Lower tech siege weapons seems to give lot more siege power?



2nd tech siege weapon is Siege Artillery - 180 invasion power + 10% invasion power on ship

3rd tech siege weapon is Satellite barrier - 375 invasion power



Got to be missing something because when I upgrade from tech 2 to 3, I lose invasion power. Seems using higher and supposedly better tech siege weapon is worse?



e.g. battleship, no hull mods other than minus ship cost to build: 350 tons storage but example works with any tonnage - just what I have on screen right now



Before: Siege Artillery tech 2 crammed max, uses 350/350 tons, MP =6048



After: upgrade to Satellite Barrier tech 3 crammed max, uses 350/350 tons, MP = 5250



What the heck? That is a lot of firepower reduced by upgrading to a supposedly better weapon on the tech tree.



Am I missing something here? Far as I can tell, these are straight siege invasion weapons, no collateral damage, no special effects so I don't seem to get anything other than invasion power. Unlike every other weapon upgrade, I lose a lot of power by going to a "better" tech.



This a design bug or very possibly am I missing some presumed additional benefit other than invasion power of the tech 3 Satellite Barrier?

This weird decrease to power as you increase to next tech also happens between siege invasion tech 4 and 5 (~30k invasion power dropping to whopping less than half, 14.4k on same design/size ship)



So it seems for the non-collateral damage causing siege invasion weapons, tech 1 to 2 is good jump in power, 2 to 3 is a downgrade, 3 to 4 is a huge boost, then 4-5 again is weird downgrade.



So only real upgrade path seems to be tech 1 to 2 to 4, and ignore 3 and 5.



Will have to check if last tier, tech 6 a-entropic weapons is an upgrade but given this even numbers good, odd numbers bad, it probably is.



Reading the description of tech 5 (drops ships), it does seem to suggest that "landing craft that can safely deliver heavily armed troops in a minimal time window"



So I'm wondering if at least tech 4 (more siege power) vs tech 5 (less siege power) is some kind of boost to success chance or reducing loss of troops if you combine tech 5 drop ships + troops, vs tech 4 + troops.



Tech 3 description doesn't mention anything about supporting troops so not sure why there's a loss in power going from tech 2 to 3 there.



Wish there was some hard info on this other than blind random testing I guess will have to do, see if more troops survive troop invasions using the lower siege mp tech 3 and 5

Those 10% boosts add up on a larger ship. Since my bombers (siege ships) are always cruisers, I never use tech level 3 for siege weapons.



Unrelated to your question, I only build siege weapons on my bombers--no weapons, armor, defense, or troops. I do add siege weapon(s) to my troop ships (always a destroyer)--if there is enough space after putting on the maximum number of elite troops. However, this is personal preference.



PS. I realize now that I misname my siege ships (always named the ultra-creative name Bomber) since I never put bombs on them!

coyote303 wrote:
Those 10% boosts add up on a larger ship. Since my bombers (siege ships) are always cruisers, I never use tech level 3 for siege weapons.



Unrelated to your question, I only build siege weapons on my bombers--no weapons, armor, defense, or troops. I do add siege weapon(s) to my troop ships (always a destroyer)--if there is enough space after putting on the maximum number of elite troops. However, this is personal preference.



PS. I realize now that I misname my siege ships (always named the ultra-creative name Bomber) since I never put bombs on them!

That's kinda what I do to, but I take it to even more extreme specialization -

1- early game I build whichever is best 1cp hull to fit most siege invasion weapon - e.g. siege artillery ; nothing else, just invasion power. So I use my combat fleet to escort and kill the system defender fleet, and use these 1cp siege invasion mp ships to conquer planets in 8 turns. I build whatever number I need to get the minimum 8 turns. I later upgrade these to tech 2, 4 and 6 and still function as slower siege fleets (8 turns)



2- soon as I get access to 2cp hull that can fit most support modules, I build my real invasion ships, because i plan knowing ahead that to use the higher troop techs I need 2 module points and the lower 1cp hulls only have 1 specialty module, so they won't be upgradable. So I build specialty invasion ships since my slow invasion problem went away once I learned about troops (thanks forum!) - troop + repair module + max amount of siege invasion weapons, nothing else



I used bombers and bombs (personnel and building bombs) to get the achievements, but once I finished that, I preferred to just use slow siege invasion or the fast troop invasion specialized fleets. All the bombs seem to due is kill of people of buildings you want after you take the planet. So I now avoid them.



I used elite troops at first because it seemed they were lot stronger, but they cause so much more collateral damage I just went to normal troopers. From what I've read re: Numerous type, that one seems either bugged or useless at the moment.