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I am playing as the Boskara in my game. They have a special bonus, a torpedo called the Shaktur FiresStorm. I see it has a damage of 84, and a Bombard Damage of 32M. So is this a bombard weapon only or can it be used as torpedoes against ships? The reason I ask, is because I see the computer made space stations have about 10 or more of these weapons, and I am wundering why if it can't be used against ships.

I thought I read that bombard weapons are in the torpedo class but can't be used agasint ships. What about the Shaktur FireStorm? Can it be used agaisnt ships and planets?

Its special in that it can be used against both. Unfortunately it is very weak as a torpedo and currently the game is really biased against bombarding since it makes lots of enemies and kills off the taxpaying population, so its not all that useful unless its very early game and you don't have the stronger torpedoes yet.

Thank you for the quick reply, greatly appreciated I wasn't going to make my ships with them, but put them on now that I know they can be used against other ships. It would be wierd if I didn't use my special tech.

So if I equipe my ships with it, can pirates copy it and use it agaisnt me? I havn't seen this happen yet, but keep reading that they copy the human players designs.

Yes, they will.  Apparently, any Escort, Frigate or Destroyer (and perhaps Cruiser) design you make is available randomly for pirate factions to just spawn. Some posters have even said they a pirate had one of their designs floating about space before they had even built one yet. 

The Firestorm is actually a very powerful torpedo, but its range is kinda crap. At short range, though, it is the most powerful weapon in the game. Of course, none of this matters if you never actually get to fire it.

Pirates will copy any Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, or Cruiser you design, although I have pretty much never seen them actually deploy a cruiser. With the new rule that you can no longer properly arm merchantmen to defend against such things, it's best if you never attempt to build any of these ships, as even if you wanted to get involved in an arms race, you can't anymore.

1. it isn't weak, it just has terrible range, so unless you are on top of an enemy it isn't going to fire. But it deals the most damage in the game... this means that a ship with the weakest torpedoes can kill off a space base with shaktur firestorms because it will fire at it from out of its range.
2. if you are sold this torpedo you gain all previous torpedo weapons, allowing you to select the one level below torpedo... which is really good.

Pirates will copy any Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, or Cruiser you design, although I have pretty much never seen them actually deploy a cruiser. With the new rule that you can no longer properly arm merchantmen to defend against such things, it's best if you never attempt to build any of these ships, as even if you wanted to get involved in an arms race, you can't anymore.

Excluding the fact that a merchant armed with one of THOSE will blow most standard pirates to hell, making your trade routes ultra-safe for the duration. The same thoughts apply to most torpedoes, actually. Now, as before, you need to be very careful what you deploy on your combat ships and designs, even if you have the tech. I'm not entirely happy, but we do what we must. With care, these things can be dealt with. Though ideally these matters shouldn't be a problem in the first place.

I'm with Fishman. I just never build Escorts/Frigates/Cruisers anymore. I redesign my Capship and use that as my ship of choice. If they pirates copy my small ship designs they are in for a big letdown.

while a SINGLE merchant with a SINGLE gun is useless...
I have seen planets surrounded by 20 merchants at all time (with different merchants warping in and out all the time)...

the problem is, a merchant will ONLY fire its weapons if it has been HIT by something... thus it is utterly useless to arm in the in the first place since a single weapon simply cannot do anything (unless it is a death ray, maybe)... I have also seen the costs of maintainence spiral out of control... especially with armed mines / gas mines.

Merchants either need to lose the guns altogether. Or they need to fire at ANY hostile within range (so that a single pirate ship attacking a busy area will be pelted by 20 merchants from all direction and might escape because its taking too much damage)...

Also... pirates should not just imitate designs. it is really annoying.

ORIGINAL: Bloodly
Excluding the fact that a merchant armed with one of THOSE will blow most standard pirates to hell, making your trade routes ultra-safe for the duration. The same thoughts apply to most torpedoes, actually.

Well, other than the fact that the Firestorm has crap range, and one torpedo isn't going to blow up much of anything.

If you are playing 1.0.4 and you are a warlike race that already has plenty of enemies and have an appropriately warlike government (or the Way of Darkness) you may want to give bombarding another try.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

If you are playing 1.0.4 and you are a warlike race that already has plenty of enemies and have an appropriately warlike government (or the Way of Darkness) you may want to give bombarding another try.

Well, unless your plan is to drive your own minority-race planets into a revolt, so you can kill them too, this doesn't seem like a particularly sound plan. Still, apparently, the value of other races in 1.04 is significantly reduced since it is now basically impossible to actually get their bonus.

ORIGINAL: Astorax

I'm with Fishman. I just never build Escorts/Frigates/Cruisers anymore. I redesign my Capship and use that as my ship of choice. If they pirates copy my small ship designs they are in for a big letdown.

The flip side of this is creating several hundred crippled Escort/Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser designs, which means the pirates will select these crippleware ships for their own. It would be very difficult for an AI to determine that you have cleverly created a completely crippled, unusable ship, if it even attempts to evaluate for worth at all: You can do things like stocking a ship with tons of short-ranged weapons that it lacks the reactor power to actually fire and the engine speed to actually use, so that on paper, it has a huge firepower rating, but in actual field combat, it is totally worthless and blows up when breathed upon.

actually, thats a good idea. create absolutely gimped designs for you escorts and destroyers (havent really seen much pirate cruisers yet) that have not only extremely limited weapons (like one blaster) but also a generous lack of armor, shields AND engines and enough reactors to power the ship for a full sprint session of 15 seconds, then name them conspicuous sounding names like 'loser' or 'sucker'. Then when u see a pirate escort of design 'sucker' attacking your mining base, you can snigger at the how the pathetic AI's attempts at copying your awesomeness has backfired onto itself.

lol, diabolical

Do the pirates just copy your ships or every empire in the game?

The way it was explained in another thread is that it randomly takes everyones designs and, through darwinism, your designs are likely to be the last man standing so thats usually what you get to fight.

Ah, that would explain a couple things I have noticed then. Thanks.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

If you are playing 1.0.4 and you are a warlike race that already has plenty of enemies and have an appropriately warlike government (or the Way of Darkness) you may want to give bombarding another try.

it should certainly be quicker and more effective than invasion... because troop ships don't load up troops well. And you need a LOT of troops to take a planet. And troops take a while to produce and ship...
Bombing a planet to oblivion should be easily done then.