Bug - Strategic Combat vs. Tactical Combat and multiple weapons |
It is (well?) known that identical battles tend to have differing results when they are run at different speeds.
After some testing, I (re?)discovered that because a ship with multiple weapons doesn't fire tehm simultaneously, but consecutivly, ships sometimes can't fire all their weapons before first weapon has reloaded. This results in ships with many weapons not doing the damage they should be doing, or their point - defense not functioning the way it should, since some weapons are never used.
In addition, the delay between shots does not appear to depend wholly on combat speed, so ships with many weapons have even more problems when using
accelerated combat speed or strategic resolution.
In my tests, when running with 8X speed (in tactical combat) a ship used only about four or five of its about a dozen weapons (reload speed 1s). Now obviously this problem is smaller when using weapons with slower reload rates, but still, even if the "limit" were twenty weapons it's not enough when it comes to some mods... or point-defense, for that matter. In fact, this renders point-defense batteries of more than a few guns useless in multiplayer.
Interestingly 32X in strategic seems to produce similar damage results than 8X in tactical. My test were performed using two ships at point-blank range, other ship armed and other filled with armor, observing how many seconds it took to destroy the victim, or alternatively studying the targeting info for the armed ship and noting how many weapons never fired (e.g. always had 0/n sec recharge).

Re: Bug - Strategic Combat vs. Tactical Combat and multiple weap
It's the most annoying on planets with weapon platforms, since the planet is considered as a single "ship".
Re: Bug - Strategic Combat vs. Tactical Combat and multiple weap
So this is what was happening in a recent battle. I was wondering why my planet wasn't using its WMGs while there were fighters in range . . . because the constant PB firing prevented the weapons below them from firing. Has this been formally reported as a bug? Because I don't see it, and it very much has a large impact.




Re: Bug - Strategic Combat vs. Tactical Combat and multiple weap
Good work, Rellep.
I'd like to see a feature that would let us set the speed for the automatic combats when we start a game (or even later "on demand" during the game). I don't trust the high speeds one bit, and I'd probably select 4x even for the unseen AI vs. AI combat. Valid results are worth waiting for.