Plasma Cannons

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#16 Post by Bigjoe5 »

No, the structural analyzer triples the damage it does when it gets past the shields. Not when it is hitting the shield, but not just when it is piercing the shield either.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

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utilae
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#17 Post by utilae »

Ok, you seem to be right. The shield being down counts as letting the damage be doubled. I thought it would not. Though I new that damage that got through the shields would be doubled. Which is why I promoted the phasor. :)

source: http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/mac/file/564290/1726
Structural Analyzer

- It Doubles the damage of each weapon that penetrates the shield,
it is just like another Hyper-X, except it works in a different
way. You've gotta have this to do more damage. Although this
system only works when the enemy shield is down, there is a way to
bypass the enemy shields which will be explained later, if you
don't already know it. (essential)
The plasma cannon is still more second choice to phasor. Cause here is what happened. My ground batteries have plasma cannons. My ships have shield piercing phasors. My ships would neatly fire throug the class V shields and do damage to the armour, then hull. But the ground batteries, well all there damage just got absorbed by the class V shields. I would love to have not chosen plasma cannons in that case. I really would only use plasma cannons for the cases where the enemy has planetary shields, cause phasors are useless against those!!! :)

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#18 Post by Bigjoe5 »

utilae wrote: The plasma cannon is still more second choice to phasor. Cause here is what happened. My ground batteries have plasma cannons. My ships have shield piercing phasors. My ships would neatly fire throug the class V shields and do damage to the armour, then hull. But the ground batteries, well all there damage just got absorbed by the class V shields. I would love to have not chosen plasma cannons in that case. I really would only use plasma cannons for the cases where the enemy has planetary shields, cause phasors are useless against those!!! :)
Well, the main drawback to plasma cannons as a planet based weapon is that they have 2x range dissipation. With ships, you can go up and do massive damage. Still though, I would recommend them for planet based weapons over phasors because you can't have shield piercing planet based weapons. Also, damaging the armour and the hull isn't really necessary with achilles targeting unit, because it penetrates the armour and damages systems directly, or at least is 3x as likely to (12x with enveloping weapons, which is why I like plasma cannons). I haven't really used shield piercing phasors very much. I'll have to try them out. But if phasors are good, i bet particle beams are better.:)
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

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utilae
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#19 Post by utilae »

Yea, plasma cannons are the best against planets, especially if they have shields. But against ships, I have noticed they take down the entire shields of a ship, and thats a waste. But they are still strong. And in some cases I certainly choose plasma cannons even over phasors.

I think particle beams don't minturise, so they ain't as good as phasors. I tried once, I could get more phasors, therefore more damage.

marhawkman
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#20 Post by marhawkman »

Plasma cannons have built in Enveloping. this means the FULL damage is dealt to all four sides of the ship at once.

My favorite for breaking planetary shields is the mighty Stellar Convertor. At max minaturization I can fit 5 on a single ship. :) Just don't mount them in multiple. Each one needs to have a seperate mount or they'll fire simultaneously every time. So if you only need one shot to destroy the planet's defenses, firing all five would destroy everything but the planet itself. :( and if you use the Ginormous deathrays in ship to ship combat you'll waste your shots the first time you fire since it'll always fire all of them at the first ship you target.
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utilae
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#21 Post by utilae »

You are right to a degree. My last game, I found that plasma cannons weren't enough because there planets were invincible with plantary shields. And the enveloping factor was a drawback, though I did notice that the plasma cannons only seemed to damage one side of their shields. Bug? I didn't have phasors in that game, as I went for all shield techs to have mega shield defense. I know, and many people belive, that phasors with complimentary systems kick ass. Cause you have shield piercing, then ignore armour through the archiles targeting unit. But hard shields are a problem for them. Which is why I went to plasma cannons instead. And plasma cannons were slightly better against planetary shields then phasors.

In the end, I replaced plasma cannons with MAULERS. They had no problems against planets and were about equal to plasma cannons really (slight miniturization). Plus they always hit. I had to steal those by invading a planet, cause I chose stargates. With stargates I was able to destroy there worlds, colonise and instantly transport defense ships to this new world as well as all others.

HereticPriest
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#22 Post by HereticPriest »

Why do you keep saying Phasers are the best weapon although it has been repeatedly correctly stated that hard shields will render them almost useless ? imo if it is fact that there is a tech that makes them worse then another weapon that fact does in fact make it impossible for them to be the best weapon. i dont think i said this very elegantly, but i think the logic is flawless. If something needs a condition to be the best something and another thing does not need a condition to do that then the first thing is worse. Also Plasma Cannons sound way cool in Moo2. Also Stellar Converters are really giant Plasma Cannons. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to teach you *bows and hides quickly*

edit: i usually put bombs or a heavier beamweapon into the ships for destroing the planetary defenses. The most important part is to have the highest fleet vs fleet combat rating afterall. neutronium bombs with transporters really rock. but if you are totally against using any special ships for planetary bombardment then put plasmatorpedos. they are an awesome weapon with all upgrades, no matter what. especially with phasing cloak and/or time warp facilitators. definitly the phasing cloak though.

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utilae
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#23 Post by utilae »

It doesn't matter vs planets. Maulers rape all.

