The more I read in this forum, the more confused I get. I've got a few questions that are somewhat related.
After beginning with a conventional start, I switched over my Missile Defense bases to more modern technology, and created a small PDC with active sensors. I figured that I was all set. But I've already had one exploring ship destroyed by missiles from an unknown enemy (my ship didn't have an active sensor), so I've also been working on point defense. First priority is a small missile defense PDC to protect the Earth, and after reading the tutorial descriptions of various weapons, I researched Gauss Cannon for that role.
1) But I just stumbled across another thread where someone notes that "the gauss cannon are useless in any type of atmosphere." Huh? Is that true? There's nothing about this in the tutorial description. Is my missile defense PDC worthless now (and all my research wasted)? Please tell me that's not true!
2) Someone in another thread points out that you can only target one ship per fire control. How does that work for missile defense? Do I need a separate fire control for each point defense weapon then, so I can shoot at more than one missile at a time? I didn't think of this. If that's the case, it would not seem to pay to build dedicated missile defense ships then, since I'd still need multiple fire controls.
3) Since I needed to research missiles anyway, in order to use all those Missile Bases on Earth, I decided to use missiles as my anti-ship weapon. But with all my reading here, I'm still not sure I understand. Is it really true that a level 2 or 3 warhead does no more damage than a level 1 warhead? That doesn't seem logical.
And by "level 1," we are talking about the power of the warhead, not the size of the missile, right? When I try to design a size 1 missile, I end up with an anti-missile missile, not an anti-ship missile, apparently, though I suppose my tech level might just be too low. Or maybe it doesn't matter what the game calls it?
I appreciate the help I've been getting here. I seem to spend more time searching this forum than I do playing the game, but it's not always that helpful. Just when I think I understand something, I find out that I really don't.
Thanks,
Bill