Weapons Ranges

[Chris21wen]

Sorry if this has been covered before but can't find it, only snippets that's hard to put together.

What are the rules for the weapon ranges in ship design? Here's what I think.

Point Blank - Closes to the min range of the shortest weapon. Blasters etc.
All Weapons - Closes to the max range ( I've read 80%) of the shortest weapon. Mixed weapons
Standoff - Closes to the min range of the longest weapon. Missiles and Torps.
Evade - Doesn't close and tries to stay out of range of the longest weapon the enemy has. Carriers etc.

[Aeson]

Distant Worlds doesn't have a concept of minimum range for most weapons - the only ones that even arguably have a minimum range are area weapons, but that's more of a preventative measure against friendly fire which was introduced relatively late in the game's development, if I recall correctly some time after area weapons changed from being a pulse centered on the firing ship to a pulse centered on the target ship.

Behaviors are:
Point Blank - get in close and stay there.
All Weapons - close to 80% of the maximum range of the shortest-ranged weapon on the ship.
Standoff - close to 80% of the maximum range of the longest-ranged weapon on the ship.
Evade - Stay just beyond the maximum range of the longest-ranged weapon on the opponent.

All Weapons and Standoff are functionally identical if all weapons carried by the ship have the same maximum range.

Note that ships set to Evade may prove unable to effectively engage an opponent if that opponent has a weapon of equal range to their own, and that the way that piloting AI works is that it picks a single driving target and uses the range to the driving target to determine how it should move the ship. As such, designs which skimp on defenses assuming that the use of the Evade or Standoff engagement range setting will keep them relatively safe can have issues in fleet engagements even if your ship is theoretically fast enough to maintain its desired range against the opposing ships as the ship will not move to maintain range against any target apart from the driving target; if the driving target is moving away from your ship for any reason, your ship may even dive right into a mass of hostiles to pursue the driving target.

Also note that "stronger" and "weaker" are strictly based on the firepower rating of the ship, which can be deceptive as the firepower rating is simply the maximum damage that a ship could deal in a single salvo, with no adjustment for rate of fire or the relative ability of the ship to endure its opponent's fire.

[Chris21wen]

Thanks. By minimum I was think more in line with power loss of weapons. e,i. they get close enough so there's no power loss.