Adding PD mounts to fix PD multitrack

albi_joe · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 19, 2005 Location: USA

CaptainKwok,
Any chance you could add mounts for PD +1, +2 and +3 range (or +1, -1 and -2)? Or perhaps a +.05, +.1 and +.15 firing rate? maybe just for some larger ships?

You could even just mod the large mounts to also be usable on PD.

I think staggering PD, either through firing rate or range, would be a workable (if human-annoying) workaround to the multi-track issue. the annoying part would be getting the AI to use it (Like through mount-coded PD adds to ships).

Psieye · Space Emperor Joined: Dec 03, 2006

I think the solution here would be the Area of Effect point-defence weapons - assuming you're thinking of one massive point-defence heavy ship. The better way to do point-defence would be to have many frigates with few point-defence each.

Actually, what you need to make the 'many Frigate point-defence array' work is a better Formation data file. The default formations place ships uselessly far apart and most of them are aesthetic or require extensive micromanagement to make work. I have shrunk things down to something suitable - you may have trouble selecting individual ships so I advise to label your task force Leader in their name tag (e.g. "Design Ace 0002 *" with the * indicating Leader position) so that you can drag then right-click select the leader from the 'list' of ships on the bottom centre panel.

With my "Dense Artillery" or "Inverse Mushroom" formations, ships will be extra compactly positioned. This allows them to cooperatively shoot down seekers and ships. With enough "Beam-type" weapons (Anti-Proton Beam, Wave Motion Gun, etc) you could take down individual AI ships before the rest of their fleet come into range. Danmaku ("curtain shooter") psychology ^^

Of course, formations aren't quite as useful as they were in ancient warfare as it wasn't just about ranged weapons and SE V lets you move through ships. Be warned - the 2 formations I added are highly direction dependant so if you get attacked from behind somehow (or more realistically: flanked 2 sides), you'd better break formation and run away. But this is only in Tactical combat and against smart humans - Strategic combat has no way to tell ships to "do a flanking maneuveur".