@Steve, regarding the new PD mechanics, I have a few questions below mainly regarding the fire concentration limit
3) Each Beam Fire Control is assigned a Fire Concentration from 1 to 10, with 1 being the highest and 3 the default. If this many shots are already allocated against a missile, this fire control will ignore that missile for targeting purposes.
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c) For each salvo in the 'Potential Salvo Targets' list that is not ignored, the fire control creates a 'Missile List' of the missiles in that salvo in ascending order of the number of point defence weapons currently assigned to attack that missile. The fire control then cycles through that 'Missile List'.
i) If the missile has already been targeted by a number of point defence weapons equal to or greater than the 'Fire Concentration' value of the Fire Control (see point 3), the missile is ignored (as are all remaining missiles in the salvo).
Does this mean if the defender has more than 10x shots than the incoming missiles, only 10 shots will be fired at each missile regardless? Do you think adding higher limits, or an 'unlimited' option here could be useful? Higher limits may be useful for PD ships utilizing small-sized Gauss cannons as the shots are numerous but each shot has a low hit chance.
The second question is whether it makes sense to limit the 'number of expected/average hits against a missile' instead of the 'number of shots fired at a missile'. I think the former keeps the goal of making leakers and overkilling shots possible and makes better sense due to the following reasons:
- It provides a better idea of 'how many shots are wasted (overkilling shots)' for all beam PD types regardless of their base hit chance. 3 shots from a 66% Gauss turret have way more expected number of hits than 3 shots from a 16% Gauss turret. Whereas 3 expected hits from either weapon are expected to have 2 overkilling shots.
- Since it is limiting the expected hits, the list can be shorter and potentially makes the UI less cluttered.
- It works for all incoming missile types regardless of their speed and ECM capabilities. The players do not have to increase this number against better/faster missiles or lower this number against inferior missiles when their shots have a 100% hit chance.
- Players also do not have to reduce this number to 'save' unnecessary shots when their ships get better combat bonuses during the course of a game.
To achieve this, the coding isn't complicated. For each shot, the expected number of hits is its chance to hit, which will be calculated during the PD calculation anyway. Then, instead of recording the number of PD shots currently assigned to attack each missile, record the sum of the chance to hit from the weapons attacking that missile, and sort the missile list in ascending order of the number of expected hits.