Nuclear Torpedoes

[Verenti]

Okay, so, nuclear torpedoes. They do millions of points of damage and I can put them on escorts. What is the cost I'm not seeing? Why shouldn't I spam them in barrage against the aliens?

[ian.whitchurch]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ulzgoroth:

Seems like a good time to abuse the economic system: drop a platform kit and add on a supply depot, and you should be able to refuel/rearm anywhere in the system in 30 days AIUI.

By the time you can do that, the Aliens have twigged to the fact that human missile barrages are dangerous, and are fitting more point defense on their ships ...

[Chimp Factory [M04]]

One drawback is the Nuclear Arsenal Mismanagement Event.

Not sure of its real name, but I ended up having that event where one of the nukes was unaccounted for and was a 'loose nuke' that can end up nuking a region in random events........

[Kunming]

Only way to effectively deliver torps vs ships is in accordance with rattler (spam) missiles. Hold your torps AND your missiles on hold until the target is close enough (500km, 400? dont ask). Then spam the rattlers, you can do this precisely in numbers with experience, once they are flying shoot a few torps in there. The big bois are nice mothership killers. Anything that doesnt move in a line, you will miss.

BUUTTTT, missiles are subpar to any main weapon system because they are very limited in numbers, easily countered by PD and require fine micro to be effective, you are better off with 3 coilguns/lasers than 3 missile launchers.

Nuclear torps have another value you dont see ingame which is where they really shine, cerberus have 50 bombardment strength, hades 100, nemesis and olympus 500 and antimatter 1000. Since AM torps use 2 slots AND use AM aswell, ur better off with nemesis torps as your bread and butter in bombardment. Every missile/torp is counted as same vs point defense (any point defense will 1 shot any missile/torp), as opposed to kinetic projectiles which vaporizes 10kg of mass from the projectile. That means while PD will do the same in any case bigger kinetic shots will survive PD while a bigger nuclear warhead is the same as a smaller one.

[corisai]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kunming:

Nuclear torps have another value you dont see ingame which is where they really shine, cerberus have 50 bombardment strength, hades 100, nemesis and olympus 500 and antimatter 1000. Since AM torps use 2 slots AND use AM aswell, ur better off with nemesis torps as your bread and butter in bombardment.

They don't shine here at all - marines are. Reasons: lost nuke events that have pretty low MTTH and cooldown.

Only exception was to rush for early (2030-2035) strategic bomber (nukes + neutron flux torch with 3-4k dV) that will cripple aliens economy and technically win the game for you. With recent nerf of Research Campus it became much less efficient strategy.

[LorDC]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kunming:

Nuclear torps have another value you dont see ingame which is where they really shine, cerberus have 50 bombardment strength, hades 100, nemesis and olympus 500 and antimatter 1000. Since AM torps use 2 slots AND use AM aswell, ur better off with nemesis torps as your bread and butter in bombardment. Every missile/torp is counted as same vs point defense (any point defense will 1 shot any missile/torp), as opposed to kinetic projectiles which vaporizes 10kg of mass from the projectile. That means while PD will do the same in any case bigger kinetic shots will survive PD while a bigger nuclear warhead is the same as a smaller one.

I am not sure what you wanted to tell here, but as someone who poked around in the game code I can tell following:
1) Bombardment value is not used in any ingame calculations. (Except value above zero meaning that weapon can bombard.) Read, there is no difference between bombardment strength being 1 or 1000000.
2) Bombardment does not use combat PD mechanics, it simulates result by doing a roll against base defense weapon score (with alien bases it will effectively always succeed).
3) Said PD roll always negates all projectile damage, both missile and kinetic and halves laser damage.

[corisai]

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

1) Bombardment value is not used in any ingame calculations. (Except value above zero meaning that weapon can bombard.) Read, there is no difference between bombardment strength being 1 or 1000000.

Either via damage or using other flags - nukes in game are going to destroy base on a single successful hit while normal weapons only destroying modules one-by-one.

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

2) Bombardment does not use combat PD mechanics, it simulates result by doing a roll against base defense weapon score (with alien bases it will effectively always succeed).

Only if values was changed :) If I remember correctly previously even 6 LD modules provided only ~35% chance to negate a first strike from bombing run. That why early strategic bombers were such efficient to cripple aliens.

