Satellites and multiple targets

[Bman]

I thought they had fixed it so that the "defending player" goes first which means the sats should go first. Even though the ships have engines and such, the sats are sitting at the wormhole carrying out their only mission: shoot anything that appears in that wormhole that is not friendly. In otherwords they are ready and waiting to fire and should get first shot. Otherwise the incoming fleet could either run out of range before the sats shoot, or bLast them all to hell.

[PvK]

Well, Wardad didn't say what the test conditions were. I would expect he was using the simulator, rather than engineering a hotseat game to do this. Therefore, it would not be a warp point defense. The ships would be moving in from outside, and since they are the moving ones, they will tend to fire first, unless the satellites are using range-increasing mounts that give them enough of a range advantage that the ships move themsleves into the sats' range a turn before they can shoot back.

PvK

[Wardad]

Ok, Ok.

I engineered a hot seat game.
The ships came from the other side of the worm hole and appeared in the middle.
I used Tactical-Auto combat and viewed combat replay. One time I did use strategic and replay.

AAARG!!!
Player 1 laid the SATs. Player 2 warped the ships.
Is that the firing order???

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UPGRADES HAPPEN!!!

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[ 28 March 2002: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Wardad]

I tested SATs with seekers next. Hot seat tactical-auto and strategic.
Strategic is different from tactical-auto. DEFENDERS FIRED FIRST IN STRATEGIC COMBAT.

I am now looking only at Strategic Combat with replay.

All 24 Seeker SATs fired at the same ship. Used 4 SAT designs (identical CSM4) with different target strategies. Opponent had different ships types as before. The Seeker SATs get creamed.

Looked at earlier experiment with Direct Fire weapons. It seems the SAT stack will use only the first SATs firing strategy.

I used more Engine Damage SATs. No way are they switching targets like they should (are the beams the same color of Computer Virus?). I think targets are switched when a different SAT design or Weapon type is fired.

If I could only text read the *.CMB combat replay file it would be easy to evaluate the results. Otherwise it will take a lot more tightly controlled tests. It would also help to know each weapons beam color and appearance.

SAT FIRING ORDER
SAT stack firing order is: first laid - first to fire.
SAT stack firing order shown in Lay SAT Order right window SATs in System.
Order can be changed by recovering all SATs of a design and relaying them.
I suggest for simplicity that a alphabetical order naming be used.

SENSOR BONUS
A "brain SAT" with sensors or talisman gives the bonus to the whole stack.

[Lisif Deoral]

Neural Combat Nets can be mounted on sats, but... do they actually work? (AFAIK units have no experience modifiers...) It's a bit difficult to test since NCNs can't be researched.

By the way: I have problems with AI not using well (or not using at all) multiplex tracking on bases and ships, too. When the Last target is destroyed, at least one weapon is skipped before the AI picks a new target (at least in the simulator); sometimes the base will stop firing after destroying its first target.

[Wardad]

I wonder if a stack of Weapon Platforms behave this badly.

Anyway, The Ionic (engine damage) beam has the same sickly green appearance as the Computer Virus. The other weapons were easy differentiate. Mixing up the direct fire weapon types in a stack seems to be the best way to multiplex the firing.

I futher mixed up a stack by creating two engine damage sats named SAT_A_ED and SAT_A1_ED and seperated the firing order by deploying other SATs inbetween. It helps.

I have been playing a simultaneous game now and there's no manual deployment. All of the SATs in a tranport get deployed. Is it first loaded first laid (Sorority System) or alphabetical order? What about remote load command? Which one gets loaded first.

I've had enough of SATs for now. I only use them early game anyway. Except for recon sensors.

[ 01 April 2002: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Fyron]

IIRC, it deploys all units in the first loaded, first deployed method. This can be used to your advantage with troops: make 2 types, one filled with shields and only one weapon, and the other type with only one shield and a bunch of weapons. Load the shield troops first, and they will be shot first in invasions, soaking up alot of damage.

[ 01 April 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]