And fyi - that was coz laser fighters did 5 dmg and fusions 7 in pre 1.50 moo2, while in 1.50 they do 4 and 6 dmg.

Hi Rocco,

I had a look at the video,

I wouldn't want to be part of your empire ;-O
Starving halve your empire ;)

And I really underestimated fighters. They really rock even till later in the game.

Would it be maybe wise to expend the anti-rocket to anti-fighter as well?

So you've dispensed with the +1 damage for fighters in 1.5? Good to know. Does Mass Driver still supersede Fusion Beam?

Yes MD supersedes the Fusion.
Also, the +1 dmg was dispensed with the cfg setting "fighter_beam_no_plus_one = 1;"
So classic behaviour could even be restored by setting this to 0, should someone wish too..
Yeah, i was even too harsh there for my citizens, epsecially in the last couple turns, i tortured them more than needed. :)

> A-M rockets to work on fighters? Dunno, if you're looking to mod the game to make fighters less dominant there are plenty of options, like make them avail somewhat later in Tree (you could swap them with Fighter Garrison for example, providing more early planet defense in the process), or bring forward anti fighter techs like Lightning Field and also Pulsar. Satellites can also be modded to have Lightning Field being equipped on them, or generally made more spacious, so they will have more PD. Keep in mind also that that reduction from 5/7 to 4/6 had a big impact already on their early game strength (that vid with 16t game was played in 1.40 mind you).

You could also make them to actually use PD instead of regular beams via fighters_use_pd .

Quite fitting thou for the MoO1 ending with the dark overload showing up ;)

Actually I am replaying MoO2 in the moment with 1.5 (great work!!!!!!)

And I found that the AI can not really handle them so well. I did not enable the advanced AI-ships, would it make any difference?

I have the feeling, so long you do not have rocket ships, the AI will not bring in PDs? Is just seem to use A-M.....until really late in the game.

But I still have to play a few more games anyway :O

Plus the game I played I had some luck with the planets.

Good that you like it!!

In what way you mean the AI can not handle them (fighters) well?

AISHIPS improves general ship designs (less bombs, better space allocation for specials, better prioritization of special systems), you can find details about it in the file manual_add.xls that came with the patch, tabs aiships_1 and aiships_2.
It's definitely recommended to try it out, and probably it will be enabled by default at some next release.
There are 8 generic ship design templates that the AI can use and only 3 of them use PD weapons, and 1 of those three have the PD % set at 0 even... That means that most ships will come without PD.

Dank je wel!!!

Thanks for the hint! :)

Is this file doing anything or just info?

ok, in the meantime as I haven't enabled it yet, my 2 cents and line of thinking:

The only real defense against fighters/bombers are PDs, right? (not talking about specials ;) ).
So if the human player uses fighters and if only 3 designs (2) use anti-fighter tactics leaves the AI at a great disadvantage, right?
A human would counter it by employing a few PD-ships and kill them off. As the AI is not able to handle this, a more generic approach would be needed, or?
And just from the logic the first thing coming to mind is A-M. If something is quick enough to counter a fucking fast missile, it shall be able to handle a slow fighter as well, or? ;)
Even starbases can be wiped off with just a few fighters. I know Luke Skywalker did the same, but he was a single special guy ;)
AFAIK fighters have 2 HP, with Tritanium 4, Zortium 8.
Damage it can do is 4 * best PD.
Let's assume laser, 1-2 points.
So 4*4*2 = 32 Damage being delivered.
HP = 4*2*2 = 16 (assuming tritanium as rather early)
To fight off this 4 fighters you would need
16/2 = 8 PD lasers, meaning 40 tons. (right? scratching my head)

So how many ships would you need to fight off just one fighter squadron? And I have no idea how big the space is on a space station.
Cost: IF I read the xls correctly: 8 PDs 40 BC? (assuming 360 and PD?)
Fighter 25 BC and only 30 space.

Just out of those figures it seems for me impossible that the AI could get a proper anti-fighter tactic running at all.
Especially if you just get a tad lucky and find a even stronger armor!
Xentronium would mean 80 HPs????
Destroyer only has 100 :O (reason why I used destroyer as this is also the smallest ship (more or less) to be able to fit fighters)
But just my 2 cents ;)

No, all non-heavy-mount beam weapons work against fighters. But PD gain a targeting bonus and allow auto-defensive fire vs. incoming fighters and missiles. SO as long as you have a good targeting computer, you can get by with out PD on your ships, but you need to manually target the fighters yourself.

The fighter description says they are armed with pd weapons, but in fact they are armed with the normal versions of those weapons. Changing the cfg setting so they actually use the pd version might solve the problem you are talking about, since then even class-I shield would block quite a bit of damage and class-III would essentially make early fighter armament obsolete.

I was talking about AI!!!!

Not human ;)

Afaik, the AI targets fighters with "normal" weapons if no other targets are around.

IIRC Rocco-40's ICE-mod moves fighter bays higher up the tech tree, so you might try that mod to see how that effects balance vs the AI.

Don't want to bash you ,but did you think before posting? ;)

As there is always a prime target, the ship from where the fighters started the AI will never target the fighters unless PDs, right? ;) (think a bit more AI man ;) )

And I suggested this too improve 'vanilla' Roccos mod. For me it looks a bit like cheating.

And as fighters are not a late game doomsday weapon, for me it doesn't make so much sense.
Ideally the AI should adapt to human strategies and have some counter-measures. So that a game against the AI is still challenging. But if you have an AI exploit right from the beginning, you could directly hack yourself everything, or?

And as far as I understood it, Rocco is trying to improve the game so that WE can enjoy it more and at least for me having a challenging fight against the AI feels good (evilgrin) ;)

Sorry for the wrong reply ;)

But he is perfectly right here, AI will targets fighters with Normal beams in the case launcher is out of Normal beams range and fighters are in. There is a direct "if no other targets are around" clause about it. While AI will tend to prefer any ship to be targeted instead in this case, i think "saving fighters from AI Normal beams" exploit is shown in Rocco's video too.

enough said.

Again: people read other peoples complete post and don't rip it apart, plus as in this case leaving the originial post out of this discussion.

If you want to cheat, do it yourself, instead of bragging about.

that's the feeling I am have talking with you two guys here.

I refer to my original post, which still stands.

What you do refer as "original"? This: https://www.gog.com/forum/master_of_orion_series/moo_2_help_building_ships/post2 [i dont know what to suggest, so ill write it twice, and will also add what all is about techs to make it a good useful answer] one. Or some else?
I just pointed what no need to use stuff like "Don't want to bash you ,but did you think before posting? ;) " in an incorrect reply to a correct post, thats all. He explained to you how it works in game, you decided to answer with some silly smiles and questioning if he think before posting. He does, seems like you do not.