Topic: DroD vs. PLaD .... Any Specfile Mods Out There?

[Fahrenheit]

In SFB (yes, yes, I know), up to two Plasma-D racks could be used in offensive mode per turn from a ship so armed.

I was thinking that, especially for some of those escort ships that are armed with Pl-D and not much else, that replacing two Pl-D racks with the undocumented DroD racks would be a nice mod.


Here's what I've done with my spec file (have to test it some tonight)...


Any ship with two or fewer PLaD have had them replaced with DroD on a one-to-one basis.

Ships with more than 2 PLaD have two replaced.


When possible (that is, additional hardpoints available to move the DroD onto), I have retained the same firing arcs for remaining PlaD.  Where this is not possible (most notably, Orion Salvage Cruisers armed with 4 PlaD), I have replaced one 2-point mount with 2 DroD, and changed the other mount to have a firing arc of ALL.  That is, instead of 2LS PLaD and 2RS PLaD, such a ship will now have 2 ALL PLaD, and 2 DroD.

I did NOT modify any fixed installation, since they're most likely to need the drone defense.  This includes bases and FRDs.

Ships with a year in service of greater than 11 get a reload of "2"; ships YIS 10 or less get a reload of "1".  Exceptions: Any Freighter (including AuxCV types) only get a reload of "1" regardless.

There is one or two X-class ships that have 3 PLaD racks on a single mount, and no known additional hardpoints.  For these, I have replaced all 3 PLaD racks with DroD, since these ships have crappy weaponry otherwise.


Does anybody have any other suggestions?  Am I just being wacky here?  Are DroD just too unbalancing to make such a mod?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know(tm)

F°
 

[3dot14]

i once brought this up, but unfortunately drod has unexpected side effects. (thanks to firesoul for this info, ntw)

when rack is loaded with slow drones (remember, drod is a missile rack and is subject to missile munition configurations) it works as expected. For Medium speed drod, the torp ignores shields. For Fast torp, it envelopes (EPT)...

So there is no reliable drod to sub in for off. plasD.

[Fahrenheit]

Quote:
i once brought this up, but unfortunately drod has unexpected side effects. (thanks to firesoul for this info, ntw)

when rack is loaded with slow drones (remember, drod is a missile rack and is subject to missile munition configurations) it works as expected. For Medium speed drod, the torp ignores shields. For Fast torp, it envelopes (EPT)...

So there is no reliable drod to sub in for off. plasD.  

It sounds like they'd work OK for single-player... except that your computer opponents might automatically take the "current speed for era", giving them penetrating or EPT plasma.

Plus, the fact that you can make scatterpacks out of them, which isn't permitted in SFB.   Hmmm...  again, in single-player, you could deal with that by your own personal honor.  

But I can see the problems that would arise in multiplayer.

[FireSoul]

Hey. You could put DroD on fighters (ISC?) that appear only once in Late era.. and call the Env a special effect of that unique weapon.  

.. it seems it would work if you ask me.

[Fahrenheit]

Quote:
Hey. You could put DroD on fighters (ISC?) that appear only once in Late era.. and call the Env a special effect of that unique weapon.  

.. it seems it would work if you ask me.  

Hmmm....   I thought that fighters had special drones, or am I thinking of EAW?

Can you put "normal" drones onto fighters?

I modified my PF's that had PLaD with DroD.  Those will rock.  Also, Orion ships that typically don't run "Escort" configurations pretty much should have DroD, IMO.

F°
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.'" -- Robert Heinlein

[SPQR Renegade001]

With the D-Base and scripting advances of the past few months, I wonder if there is a way to restrict plasma races to having only slow speed drones? The fast DroD are a bit much for ship based weapons (and the medium ones are just nuts), but the slow ones are just what the Doc ordered for the POS Plas-D escorts. A D-Base fix wouldn't help with GSA matches, but at least there you know your taking the ship because your going to protect something.

