Author Topic: Replacing PDCs  (Read 82069 times)

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Offline Silvarelion

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #30 on: September 21, 2017, 12:56:39 AM »
I really like the proposed changes. I'd be worried about adding HoI like functionality to a space game, but having some sort of customization and PtS capability would be awesome!
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Offline plasticpanzers

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #31 on: September 21, 2017, 05:00:22 AM »
Being an old sci fi fan I would miss the PDCs.   The free maintenance can be adjusted to the population of the planet.   a 100,000 ton
PDC is no larger than a little more than 2 Iowa class battleships.   A population of sufficient quantity should have no problem maintaining
one.   There are hundreds of 100,000 plus ton ships out in the real world now.   Replacing the PDCs with a new mix of just ground units
is not the same as having El Scorpio PDC (for those who remember 'Sleeping Planet). 
 

Offline bean

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #32 on: September 21, 2017, 07:50:23 AM »
Being an old sci fi fan I would miss the PDCs.   The free maintenance can be adjusted to the population of the planet.   a 100,000 ton
PDC is no larger than a little more than 2 Iowa class battleships.
Less, actually.  The Iowas were 45,000 tons 'treaty', but treaty displacement is a joke.  Fully loaded, more like 57,000 tons.   

Quote
A population of sufficient quantity should have no problem maintaining
one.   There are hundreds of 100,000 plus ton ships out in the real world now.   Replacing the PDCs with a new mix of just ground units
is not the same as having El Scorpio PDC (for those who remember 'Sleeping Planet).
There are no 100,000 ton warships.  The biggest (US carriers) top out around 90,000 tons.  And civilian ships don't have the same drivers as PDCs.

Steve, could this idea be used with ships as well. It has been mentioned before that training up a ships crew and then losing that experience level when the ship is scrapped makes the turnover of ships and fighters to be painful. When scrapping ships, could a second crew pool be maintained (representing the cadre from the scrapped ships) that new ships and fighters can pull crew from first, before using untrained naval crew coming from the general pool.
Something along these lines would be really nice.  I don't like the current system, where your best ships are almost always your oldest, nobody retires, and people being sent back to the pool are diluted to pool level.  Here's my suggestion (reposted) on a more realistic system:
First, the crew pool tracks people and points separately.  The academy has a level that it pumps people in at.  For example, it may add 100 people and 20000 points in a given week.  These are added to the pool values.  When a ship is commissioned, it takes the correct number of people and points, based on the pool averages.  Adjusting the academy training level only affects the inflow, not what's already in the pool.  Also, people should leave the pool.  Maybe 5% a year, of average points.  In wartime, you can check a box which temporarily slows the loss rate, but eventually (5 to 10 years later) it comes back to normal, or even goes higher.  After you uncheck it, the war timer counts backwards until it reaches 0, so people don't just toggle it on and off when they get to the point of diminishing returns.
Second, rotate people on ships.  To make it easy, whenever a ship gets shore leave, a certain number of people rotate back into the pool, based on how long it's been out.  Maybe 10% per year.  They're replaced with normal people from the pool.  This is to avoid the "ICBM station with an enormous crew rating" problem.
Third, allow picked crews, and unpicked crews.  These have maybe 150% and 50% of normal points, respectively, taking the appropriate number of people and points from the pool, and getting those values when the crew rotates.  This is to allow you to have a good crew on your fancy new battleship, and give your second-line PDCs the dregs.
Fourth, conscript-crewed ships should not feed into the pool.  Because of the nature of the crews (and to avoid flooding the pool with untrained people), the people who leave the ship at the end of their tour are just lost. 
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #33 on: September 21, 2017, 08:41:38 AM »

There are no 100,000 ton warships.  The biggest (US carriers) top out around 90,000 tons.

