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[Reshy]

OR right now the balance meter is highly in favor of the missile/fighter right now. PD weapons are in general right now trailing the missile/fighter tech of the game. it either takes longer than the weapon has to fire to blow up a missile/fighter or they can be over whelmed very easily with missile/fighter spam. if we had a few more area damage PD weapons for more mounting sizes...im looking at you small and large... and an energy based solution... i think we could balance them out a little more. though if one goes to far in that direction then you have missiles/fighters trailing PD tech. so while i believe there is more balancing to be done personally i also believe its a hard line to get right on the money. and may require some kind of ECM tech for fighters...

Counter-Measure Flares,  Anti-missile-missiles, a good low end ballistic PD and a good medium energy PD.  Also the guardian PD is kind of worthless, fires too slow, takes too much OP, and turns at an abysmal rate.

[Kommodore Krieg]

I think the issues with fighters zerging the ai are largely dependent on the what the Ai's fleet comp is.  I was steamrolling all pirate fleets with my 6 talon 5 broadsword 2 carrier group in seconds, but when I fought a tri-tach fleet with similar number of fighters and all those beam weapons the battle was much closer.  I ended up losing nearly all my fighters, as did he, and the fight came down to our larger ships duking it out. 

[Gaizokubanou]

I think the issues with fighters zerging the ai are largely dependent on the what the Ai's fleet comp is.  I was steamrolling all pirate fleets with my 6 talon 5 broadsword 2 carrier group in seconds, but when I fought a tri-tach fleet with similar number of fighters and all those beam weapons the battle was much closer.  I ended up losing nearly all my fighters, as did he, and the fight came down to our larger ships duking it out.  

I second this.  AI could really use more flak wielding ships.  Although I disagree with you on tri-tach fleet giving fighters much trouble.  Once you gather bit more broadswords (those 6 talons are really worthless, performance to price ratio wise, broadswords easily out perform them), it's the same deal as any other fleet.  The toughest to fight against as fighter spammer is probably onslaught based hegemony defense fleet due to the onslaughts carrying a lot of explosive and flaks.  By tough I mean you might end up losing few pilots by the end.  But it is not risky fight at all.

[icepick37]

and turns at an abysmal rate.

Isn't it supposed to track nearly immediately?

[Darloth]

I'm not sure where I fall in this discussion, but taken as a whole, point defense should -lose- to an equivalent resource expenditure of missiles and/or fighters.  Why? Because otherwise it's a stalemate and if both sides take loads of missiles, fighters and PD, nothing ever gets hurt, and that makes it a boring game. Generally, if (for a roughly equal amount of ordnance points, fleet points, etc) you can wait out the missiles until they run out of ammo, PD is probably too good.

That's not saying that PD should do nothing, and if it's not doing -enough- right now then that's a problem; the lower end of energy PD certainly seems a bit meh, and I never even see anything with a Guardian so I'm not sure they can be usefully considered.  In general, PD should be a way of extending the survivability of things when faced with missiles and fighters, rather than a way of countering them entirely - the way to counter them entirely is either interceptors to kill opposing fighters, or blowing up whatever's launching the missiles.

[Dreyven]

Enemy Ship Strafing

I currently have a big problem with the AI,
it doesn't strafe enough. It's too defensive, not in the "doesn't engage enough" way, i like to not loose ships.
But it doesn't strafe enough, resulting in Hardpoints not turned where they need to be.
The two biggest problems are the Hound and the Wolf, they both turn their Hardpoint away from the enemy too quick, resulting in them not shooting enough.

[MidnightSun]

Isn't it supposed to track nearly immediately?

Yeah, I've never had problems with Guardian tracking. The main problem with it is its ridiculously slow firing rate, I think.

I don't think PD is supposed to stop multiple wings of bombers and torpedo bombers, along with tons of Piliums. If it does, either A) the PD is probably overpowered, or B) the ship's OP were stacked towards PD, and therefore the ship overall has relatively low offensive power against larger ships (ie, if you use all of an Onslaught's OP for flak cannons).

My nearly-stock Conquest flagship loadout is more than capable of handling most fighter wings and the bombs/torpedoes that slip past escorts, but obviously if I was zerged with Piranhas, something's going to slip through (which is what the omni shield is for).