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OndrejR
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#24 Post by OndrejR »

Weapons and all systems should be balanced like in StarCraft - every unit and weapon is very effective against something and very weak against something else.

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utilae
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#25 Post by utilae »

They should be.
I don't believe Moo2 is perfect or even satisfactory in that respect.

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IConrad
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#26 Post by IConrad »

On the MOO2 equation: Please consider the following. Insofar as plasma cannons v. phasors goes; please consider the following:

Ship shields invariably have very little in the way of total value. And because you only have to multiply the shield strength by 1x when counting for enveloping weapons, the amount this comes to bear is relatively marginal.

We will allow, here, for shield piercing to be effective on the Phasor -- you'll see that the "best bet" will remain the plasma cannon, in terms of raw damage dealt.

Why? Because while the Phasor is dealing up to 3x damage, the Plasma cannon is dealing up to 4x damage. Just from its base design, it deals 33% more damage at base (and that 33% invariably offsets the value of the shield system when considering the amount of shield it has.) The fact that it does at base (before enveloping) roughly 50% more damage yields a base after enveloping/autofire balance of almost double that of the phasor. However, because you must factor out the number of the weapons you can pack in the same amount of space, that falls back to, IIRC, something more like 1.8x the damage "factor".

Using plasma cannons also allows you to 'free up' the slot taken up by the battle scanner (your PD weapons don't need the boost and there, bar none, phasors are the superior PD weapon thanks to their lack of the need for it). Relying on Continuous just doesn't completely cut it -- you're still down somewhat on the percentage, otherwise.

My usual ship (mid-to-late) design looked something like this:
XX Hv Cont. Plasma Cannons
XX Pd Cont. Phasors
(Sometimes: XX Hv. Cont. Ion Cannons)
(Sometimes: 6 Tractors)

Heavy Armor // Reinforced Hull // High Energy Focus
Energy Absorber // Automated Repair System // Inertial Stabilizer
Battle Pods // (Yes, I know) Battle Scanner/Achilles Targeting System/Damper Field

((Not bad considering I haven't played the game in over a year!)

I would also of course be running a cybernetic race. As you can see, my designs basically ignore shields outright. I also never really bother w/ Structural Analyzers for the simple reason that I found them to be not worth the effort. The raw punching power of the Heavy-Mounted, High-Energy-Focused Plasma Cannons essentially made it take no more than 3 Plasma Cannons to eliminate a Titan-class ship, and the AI pretty much never designed their ships to be an effective counter-measure to this.

The "sometimes Ion Cannons" would depend on the sizes of the fleets being sent at me. If I was facing more than an 8x/1x ratio of theirs v. mine, I'd add 2 Ion Cannons in lieu of Plasma Cannons (in separate slots, of course). You then fire on the second rank of ships first, and can generally be counted on to take out a good three or four ships extra just from the shockwave effect. I tried the phasor configuration once. I found that the AI //always// uses Hard Shields; and that furthermore, the lack of sufficient punching power meant that I was having to re-shred the shields every time they turned. Which they did. Obnoxious.

As to taking out the Guardian / Antarans and getting Death Rays... well, shame on you guys for not saving before going into the fight and reloading when you get the bad techs! :P ( ;-) )

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Zieman
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#27 Post by Zieman »

IConrad wrote:As to taking out the Guardian / Antarans and getting Death Rays... well, shame on you guys for not saving before going into the fight and reloading when you get the bad techs! :P ( ;-) )
You always get Death Ray when you defeat the Guardian, other techs vary.
Capturing & scrapping an Antaran battleship or titan may give you Death Ray, smaller Antaran ships don't have it.

And Disruptors give best bang for space used ratio, if you compare fully miniaturized beams with each other. You need hyper advanced tech V for that to happen though (II for Phasors).
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marhawkman
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#28 Post by marhawkman »

Yeah, in single player it's best to hijack a few antaran ships before you go to Orion. That way you have less options open for the computer to give you. :)
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Aussie Mick
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#29 Post by Aussie Mick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:True, it does do massive damage. And it destroys planets. :D

But you can fit 40 Plasma Cannons in it's place. :(

Anyway, the reason I'm kind of annoyed at Plasma Cannons being the best weapon was that I was in a real pickle, so I attacked the Gaurdian to get Xentronium Armor with the last vestiges of my fleet, but I also got Death Ray, which replaced my Plasma Cannons, so my planetary defenses got owned. :(
So what you're really upset about is being forced to use Death Rays in your planetary defenses. Yep, that's a bastard. I mean don't the planetary governments consult before replace vital systems? All it would needs is a simple "You have better technology do you you want to upgrade?" screen.

Morgian
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Re: Plasma Cannons

#30 Post by Morgian »

I never did much mathematical calculations, but in practice, when I get plasma, I usually win. Phasors are almost there, but not quite...I have been defeated sometimes by the Guardian when having only phasors. And by some of the competition too, usually when they brought more ships or better tech then me. But once I have plasma guns on titan ships there is nothing I cannot beat, no matter what they have (doesnt matter at that point, if I have been heavily out-teched).

In short, it does not matter if there are better weapons than plasma, because plasma is good enough to beat everything. Doesn't hurt to have high energy focus, achilles targeting and rangemaster units of course...

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