As for the fighters, yeah, Enveloping DroD would be an improvement over using Plas-F on fighters. The CV jock gets the bonus of having his plasma damage do more mizia damage and the ability to score damage around solid shield facings, and the victim has the advantage of the shorter plasma range and the security of knowing that he's not gonna take 80 points of damage through one shield facing if he gets in a bad spot with that squadron of heavy fighters. With enveloped damage, they might even be reasonable as the 2 shot "Dump and Run" fighters they're supposed to be (ie. pd phasers only). Certainly no further over the top than the other top of the line fighters.    

[Fahrenheit]

OK, I've been playing with PLaD for a bit in campaign mode.

Late Era, Admiral Level.  I stick with "Slow" DroD.

Before your first mission with a ship, you can't buy any, and you won't have any that mission.  After that, you have a normal complement and can buy more (which are free since I'm using slow speed).


Doesn't seem that enemy PD do much to them.  Don't know how much it takes to kill one, but I've never seen one die yet from PD.

I've seen enemy AI ships pop a weasel if I dump out a scatterpack and six of them pop out.

The DroD torps have a very limited range.  It's greater than 10, but it's not much more than 10.  Maybe it's 15.

The DroD torps always do a fixed amount of damage: 12.  This holds true if you fire them at range 1, or at range 10.

They travel at speed 36.

The racks recycle in 1 turn.

AI ships NEVER fire them.  I think it might be related to the "first mission no ammo" thing.



Restricting plasma races to only slow drones?  Well.... We are talking OP here, and many of the ships that sport PlaD/DroD are pirates.  Some of those ships have drone racks on them too, although I've yet to play a ship that has a mix of regular drones and DroD.  I'd be interested to see what the scatterpack looks like.

I'm looking forward to getting the Prime Cartel's XCA in my campaign (I'm in a DBR2 or 3 right now).  It has 2 C-racks and a lone DroD on it.  Once I get that I'll let y'all know how the interaction works.  Course, I think the fact that Prime's XCA has H-photons instead of PLaX (the XDD has PLaX) is stupid, so I'll probably change that in my spec file too.

[The_Infiltrator]

There is, unfortunately, no real solution here to this. What would be nice is that you could simply put a plasma D launcher on a fighter and select the speed to slow, and have the AI fire it. Unfortunately, the problem is that not only is there no way to select the speed, there's no way to choose how many reloads the fighter has, and (biggest problem) is that IIRC the AI was never programmed to know how to use them. So, they never fire them.

Also, since the program thinks it's a drone with very short range, the damage doesn't degrade with range.


Having this work correctly would be a big plus, as then you could get ISC, Gorn, and Romulan fighters armed with the correct weapons. Has anyone ever gotten an answer why they decided to do it this way?

[Captain Ron]

The DroD was never completed and why it was not released as part of the game. The reason was more than likily time related as almost all weapons are custom coded and most require over 200 lines of code to make work. T/R beams are also in the game but again they were never completed.

The real question is will MagnumMan complete them as part of his patching process for us to mod, or will they be always left out?

[FireSoul]

Fact #1: there will be no more patches.
Fact #2: I think Mags did at some point have some DroD code for Taldren, but it was not accepted.

[3dot14]

http://208.57.228.4/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=UBB2&Number=145357&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&vc=1

Not knowing too much about scripting, I thought this post might be significant...

Seems on SS2 (upcoming Op d2 campaign) there is a mission glitch (at least it's a glitch in that context) that even late era AI only have slow drones.

Won't that be a good starting point?

[jimkirk]

W odpowiedzi na:
Fact #1: there will be no more patches.
Fact #2: I think Mags did at some point have some DroD code for Taldren, but it was not accepted.  

Did you mean this for SFC2:EAW or SFC:OP??? Cause I don't get it... BTW In SFC2:EAW there was no TR Beam code.  

[Strafer]

Quote:
 BTW In SFC2:EAW there was no TR Beam code.  

That's because it was to be the Gorn X weapon until someone thought up the Snare. It stayed, and it got it's little brother included down the road...