Federation Commander

Is there any reason why some weapons are damaged on torpedo hits while others are damaged on drone hits?

The alternative would be a hit that said photon/fusion/disrupter/plasma/IonCannon and another that said Drone/ADD/ESG/Hellbore/IPG etc.

Torpedo and drone is just simpler.

Unless you are suggesting that it be made simpler and just say 'weapon' with the player choosing?

So row 6 would be: weapon>weapon>weapon.

I was wondering if there was any particular reason a weapon would fall under the 'torpedo' category as opposed to the 'drone' category.
A quick survey of the DAC shows both drone and torpedo appear 3 times so i don't really see a difference.
Just curious.

At one point drone was the secondary/drone/anti-drone system - drone, ADD, ESG etc, and Torp was the major heavy weapon.

Now its less obvious as things like PPD and Hellbore are drone hits.

Plus the system as it stands helps to spread the damage around. Also to make the target lose systems he may not want to lose, for example, PA panels on an Andromedan ship. It gives the target less choice.

Also, the system penalises ships which have a large variety of heavy weapons, for example, Hydran ships with fusion/Hellbore combinations. This is an elegant play-balancing feature which balances those ships' versatility with added vulnerability to damage.

Kang wrote:Also, the system penalises ships which have a large variety of heavy weapons, for example, Hydran ships with fusion/Hellbore combinations. This is an elegant play-balancing feature which balances those ships' versatility with added vulnerability to damage.

I'd have said the other way round myself, without systems that are hit on torp and drone you end up losing phasers fast. One of the big problems Hydrans face is losing all their phasers rapidly - they lose at least 3 phasers going down the 6 row, 2 in the first 3 hits.

Interesting, Lee. Never thought of it that way myself....

Off the top of my head there are 3 empires which tend to have just one type of non phaser weapon, Hydran, Rom and Gorn. All 3 of them want phasers.

All of them because the other weapons are multi turn armers, so phasers are their only weapon they can use every turn. Plus phasers are more power efficent than anything else generally speaking. Especially true on Fusion hydrans.

Hydrans because gatlings are their main weapon, and they want other phasers to help protect them.

Plasma empires because they are their drone defense and also they are what you are shooting with when the enemy is running from plasma.

I tend to find hyrans 'feel' it more, probably because the gatling phasers are their main weapon, but the other phasers are their main long range weapon (at least as far as fusion hydrans go) so whatever phaser you lose is painful.

It is the way the system works. Dividing weapons into three categories (phaser, torpedo, drone) makes the weapon hits appear at the correct frequency.

Now, as for the "not obvious" nature of what's what, here's a clue.

ISC have plasma torpedoes (which obviously go into torpedo) and phasers (which obviously go into phasers) and PPDs (which don't really go into phasers or torpedoes and the ISC have nothing to go into drones) so putting PPDs into drones makes the algorithm work.