About the dread star

[Rystiya]

The dread star is supposed to have 6 siege weapon slot but in combat they usually only shoot 2 to 4 shoots per round. Is this because seige weapons have a limited firing arc? A dread star is 2 to 3 times as powerful as a super dreadnaught, but it costs way too much resourse and way too little labour. Is this how things supposed to be? It also seems strange that it have a lot of armor but it only have a bit more hull points then the super dreadnaught.

[Arioch]

The "size" of siege weapon hardpoints is expressed in terms of the number of heavy weapons it will carry; a "x 3" siege hardpoint slot still carries only one siege weapon. So a dread star should be able to fire 2 siege weapons per turn.

Most of the cost of ships is based on their components. I'll take a look to see if there's something pulling the dread star costs out of whack.

[Rystiya]

Originally posted by Arioch:

The "size" of superheavy hardpoints is expressed in terms of the number of heavy weapons it will carry; a "x 3" superheavy slot still carries only one siege weapon. So a dread star should be able to fire 2 siege weapons per turn.

Most of the cost of ships is based on their components. I'll take a look to see if there's something pulling the dread star costs out of whack.

Well I understand that a x3 heavy weapon slot means the heavy weapon installed here is three linked, and it can fire once and do triple damage. But although the dread star can fire super beam twice correctly, the beam is either single or twin linked, which does 400 or 800 damage instead of 1200. I haven't played this game for much time, but this doesn't seems right.

[Arioch]

A siege hardpoint can either mount 3 heavy weapons or 1 siege weapon. It cannot mount 3 siege weapons. A dread star has 2 siege hardpoints, so it can mount a total of 2 stellar surge beams doing 400 damage each.

[Rystiya]

Originally posted by Arioch:

A siege hardpoint can either mount 3 heavy weapons or 1 siege weapon. It cannot mount 3 siege weapons. A dread star has 2 siege hardpoints, so it can mount a total of 2 stellar surge beams doing 400 damage each.

That's weird... I saw a single dread star deal 400 damage with one shot and 800 damage with another shoot, dealing 1200 damage in total... if I am not mistaken. The dread star sometimes also shoots three beams at the same time visually.
What's more, the dread star would also be too weak if it can only install two seige weapons. It costs about 4-5k labour and 16-19k metal if well equiped, while super dreadnaught costs about 4k each. The dread star is just slighty more then twice as powerful as super dread naught in terms of firepower and defence, and I'm not sure whether it can survive fighting 3 of those at the same time. The dread star seems to be much less cost efficient in comparion to super dread naught, while fleet/heavy carriers are probably even more efficient then the latter.

[Rystiya]

Originally posted by Arioch:

A siege hardpoint can either mount 3 heavy weapons or 1 siege weapon. It cannot mount 3 siege weapons. A dread star has 2 siege hardpoints, so it can mount a total of 2 stellar surge beams doing 400 damage each.

Visually the dread star shoots its siege beam form two spot, the front spot shoots a single beam and the back spot shoots a twin linked beam, which is really weird.
Even more strangly, the sutge beam cost 750 when installed on super dreadnaught, 900 on dread star and 1050 on planet. Its metal cost is 45/90/45 respectively, and the energy cost of primary artilary, on the other hand, is 360/432/540. This doesn't make any sense. Something is probably broken, maybe those siege weapons are sometimes considered single and sometimes considered double or triple during calculations.

[Rystiya]

Originally posted by Arioch:

A siege hardpoint can either mount 3 heavy weapons or 1 siege weapon. It cannot mount 3 siege weapons. A dread star has 2 siege hardpoints, so it can mount a total of 2 stellar surge beams doing 400 damage each.

I also investigated the price problem. The blackhole reactor generates 1020 energy on super dreadnaught and 1520 on dread star. The teleport shield generates 520 shield points on super dreadnaughts and 780 on dread star. This is correct, as the system efficiency of super dreadnaught and dread star are 20 and 30, which is 2:3 (Which I think is both two low. As cruiser have 10 and battleship have 20, way not change those of these super weapons to 30 and 60 or even higher?).
However the metal cost of blackhole generator is 96 and 288 on these two ships, and the teleport shield costs 150 and 480. This is about 1:3, and certainly wrong. The blackhole reactor costs 96 metal on super dreadnaught and fleet carrier, which have a system efficiency of 15. It costs 72 metal on battlecruiser whose efficiency is 15, and 48 on 10 efficiency heavy cruiser and 24 on 5 efficiency destroyer. Therefore the cost of systems should scale with sysytem efficiency as their effects do. On dread star, however, every systems are about 2 times as expensive as they should be.
When it comes to weapons, the cost of each strike fighters are 288/8 = 36 on super dreadnaught and 216/6 = 36 on fleet carrier, however its cost turned out to be 1728/24 = 72 on dread star. Here the price is also doubled.
Also the hull of the dread star is too expensive, as it costs 2994 metal, while super dreadnaught costs 674, and fleet carrier costs 312. The hull of dread star is 4.5 times as expensive as those of super dreadnaught (The hull of dread star along with its armor(whose metal cost seem to scale with hull cost) costs more then 8000 metal). On the other hand the dread star have 590+2700 = 3290 life points altogether while super dreadnaught have 410+1080 = 1490, and the life points of the dread star is slightly higher then twice the health of super dreadnaught. Again the dread star is twice as expensive as it should be.
I hope that the dread star can get 2 three-linked siege weapons and twice the firepower, health and shields it have now, so that it can worth its price. It is not reanable that the utimate weapon in the game costs twice on every affeir, and its only advantage is that it is fast to build. After all, metal is far more precious then labour when it comes to ship construction.

[Rystiya]

Originally posted by Arioch:

A siege hardpoint can either mount 3 heavy weapons or 1 siege weapon. It cannot mount 3 siege weapons. A dread star has 2 siege hardpoints, so it can mount a total of 2 stellar surge beams doing 400 damage each.

I have just checked that the siege weapon slot of super dreadnaught do turn the heavy weapon installed in it to three linked, so I don't think the 'x1' 'x3' mark of siege weapon slot have anything to do with heavy weapon...