Laser towers are useless whats the point?

[bastage2007]

I have been playing around with defense on gates and from what I have seen laser towers serve no purpose when you are out of sector. I setup a hyperion with 2 eclipse's and 2 falcon sent's that destroy just about anything that come through the gate but for the fast movers that get by I put 6 laser towers in the rear. Now I sat and watched as wave after wave of pirates came through the gate and my ships would destroy them easily before the lasers could even get to them. But when a fast mover did get by he was soon vaporized by the towers.

After I left the sector all 6 towers were destroyed one by one by a single nova that seemed to just fly by my convoy of ships unharmed and yes all my ships guarding the gate are set to fire on enemy. So do you have to be in sector for your ships and lasers to work properly or was this just one lucky ship that made it through my convoy only to face some extremely weak lasertowers?

[Carlo the Curious]

I suspect the latter.

I find vanilla lasertowers are only useful in large (20+) numbers OOS, and even then a patrol with multiple M3s can kill a bunch before the LTs get them. Also, if the LTs are around a gate then usually anything that comes through the gate will actually jump in out of range of the LTs anyway.

The Ring of Fire script tweaks LT OOS performance so they're a bit less naff.

[Maverick024]

I find that my lasertowers OOS only aid in the destruction of a pirate by stalling them long enough for a sector patrol to reach them, beyond that they're pretty rubbish. Setting them up is a hell of a lot easier than selling them though for those of us who built one as our first fab

[viptir]

I simply jump IS when I hear the beacon. I have my lasertowers around various complexes/facts. If the patrols miss something, the LTs are my signal to get IS and protect the moneymakers. As soon as I get IS, the LTs vape them. A couple minutes of my time for what I was[/] doing are gone, that's all.

[Kor'ah]

They make nice decoys since the AI really hates LTs and will go well out of it's way to shoot at one.

[apricotslice]

I only use LT's in groups of 50-60 at a time.

OOS, they are hardcoded, and I have always suspected that the hardcoding never got updated from an earlier version of the game. You can script in 125mj sheilds, or even 1gj sheilds and yet oos, they are destroyed like they had only 25mj sheilding.

IS, they are pretty lethal. OOS, the way the calculations are done works badly against them, and you lose them for no apparent reason. The only way they work oos is in huge numbers, and you will lose 1 or 2 of them in every engagement.

[Paranoid66]

Lt seem to be unique to X unfortunately they are uniquely rubbish. Can't really think of a good thing to say about them. even the size of the things is pretty mad.

X's defensive gear is a bit on the sad side. Squash mines if they work like they did in X2 are hardly worth the effort either.

[Mazer]

a single stationary object is easily destroyed but 50 stationary objects set in the right pattern will annihilate most anything.

if you want to use LT i suggest the ring of fire script.

[Gazz]

IS, they are pretty lethal. OOS, the way the calculations are done works badly against them, and you lose them for no apparent reason. The only way they work oos is in huge numbers, and you will lose 1 or 2 of them in every engagement.

RoF Lasertowers are tuned to have the exact same firepower IS and OOS.
They also take advantage of their high laser range.

X's defensive gear is a bit on the sad side. Squash mines if they work like they did in X2 are hardly worth the effort either.

Heh. SQUASH mines are some kind of half finished concept. Apparently the implementation stopped halfway so they never had any practical use or purpose.

If you want something useful you should try TRACKER mines. These things are mean. =)

[-Dusty-]

Heh. SQUASH mines are some kind of half finished concept. Apparently the implementation stopped halfway so they never had any practical use or purpose.

Yeah... They don't even work OOS (afaik)
It can't be the meaning that I have to stay in the sector if I want that my mines blow up some pirates...

b2t: What's so bad about lasertowers? 50 of them can be useful ^^

[Paranoid66]

I think if you need fifty LT's for them to be truly useful that says it all. I never liked them they just seem cumbersome OTT and impractical. Also they seem almost like an alien technology compared to just about every other weapon in X. Like somebody just had an idea at 90 degrees to everyone elses reality and chucked them in for a laugh. I am honestly surprised this one hasn't become fully obsolete and been scrapped in favour of some more elegant solution.

What are these tracker mines are they in the vanilla X3?

[-Dusty-]

What are these tracker mines are they in the vanilla X3?

