MoO2: Does the "2X range penalties" thing actually

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Minor Annoyance
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MoO2: Does the "2X range penalties" thing actually

Postby Minor Annoyance » Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:10 am

Because this guide: http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin ... 7873/16743 says it doesn't and there's no difference in damage dissipation.
On a similar topic, I've been using heavy mount pretty exclusively for a long time, but that same guide has a chart of the effectiveness of the three mounts at various ranges and at close range two standard mount is better than one heavy, especially with High Energy Focus. Which I guess makes heavy more like spinal from MoO3 in that it's more for the range than over all damage.
So I'm wondering under what situations I should be building short range ships or long range, and assuming one is not clearly better than the other, if I should be building both at the same time or if I should be specializing my fleet to use one until situations change and the other becomes more useful.
EDIT: Also it says that the lower number for damage doesn't do anything and implies that beams always do the big number in damage if it hits. If that's true then doesn't that mean that mass weapons are only different for damage dissipation?

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Gusset
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Postby Gusset » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:59 pm

I won't try to answer all of your questions, because to be honest, I don't know all of the answers...I haven't run any experiments. It should be fairly straightforward to test them, however: just start a hotseat 2 player game, use the ALT-Einstein cheat to get all techs, design some ships, and conduct a series of battles to test things out.

What I can offer, however, is something to consider regarding the question of whether standard mount weapons are the best choice for close range combat. My offering is this: unless you're using shield-piercing weapons, shielding of the target ship can make a difference.

Shields not only absorb damage, they also deflect some of it into oblivion. For instance, provided the shield generator has not been destroyed, Class 3 shields ELIMINATE 3 points of damage from any non-shield-piercing weapon that hits the ship. Those 3 points just go away...they don't even subtract from the remaining shield points. Even if there are zero shield points remaining, the shields still take away those 3 points as long as the shield generator has not been destroyed.

As an example application, let's say our ship, armed with lasers, fires on a target ship protected by C3 shields. If we choose a weapons mix of 2 standard lasers, which are rated at 1-4 points of damage, the most we can hope to punch through the C3 shields is 1 point for each laser cannon, for a maximum of 2. However if we used the same amount of space for a single heavy laser, which does up to 6 points of damage, the most damage we can do goes up to 3 points.

In this example, the heavy laser cannon is the best bet. Of course the trade-off is that our heavy laser cannon would not be able to target fighters or help out on the PD front...

Along the same lines of investigation, you would find that without High Energy Focus or some other assistance, PD mass drivers cannot damage a C3 protected target ship, because they are only good for 1-3 points of damage.

Just something to consider.

-Gusset

Gorean
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Postby Gorean » Tue Aug 25, 2009 9:01 pm

I've seen that article before, and I consider it to be somewhat suspect. I believe that it also suggests that enveloping fusion beams are not the most effective point defense weapon due to dissipation. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that they win hands down, because they still have a four times hit even if they dissipate to almost nothing.
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Minor Annoyance
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Postby Minor Annoyance » Wed Aug 26, 2009 8:36 am

It should be fairly straightforward to test them, however: just start a hotseat 2 player game, use the ALT-Einstein cheat to get all techs, design some ships, and conduct a series of battles to test things out...
Even more straight forward if I use an editor program. I could create a fusion beam with double dissipation and without. Or something with a big damage range and a small one and see if they're different.

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Gusset
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Postby Gusset » Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:14 pm

Even more straight forward if I use an editor program. I could create a fusion beam with double dissipation and without. Or something with a big damage range and a small one and see if they're different.
If you decide to run such a test, with or without going to the trouble of editing things, please be sure to post your results here. I don't play MOO2 much any more (moved on to another 4X game), but I'd still be interested in what you find.

Minor Annoyance
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Postby Minor Annoyance » Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:51 pm

O.K. I've tested some things.
Firstly, the damage range does work as intended. I think the reason it appeared to not work for the other person is because the roll for hitting the ship and for damage done are the same, so if you just barely succeed in hitting your target it does minimal damage and if you well exceed their evasion you do max damage. The previous tester probably had a huge attack advantage so they could always hit but that also meant they'd always to max damage. I instead made the weapons always hit like the mauler device and had attack close to defence. So I did see varying damage.
Secondly, 2x range dissipation does not work. I changed the fusion beam to be identical to the plasma cannon. I then removed 2X dissipation for fusion. When I tried them out, they both did the same damage at any range. I thought there was another bug that made heavy mount 2x dissipation weapons not work in the extended range of the heavy mount, but it turned out it was just a display error. Sometimes having a standard mount weapon fire after a heavy weapon will make the first one not flash the damage it does on screen, but it is still working.

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Postby Child of the Sixth Sun » Mon Mar 15, 2010 1:21 am

In my experiences, fusion beams and plasma cannons do not suffer 2x damage dissipation. However, this may have changed in the 1.31 patch.
Proud hater of the 1.31 patch

Minor Annoyance
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Postby Minor Annoyance » Thu Oct 04, 2012 12:21 pm

I'm using the 1.31 patch so it doesn't. I tried modding those 2x dissipation weapons to no have heavy mounts to make them short range another way, but the AI ships could still use heavy versions. I guess the AI's ship design function doesn't look at the same tables that the human player has and the editor I used doesn't change what the AI thinks it can do.


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