[LorDC]

Początkowo opublikowane przez corisai:

Either via damage or using other flags - nukes in game are going to destroy base on a single successful hit while normal weapons only destroying modules one-by-one.

Not going to deny that. Game actually checks for damage value in MJ, if it is above certain value, hab is jist straight up deleted.

Początkowo opublikowane przez corisai:

Only if values was changed :) If I remember correctly previously even 6 LD modules provided only ~35% chance to negate a first strike from bombing run. That why early strategic bombers were such efficient to cripple aliens.

In current patch 6 LD modules would give you something like 3500% chance to negate damage.

[corisai]

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

In current patch 6 LD modules would give you something like 3500% chance to negate damage.

I think you're either reading code wrong or missing an extra mechanic because 3500% chance to stop damage for 6 modules mean that 1 LD (tier2 module) have 583% chance to stop bombardment (= always stopping it).

Way too much and obvious bug in that case (a single tier2 module shouldn't provide an absolute protection).

[LorDC]

Początkowo opublikowane przez corisai:

I think you're either reading code wrong or missing an extra mechanic because 3500% chance to stop damage for 6 modules mean that 1 LD (tier2 module) have 583% chance to stop bombardment (= always stopping it).

Way too much and obvious bug in that case (a single tier2 module shouldn't provide an absolute protection).

You aren't that far off. It is actually 314.18% chance per LD array.
There is actually a mechanic that reduces that chance if you have more ships bombarding than there are defense modulesa on a base, but with current numbers you need something around 500 ships to have a chance to hit with missiles.

[LorDC]

Oh, and as side note, it doesn't look like a bug, becuase numbers are quite sensible for human defense modules (15/23/45% per module for plain/arc/phasers).

[gimmethegepgun]

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

Oh, and as side note, it doesn't look like a bug, becuase numbers are quite sensible for human defense modules (15/23/45% per module for plain/arc/phasers).

That makes it sound like a bug to me. The weapons on human defense modules are roughly at parity with the ones on the alien defense modules when you have UV phasers. They should have about the same chance to protect as the alien ones at that level.

[kalonjelen]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ian.whitchurch:

Początkowo opublikowane przez ulzgoroth:

Seems like a good time to abuse the economic system: drop a platform kit and add on a supply depot, and you should be able to refuel/rearm anywhere in the system in 30 days AIUI.

By the time you can do that, the Aliens have twigged to the fact that human missile barrages are dangerous, and are fitting more point defense on their ships ...

That'd be cool if they did that, which they don't.

And yeah, I also go for the colony ship that refuels/repairs. I've won twice now and played a few other games and I've never seen the AI react to intercepting my fleet in that 30 day window before they can start getting repaired.

That said, the value of nukes is pretty low and hard to get to work anyway compared to lasers. But the whole oiler fleet idea and having the fleet blow up their base, build an outpost after linking up with that fleet (so that any disabled ships can repair) and waiting 30 days has been a cornerstone of the game for a while now.

[LorDC]

Początkowo opublikowane przez gimmethegepgun:

That makes it sound like a bug to me. The weapons on human defense modules are roughly at parity with the ones on the alien defense modules when you have UV phasers. They should have about the same chance to protect as the alien ones at that level.

It is not a bug but rather a poor balance, Formulas that are used to calculate chances for "PD roll" are the same for all lasers and are pretty straight-forward. It's jsut that alien ground lasers have significantly larger aperture size and significantly lower jitter value (read, better targeting) compared to human ones. The difference is larger than for ship-mounted lasers but not that large to see it as unintended error.

[corisai]

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

The difference is larger than for ship-mounted lasers but not that large to see it as unintended error.

Almost complete immunity to orbital bombardment due to aliens using templates with more then a single LD is like unintended error to me.

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

becuase numbers are quite sensible for human defense modules (15/23/45% per module for plain/arc/phasers).

For a single LD module? It's still hillariously low chance.

[gimmethegepgun]

Początkowo opublikowane przez LorDC:

It's jsut that alien ground lasers have significantly larger aperture size

Oh. I see where my mistake was. I only compared the T1 to each other. But for T2 and T3 the human surface defense lasers have much less size increase than the alien ones do. The human T2 is 50% larger radius than the T1, and T3 is 100% larger radius, whereas alien is 100% and 200%300%. For some reason.