It's a script made by Gazz... I think you'll find the link in his signature

[Carlo the Curious]

I think if you need fifty LT's for them to be truly useful that says it all. I never liked them they just seem cumbersome OTT and impractical. Also they seem almost like an alien technology compared to just about every other weapon in X. Like somebody just had an idea at 90 degrees to everyone elses reality and chucked them in for a laugh. I am honestly surprised this one hasn't become fully obsolete and been scrapped in favour of some more elegant solution.

It's not hard to build hundreds of LTs fairly early on in the game. Deploying them without a script is a nightmare though, and they do clog up the sector view (RoF fixes those issues).

I agree they're not really an elegant solution - they work more in an anti-player role (or irritating the player role ) when they're around NPC stations. As static OOS defenses they kinda suck, which is odd since you might think that's the intended role...

[Rikaelus]

I agree they're rather rubbish, and rather illogical. When you think about the state of the galaxy, I'm sure the governments would have come up with far better defensive measures. The XTended MOD introduces a weapons platform that can go toe to toe with an M2. That's definitely a step in the logical direction. Still, I think it'd be quite normal to find weapon hardpoints on practically all stations.

But then I also think freighters would have much better shielding and/or much better weapon systems to keep enemies off them, considering how many potential enemies they can run into...

[Gazz]

I agree they're rather rubbish, and rather illogical. When you think about the state of the galaxy, I'm sure the governments would have come up with far better defensive measures. The XTended MOD introduces a weapons platform that can go toe to toe with an M2.

You haven't given Lasertowers a chance, yet.
A formation of 80 LT will roast any M2. I tested a formation of 80 LT vs a fully geared Phoenix.
It has the biggest and fastest charging shields so would be the hardest M2 for LT to crack with their peashooter lasers.

Phoenix destroyed in 2.5 min IS and (with ROF LT) in the same time OOS.
Losses: 3-5 LT.

12 Mil Cr worth of LT consistently terminate M2s - not to mention smaller craft - and they can conveniently be mass produced without the need to equip every single ship.
I don't see how that translates into rubbish.

[ttl]

Definedly not rubbish, but I would say cumbersome, if you need them by the dozens, and a complex script to deploy in a meaningful manner. Not to mention rather bad for performance. 10 LTs firing IS puts down my FPS to very jiiggery levels. If we had the firepower of 10 LTs in one, and they might be handy.

[Paranoid66]

12 Mil Cr worth of LT consistently terminate M2s - not to mention smaller craft - and they can conveniently be mass produced without the need to equip every single ship.
I don't see how that translates into rubbish.

How about the fact that X3 is more of a simulator and the solution of using this number of LT's sounds like rts to me. As the previous poster said cumbersome. Individually ineffective would be my estimation. Ugly and impractical without resorting to third party scripts which you shouldn't have to do to enable a functioning static defence. However this is just my personal take on the issue. Wouldn't it be better if they where at the least individually more useful but cost more and took longer to manufacture. I consider working with 50 , 60+ LT's not worth the effort using the X3 interface.

So I simply don't use them, would be nice to have a viable official alternative though.

[viptir]

I agree with Paranoid, we need something else. If and when X4 ever comes out, LTs better have either an OOS overhaul, or have a bit of variety. Missile platforms, Orbital Defense Stations, et cetera....
(yeah, I almost included Death Stars. rawr!)

[Paranoid66]

(yeah, I almost included Death Stars. rawr!)

Not what I would call a static defence more a very, very big mother of a ship or mother of a mothership lol. I suppose they called it an operational battlestation or something but imo if it moves its a ship. If it dosn't move its a station or a static defence.

I like the idea of free standing hardpoint platforms in which you could install suitable lasers and with a cargo space for missiles. For example you could also give these the missile defence command. Which would stop them being easily knocked out at a distance and upgrade the shields. Maybe with traditional small medium and large varieties.

Small ones maybe using just aires mostly for station missile defence could be carried and droped / scooped even by fighters. The biggest using PPC's would be carried droped and scooped by TL's.

[viptir]

Exactly, that's why I said Orbital Defense Stations. Even to the extent that you could actually land on it and manually fire - PPCs - at enemy capitol ships. Automated by default, of course. They just really need to mix it up in the next installment of X, or another bonus pack for X3 for that matter...