Minelaying to victory, or, Jump point assaults are hard?

[LtWarhound (OP)]

The jump gate led into the NPR home system, with a gate on each side of the point.  I knew there was a small fleet of defenders (roughly 10 ships, a mix of 6800 ton and 13700 ton designs) sitting on the jump point, so I designed a captor mine with specialized submunitions:  

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Mine(1): CM S5g1 sW4x4 D2.9m A360k T9k s800k (1)  Speed: 0 km/s   End: 87d    Range: 0.8m km   WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 0 / 0 / 0
Submunition(4): SBA S1g1 W4 a360k r1.1m (1)  Speed: 37,200 km/s   End: 0.5m    Range: 1.1m km   WH: 4    Size: 1    TH: 248 / 148 / 74
The twelve 6000 ton destroyers loaded 20 of the mines in place of the standard ASM, jumped through, fired one salvo of their 20 launchers (each) at the jump point and jumped back through.

The 240 captor mines went active, immediately launched their 4 submunitions, 960 warhead strength 4 missiles went active, and when the smoke cleared the defenders were dead.

Total damage to the attacking fleet?  Zero.  Since the defenders hadn't been bothered in a few months, their active sensors were down.  Before they could respond the attacking fleet had fled back through the jump point, completely unharmed.  And the captor mines launched immediately, without taking fire, letting the submunitions rampage through the defenders.

This just seemed too easy.  The recovery delay after a jump point transit doesn't seem to apply to dumping mines, or to the mines' electronics.  Had I kept the launchers loaded with ASMs, and tried to stay in the enemy system long enough to recover and fire, I'd have taken a lot of damage, probably lost the fleet.  Jump point assaults are supposed to be hard, right?

Timeline of the attack:

0 seconds elapsed / 5 seconds 'tick': Attackers execute 'standard transit' through the alien built jump gate.
5 seconds: Hostile thermal contact warnings pop up as the attackers arrive on the far side.
10 seconds: Attackers fire missiles at the jump point (laying the mines) and standard transit back through the jump gate.  Defenders turn on active sensors.  Even if the defenders had ASS running, they would have gotten only one salvo at the attackers.
15 seconds: Mines go active, ASS spot enemy ships.
20 seconds: Mine launch missiles. Missiles go active, their ASS spot enemy ships.
25 seconds: Missiles travel, some reach the targets right on the jump point.
30 seconds: Some more missiles reach targets loitering just off the jump point.
40 seconds: All missiles have reached their targets, all defenders dead.  There is no overkill, there is only 'open fire' and 'mission accomplished'.

So, tinkering with the mechanics of minelaying after a jump point transit may be in order.

***

If that hadn't worked, plan B was to send a swarm of 100 ton interceptors through the jump gate, have them just outrun the defenders, then come back for an attack after the recovery delay elapsed.  When the fighter is moving 37500 km/s, it doesn't stay in beam weapon range very long.

[sloanjh]

This just seemed too easy.  The recovery delay after a jump point transit doesn't seem to apply to dumping mines, or to the mines' electronics.  Had I kept the launchers loaded with ASMs, and tried to stay in the enemy system long enough to recover and fire, I'd have taken a lot of damage, probably lost the fleet.  Jump point assaults are supposed to be hard, right?

Great example!

I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work this way - you seem to have found a loophole in the fact that you can fire at WayPoints before the fire control is back on line.  If you want to work around the bug, I'd recommend simply not launching mines etc. until after the recovery delay clears.

It sounds to me like there's two concrete suggestions here:
1)  No firing weapons (missile or beam) while in jump recovery.
2)  No jumping while in jump recovery.  I'd already noticed this when probing systems - it doesn't seem right that I should be able to jump through a jump gate and then jump right back....

I personally don't think the fighter tactic is a problem - I imagine they're pretty fragile if they're that fast.  Another thing to keep in mind:  IIRC, Steve wanted Aurora to be less choke-pointed than Starfire.  So the 3rd suggestion would be to disallow movement at all during recovery, but I think that would probably be excessive....

John

[Narmio]

Heh, neat tactic!  One balance possibility (although this may be more complicated to code than just preventing firing at waypoints while in recovery) would be to make the sensors on *missiles* affected by the sensor blindness in the same way that the ship that launched them is.  After all, if you transit and then launch fighters while blind, the fighters have sensor blindness too.  So missiles should work in exactly the same way - whatever disturbance is affecting your sensors should affect any sensors that were on board your ship when you jumped.  And that includes the detectors on captor mines.

