Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor

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Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> The War Room >> Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor

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Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor - 1/24/2015 10:45:46 PM

CMS1302

Posts: 15
Joined: 8/24/2013
Status: offline

Hi Folks,
is it just me or are the Shakturi well protected againsr gravitic weapons? According to the game manuels, gravitic beams should ignore both, shields and armor, and so far it worked well with pirates and any other Opponent. But when I started an attack on the Shakturi, These beams proved completely useless.
I had a fleet of about 90 vessels, all in all fire power of approx. 30 000, well equipped with gravitic beams, spiced up with a few maxi blasters. And when I attacked a Shakturi base, its shields got away like leaves in a hurricane. But afterwards, I couldn't inflict any damage at all.
So the blasters did their Job, but my main weapon, the beams, showed no effect what so ever on Shakturi bases and ships.

Is this a bug or an well intendend effort to make the Shakturi an even more serious threat?

Thanks in advance

Ingo, who is now kneeling under the Shakturi

Post #: 1

RE: Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor - 1/28/2015 9:50:33 PM

Aeson

Posts: 784
Joined: 8/30/2013
Status: offline

My understanding is that the effectiveness of gravity weapons depends to some degree on the relative size of the ships involved, with the effect being more potent when the ship mounting the weapon is larger than the target vessel and less potent when the ship mounting the weapon is smaller than the target vessel. I don't know how strongly the size affects the weapon's strength or how the effect scales, however.

Regardless, if your ships are significantly smaller than the Shakturi vessels you should probably not be using gravity weapons, and gravity weapons are likely a poor choice against anyone's bases since most of the dangerous base types tend to be much larger than your warships regardless of who owns the base. You might be better off with a pure-blaster design or with a design mounting blasters and something with a high per-shot damage for punching through armor.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, the Shakturi use the same armor as everyone else in the game, and I don't think there are any 'immune to gravity weapons' or 'immune to armor-bypass' flags available to apply to any factions, though I could be wrong.

(in reply to CMS1302)

Post #: 2

RE: Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor - 2/11/2015 6:10:53 PM

CMS1302

Posts: 15
Joined: 8/24/2013
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Well, my ships were size 600 and I wouldn't have been able to destroy an shakturi escort if it wasn't for the maxos. And the ship design was tried and tested. I destroyed plenty of large space ports wirh smaller designs. Before I issue new designs I always test them in edited saved games and compare them tobthe other options I have got: I use one ship for each weapon I haven't tested before (same firepower) then I pick a pirate target and compare how effective each weapon is and try to find the best combination possible. This takes some time with all that loading and reloading but after that, I know what my vessels can do.

But against the shakturi, the designs which have outdone any other design showed no effect if it wasn't for the maxos.

And as the manuells say that gravitics bypass both shields and armor, I expect 100 ships of size 600 and a gravitic firepower of 600 each to do so and crack a single shakturi frigate!

Is it possible, that shakturi posess an extremely strong ECM making them invulneable to gravitics? Ion defense maybe? Would be good to know for my own designs.

< Message edited by CMS1302 -- 2/11/2015 7:15:32 PM >

(in reply to Aeson)

Post #: 3

RE: Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor - 2/12/2015 3:43:58 AM

Aeson

Posts: 784
Joined: 8/30/2013
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quote:

Is it possible, that shakturi posess an extremely strong ECM making them invulneable to gravitics? Ion defense maybe? Would be good to know for my own designs.

As far as I am aware, the only special toys that the Shakturi possess are Shaktur FireStorm torpedoes and the superweapons. No special ECM components, no special targeting components, no special ion defense components.

Beyond that, ECM does not directly protect a ship from gravitic weapons. It makes the ship harder to hit. You were able to take out the shields of your target with your blasters, and so presumably you were able to hit your target with your weapons. Ergo, the target did not have some sort of superb ECM system. Ion Defense, to the best of my knowledge, is completely useless as a defense against anything that isn't an Ion Cannon or Ion Pulse (or a modded weapon with the same damage type), aside from the whole "RNG says the last blaster shot hit the Ion Defense rather than the Fighter Bay" aspect.

quote:

And as the manuells say that gravitics bypass both shields and armor, I expect 100 ships of size 600 and a gravitic firepower of 600 each to do so and crack a single shakturi frigate!

It appears to be true that gravitics bypass both shields and armor. However, this does not make gravitics good primary weapons. Gravitics tend to be short-range weapons, the tech description implies that their performance scales in some way with the relative size of the ships engaged, the weapons suffer range penalties, and the weapons offer poor DPS density. The Maxos Blaster I (the component as it is when none of the improvements for it have been developed) offers a DPS density of 0.81 DPS per size unit at 0 range. The Graviton Beam I, by comparison, offers only 0.11 DPS per size unit. Even the Seeker Missile, the primary weapon with the lowest DPS density available, more than doubles that, with a DPS density of 0.23 DPS per size unit.

Graviton Beams and Resonant Graviton Beams are much better as secondary or specialty weapons, much like Ion Cannons and Tractor Beams. Much like Ion Cannons, they degrade the performance of an enemy ship while the primary weapons beat it down and kill it the old-fashioned way (by destroying components, unlike Ion Cannons which merely disable components). Much like Tractor Beams, Graviton Beams and Resonant Graviton Beams hold the target in place while your other weapons deliver the beating, and unlike Tractor Beams the Gravitons do a little damage on the side (of course, they also don't pull the target in closer or push it away, if my memory is correct, whereas Tractor Beams do). What Graviton Beams and Resonant Graviton Beams do not do is provide a significant amount of offensive power. The firepower statistic that the game provides is the sum of the weapon damages for every weapon mounted on the ship, which is an approximation of the ship's alpha strike damage or its damage per firing cycle, but this does not consider (and in many ways conceals) the effect of the firing interval - two size-10 weapons which each deal 10 damage per shot both increase a ship's firepower by 10 per weapon mounted, but if one of them fires at twice the rate the other fires, do you think that a ship which mounts the slow-firing version is any real match for a ship that mounts the fast-firing version if the ships are otherwise identical and the slow-firing weapon has no advantages in terms of attack range or energy-efficiency? Your primarily-Graviton Beam ships have to get well into blaster range to engage the Shakturi's blaster-heavy ships, and even low-end blasters like the Maxos I have significantly better DPS. Your Gravitons probably deal some damage, but even though they're bypassing shields and armor they're probably not going to survive long against something with up to 30 times the DPS (Titan III versus Graviton I at 0 range, not terribly likely but possible; Titan IIIs additionally have roughly 4 times the range and don't have quite as much of a range penalty relative to the base shot power, so there could be ranges in which both weapons can fire where the relative difference in power is even worse) or kill it without some other significant advantage.

(in reply to CMS1302)

Post #: 4

RE: Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor - 3/9/2015 8:20:52 PM

bobthe

Posts: 7
Joined: 2/25/2015
Status: offline

quote:

I use one ship for each weapon I haven't tested before (same firepower) then I pick a pirate target and compare how effective each weapon is and try to find the best combination possible. This takes some time with all that loading and reloading but after that, I know what my vessels can do.

I should point out that firepower is a very poor way to compare ships and weapons. Firepower is, as far as I can tell, simply the total damage output per shot of each weapon. It does not, however, account for the rate of fire, size, energy consumption, or range of weapons, which can drastically change the effective firepower of a weapon/ship.

Personally I have a spreadsheet with all the weapons and tables for damage adjusted for rate of fire and range and then two further tables for damage adjusted for range, ROF, and size and then damage adjusted for range, ROF, and energy consumption. Depending on whether my concern at the time is space or energy I sort the appropriate table to determine which weapon to use.

(in reply to CMS1302)

Post #: 5

RE: Gravitic Beams don't bypass Shakturi-armor - 3/9/2015 11:04:17 PM

Erik Rutins

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline

The Shakturi are not immune to Gravitic weapons. Their ECM could certainly be preventing your weapons from hitting them. The effect of Gravitic weapons also diminishes based on the size of the _target_ so they are less effective against bases and capital ships and more effective against smaller ships.

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Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC