There is some new, important info at the end of this article, added November 2001
PD's changed in February 2001 to introduce some variety. Previously, there was very little difference between techs 5 to 9 except cost. Now, there is more reason to choose PD weapons carefully.
The Point Defense weapons have the following differing abilities:
Jelmer and David are two experienced Beta Testers.
Holo Decoy:
These used to be useless, but a huge bug in the Host code was discovered and patched in Host 93 (November 2001) and they no longer affect your own fighters, AA guns and photon torpedoes (!!!). They reduce the chances "to hit" of enemy small weapons, (large weapons? I'm not sure), fighters, AA guns by up to 25%. They reduce the chances of Photon Torps by 60% so are particularly effective versus Stormers. However, they use quite a lot of Ord, so don't put them on ships with small ord capacities.
35 MM Vulcan:
maybe a really desperate Tholian [Crystal] would place these on their ships to stop streak missiles, but as they waste ordnance, and there are other weapons that can fire at streak missiles, so these are still "what do you expect from tech 2?"
David Ouimet concurs. "Still no real use, drains ordnance too fast to be of use on most ships and pointless for larger ships."
Some races have ships with mainly lots of small weapons. 35mm Vulcans are suddenly more useful versus them.
Flake Cannon:
This thing has a nice range, and the highest accuracy of all lowtech PD weapons. The change only made it better. Though I did think of this: what if you have a ship with lots of small weapons and a few large ones, and the opponent is using flake cannons. Then it would be possible to choose your small weapons in such a way that they fire before the LW, and distract point defense. (those SW are then 'distractors' ;-)
Some races have ships with mainly lots of small weapons. Flake Cannon are suddenly more useful versus them.
David Ouimet disagrees. "Still not really useful but may be mounted on low tech ships designed to hunt probes and other low tech ships."
Concussion Rocket:
If the only thing to fire at the sand is concussion rockets, I suspect that we will see Stormer ships with these on them, and that it will become standard practice to put one (or two) concussions on your ship, just like you putting a sand caster on it is. A switch 'fire CR's only at Sand Casters' just like we have 'fire SCs at ships' might be nesseccary.
David Ouimet: "Normally I couldn't really care about stopping a sandcaster, shields drop fast enough with normal weapons; I don't see it being critical enough to worry about."
Micro Sandcaster:
Still useful, though the higher tech weapons might be better in some situations. but I still would use these for anti-weapon, and let the sandcasters take care of the fighters (as the MCS is fairly useless vs. fighters (short range)). I'd still call this a target tech, becouse from this point on, it only gets better (and more expensive...)
Auto Blaster:
this non-ord weapon has gained another use: it's probably the anti streak weapon, and [ord-based] photon torpedoes suffer from its 20% accuracy increase. Probably the big brother of the MSC, despite it's high cost.
Some races have ships with mainly lots of small weapons. Flake Cannon are suddenly more useful versus them. Note also: it normally takes 3 seconds to recharge. But when firing against a Small Weapon, it will only take 1 second, so it is very good against small weapon-based races.
Turbo Laser:
This has lower stats in everything compared to the Auto Blaster, but it is an anti-fighter weapon. I don't wich one will be better: the TL or the micro missile launcher, but I can say this: Turbo Lasers are a lot cheaper.
The Turbo Laser charges 3 times as quickly as most PD weapons so once the Evil Empire's fighter swarms are in the game it might become more useful.
Other experienced players have commented that the Turbo Laser was always one of their favourite choices even before the changes.
Mark Heinrich did some experiments and concluded micromissile launchers are significantly better than TL's. I checked and found he was right, at least against heavily armoured fighters like, say Lizard ones. TL's are probably better versus lightly armoured ones like Stormer and Crystal fighters.
Quad Laser:
A good, if expensive all rounder. I'd stick to this one, and then wait for a while until I upgrage to the highest tech. even then, I still would use the others sometimes.
David Ouimet: "Probably still not going to use this one, unless I was playing Crystals, as there is a good mix of solid energy and solid ord weapons. I think the MicroSandcaster may still be a better choice in general."
Micromissile + Intercept
Still the best, if super-expensive weapons. Might have become less usefull becouse of the increased punch of the other weapons. Note that the Intercept is still the best in normal fights versus ships, but useless against Fighter Wings; the Micro-Missile Launcher is still the best versus fighters (or possibly the Turbo Laser).
Conclusion:
Stormers have gained a lot, so have the Crystals, and the PD tech / effectivness curve has become straight. Also, Streak missiles have become less useful, and the influence on other small weapons is also good.
Mission acomplished, Tim! ;-)
David's conclusions: "No true change but some new options. MicroSandcasters, Turbo lasers, Micro-Missiles, and Interceptors are still your primary selections. First and last for defense and the middle two for anti-fighter work."
We now have to consider the PD Odds of Small Weapons when we choose them. Previously, small weapons had little to differentiate them. Now however ones which we'd previously have ignored - like the expensive Tachyon Gun - become more interesting (its PD Odds are zero - most are around 40%).
And the Streak Missile is going to be much less useful because its PD Odds are 80%, besides which a 35mm cannon has an extra 70% chance of stopping it if I read Tim's post correctly. Up to now, Streaks have been the only cheap small weapon which could be used with large standoff ranges, but suddenly the Tachyon Gun is interesting again for another reason!
Along with the proposed new rules on boarding [see other thread], this helps Crystals a lot. [Because their enemies generally use ord-based weapons to take advantage of Crystals' triple damage from them.] Even though I've never played them, I think this is good, because now they have a chance to come out from their Webs a bit and counter threats of massed minelayer buildups on their borders: previously, all they seemed able to do was wait to be beseiged, then any half decent player could take them when he was ready. Now at last they actually have some teeth too.
Stormer ships are individually weaker because by careful choice of PD weapons, opponets can survive longer and take out more Deth Specs. (Deth Specs usually use Photon Torps which use Ord, and their survival chances against say an LCC are dicey.)
However by the same token the Stormer ships no longer *have* to be equipped with Intercepts to survive a fight. So their price plummets and you can build 1.5 to 2 in place of the 1 you used to build. So what if half blow up in battles. It's fun! It's masses of ships! It's a Stormer Horde! We no longer need to worry about losing every ship. - Paul Honigmann
Step 1: If an incoming large weapon is going to hit the ship and there is a PD weapon fully charged that can destroy incoming weapons fire go to Step 2
Step 2: rOdds = Large_Weapon_PDOdds + PD_Intercept_Odds
Step 3: If the attacker ship has an attack bonus greater than 100 go to step 4 otherwise go to step 5
Step 4: If ((Rnd * 100) + (Ship_Attack_Bonus - 100)) < rOdds Then "Enemy Weapon Shot Down!" Done
Step 5: If (Rnd * 100) < rOdds Then "Enemy Weapon Shot Down!" Done
- Tim, 11th Feb 2001
Important new discovery about Point Defence Weapons
In August 2001, Mark Heinrich discovered the following and shared it with the mailing list:
The effectiveness of Point Defence Weapons varies enormously depending upon which slot they're fitted into.
After debate on the List and with Tim, it was determined that the way PD weapons work is this: only one fires at any given incoming shot. The PD weapon which fires is the one which is (a) in the lowest numbered slot (ie PD weapon bay 1 fires before 2, etc); providing (b) it is charged up.
So let's say you have some incoming fire and your ship's first PD bay has a micro-sandcaster ("Intercept Fire Accuracy" of 40%) whilst the second bay has an Intercept ("Intercept Fire Accuracy" of 90%). Since you only get one shot at it, you want the more accurate PD weapon to fire at it: the intercepts. But unless there are 2 shots coming in simultaneously, the Micro-sandcaster will fire, because it's in slot 1. And if it can recharge quickly enough, the Intercept will never fire at all! (Which is how Mark spotted the problem.)
The solution seems to be to build ships so that the most effective PD weapons are in the first slots.
Even in the late game, when you can afford to build just Intercepts, you will want a mix of PD weapons, because Intercepts are useless versus fighters. ("Anti-Fighter Accuracy" is 0%.) So I would advise a PD layout like this:
Because of this feature, Diplomat was altered to allow you to specify which PD weapon goes in which slot. ShipCalc already allowed this. These utilities are widely used to create QSP files which can be imported into Planets for quick-building of ships.