Choice of Weapons?

CalifDude

Join Date 12/2007

Choice of Weapons?

Can some of you good players discuss which of the three types of offensive weapons you prefer and why? Are there some advantages or disadvantages that show up as you move up the tech tree on one line or the other? (A poll on this subject would be interesting...or is there a nearly unanimous answer I don't know about?)

I've seen references to psionic beams as if this was the ultimate offensive weapon...but don't see this on the DA tech tree; are psionic beams available in DA, possibly only as a special ability of some race? Are they one of your goals in a long game?

I've used missiles in all of my games so far, but couldn't give you a reason for that choice. I've won my games without needing to go any farther than photon torpedoes, usually won with harpoons. I might have done just as well or better with either beams or guns for all I know.

I have not seen a clear pattern of choice of weapons by the AI. In past games, they used mostly guns, but in today's game 6 out of 7 have missiles and the other has guns. I use the trick of making a few paper tiger beam ships as soon as possible, to misdirect the AI as to their choice of defense, and to build a huge military rating so they won't declare war on me...maybe that has something to do with it.

Thanks for your replies. This should be interesting.

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Mass drivers seem so Star Wars like to me.

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Hi!I'm pretty sure that defense is done as follows. If you have say 4/16/ 4 it ends up being the appropriated defense + the square root of the other two.That would be dread Lords combat, where defenses stack. In Dark Avatar they roll separately. For more info you may find usefull wiki article: Ship combat.BR, Iztok

Ah, so good to know I was right and I was wrong. I just got Dark Avatar and didn't realize the combat system had been revamped that much. I'll look forward to having to change my strats for ship building from Dread Lords then. And I also need to look more closely at the wiki (which I've used a few times to get info).

That still seems to say that off defenses are good to have, at least until later in the game as it appears that if the primary defense is depleted you'll still get some reduction from the off defense and as the specifically mentioned it becomes very good vs low attack weapons. I think this still makes sense even with what DarkYorPathfinder is saying. It's only the one roll per mount but if I read it right the defense that rolls is the one that is the highest, so if you have a 16/9/9 and are facing a beam ship, if the shields are depleted to 2 and the attacker still has some beams to fire you'll end up rolling the armor or point defense since sqrt(9) = 3 > 2. This does seem to remove the perfect squares rule of thumb for armor but yeah the wiki does point out a few weaknesses like how a single no def high attack ship is better to use in succession while attacking as opposed to sending a fleet since if you know that at least one ship will die in the attack you spare others. Yeah that has nothing to do with defense and more to do with the new everyone gets a shot rules (unless you are Arceans and even then only for the first round).

Well I'm glad I posted outdated info and got corrected.

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I play on tough and challenging a lot and I find it most effective on those difficulties to use beam and just tech up quickly to get psionic beam. Also, don't forget that if you have a defense that doesn't directly counter a weapon type (ex: 16 beam defense against 16 mass driver attack), the defense operates at the square root of its normal value taking away 4 of the above mentioned 16 mass driver attack (at least that's what I remember it doing). It's cost effective to pile on defensives in perfect squares (1, 4, 9, 16, etc...). Luck is also always useful when dealing with any aspect of the game.

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