Protector Starship questions

[Tridus]

I finally got a game with protector starships as a bonus ship (after hitting 'new map' about 30 times). Man, they're awesome. I particularly love them when Eye raiding, because adding even a couple massively boosts the longevity of my small raid fleet. A pair of mk II's are even better.

Couple of questions:

1. If the intercept projectile doesn't reach the projectile before the original target gets hit, is that shot wasted? I'm noticing that graphically it works better at long range (and against slower ammo) so I'm curious if it works that way in practice too.

2. Does another ship (or a duplicate module on the same ship) know that a given projectile has already been countered and shoot at something else, or can it waste shots?

[keith.lamothe]

(after hitting 'new map' about 30 times)

Calisthenics!

Man, they're awesome.

Glad you like them

1. If the intercept projectile doesn't reach the projectile before the original target gets hit, is that shot wasted? I'm noticing that graphically it works better at long range (and against slower ammo) so I'm curious if it works that way in practice too.

In theory I could have those shots that "slip through" (reaching target before the counter-shot reaches them) do damage but in practice the code is set up to set the damage of countered shots to zero.  Though there's a later code branch that could be firing to recompute the damage on impact, so maybe they are actually doing damage.  Have you observed countered shots doing damage?

2. Does another ship (or a duplicate module on the same ship) know that a given projectile has already been countered and shoot at something else, or can it waste shots?

No wastage on this point: counter-shots are done totally differently than other shots.  Specifically, counter modules do not build a target list, sort it, and fire at the top several (which is what normal-shot stuff does).  Instead, when a normal shot is fired, it checks for the target having finite-counter protection and if so it generates the finite-counter-shot in the same instant as creating the shot itself.  This is also why counter-modules cannot fire on incoming shots later in the shot travel time (even if the counter-module has reloaded and no other new counterable shots are starting) : there's simply no place for them to check.

[Tridus]

In theory I could have those shots that "slip through" (reaching target before the counter-shot reaches them) do damage but in practice the code is set up to set the damage of countered shots to zero.  Though there's a later code branch that could be firing to recompute the damage on impact, so maybe they are actually doing damage.  Have you observed countered shots doing damage?

I don't think so, but I wasn't looking for it at the time. I just notice that graphically it looked like they weren't being intercepted due to the target ship being at point blank range and the protector starship being further back. I did suffer exceptionally few losses from that battle, so based on what you said here it's probably working properly on damage and it's just hard to see the intercepts.

It's actually pretty fun to watch missile guard posts try to attack me now, because those fire from such long range and have slow projectile speeds so there's this awesome display of interception.

No wastage on this point: counter-shots are done totally differently than other shots.  Specifically, counter modules do not build a target list, sort it, and fire at the top several (which is what normal-shot stuff does).  Instead, when a normal shot is fired, it checks for the target having finite-counter protection and if so it generates the finite-counter-shot in the same instant as creating the shot itself.  This is also why counter-modules cannot fire on incoming shots later in the shot travel time (even if the counter-module has reloaded and no other new counterable shots are starting) : there's simply no place for them to check.

Oh, nice.

Thanks Keith!