[UnLimiTeD]

I use the same tactics, but I normally just fire swarms of homing missiles instead of Mines. Sometimes it works, sometimes they selfdestruct.
A single 10 k ton ship can have a mass of Size 4-6 box launchers.

[Charlie Beeler]

Considering current mechanics, an excellent tactical solution.  Much better than what I've been doing, squadron jumps with jump engines that have 500k km range.  Leaves the attack fleet scattered in TG packets around the jump point.  Both methods require good crews and task force training.

If I'm reading your notations on the mine correctly the active sensor is set to Resolution 180, detects 9k ton targets at 800k km and fires the submuntions if a valid target is within 360k km... correct? 

What is the sensor configuration of the attack munition?  Looks like it is set to attack at 360k km and can see targets out to 1.1m km but I don't see the resolution.


I have a feeling that Steve will be making changes to missile and parasite launchs in relation to jump delay.

[sloanjh]

I have a feeling that Steve will be making changes to missile and parasite launchs in relation to jump delay.

IIRC, you can't launch parasites while in jump delay.

BTW, the original poster should put a reference to this thread in the official suggestions thread if he hasn't already (see Steve's recent request).

John

[LoSboccacc]

IIRC, you can't launch parasites while in jump delay.

BTW, the original poster should put a reference to this thread in the official suggestions thread if he hasn't already (see Steve's recent request).

John

doesn't military jump engines and commercial engines differs in terms of jump delay? It stands to reason that a jump gate would have a even shorter delay, rendering the scenario described still troublesome even accounting for an added delay to mine sensors.

[Charlie Beeler]

IIRC, you can't launch parasites while in jump delay.

BTW, the original poster should put a reference to this thread in the official suggestions thread if he hasn't already (see Steve's recent request).

John

The only thing I find documented is the sensor delay and I have used assault carriers and launched parsites while under transit blindness, but not since v4.91.

[LtWarhound (OP)]

I personally don't think the fighter tactic is a problem - I imagine they're pretty fragile if they're that fast.  Another thing to keep in mind:  IIRC, Steve wanted Aurora to be less choke-pointed than Starfire.  So the 3rd suggestion would be to disallow movement at all during recovery, but I think that would probably be excessive...

100 ton interceptors, pretty much the definition of fragile.  But, at that speed (37500 km/s), they transit and evade without much trouble.  I ran 10 of the interceptors (two scouts, 8 strike fighters with 3xstr 4 missiles)  through (used a save game, just to see if the results matched theory).  The ten defending NPRs got off one salvo (ASS was active, I had poked them to make sure of that for purposes of the test), killed 2 of the fighters, and then didn't get another shot.  The fighters ran a short distance, the NPRs quickly stopped pursuing and fell back to the jump point.  The fighters returned, launched, killed two ships and ran back through the jump gate without any further harm.  That's a single squadron, 1000 tons (one hanger deck).  My current supply of small craft support tenders would have been able to bring 6 such squadrons, and that would have cheaply cleared the jump point. 

Sending in the fleet, and letting the defenders get one salvo off, it stripped the 8 layers of armor off the 6000t destroyer they focused fire on, no internals.  So, trying to sit and survive long enough to get the sensors back online would have killed the fleet, I think.  Or at least gutted it.

If I'm reading your notations on the mine correctly the active sensor is set to Resolution 180, detects 9k ton targets at 800k km and fires the submuntions if a valid target is within 360k km... correct? 

What is the sensor configuration of the attack munition?  Looks like it is set to attack at 360k km and can see targets out to 1.1m km but I don't see the resolution.

I have a feeling that Steve will be making changes to missile and parasite launchs in relation to jump delay.

Notation I use is 'Type of munition' 'Size and generation'  'Warheads' 'Duration' 'Active sensor range' 'Thermal sensor range' 'Max Separation'.
So, Captor Mine, Size 5 gen 1, submunition warhead str 4 x 4, duration 2.9 months, Active sensor range 360 km (resolution 100, undocumented, but these were custom built for the defenders I had previously scouted), Thermal 9k (I don't recall why, now) and a max separation range of 800k.  I think it had some armor as well, but they never took fire.

The submunition (SBA for a submunition with active sensor, it would be SBM without sensors) has the same sensors as the CM.  The 1.1m km range allows for high speed targets, so they can't simply run the SBM out of fuel.  Some of the destroyer sized ships the NPR used were seen to go just short of 10k km/s.

