Damage Suggestion - Fixing missiles

[wilddog5]

another way to deal with amm spam is to force amms to do less than 1 damage to target a missile and have a missiles health increase by armor level starting a 0 basic armor and increasing 0.1 per armor researched

edit: side note doesn't the yeald of a nuclear warhead generally depend on the amount of material, the equipment used to trigger a reaction generally stays about the same size thus imposing a limit in how small a bomb  can be made.

addition to suggestion have a micro nuke tech line for amm warhead to show how hard it is to miniaturise nukes rising 0.1 damage per tech so only level 10 could damage ships

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Having micro-htk for missies is interesting, but changing missiles to artificially unable to target missiles if they have a size 1 warhead feels forced.  There are other solutions to sandblasting presented in the thread, to the extent that it's an issue. Personally I like armor HTK (compared to total size of blast).

Or it could be progressive HTK?  4 damage warhead vs HTK2 armor.  first damage alloc, 4 damage remaining so autohit.  second alloc, 3, autohit. third alloc, 2, autohit. last alloc, 1, 50% chance to damage second layer.  *shrugs*

[UnLimiTeD]

Given we already have size-based efficiency for missile engines, can't we do the same formula for missile armor?
In addition to, say, weight reduction to 0.5 for a point on maximum tech?
Even a mid level missile of, say, size 6 would only need to spend 0.55 msp to get the equivalent of a point of ablative armor; it's a subtle change that might not solve the problem, but it'll be a step, and the effect can be evaluated.

[varsovie]

  I can't imagine what you'd improve for box launchers though.  Marginal increases in size reduction? HTK? Reload speed? (haha. ) 

Maybe a superposed load like Metal Storm products.


P. S.  In my opinion the size 1-4 ASM desing with box luncher is beaten by the size 50-100 box with size 1-4 ASM as second stage, giveng a longer range for a deadly alpha strike, giving enough room to flee/hide if need a second strike.

[Elouda]

Maybe a superposed load like Metal Storm products.

This. Or the option to 'multipack' large box launcher with many smaller missiles, for example 4 Size 1 AMMs in a Size 5 Box Launcher (so some size is wasted - tech line?). This is similar to the way real VLS systems can pack multiple smaller missiles into a larger VLS (US Mk41 can mount either a long range Standard SAM, or quadpack 4 short range ESSM SAMs).

This would allow box launcher designs to be more flexible, without making them more powerful directly.

Also, I think box/vls launchers should be seperated from rail/rack type external launches. The first is more likely on ships, the second on gunboats and fighters, possibly being limited to these types.

[Falcon]

AMMs used in an anti-ship role could also be nerfed by making missiles unable to evade defensive fire by default. 

Let's say a missile requires a 'terminal guidance' system to be able to try and evade defensive fire.  It could be of a minimum size, say 0. 5 or 1 MSP.  If CIWS was changed at the same time, making it 4 25% accuracy guns it would make AMMs extremely easy prey for it.  A single CIWS would then be able to take down 16 AMMs at ROF tech 4, and ships would have a reason to mount large numbers of reduced size gauss guns.

[bean]

You can sort of do the quad-pack already, by taking, say, 4 size 1 missiles, and fitting them as the second stage in a size-5 missile. The missile itself can be a cheap engine (conventional would work well) and whatever cheap filler you can come up with (Armor springs to mind).  The problem is that all of them go off against the same target at the same time.  
Adjusting missile armor would be very nice.  As is, the same amount of armor is required no matter the armor tech and missile size.  Fixing that would make it a lot more useful.  As a bonus to larger missiles, the amount of armor required would scale with the 2/3rds root of the size of the missile.
One thing I would like to see is an improved staging research system.  Right now, researching a staged missile means you have to pay the research cost for the upper stage(s) as well.  Charging something like 10% of upper stage construction cost into the research cost would be nice.

For the other damage stuff, this is starting to sound like Newtonian Aurora.  Some of the things from there might be nice to implement.  Or maybe we could get the whole thing...

[Gidoran]

You can sort of do the quad-pack already, by taking, say, 4 size 1 missiles, and fitting them as the second stage in a size-5 missile. The missile itself can be a cheap engine (conventional would work well) and whatever cheap filler you can come up with (Armor springs to mind).  The problem is that all of them go off against the same target at the same time.  
Adjusting missile armor would be very nice.  As is, the same amount of armor is required no matter the armor tech and missile size.  Fixing that would make it a lot more useful.  As a bonus to larger missiles, the amount of armor required would scale with the 2/3rds root of the size of the missile.
One thing I would like to see is an improved staging research system.  Right now, researching a staged missile means you have to pay the research cost for the upper stage(s) as well.  Charging something like 10% of upper stage construction cost into the research cost would be nice.

For the other damage stuff, this is starting to sound like Newtonian Aurora.  Some of the things from there might be nice to implement.  Or maybe we could get the whole thing...

