("Planet Population Happiness") should produce the "Revolt Bomb" somewhat jokingly suggested earlier on; it will not only get the obvious Urban Pacification Centers, but also Fate Shrines, Temporal Vacation Services, Genetic Recoding Labs, and any modded facility that provides happiness, since it's checking on the underlying ability to affect such things.

What I don't understand yet is how / where in the damage process it decides to damage ground units instead of or in addition to facilities.

"Target Weapon Plantforms Only" would be a really interesting type of weapon. But since it would be so powerful, it shouldn't be avaible until the end of the Planetary Bombardment research IMO.

See element # 7 of changelog 1.37 for the details. If this is working, it's pretty much what we're after here.

Am I missing something here? Why can't you just write a strategy where only WPs with weapons are targeted and everything else is set to do not attack? Isn't there a WP listing in the priorities list? I'm at work and cant check myslef.

What Dvoongar was referring to, from 1.37 (included as of the 1.44 public release):
7. Fixed - If a strategy has a target type damage amount for a planet as "All Weapons Gone", then when the planet has no weapons left in combat, no ships will fire on it. The behavior for other targets with this damage amount setting is that they will be targeted last after all other targets are destroyed.

The difficulty is that with the current damage arrangement, if you fire on a planet generally until all the weapons are gone, it's frequently going to be at least horribly damaged, and quite possibly glassed. The above being fixed is better than being broken, but when damage hits the valuable facilities (capturing a fully functional spaceport and resupply depot, for instance) and kills population *faster* than it damages weapon platforms, this doesn't have the desired result.

While no bombing system is perfect, so there are probably going to always be some civilian casualties and facilities damage, the current ratio is badly out of whack. Imagine if the WWII allied bombing raids against Germany, despite focusing on military and industrial targets, ended up as an unavoidable side effect killing every single civilian in the entire country, and flattening every city, town, and hamlet into unlivable rubble... except there were still tank divisions, fighters & airfields, and anti-aircraft batteries as the only thing left.

If I'm reading the files correctly, the setting for "Population Amount Killed Per Damage Point" is one of the keys, which for most damage types is 0.25; and I think that's in millions. That means for every single point of damage you inflict, 250,000 people die. This unfortunately (and illogically) includes the "Only Weapons" damage type, which was one of my other ideas. It's no higher for the "Only Planet Population" damage type either, which is also out of whack... you can't do any more damage if you're specifically aiming at the people than what you do accidentally aiming at something else.

As for DauntlessDave's comment, I need to do some testing; there is now a Weapon Platform entry in the target types, but even if it works "properly", I suspect that it doesn't actually target weapons platforms, it targets things with a Design Type of Weapons Platform... like Attack Ship, this depends on your opponent obligingly describing their ships in a way that makes it easy for you to hit.

The target type would be based on the vehicle type and not the design type.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Oh, thats right JD, but it may be that the AI allways identifies its ships and units, but it is true that people often dont. As for the ships with a dedicated strategy failing to engage properly against other ships in ordinary battle, that may be true, but a well written strategy should solve that. In any event i get around that by using dedicated bombardment ships that only target planet defenses and use thier PD to defend themselves, after a planet is defenseless, I retreat them. So far, this has worked in sim.

oops, CK got in with the correct answer while I was writing. So thats that, a proper strategy should allow you to target WPs and stop shooting once they are destroyed.

I was really disappointed when I hatched the idea of using Weapons Destroying Weapons against a planet with no shields and they failed to damage the weapons platforms. Why doesn't that work?

To the poster who complained that troop transports are on a suicide run: Yeah, but at least they're in-and-out of there. They're actually more efficient at getting past weapons platforms than ships that stay in orbit and shoot the weapons platforms till they're all gone. You can land troops on a planet with about six frigates that you would need twelve cruisers with Napalm to bombard successfully.

I think that target priorities for weapon platforms ony work when they are directly present - i.e in ground combat only (same thing for weapon only damaging weapons?)

IMHO you shouldn't be able to trarget specifically weapon platforms when shooting at a planet, but the weapon platforms/infrastructure & population hit ratio should certainly be better.

Has anybody tried a damage type like that:

Damage Type Name := Planetary Cargo
Description := Damages only planetary cargo.
Picture Number := 1
Cannot Penetrate Any Kind Of Shields := FALSE
Cannot Penetrate Any Kind Of Armor := FALSE
Number Of Vehicle Types := 0
Number of Shield Types := 0
Number of Armor Types := 0
Internal Damage Percent := 100
Facility Damage Percent := 0
Population Amount Killed Per Damage Point := 0
Crew Amount Killed Per Damage Point := 0
Is Viral Weapon := FALSE
Number Of Special Effects := 0
Number Of Requirements := 0
Number Of Abilities := 0