Storms as a defense?

[AMF]

Hmmm...I thought for sure I was the offending player TT was referring to. I am using storms as a defense in two games, on e of which I used them without knowing of the bug mentioned above and before it was fixed (a DevNull game). So, actually, I have a Temple World that has 527 storms around it. It's an RP thing. But it's also quite defensible now, obviously.

There are at least three bummers with storms:

1) Ships only take damage when they move into them. Not very sensical to me. And allows massive fleet defense given enough time

2) Not realistic: I have an empire with storms around ringworlds. I can concievably keep building up storms and facilities on my ringworlds, lose all my other planets, and yet, somehow, the trading of goods and services continues in my empire. Storms that cause damage should also blockade anything in their sector.

3) Are unbalancing: the above empire, if left unchecked, will eventually be undefeatable: If I have, say, twenty or more turns storms over my richest ten planets, then odds are I will be a hard nut to crack. Give me another twenty turns, and its even harder, and so on until I have ten planets with 100 storms over each, and as long as I have some weapons on those planets, any fleets that try and come in will get devastated by the storms and then shot like fish in a barrel. Using storms as WP defense is just as nasty.

I don't like storms anymore, for these reasons. Although, I am still using them in two games. And approaching problem #3 above in one of them.

Tks,

Alarik

[Kamog]

The type of storm that gets created seems to be random and only some of the storms are damaging. Is there a limit to the number of storms in one sector? Can you have more than 100? If there's a limit, I guess you can destroy the non-damaging type of storms and only keep the damaging ones.

[Alneyan]

The other storms can also be very mean, if they stack: they will work all the time, unlike damaging storms that you might avoid. Less shield and/or less accuracy can be relatively nasty, and if you happen to have the Talisman... Well, let's just say nobody will bother you anytime soon.

I do not think there is any limit on the maximum amount of storms over one sector, so go stack'em!

[Ed Kolis]

It seems that if you create one storm and destroy another on the same turn in the same sector, though, that the new storm will always be of the same type as the old storm.... Or maybe that's just my bad luck

[Spoo]

Only the damaging storms stack. The damage is applied as all or nothing, so sometimes you can move a fleet through without taking any damage. The odds of harm for 1000 damaging storms is no higher than the odds for one damaging storm.

I have no proof, but I suspect that if you include at least one ship with a storm destroying component, you have a better chance of entering the storm safely.

[NullAshton]

It could be that destroy storm always destroys the last storm that's been made.

[Wolfman77]

Try destroying a storm, moving 1 square then back, then creating a storm. If it works similar to creating planets it should change. I haven't tried it myself yet with storms though.