***

The fighter swarm rush tactic is a legitimate one, and while hard to defend against, it doesn't violate the spirit of the game.  If the defenders are gonna sit there when there is a jump gate on both sides of the point (they built them, so they definitely know about them), and let me send a swarm through, that's just too bad for them. 

Minelaying and instantly jumping back through the gate to safety, that's a tactic that shouldn't be possible, given the way the game seems to be intended.  So, now that I know it works, I'll toss it aside.  I could keep using it, but what's the fun in that?  Oh, and I've seen an NPR do this, a scout jumped in, I went active on the jump point defense platforms' sensors, and the scout jumped right back out. 

***

Posting a comment in the suggestions thread pointing back here.

[sloanjh]

doesn't military jump engines and commercial engines differs in terms of jump delay? It stands to reason that a jump gate would have a even shorter delay, rendering the scenario described still troublesome even accounting for an added delay to mine sensors.

TG can only use "standard" transits when using a jump gate, which have a much longer time of jump delay.  "Squadron" transits (which require a jump ship) have a much shorter delay.  This is exactly to address the balance issue that it sounds like you're concerned about.  The game is set up so that you have to make a choice between being able to jump a LOT of ships in without the need for a jump ship and being sitting ducks for a long time, and paying for specialized jump ships but having a much shorter time of (what is supposed to be) helplessness.

John

[sloanjh]

The ten defending NPRs got off one salvo (ASS was active, I had poked them to make sure of that for purposes of the test), killed 2 of the fighters, and then didn't get another shot.

I've been toying around with making a suggestion that wormholes be tracked even more closely, i.e. adding "open wormhole" and "close wormhole" orders, which would take finite time, be noticable, and apply even to commercial gates.  This was mainly in the context of communication links, when my pickets are talking through the wormhole, but it would also be nice to get an event when a wormhole is about to open so you can start waking up your crew.  It sounds like it might be useful in the context of "heads up, fighters might come through".

The fighter swarm rush tactic is a legitimate one, and while hard to defend against, it doesn't violate the spirit of the game.  If the defenders are gonna sit there when there is a jump gate on both sides of the point (they built them, so they definitely know about them), and let me send a swarm through, that's just too bad for them. 

Minelaying and instantly jumping back through the gate to safety, that's a tactic that shouldn't be possible, given the way the game seems to be intended.  So, now that I know it works, I'll toss it aside.  I could keep using it, but what's the fun in that?  Oh, and I've seen an NPR do this, a scout jumped in, I went active on the jump point defense platforms' sensors, and the scout jumped right back out. 

Agreed.

John

[LtWarhound (OP)]

TG can only use "standard" transits when using a jump gate, which have a much longer time of jump delay.  "Squadron" transits (which require a jump ship) have a much shorter delay.  This is exactly to address the balance issue that it sounds like you're concerned about.  The game is set up so that you have to make a choice between being able to jump a LOT of ships in without the need for a jump ship and being sitting ducks for a long time, and paying for specialized jump ships but having a much shorter time of (what is supposed to be) helplessness.

John

Aha, did not know that.  That explains much.

[Steve Walmsley]

TG can only use "standard" transits when using a jump gate, which have a much longer time of jump delay.  "Squadron" transits (which require a jump ship) have a much shorter delay.  This is exactly to address the balance issue that it sounds like you're concerned about.  The game is set up so that you have to make a choice between being able to jump a LOT of ships in without the need for a jump ship and being sitting ducks for a long time, and paying for specialized jump ships but having a much shorter time of (what is supposed to be) helplessness.

You can use standard transits with a jump ship. There is some technobabble on this somewhere bit I can't remember where . This diadvantage of the standard transit is the much longer fire control/sensor downtime and the predictable emergence point. What I need to do is extend that downtime to parasites.

Steve

[sloanjh]

You can use standard transits with a jump ship. There is some technobabble on this somewhere bit I can't remember where . This diadvantage of the standard transit is the much longer fire control/sensor downtime and the predictable emergence point. What I need to do is extend that downtime to parasites.

Steve

Sorry - I didn't mean to imply that standard transits were "jump gate only".  The original post (IIRC) was talking about using a jump gate, hence the jump-gate-centricity.

John

PS - don't forget that the original exploit was being able to fire captors at waypoints and exiting the system while fire control/sensors are still down....

[Charlie Beeler]

You can use standard transits with a jump ship. There is some technobabble on this somewhere bit I can't remember where . This diadvantage of the standard transit is the much longer fire control/sensor downtime and the predictable emergence point. What I need to do is extend that downtime to parasites.

Steve

But that still begs the question...do munitions count as parasites in this case?  If not should they?