Not anymore...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier

( Nimitz class actually also is closer to 100kt nowadays ).
« Last Edit: September 21, 2017, 08:43:23 AM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline plasticpanzers

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #34 on: September 21, 2017, 12:45:34 PM »
The 100,000 plus ship are the supertankers and supercargo vessels on the seas now.   There are also
plenty of 100,000 plus cruise ships too.    My comment using the example of the Iowas is that in a
planetary nation/colony with sufficient and economy there should be no problem hosting a 60-90,000
ton PDC.   Its not 'the hill' from Triplanetary and NORADs HQ under Cheyenne is just a command facility.
real PDCs would be placed over a large area with overlapping fire.  1 battalion garrisons would be
woefully bad as garrisons.  It would take divisions to protect one.   I think the concept of the PDC is
accurate for defense from space and some on the ground but they would be more susceptible to
ground attacks as they are dispersed bunkers, gun batteries, launchers.   If they can keep an enemy
in space and make it too hard to invade then they do what they are supposed to do.   I can easily see
that PDCs can only control a % of the planet (tho can defend it all).  You would need mulitple PDCs to
have coverage against any ground landing and would have to hit 1 or more PDCs to open a hole for
your ground troops.   Please don't take our PDCs away!  Only the 'bugs' will appreciate it! 
 

Offline IanD

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #35 on: September 21, 2017, 01:00:14 PM »
PDCs
For a conventional start I think you still need a type of PDC to simulate current missile silos. But what if you restricted missile silo "farms" to box launchers that require a command & control facility for every 10 silos (upgradable?) with a significant reload penalty? Thus while you may have a significant alpha strike it would take you hours or days to reload your dispersed missile silos which would remain even with TN missiles.

Titans
If you used Bolos as your model rather than Titans you could have the Mk I to III as your heavy armour all the way up to the Mk XXXIII Continental Siege Unit capable of standing off two or three starships.  Reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(tank)
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Offline Zincat

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2017, 01:47:52 PM »
Being an old sci fi fan I would miss the PDCs.   The free maintenance can be adjusted to the population of the planet.   a 100,000 ton
PDC is no larger than a little more than 2 Iowa class battleships.   A population of sufficient quantity should have no problem maintaining
one.   There are hundreds of 100,000 plus ton ships out in the real world now.   Replacing the PDCs with a new mix of just ground units
is not the same as having El Scorpio PDC (for those who remember 'Sleeping Planet).

That is not the kind of maintenance that is being discussed here. It has NOTHING to do with manpower or money or population.

TN ships require TN minerals (for the MSP) to be maintained. They also require time "offline" as they are being maintained.
Until and unless PDC also require TN minerals AND offline time to be maintained, PDCs are NOT balanced and in fact they can be exploited to create a defense / hangar system for free.

This is the problem here. Plus, as stated by Steve, that they break a lot of rules.

Also, as said before you will be able to do the same things you do now with orbital defense stations. So, it's not like you can't do stationary defense systems anymore. Also orbital defense stations can be towed, so that's a plus.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2017, 07:47:05 PM »
Can't we just disallow hangars in PDC's?  The fact that PDC's can't move is a big enough downside to outweigh the fact that their maintenance is free.  Who cares how amazing your PDC defenses are, they're stuck on your planets.  You can't attack with them.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #38 on: September 22, 2017, 01:46:26 AM »
They also require time "offline" as they are being maintained.
Until and unless PDC also require TN minerals AND offline time to be maintained, PDCs are NOT balanced and in fact they can be exploited to create a defense / hangar system for free.

No, a ship that spends it's entire lifecyckle on a planet does not require offline time to be maintained. So a PDC is not really breaking this particular rule at all.

I agree about the other rules though, but I don't mind them that much since you get to choose yourself to what extent you want to exploit the game and I simply choose to not use them in that manner. I never used PDC Hangars for anything other then basing some obsolete fighters ( Which don't think anyone considers an issue to be honest ).

If creating these special rules for them is alot of coding effort, and Steve prefers to put that effort into a better ground combat model instead then I am all for it.
 

