Barracks on PDCs

[Gump (OP)]

What is the purpose of having barracks space on PDCs?

[metalax]

Protection from orbital bombardment. The also provide a defensive bonus to your ground troops that are stationed inside them when defending against a ground assault.

[Gump (OP)]

So if I am placing mutliple PDC designs on a colony they don't all need Barracks to keep them safe from ground assault?  They are more like bunkers to shelter in, and I could store my garrison in one Barracks PDC for safety?

[Nathan_]

They also prevent an invading ground army from taking the PDC I believe.

[Gump (OP)]

They also prevent an invading ground army from taking the PDC I believe.

So does every PDC really need its own barracks for its own defence?

I have another PDC question not related to Barracks but to magazine space.
As the PDC is attatched to a planet, can ignore adding many magazines, and just move missiles from the planetary stockpile to the PDC during a battle?

[Hawkeye]

You don´t _need_ barracks in a PDC at all. If you can prevent an enemy (assuming single race on the planet) from landing troops, you are fine (The crew will try to defend the PDC, but a couple hundred crewmen will not fare well vs. a battalion of power armored infantry).
And if you kill any enemy ship before they can start shooting at your planet (or intercept all inbound missiles) you also don´t need their bunker function.

Of course, those are some pretty big IFs    


As for your second question, yes, you can restock the ammo of your PDCs from the planteary stockpile, but IMO this is _very_ gamey.

[alex_brunius]

As for your second question, yes, you can restock the ammo of your PDCs from the planteary stockpile, but IMO this is _very_ gamey.

On the other hand building protected big magazines by just creating a cavern in the mountain under a PDC should be far easier and cheaper then building one for space ships.

I usually RP and allow one or two reloads to account for the fact that Magazines should be much cheaper and bigger in a planetary environment.

In the end it's up to what you think makes sense.

[metalax]

One other reason to use at least some magazines on PDC's, is to avoid the situation where all your missile stockpiles were used to resupply one of your fleets, which have now moved off to another system and suddenly a wormhole opens up nearby and spits out some ships, leaving your PDC's with only the missiles loaded into their launcher and no reloads.