The problem with doing a two-stage missile for this kind of thing is that it makes a good portion of the missile 'useless' because you've got to fill it up to at least 1 MSP before you can put any other stages on it. It used to be that you could do shotgun-canisters that were JUST a bunch of missiles strapped together, but that got removed due to being able to make size 0.25 missiles and spamming them. It also complicates your missile production; right now in my campaign I have six missiles I need to produce, a Size 4 Torpedo, a Size 2 Torpedo, a Size 1 ASM, a Size 1 Countermissile and a Size 4 ASM. Oh, and the jump-gate mines. Adding another Size 4 design for a CM Canister would just make logistics and production way more difficult.

So while the return of pure canister shot would be nice, it'd still be a little bit strategically inflexible. Now, that said, I wouldn't mind seeing a separation of VLS and Rack/Box launchers. Give VLS a slightly longer reload time at a maintenance port/in a hangar, while Rack would be a 1000 ton (or maybe 500 ton and have them be purely fighter) version that reloads much quicker in a hangar, but can't reload from maintenance ports. And as another defining characteristic, give VLS the ability to pack multiple smaller missiles inside of a larger cell, even if that's a tech line we have to go down, while racks would still need to use canister-style designs.

[PTTG]

Maybe the tech tree should work the other way around? Where you start with box launchers and can research 1x size 1x reload, then 2x size 1.5x reload speed, then 3x size 1.75x reload speed...

[Erik L]

Maybe the tech tree should work the other way around? Where you start with box launchers and can research 1x size 1x reload, then 2x size 1.5x reload speed, then 3x size 1.75x reload speed...

Why would you progress past 1x in this case?

[ThatBlondeGuy]

Maybe the tech tree should work the other way around? Where you start with box launchers and can research 1x size 1x reload, then 2x size 1.5x reload speed, then 3x size 1.75x reload speed...

Wouldnt Box launcher, .25 size .25 reload then you go up like that till you get a full size automatic launcher that is 1x size 1x reload speed. Then the reload rate tech is still valid?

[swarm_sadist]

Why would you progress past 1x in this case?

I think he means 1x would start where 100x would normally be, making the default ROF 3,000 seconds instead of 30 seconds. You would then add tonnage to the weapon system, adding the loading mechanisms.

That would make the tech tree look like:
Tech Name       Size    Reload Speed Mod
Box Launcher   0.6x   6.6x   (no internal reload)
Internal Reload 1x      1x      3,000 seconds
Reloader 1        1.32x 5x      600 seconds
Reloader 2        2x      20x    150 seconds
Reloader 3        3x      50x    60 seconds
Reloader 4        4x      100x  30 seconds

[Zatsuza]

I would also like to see some mechanic where armor can shrug low damage shots entirely (1-4 damage range).  For one it would be great to balance smaller missiles.

The odds of it happening though could depend on a few other factors like:

¤ Total thickness (10 levels thick has a much higher chance then 2 levels)
¤ Armor density (tech level)
¤ Relative angular speed at impact (probably to complex to simulate)


It would also be fun to see some additional detail flavor, like choosing either "reflective armor" (better against laser type damage) or "reactive armor" (better against fragmentation type damage).  Could include different technology lines too.  It feels wrong to have so many different kinds of weapons, but so few kinds of defenses.

Yeah, I actually like this idea.  Make the armour value be able to absorb a certain amount of damage depending on how thick it is-- i. e a 4/5 layer armour might be able to shrug off 1 point of damage-- meaning anti missiles and lasers at long range simply wouldn't do damage (and really, a laser at long range would be pretty weak, but when they close in they'd still probably cut through like butter as the laser is stronger anyway. )
Additionally I'd probably make sure the mitigation factor is limited by range or something, so fighters or FACs that come in close would still be able to score damage (being closer would mean they could target specific weakspots etc, bulkheads, the bridge, engine housing etc instead of just pewpewing from maximum range and hoping to hit something important. )

Whereas a size 10 layers of armour could mitigate say, 3 points instead of 2-- indicating larger, more heavily armoured ships would be able to take more punishment before enough critical system damage racks up.  Again, a 20 layer ship would be able to mitigate something like 6 points-- meaning for larger ships you'd have to design larger missiles. 

As it works now, all armour is ablative-- if one section takes damage, it takes damage and is lost.  I use shields for mitigating damage since they regen (hell, in my first combat encounter my measley tech 2 shields were enough to shrug off a good few volleys of nukes-- and the enemy were firing so slowly I managed to get out of the encounter with only a tiny amount of damage to my armour on one ship of three and no critical system damage.  Didn't even lose crew-- and those ships were something I just had to bodge together because my first contact mission ended rather abruptly when a peaceful race decided to blow my survey ship out of space.