Offline obsidian_green

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #39 on: September 22, 2017, 02:18:33 AM »
I'd prefer ground combat not stray too far from the fundamental. Researching techs related to personal weapons or personal armor, perhaps even planetary equipment, strikes me as below the level of detail established by ship-related tech and shipbuilding. If the base ground unit is the battalion, we should probably assume they would equip themselves comparably to tech levels demonstrated by the faction's ships, yet scaled to unit combat against combatants and their heavy equipment. In playing, I've role-played the ground unit techs primarily as organizational reforms adapting forces to the new technologies. Customizing ground units only makes sense if we're making tactical ground-combat decisions, which seems outside the scope of Aurora and something at which NPR AIs might not excel.

Much is already implicitly reflected in the different types of ground units. Changes in how those units function might be improvements, but I don't think that framework needs changing. Others have mentioned hard/soft values for attack and defense, which could benefit better combat mechanics, but which I don't think should effect gameplay other than to make a decision about which sort of battalion to build. I have always assumed aircraft as integral to battalions, below the level of gameplay---no way these battalions, even light ones like garrison, ship out without integrated air support (unless it's a waterworld, sea-going assets would be obsolete).

I would, however, argue against integrated ground-to-space capability in the current battalion types---I don't see that as their role. I am open to the idea of new battalion types dedicated to space defense; they'd secure and operate weapons to counter space-based threats and be relatively useless in combat versus other ground units. Specialization of equipment and unique unit combat doctrine could merit a new line of tech for such units.

I glanced at the Titan thread last week, but don't quite get what it represents---in military equipment you want the most possible lethality in the smallest possible package. I'm already anticipating how I'm going to imagine them as units of specialized siege equipment, but if the PDCs are going away ...

Steve, could this idea be used with ships as well. It has been mentioned before that training up a ships crew and then losing that experience level when the ship is scrapped makes the turnover of ships and fighters to be painful. When scrapping ships, could a second crew pool be maintained (representing the cadre from the scrapped ships) that new ships and fighters can pull crew from first, before using untrained naval crew coming from the general pool.

I like this idea. An alternative might be a crew rating for the general pool that increases with the addition of crew from scrapped ships or lifepod survivors, which would simulate/be analgous to training and supervisory roles within the force structure and would translate into higher initial grade bonuses for new ship crews.
 

Offline NihilRex

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #40 on: September 22, 2017, 10:36:55 PM »
Steve, could this idea be used with ships as well. It has been mentioned before that training up a ships crew and then losing that experience level when the ship is scrapped makes the turnover of ships and fighters to be painful. When scrapping ships, could a second crew pool be maintained (representing the cadre from the scrapped ships) that new ships and fighters can pull crew from first, before using untrained naval crew coming from the general pool.

This probably deserves its' own thread, but Id see it easier to implement this as giving an XP boost to all ships at the same location as the scrapped ship, to represent personnel transfers.

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Offline Bluebreaker

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #41 on: September 23, 2017, 12:16:51 PM »
Since ground combat is getting more depth, I hope its also easier to manage.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #42 on: September 23, 2017, 04:04:00 PM »
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I am going away for a week on holiday so I won't be posting (or working on Aurora). I'll start work on ground units when I get back.
 

Offline boggo2300

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #43 on: September 24, 2017, 04:37:35 PM »
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I am going away for a week on holiday so I won't be posting (or working on Aurora). I'll start work on ground units when I get back.

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Offline Gyrfalcon

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #44 on: September 25, 2017, 01:40:47 AM »
One request: for the new unit types, please don't forget conventional units as well. I tend to play pre-TN starts with active combat between world powers, so it'd be awesome if fighter/bomber wings come in pre-TN and post-TN varieties, for example.

Also, I suggest that brigade and division command units shouldn't have research costs attached to them (or at least not nearly as much as they currently do). It's not like the equipment and organizations don't exist in every modern military, they simply need to be updated to use TN technology. This shouldn't be on the order of researching a new form of nuclear energy.