Quote

Originally posted by Quantum Transcendence:
**(rant)As you pointed out, the little shuttle will be destroyed with one shot by a pd turret. However, you fail to take into account that humans actually have brains. A player will use a less powerful secondary weapon, and will refrain from firing the Tleilaxu Muad'dib-killer laser turret. A pd weapon fires no matter what. So if you are trying to disable that viper with a Raven, you'll use Wraithii. Unfortunately, if you're CPL is point defense, it'll fry the viper without your consent. Furthermore, this is a game. Not sure about you, but I want to do the flying. I don't want to watch the computer fly my ship, fire my weapons, and do my missions. Also, as you point out, pd weapons only fire on enemies. I've had a fair number of ships with nothing more than turrets and raven rockets. What if I want to fire my long range Shai Hulud turreted railgun at a Fed Cruiser? You're going to make me get in its face and fire a raven rocket at the ship so that it gets mad. I would prefer to be able to open up with my turrets first, and stay far back.(/rant)

**

The AI can't fly the ship unless you expressly tell it to, and you've still gotta be smart enough to pull off the missions... First, I'll admit that I've never heard of a Fed Cruiser... Is that a new ship from some plug that I haven't gotten yet? (To answer the question: so use your Ravens. What's wrong with them? Besides, you've got enough range with even them to fire one, peg the enemy with that one, then turn around and run -- while your Shai Hulud turreted railgun pounds them to bits.) And if you're really smart, you don't use your Wraithii, either (I think those are also powerful enough to kill a Shuttle with one or two rounds). You launch a single multi-torp from far enough away so that it detonates without impacting the target, then let loose one Manta, and keep going back and forth from 'Attack' to 'Hold Position' so that the Manta disables the Shuttle. Use a scalpel, not a frickin' flamethrower. Besides all that, a CPL is a fixed weapon, and therefore not a PD weapon. A BioRelay Laser Turret would be a PD Beam, on the other hand. And it would be delicate enough to disable, not destroy, almost anything.

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Suddenly, the little scoutship disappeared and then reappeared right behind the alien warfleet. The gravitic ship's captain hailed the armada. "You are going to be destroyed, but I will give you a choice as to how you want to spend eternity: big pieces, little pieces, or quarks?"
Dead silence.
"Quarks it is, then."

I just wanted to put in a little bit about a lesson I learned in my (now abandoned) Robotech plug. One ship in that plug (the Alpha, for those interested) had it's primary weapon system as a PD turret. The problem was that it was impossible to MAKE enemies with that ship- you can't make the PD fire when it doesn't want to, obviously. My solution was to give it a "Targetting System"- a beam that does no damage, and looks like a laser sight, that you could fire normally. It pissed of ships without actually hurting them, or usurping the control of the PD weapon.

Of course, none of this will solve the scalpel-vs-flamethrower problem with PD weapons, but it does solve another problem.

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~Charlie

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
**I just wanted to put in a little bit about a lesson I learned in my (now abandoned) Robotech plug. One ship in that plug (the Alpha, for those interested) had it's primary weapon system as a PD turret. The problem was that it was impossible to MAKE enemies with that ship- you can't make the PD fire when it doesn't want to, obviously. My solution was to give it a "Targetting System"- a beam that does no damage, and looks like a laser sight, that you could fire normally. It pissed of ships without actually hurting them, or usurping the control of the PD weapon.

Of course, none of this will solve the scalpel-vs-flamethrower problem with PD weapons, but it does solve another problem.

**

Good idea. Never thought of that. Hrm. Faint, extremely thin red beam that can stretch across a system (count and speed of 32767), and passes through asteroids. An alternate is a guided missile weapon with the same stats -- would probably be better, considering that it would not accidentally hit any other ships.

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Suddenly, the little scoutship disappeared and then reappeared right behind the alien warfleet. The gravitic ship's captain hailed the armada. "You are going to be destroyed, but I will give you a choice as to how you want to spend eternity: big pieces, little pieces, or quarks?"
Dead silence.
"Quarks it is, then."

Quote

(count and speed of 32767)

Don't give it a count of 32767! The beam would never go away, and quickly overrun Nova's buffers (no more beams possible). For my beam, I made the range equal to the range of the turret- thus avoiding most unnecessary pissing off.

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~Charlie

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
**Don't give it a count of 32767! The beam would never go away, and quickly overrun Nova's buffers (no more beams possible). For my beam, I made the range equal to the range of the turret- thus avoiding most unnecessary pissing off.

**

Good point. Actually, I forgot something: if it's a guided missile, it doesn't have to last any longer than enough to get the other guy mad at you.

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Suddenly, the little scoutship disappeared and then reappeared right behind the alien warfleet. The gravitic ship's captain hailed the armada. "You are going to be destroyed, but I will give you a choice as to how you want to spend eternity: big pieces, little pieces, or quarks?"
Dead silence.
"Quarks it is, then."