I think it would be relatively simple to add the mitigation factor, but I'm not a programmer
As for ricochet/Deflection, I think projectiles would be travelling at high enough velocity that this wouldn't matter much unless we had the ability to create angular armour on our ships so as to increase the angle of incidence-- a projectile fired from a railgun or gausscannon wouldn't be losing velocity in a vacuum and missiles would detonate (aside from kinetic missiles. )

However, I can see fighters and FACs being rather angular ships, so perhaps an evasion or deflection modifier based on current speed divided by projectile speed? a vastly faster projectile would have a higher chance to hit while a faster ship would be able to evade or deflect a bit more.

[Paul M]

The problem is in the ablative armour mechanic.  It makes all 1 pt damage equal.  Since all 1 pt damage is equal it doesn't matter if this is the long range fire from the Überkannonen or some dinky peashooter on a PT boat.  As all weapons will do 1 pt of damage it generally becomes advicable to generate damage in many small 1 pt hits rather than 1 big 20 pt hit.  This is true of any game that uses ablative armour.  It is not something you can fix while retaining ablative armour.

The solution is give armour a rating.  It stops x damage.  If the weapon does <x then it does no damage.  That stops pipsqueek weapons cold.

This is why in the real world destroyers did not engage in gun duels with Battleships.  Their 4.5" main guns were not going to do anything of consiquence to the battleship and the battleship had a lot of fast firing secondary batteries that would ruin the day of the tin can.  The destroyer was dangerous because it mounted torpedoes that could (and did) penetrate the battleships armour.  The same is true of MBTs, armoured cars/IFVs/AFVs don't stand a chance against a MBT in a gun on gun duel.  That is because the MBTs armour can shrug off the hits of the small calibre guns they are armed with.

A friend of mine for the game battletech (where exactly the same problem shows up) made a system of penetration and armour that dramatically improved the game play.  An assault mech suddenly became an assault mech as you would expect from the game fiction. 

As a mechanic for a PnP game abaltive armour is easy to use and appealing but it borks up any game that uses it.  It all comes down to 1 pt of damage is 1 pt of damage and it doesn't matter from where it comes and that is what at the end of the day breaks the combat system.  It is true of battletech, starfire, aurora, starfleet battles, renegade legion leviathan and every other game I've ever played that uses it as a mechanic.  I believe Attack Vector: Tactical uses a fixed armour value that just subtracts from damage done.  But in that game getting hit by a missile is a catastrophy you do your best to avoid since it is likely to be highly fatal to the ship.

You can do fancy things were multiple hits to the same section reduce the armour value of an area but principly armour should work as a damage break.  If the damage exceeds it then it does something otherwise nothing happens.  This would stop cold the 1 pt warhead problem.

[Brian Neumann]

How about a hybrid of the current ablative system, and the system it replaced many versions ago.  The old system was each level of armor prevented 1 point of damage from each hit.  So with two points of armor a missile doing 1 point of damage was effectivly doing nothing.  The same hit with a base damage of 3 would be getting 1 internal damage point.  The armor was not changed as the ship took hits.  Steve later changed to the ablative armor and multiplied how much armor was recieved for a given tonnage by 4.  What would the effect of having every 4 points of the current armor depth stop 1 point of incomming damage?

For example a ship is hit with multiple strength 4 hits and has 4 points of armor.  Currently each hit would leave a crater 3 wide with only the center being 2 deep in the armor.  A couple of hits in the same place and the armor is breached.  With the system I am proposing the 1st hit on any column would only do three points of damage and would not penetrate to a deeper level of armor.  It would however reduce the damage reduction to zero so the next hit in the same place would do more damage.  I would take 3 hits in the same position for any internals.  Compared to the old style where after two hits the armor was breached and waiting for any addidtional damage to be internal. 

If you increased the armor to 5 depth then the first two hits on the same place would be weakened and the rest would work the same as the previous example.  In both cases the ships would be immune to 1 point hits untill some other source of damage had put some craters in the starting armor. 

Some consequences that come to mind are that non square warhead sizes would become more important.  With the examples above a 5 point warhead would have double the penetration of a 4 point warhead.  I could also see a 6 point warhead being fairly usefull for the same reason against heavier armors (8 - 11 points of armor depth.)  This would be less of a point for really big missiles as they have the room for a bit larger warhead, but for the missiles people usually use (size 4-6) it could have a major impact on missile design. 
The change would also make long range beam combat more interesting as weapons doing minimal damage at their extreme end would not be hurting a ships armor.  Larger slow firing weapons that do lots of damage even at max range would have an advantage, as would particle beams with their fixed damage at all ranges.

Small 1 point damage weapons would still have a purpose however in taking down a targets shields.  Small 1 point damage missiles could also be used to help saturate enemy point defense and take down the shields so the heavier missiles that follow could get in close and have a chance to inflict damage.  If they inflict enough damage then the small missiles could finish off a target. 

The one major question I would have is if this would be to hard to code in.  Each shot would need to compare the damage being done to the amount of armor remaining in the specific column being hit.  This might add to much processor time to be worthwhile.

Brian