Ripper Beams

[capnq]

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Do engine, weapon, and shield destroying weapons bypass shields, or do you have to beat the shields down first ?

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All the X-destroying weapons only affect X-type components, and completely ignore any other components on the ship.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

quote:

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Originally posted by capnq:
All the X-destroying weapons only affect X-type components, and completely ignore any other components on the ship.

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Thanks both of you!
If both weapons and armor, then that changes my plans. There are going to be a LOT of engineless/weaponless enemy hulks on my warp points! Not over my colonies of course since that would be a blockade.

[Baron Munchausen]

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Originally posted by jc173:
I think Marty hit the nail on the head. Easiest thing to do is to give incinerator beams, ripper beams, and WMG's different family and weapon numbers. That way the WMG won't automatically replace the ripper beam when the AI decides to upgrade/build new designs. This would leave the research queues intact, all you would have to do is swap weapon numbers in the AI's design creation files. I suppose if you wanted to you could even design ships with a primary armament of ripper beams backed up by one or two WMG's which might be kind of interesting. I'm about 85% sure it should work just fine.

[This message has been edited by jc173 (edited 10 June 2001).]

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Yep, changed the family of the Ripper beam a long time ago in my techs. It's a completely different weapon than the Incinerator or Wave-motion gun. That tactic of putting tractor, then rippers, and then a repulsor beam works great in SE3. Chew 'em up & spit 'em out right! Haven't tried it yet in SE4. I guess it's just natural to try the new stuff rather than what you already know.

I was reading the post on damage as affected by shields and armor when it occured to me that I really might want to use wave motion guns anywhere a visit by crystalline or organic ships was likely. It looks like the WMG would be more likely to blow them away than anything else. But it sure is big and expensive for the damage it delivers. Could anybody comment on rippers versus organics and crystallines ?

I have been doing tradeoffs for starbases armed with massive mount weapons. Here is the design I plan to use - number of the component to include, name, size, damage, cost in minerals/ organics/ radioactives, then total size/ damage/ costs
1 - Starbase hull when selected 2500/0/0
1 - Master Computer III 20/20 4000/1000/1000 same
1 - ECM III 10/10 400/0/0 same
1 - Combat Sensors III 10/10 400/0/0 same
1 - Multiplex Tracking (5) 10/10 350/0/0 same
1 - Scattering Armor III 50/150 500/0/100 same
6 - Stealth Armor III 30/100 700/0/200 - 180/600 4200/0/1200
8 - Phased Shield Generator V 40/40 800/0/0 - 320/320 6400/0/0
9 - Shield Regenerator IV (not V) 20/20 850/0/260 180/180 7650/0/2340
Total non weapons 780/1300 26400/1000/4640
All weapons are Heavy mount.
4 - Anti Proton Beam XII 120/210 1600/0/480 - 480/840 6400/0/1920
5 - Phased Polaron Beam V 120/210 2000/0/1200 - 600/1050 10000/0/6000
8 - Ripper Beam IV 80/140 800/0/640 - 640/1120 6400/0/5120
Total weapons 1720/3010 22800/0/13040
Grand total 46 components at 2500/4310 49200/1000/17680
Ratio nonweapons to weapons 0.45/0.43 - 1.1/all/0.35

