Doomsday weapon in Proportions

[oleg]

It is ... Smart Bomb (either supply depot or space port - does not matter). When you drop it on planet, it seeks and destroy buildings with resupply/spaceport ability, such as Cultural Centeres http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif One round of fire from puny battlecruiser will nuke your homeworld back to the Stone Age http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

[Puke]

skipping shields?

[geoschmo]

Ouch! Does one of them destroy ALL the facilities? If so that's a serious flaw I think Pvk should consider eliminating that particular weapon.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Er, ya, probably so... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Thanks!

PvK

[oleg]

Smart bomb skips shields, weapon platforms and smartly goes after buildings. I don't know exact algoritmm, but one SB III appears to kill one cultural center per shot.

[dogscoff]

I wonder if it would be possible to reduce the damage on the SB? Either that or up the cost/ research and repackage it as some kind of city killer. (Think "independence Day"=-)

[PvK]

Ok, I did some tests, and the result is that one smart bomb, no matter what the damage rating, will destroy one facility of the indicated type in a single shot. This means it can knock out one cultural center per shot. It's reload time is three turns.

It does NOT skip shields, in SE4 Gold 1.78.

Other weapons damage facilities based on population damage, in an arcane system that I couldn't really figure out by testing. Neutron bombs are interesting because they do damage to shields, and then damage population but not the facilities, but since facility damage is linked to population, they can greatly reduce the amount of damage a planet's population and facilities can take. They also do so much damage that they can lower a homeworld's intrinsic shields pretty quickly (a few shots, depending on size and tech level). Of course, Planetary Napalm is rather effective, too.

However, I was using the simulator, which inexplicably set the population to 300M instead of the typical 4000M or so, so I guess that means it's a factor of thirteen harder than I was seeing for the non-smartbomb weapons.

So hmm. I am thinking maybe it's not utterly imbalanced, in the sense that there are other weapons that can also wipe out a homeworld relatively easily, if they can get into range.

I guess it bears further testing, thought, and discussion. I'm wondering if there is a way to tone them down via making them very large (150kT - 300 kT), range 1, reload time 30, max one per ship, and/or applying a negative to-hit modifier.

Any further opinions?

[oleg]

Originally posted by PvK:
Ok, It does NOT skip shields, in SE4 Gold 1.78.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm, in my tests it appears to skip shields. Will do tests again. As to 300M population in simulator - SE does not "know" what population is on planet during simulations and automaticaly assume domed planet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.

[oleg]

Yes, SB does not skip shields, don't know I missed it.

I found a way to fix planetary population in simulator: once you selected a homeworld as a part of simulation, click on "transfer cargo" It will allow you to move people from real homeworld to "virtual reality" homeworld. Something like in Matrix.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But it is not easy to kill population on homeworld that absorb damage ! Given low damage of NSC, SB is a monster.

BTW, why do you think NSC skips weapon platforms and units ?? In all my tests NSC happily attack units before proceeding to civilians ! Even when I tried to attack undefended homeworld with NSC cruiser, in 30 turns it managed to kill only 40M people without damaging ANY structure. It took only 13 turns for the same cruiser to drop shields and wipe out homeworld clean ! No, NSC is fire cracker compared to SB.

[ September 27, 2002, 00:53: Message edited by: oleg ]

[PvK]

NSC's and other shield-skipping weapons have an advantage against Proportions homeworlds because they skip the homeworld's intrinsic shields (12,000 or so). However the 12K shields aren't really all that hard to bring down, with appropriate weapons (napalm, shield depleter, neutron bomb, drones, etc).

So, I'm currently most concerned about neutron bombs and smart bombs. I'm thinking of lowering neutron bomb damage, and making smart bombs large components with Reload 30 and a new description about being designed to wipe out developed continents (and incidentally, spaceports http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) - then maybe rename them and make them precusors to tectonic bombs. The existing smart bombs would be replaced by some more generic bomb, perhaps able to skip shields (but not take out CC's in one hit) would be a good compromise.

Opinions? Ideas?

PvK

[Rollo]

Sounds like good ideas. I like the shield skipping bomb.

Rollo

[Q]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As far as I have seen it null space weapons will not skip weapon platforms and they will not even skip armor and shields on weapon platforms, because units don't have armor and shields for SE IV combat calculation: armor and shield points are just added to the total damage resistence of the unit and only if more damage than the total damage resistence of one unit is done the unit will be destroyed.

[minipol]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Looking for a doomsday weapon vs. planets? I direct you to the Null Space Cannon, which will skip shields and units and start damaging the planet immediately. It might not be as 'precise' as the Smartbombs but it's pretty efficient since a planet seems to be treated like a 'ship' for damage allocation purposes. The units are the 'armor' and the population/facilities are the internal components.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wow, this is something i have to try out vs. TDM ai. That's one of the great things about SEIV: always something new to try.

[oleg]

Originally posted by PvK:
NSC's and other shield-skipping weapons have an advantage against Proportions homeworlds because they skip the homeworld's intrinsic shields (12,000 or so). However the 12K shields aren't really all that hard to bring down, with appropriate weapons (napalm, shield depleter, neutron bomb, drones, etc).

So, I'm currently most concerned about neutron bombs and smart bombs. I'm thinking of lowering neutron bomb damage, and making smart bombs large components with Reload 30 and a new description about being designed to wipe out developed continents (and incidentally, spaceports http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) - then maybe rename them and make them precusors to tectonic bombs. The existing smart bombs would be replaced by some more generic bomb, perhaps able to skip shields (but not take out CC's in one hit) would be a good compromise.

Opinions? Ideas?

PvK<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, it would be a pitty to lose SB alltogether. Just make them almost as expensive as tectonics bomb with reload 30 and large size. Assigning NSC ability to planetary napalm will make one nasty antiplanet weapon ! May be make it a cross-over tech between null-space and planetary weapons ?

[PvK]

Originally posted by oleg:
[QUOTE]Yes, it would be a pitty to lose SB alltogether. Just make them almost as expensive as tectonics bomb with reload 30 and large size. Assigning NSC ability to planetary napalm will make one nasty antiplanet weapon ! May be make it a cross-over tech between null-space and planetary weapons ?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, I'm leaving napalm as-is, adding two new Small Tectonic Bombs, and giving shield-skipping to the new Smart Bomb and Smart Missile weapons, which have new research requirements and abilities.

And, I'm toning down the ability of the Neutron Bombs. Their unique ability to wipe out the population of a planet but preserve the facilities is particularly useful in Proportions (since it can mean capturing years of colony development work intact), so they don't need to have the extreme strength they currently do, to be worthwhile.

PvK