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Those four values are the weapon damages. Now, I'll be honest, and admit that, until you posted that MOO3 Senate link, I hadn't thought much about the second pair. You'll be aware that the limited documentation covering peoples' investigations into this (that come with the OCL package) suggest these might be legacy values from some testing phase.
However, that idea that the second pair represents damage values as used in strategic combat makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the Senate site just dumps the raw numbers into a table, and I couldn't track down any provenance on this idea.
But if it's true, then the four values represent the minimum and maximum weapon damage for tactical and strategic combat. That's why the NRD weapons (like Mass Drivers and missiles) have the same value twice, but weapons which dissipate have different values.
It would make some sense to have a different table of values for strategic combat, if that were handled by a different process from tactical combat. In a sense, MOO2 has two combat engines - one which we see, if tactical combat is on, and our ships are involved, and another, which we never see, since it's only used for AI vs AI battles, and our own in a game with tactical combat switched off.
Most of the differences between the tactical and strategic values represent a weakening of high tech beams. In particular, Mauler and Death Ray are crippled, and Disruptor is halved. It's entirely possible that during testing, these weapons were found to have a disproportionate impact (ahem) on strategic combat, and had to be toned down for balance reasons. Note also that Black Hole Generator does 100 damage (in strategic mode) according to these values. Perhaps the strategic combat process ignores its usual effect, for simplicity's sake, and treats it as a (very powerful) weapon.
As to the tactical combat values for Interceptors, I had assumed these to be the numbers used if you actually deployed them before researching Lasers - without a value here, they would do ZERO damage if you had no 'best beam weapon allowing the point-defence mod'. However, a quick test (with a horribly uber race) demonstrates 'unarmed' interceptors do 5 damage per hit, which is the same as they achieve with Lasers. So now I'm a lot more confused about that than I used to be. I suppose I'm a bit less wrong, though...
However, that idea that the second pair represents damage values as used in strategic combat makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the Senate site just dumps the raw numbers into a table, and I couldn't track down any provenance on this idea.
But if it's true, then the four values represent the minimum and maximum weapon damage for tactical and strategic combat. That's why the NRD weapons (like Mass Drivers and missiles) have the same value twice, but weapons which dissipate have different values.
It would make some sense to have a different table of values for strategic combat, if that were handled by a different process from tactical combat. In a sense, MOO2 has two combat engines - one which we see, if tactical combat is on, and our ships are involved, and another, which we never see, since it's only used for AI vs AI battles, and our own in a game with tactical combat switched off.
Most of the differences between the tactical and strategic values represent a weakening of high tech beams. In particular, Mauler and Death Ray are crippled, and Disruptor is halved. It's entirely possible that during testing, these weapons were found to have a disproportionate impact (ahem) on strategic combat, and had to be toned down for balance reasons. Note also that Black Hole Generator does 100 damage (in strategic mode) according to these values. Perhaps the strategic combat process ignores its usual effect, for simplicity's sake, and treats it as a (very powerful) weapon.
As to the tactical combat values for Interceptors, I had assumed these to be the numbers used if you actually deployed them before researching Lasers - without a value here, they would do ZERO damage if you had no 'best beam weapon allowing the point-defence mod'. However, a quick test (with a horribly uber race) demonstrates 'unarmed' interceptors do 5 damage per hit, which is the same as they achieve with Lasers. So now I'm a lot more confused about that than I used to be. I suppose I'm a bit less wrong, though...
. OR make it so all options add 0 to the weight. Cause I did that with advances and such, all the tech picks for races take 0 points ^_^.
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