Proportions mod bugs / quirks:

[deccan]

1) There seems to be a bug in upgrading some kinds of components. ECM 1 and Combat Sensor 1 upgrades to ECM 1a and Combat Sensor 1a respectively and so on.

2) Why is it that you can upgrade Minor City -> City -> Major City -> Metropolis, where the cities don't provide resupply and space port services but Metropolises do, however you can't upgrade the Spaceport City series to Metropolis when the Spaceport City series do provide resupply and space port services?

3) I'm far from getting anywhere near the end of the tech tree, but it seems to me that fighters get disproportionately more powerful as the game progresses. In Proportions, it seems that you need the Beam Version of PD to hit fighters reliably. It's very easy to get Point-Defense 5, but then your PD damage reaches a plateau. However, fighters continue to get bigger, tougher and more powerful as the game progresses for a very long time, and Beam PD damage eventually becomes insufficient to deal with them. Assuming that continuing advances in Combat Sensors exactly cancel out continuing advances in ECM, then unless there are better ship-based anti-fighter weapons in the tech tree I don't know about yet, eventually the only way to deal efficiently with fighters are other fighters. Am I right or wrong?

[dogscoff]

1) Yes, this is annoying but it's a result of the way the game handles upgrades. It can't deal with multi-branch upgrade trees, so PvK had to choose one branch or the other to purue as as upgrade path.

2) Again, if we had our way you'd be able to make all kinds of funky faciliity upgrade choices, but the game only lets you do it a certain way.

3)Try a fast cruiser full of organic armour set to "ram". If you're not organic, any old armour will do, just make sure you have a few repair components in the fleet.

[Fyron]

Yes, fighters are indeed a little too powerful in Proportions. Have you gotten the Energy Pulse Weapons anti-fighter PDC weapon?

[oleg]

You can also try point-defence mounts for direct fire weapons that can target fighters. To increase even further the chance to hit fighters, use small ships (not bigger than destroyers !) and train them. Yes, it is hard to hunt down fighters but it is possible.

[PvK]

It depends on your Aggressiveness. If you have low aggressiveness, you might have a hard time ever hitting fighters with PDC. If you have average or better Aggressiveness (and/or cultural bonuses) then although the fighter tree starts out powerful, it can eventually become less so.

For one thing, fighters can never upgrade, so enemies stockpiling fighters will tend to have a lot of old designs (though these will still be dangerous).

But the thing is that even in Proportions, there are more ways for ships to add accuracy bonuses, than there are for fighters to add defense. And since I couldn't alter the way SE4 combines to-hit penalties, it just takes enough accuracy bonuses before suddenly PDC is looking a lot more like it did in unmodded SE (fighter doom):

* Combat sensors go up to +56 (at a big cost) while fighter ECM only goes up to +30.

* Ships can train up to +13, and fleets up to (?) +5 - fighters can't train at all.

* Fighters don't receive racial/cultural defensive/combat bonuses, but ships do.

* Bases and weapon platforms can use mounts and _Fire_Control_Centers_ to become able to hit fighters with heavy weapons, making sauce out of them. I watched one of Fryon's attack fleets with dozens of carriers loaded with fighters lose all of their hundreds of big shielded fighters mainly to an AI homeworld's weapon platforms (which I don't think even had Fire Control Centers - not sure).

* Ships can use PD mounts on heavy weapons to smack fighters for a lot of damage.

* Ships can add elite bridge and Aux Con equipment for another +8.

* Small escorts get accuracy bonuses, too.

* Racial tech areas offer some other combat bonuses that can be used to get into the slaughter numbers for PDC.

Etc.

However it still takes a lot of effort to achieve that, so fighters still remain dangerous, but not supreme.

Fighters do remain pretty tough though, and fighters designed to intercept them is generally a good way to counter them throughout the game.

PvK

[Fyron]

Yes, but all of that requires huge amounts of research, whereas fighters require nowhere near as much.

[Loser]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Try a fast cruiser full of organic armour set to "ram". If you're not organic, any old armour will do, just make sure you have a few repair components in the fleet.

I thought Ships wouldn't Ram Units in Strategic Combat. Is this not so? Was it a priority problem?

[deccan]

Originally posted by PvK:
But the thing is that even in Proportions, there are more ways for ships to add accuracy bonuses, than there are for fighters to add defense. And since I couldn't alter the way SE4 combines to-hit penalties, it just takes enough accuracy bonuses before suddenly PDC is looking a lot more like it did in unmodded SE (fighter doom)

Okay, but don't forget that fighters get better offense/defense with better engines and can add on afterburners.

[PvK]

I know.

Fighters are a powerful weapon throughout Proportions' tech tree. It's difficult to get ship-based weapons that can lay waste to them like in the unmodded game, although Fire Control Centers can let bases and weapon platforms do a very good job. However ships can cary their own fighters, and if your fighters are set to target their fighters, their fighters will probably die if they try to concentrate on your ships.

That's all pretty much an intentional situation, and is pretty much in line with modern air/naval combat and much sci-fi as well (cap ships without fighter cover versus fighter/bombers are in big trouble).

Ideally, I'd have time to go re-work some of it, though.

PvK

[Rollo]

Originally posted by PvK:
...
* Fighters don't receive racial/cultural defensive/combat bonuses, but ships do.
...

just a sidenote, I am rather sure that fighters do get these boni.

Rollo