Point Defense

I've seen them work, though I haven't done heavy testing. I just sat a pair of bases with missiles next to eachother and watched the missiles do nothing.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

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

They work, but have a couple of big issues.

1) They all seem to fire at the first target that comes into range.
2) PDs fired from vehicles not targeted by seekers almost always miss.
3) I have not seen a PDC on an AI ship yet, only on a WP.

In my current game, the AI surprised me early on by mounting point defense on almost all its ships (at least the ones I was running in to). My scouts were equipped with Capital Ship Missiles, and I had more than one combat in which every missile I fired was shot down by enemy point defense. I ran out of ordnance before putting a dent in their armor

I should note, however, that this was using the latest version of the Balance Mod. In my previous game I never saw the AI use point defense.

I have battled empires that put Point Defense on Frigates. I am playing with the Balance Mod. I found that when my single Plasma armed Frigate when up against there single armed Frigate with PD I went through most all of my ordinace(300) to decent chance of a kill. If the enemy had more than one ship with PD I cound got get a hit in. I had to use multipule ships to be effective or 3 Plasma Missles from a Weapons Platform to get in hits against Station with PD or enemey Fleets with PD. I did NOT notice if the enemy pd were all firing at the same missile or groups. I do know they they were firing twice at the plasma missle before it reached there ship.

I do remember one battle where I went up against a space station. I think it had mutiplue PD's. Took there Plasma Missle frigates to destory the station. And it only seemed like one missle in 9 was getting through. Then again I am playing the balance mod and do not know how PD compaires with standard.

There was a bug introduced in v0.92 of the Balance Mod. PD increases in accuracy at range! I had removed the original bonuses because it was a little bit too effective, but neglected a minus sign.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Kwok, until Aaron figures out how to do the multi targetting. I've got a suggestion for your balance mod for point defence. It might ease the 'single target' down to a manageable level.

Decrease damage /10
Increase firing rate *10

That way the guns fire more often with less damage, therefore less wastage between shots.

EDIT: Increase the projectile speed a bit too so it doesn't look too daft.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

While there may be some definite issues to work out that involve supplies and ordinance, I am excited about their inclusion in this game. It is just one of about a dozen things I love about this game. It is awesome that you can catch your opponent when he's out of ammo and utterly destroy him with a weaker force.

I think the idea about making the Point Defense weapons do less damage but fire more often is a great idea. But I wonder if firing ten times as often means it takes ten times as much CPU power during the battle?

Yes it would.

This isn't a fix, it's a workaround. A 'suggested' workaround.
I use it on mine and I've yet to see a performance hit on my PC.

I do have a custom built gamers pc with a 7800 gfx card, that plays oblivion at 1200*1600 quite reasonably on full detail. So I do have quite a baised perspective on performance.

Let Kwok decide what he's going to do with it, and set his own benchmark. And then change the values to meet your own needs. Thats all.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

If you turn off auto-targetting, you cannot shoot down incoming missiles. It's impossible to target seekers manually.

Most of the Balance Mod PD fires at 500ms and has a damage so that about 50% the missile is destroyed with one hit. Overall a 1:1 ratio of missiles to PD will allow a few missiles to slip in. I haven't seen any really problems with targetting.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

I remember fighter battles in the Adamant mod for SEIV. Now they were epic (for SEIV anyway). 2-300 fighters. There was no way normal ships could attack planets. You had to come in with fighters as well, or built a fleet of PD ships.
Even PD ships go overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc