Devastating Pulse

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Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 10:32:00 AM

greendroid

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Joined: 7/2/2005
From: Austria
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By chance I got during a game (version 1.9.0.2.) the Super weapon "Devastating Pulse" which is an incredible powerful Area weapon. But unfortunately this weapon does not make any difference between hostile ships and your own ships. It destroyed them all. My question is, is this intended ? - and - if yes - does this work in a similiarly way by all area weapons ? This would mean a complete change in strategy, using area weapons. In former versions, area weapon didnt harm your own ships.

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 11:34:09 AM

Raap

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Yes, I believe it's intended. At least it's always been thus, and it's been reported before.

I'm not entirely sure if it affects all area weapons. I believe it affects the 'old ones', basically poorer versions of the Devastator Pulse. However, it might not affect the new gravitic AoE weapons; I haven't tried those yet myself.

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 11:35:02 AM

Darkspire

Posts: 1986
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From: My Own Private Hell
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quote:

ORIGINAL: greendroid

By chance I got during a game (version 1.9.0.2.) the Super weapon "Devastating Pulse" which is an incredible powerful Area weapon. But unfortunately this weapon does not make any difference between hostile ships and your own ships. It destroyed them all. My question is, is this intended ? - and - if yes - does this work in a similiarly way by all area weapons ? This would mean a complete change in strategy, using area weapons. In former versions, area weapon didnt harm your own ships.

As far as I know that has always been the case with area weapons, I remember in ROTS I used to make a capital ship up and fit it with an AOE weapon, multiple shields and as many engines as I could fit and just send through enemy systems, it used to cause real havoc

Have not designed one since then because of what you have pointed out, even if you put them on a remote starbase there is a chance the enemy will attack and one of your own ships gets sent to defend and then gets wiped out in the process. The only use for them IMHO is the one I used it for, a tank to annoy the enemy and weaken there system defenses before sending in a full attack force.

Darkspire

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 12:54:43 PM

ASHBERY76

Posts: 2136
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: England
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I heard area weapons were going to change in Shadows(Erik?) but sadly it seems not.The race design templates basically ignore area weapons making that tech redundant and useless.

They should ignore your own ships to make them worthwhile.

< Message edited by ASHBERY76 -- 6/2/2013 12:57:01 PM >

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 1:22:58 PM

Raap

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Ideally I think the AI of your ships should just be smart enough to stay outside the range of a friendly AoE ship when in combat, but that's neither here nor there. Maybe AoE weapons could have a check before firing to see if there are friendly ships/stations in range.

Simply making friendly ships immune to the effect seems rather arbitrary and most likely unbalanced; A fleet with powerful AoE weapons would then decimate enemy fleets before they had any idea of what was going on. The solution to that would be to make AoE weapons so weak that they would be useless for any purpose.

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 1:26:58 PM

Bingeling

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It would not make sense to have aoe weapons ignore friendlies. Improvement would have to come in how to behave around area weapons, and when they are fired.

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 1:33:35 PM

ASHBERY76

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From: England
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Arbitrary is better than being not used at all by the game apart from the odd tech base and taking up UI space.

A simple rule change could stop ships using it.

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 1:38:33 PM

Fenrisfil

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The biggest problem with the AE weapons is that the AI doesn't really understand them. For example, you can bet your opponents won't randomly slap a Devestation Pulse on a capital ship and send it alone into your space to mess you up.

For me the only place I use the normal AE weapons is on research and monitoring stations as they often seem to get caught unprotected. Though really if the AI was sensible it would just stay out of their range.

I do use the AE Ion Pulse a lot however. I don't know if it doesn't do friendly fire or if it's just being countered by my own Ion Defence level.

I actually think making AE weapons not do friendly fire in most circumstances is reasonable. As it's your own design of energy weapon it makes sense that you could equip your ships with something that would negate it's effect. Maybe the key would be to add a friendly fire component you need to add to your ships (and could therefore be disabled via damage or ion pulses). It could even be it's own tech line with a % reduction on friendly fire only growing to 100% at tech level 7.

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 2:32:38 PM

Raap

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Well, ten Derasian Shockwaves on a ship would give you 1600 damage to each target simultaneously at a range of 360 for 180 size. Ten ships in a fleet would give you 16000 damage to each target simultaneously. Make a fleet of 20 ships with these things and you'd wipe out anything in the area the very second you arrived. At this point the damage would so high, and the ships spread out so much, that the damage loss from range would be completely negligible.

< Message edited by Raap -- 6/2/2013 2:34:55 PM >

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Post #: 9

RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 3:16:59 PM

Erik Rutins

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From: Vermont, USA
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Hi guys,

The new gravitic area weapons do have a completely different logic. They try to fire to avoid friendly ships and target a point in space for their "blast". We also improved the logic for the other area weapons to try to avoid too much friendly fire. If you like how the gravitic area weapons work, we could update the other area weapons to work similarly in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

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Post #: 10

RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 3:23:36 PM

ASHBERY76

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I think using the gravitic area logic would be a better solution to not being used like present.

+1

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RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/2/2013 5:27:37 PM

Fenrisfil

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I like how the gavitic AE works.

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Post #: 12

RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/3/2013 11:03:22 AM

Florestan

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From: Montpellier, France
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Well, Seems like the ship don't care if they run into a vortex� Firing is good, but navigation needs some more work.

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Post #: 13

RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/3/2013 3:34:49 PM

Plant

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I made a fleet with ships with purely gravitic area weapons. If under close in command AI, they will get too close to a base target and only fire once and then close in and never fire. So Gravitic area weapons seem to be avoiding friendly fire, as if even one ship was too close to the target, they would not fire.

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Post #: 14

RE: Devastating Pulse - 6/6/2013 12:36:45 PM

Darkspire

Posts: 1986
Joined: 6/12/2003
From: My Own Private Hell
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quote:

ORIGINAL: greendroid

By chance I got during a game (version 1.9.0.2.) the Super weapon "Devastating Pulse" which is an incredible powerful Area weapon. But unfortunately this weapon does not make any difference between hostile ships and your own ships. It destroyed them all. My question is, is this intended ? - and - if yes - does this work in a similiarly way by all area weapons ? This would mean a complete change in strategy, using area weapons. In former versions, area weapon didnt harm your own ships.

Been waiting for a chance that one of these would turn up and fitted out all my mines with it and TBH used on mines they do tend to slow the enemy down a bit, if my ships get nuked the way I tend to look at it is that ships are built a whole lot faster than mines and I would rather damage / destroy an escort or three and have a better chance to save the mine, I will now start looking at how to supplement this effect with the new tech in Shadows and the other tech available. In Legends my mine designs could quite happily stand up to a small fleet, Shadows has changed that, I just watched a smallish fleet of bug ships that in Legends I would have laughed at destroy my mine, so it is back to the drawing board and AOE will most definitely be at the top of the list, closely followed by anything that slows them down so that the AOE will have full effect. This is going to be fun