[Adjutant]

thats the point of larger ships. to defend your carriers, most of the real fighting is done with fighters just because of how good they are.

[Iscariot]

Pft. I push with my capital ships.

[Adjutant]

if I was zerged with Piranhas, something's going to slip through

4 piranha wings cost more fleet points then a conquest class. if they don't have a good chance of doing some damage then something is wrong.

[Anysy]

I feel like the guardian PD should be a collection of small (maybe with a medium?) burst lasers - 4-5 of them on independent turret points, regardless of if the weapon is on a hardpoint or not..

It would give it a somewhat unique role in that youre turning a hardpoint into turreted point defense..
In reality, this would probably end up being silly powerful in actually being a point defense item..

[Reshy]

Problem with the guardian is most ships that have it also have advanced optics I realize, which makes it completely useless for everything.

[Nanostrike]

I think Point Defense has a trio of main problems, really:


1) They attack so much crap that ISN'T a missile/fighter that they forget to do their damn job.  I can't count how many times my Burst PD Lasers have fired at a Capital Ship I was strafing past instead of the missiles trailing behind me.  And when they finally turn to face the missile, they're in cooldown and the missiles hit me.

Ideally, I'd like a way to make Point Defense weapons STRICTLY point-defense.  Perhaps a "PD Only" toggle.  Like the "Hold Fire", when it's on, Point Defense weapons will ONLY fire at Fighters and/or Missiles.


2) Another problem I have is with the Hold Fire in general.  If I have Pulse Lasers that pump out the damage and PD Lasers that are keeping me alive, all on autofire and I have to shut off the flux-happy Pulse Lasers so I don't overload...my Point Defense is now offline too!  A separate "Auto-Fire/Hold Fire" set would fix this.  SHIFT+1 puts something on "Autofire 1" that you can stop by hitting X.  ALT+1 would put that same group on "Autofire 1" that you could stop by hitting Z.  Not only would this help with Point Defense, but it'd give more freedom in general of what weapons are firing when.

Might be nice to have a capital ship that can toggle Autofire separately for it's Anti-Shield and Anti-Armor weapons.


3) Energy PD weapons largely suck.  I would take a Vulcan Cannon over a PD Laser or a Flak Cannon over a Burst Laser any day.  First, the normal PD laser is so weak even with multiple lasers,  it's hard-pressed to take out a single missile.  And while the Burst PD lasers are good (Although the cooldown is a bit long), the issue in problem #1 kicks in: their long range makes them attack things that they shouldn't instead of fighter/missile threats.

This is compounded by the fact that they're all "Energy" and not "Fragmentation", and get no real advantage against fighters/missiles.  Maybe change certain PD Energy weapons to have Fragmentation damage.  The reasoning could be that they cause some sort of radiation, emit certain particles, or cause internal thermal damage.  All that would be largely blocked by armor/shields, but will devastate unshielded targets and small ships.

Also energy has no real AoE attacks that can swat down groups of missiles/fighters like Flak Cannons can.  Some sort of "Charge Launcher" or "Energy Mortar" that explodes on contact.

[Anysy]

If point defense energy weapons were moved to frag damage, and the targeting was changed to HEAVILY favor actually doing point defense stuff, that would be huge.. Even if it meant you couldnt use point defense lasers on fleet ships at all, their usefulness in being PD is incredibly strong.

[Flare]

2) Another problem I have is with the Hold Fire in general.  If I have Pulse Lasers that pump out the damage and PD Lasers that are keeping me alive, all on autofire and I have to shut off the flux-happy Pulse Lasers so I don't overload...my Point Defense is now offline too!  A separate "Auto-Fire/Hold Fire" set would fix this.  SHIFT+1 puts something on "Autofire 1" that you can stop by hitting X.  ALT+1 would put that same group on "Autofire 1" that you could stop by hitting Z.  Not only would this help with Point Defense, but it'd give more freedom in general of what weapons are firing when.

Why don't you just put all your PD in one weapons group and the main damage dealing weapons in another group separately? This way you can shut off damage dealers to save on flux generation while the PDs are still functional in their role.