This design is for late in the game when the enemy can be expected to have phased shield generators on ships but will also be attacking with hundreds of fighters. The APB have range 14 so can strike fighter Groups on the turn before the fighters get in range. The PPB have range 12 and can blow many fighters away (because they lack phased shields), but are 5/4 the minerals cost of APB at 12 for the same hits per unit space. Unfortunately fighters with max engines and afterburners move 12 in combat, so the PPB get to hit only if the base survives the first round. The RB only have range 9, but the minerals cost per hit is 60% of APB and 44% of PPB. The hits per unit space is 5/4 the APB and 4/3 the PPB. Also the damage value for RB is cheaper minerals per unit - 3/4 the APB and 60% the PPB. So you get both cheaper hits and armor at the cost of lousy range and not being able to shoot fighters. At point blank the Ripper is king. Minerals per hit is 65% APB and 48% PPB. Hits per unit space is 15% greater than APB and 25% greater than PPB. I looked at the other weapons but they were all space wasters per unit hit per turn. Meson BLasters were a close match for APB at range 12, but lacked the extra range to 14. They were not shield penetrating like PPB and did not have the firepower of RB. Point defense is a waste of space. I will have PD only weapon battle cruisers for missiles and to help with fighters. Also I will have PPB armed fighters to take out fighters, and rocket pod armed fighters to take out missile ships and carriers. All that leaves is baseships and many small stacks of rocket pod armed fighters as a threat. Since I will have seven of these bases backed up by two carriers with 400 fighters and 14 yard bases to do repairs, I do not anticipate any great defeats. Now all I have to do is find the 3.5 million minerals maintenance money - about 20 turns for 50 sphereworlds.....

Edit - combat simulator shows fighters with max best engines and afterburners move *9* not 12. This base design took out a stack of 100 nicely without a scratch. Unfortunately carriers launch in packs of five, and the base only has nine weapons that can shoot fighters. Thats why you have to back them up with PD ships and your own fighters.



[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 11 June 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

You may find it difficult to hit those fighters at long range, accuracy goes down 10% per square and they are hard to hit to begin with. You might want to build a bunch of PD sats if you are going to face a lot of fighters or build a training facility to get you base a high level of experiance.

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Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
You may find it difficult to hit those fighters at long range

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I know, that's why I must include PD ships and my own 400 fighters everywhere. I am not really worried about fleets, because I will usually have range on them with massive mounts. But fighters move so fast in combat that they can blow me away with rocket pods if not intercepted. I plan on having all the ships and bases collected into fleets with BASES as the fleet leaders so the ships will stay close to papa.

Last night I was once again looking at base designs to see whether they would be capable versus waves of fighters, and thought that I had overlooked the shield and armor penetrating Null Space Projector NSP. But here is a comparison versus Ripper Beams RB to blow away my own base design with 3000 shields, 750 armor, and 4310 damage in a single salvo engagement.
NSP must hit 4310, MM shoots 420 so you need 11. Cost is 44000 0 44000 at 2200/3850.
RB must hit 8060, MM shoots 350 so you need 23. Cost is 18400 0 14270 at 1840/3220.
So RB cost is 41% same 32%, while space is 84% and damage absorbed is 84%.
The RB blow away the same enemy in a single salvo engagement, at less than half the cost, slightly less space, and are cheaper for damage absorbtion by a factor of two. At range 9 or less (versus 11 for NSP) RB RULE!
Now the only problem is an enemy armed with NSP at range 11 blowing away your RB only equipped base. That's why you must also have the PPB and APB, which outrange the NSP.

The only other thing I can think of to make NSP attractive are those organic and crystalline armors that feed damage back to shields. If you cannot blow up the ship in a single combat turn, then this could cause a big problem. Could the experts on these armors give their opinion on RB versus NSP here ?

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 12 June 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

I wouldn't want to attack a starbase with ships armed with rippers. The 3 range is to short. Baseships equipped with these would face 2-3 salvos before getting into range.
They do make good base defense weapons though, although nothing beats an APB XII on a base. You can almost fire to the edge of the screen!

[jc173]

If you are only considering being able to destroy every component possible than the RB is more effective. But you don't have to destroy the entire target to render it combat ineffective. So if a NSP skips past armor and shields and manages to knock out the critical components, in this case probably weapons, bridge, possibly ECM, sensors, and multiple... then you don't need to destroy everything else on board the target. I think combat loss grouping might be a bigger factor with an NSP armed force, ie the quicker you knock down one enemy the more rapidly you will dispatch the others because you can concentrate fire on the survivors.

I'd be perfectly willing to use the damage until no weapons strategy and finish off the stragglers later even if they still had shields and armor.

Ok the same effects apply to the ripper beam somewhat also, but to me that's diluted by the fact that you must burn through the shields and the armor first. Which means that you have that much more damage to do before you can hit the internals.