Spinal Mount & Fire Control: More Range, Please

[Thundercraft (OP)]

I was reading the fleet doctrine for a new guy topic and I noticed how several recommended missile boats and/or talked about the severe range limitation of beam weapons:

...The biggest problem with beam weapons is your enemy WILL have greater range than you, there is no way to change that. So to even have a chance you must either surprise him, take away his range, or be able to close to the range in which your weapons work without dying...

Beam only fleets are feasible for fleet combat, but require overkill point defenses. If you can shoot down every missile your enemy fires you can tank missile waves all day until their magazines run dry.

To me, this suggests a flaw in the game design of beam weapons. If the strategy involved with beam ships always relies on quote "overkill" point defenses in order to either outlast the enemy's supply of missiles or before being able to close the distance for beams... IMO, that's a bit predictable and restrictive.

But, there seems an even worse problem:

...The biggest problem with beam fleets appears when you attempt to assault an NPR homeworld. Short ranged anti-missile fire will still outrange your weapons by several orders of magnitude, and NPRs often have orbital defenses that fire stupidly large quantities of little missiles backed by massive planetary stockpiles. Assaulting homeworlds almost always requires missiles, and while you could use specialty bombardment cruisers for the job it is usually simpler and safer to just arm your primary warships with missiles in the first place.

So, even if a player wants a doctrine of strictly beam weapon ships, they must still sink significant research into missiles just to overcome the defenses on NPR worlds. What can one do if range is always king?

Also, I was very surprised to read the wiki on Spinal Mount Weapons how they do not seem to have increased range!

What's the point of having a massive superlaser on a ship if it does not have any more range than a standard weapon? Sure, the thing does massive damage. But it also costs a lot more, you can't mount it on a turret, and your restricted to one per ship.

For the cost of that superlaser, you may be better off using the space and resources to add smaller weapons, particularly if they can serve as both offensive and point defense.

Further, you're still stuck having to either outlast the enemy's supply of missiles or surviving long enough to close the distance before you can fire. Also, they sound a bit like one-shot wonders. If your single superlaser gets broken, your ship is just SOL.

I'm just saying that if the rules for Spinal Mount were balanced, then we'd see more designs use them. Unfortunately, designs in Aurora that feature a spinal mount weapon seem unheard of. I did find one example in the Ships topic. That's one among countless dozens of other designs. To me, this suggests that if anyone designs a ship with a Spinal weapon, then it's most likely due to the coolness factor or role-playing reasons, rather than a perceived tactical advantage.

Speaking of range and beam weapons in general, I'm also concerned about this page:
Beam Weapon Range

In particular, I noticed how most tables make note of this:

* Beam Fire Controls only have a max range of 1,400,000 km

At high tech levels and large sizes, weapons like Lasers, High Power Microwave, and the Meson Cannon have the potential range of several millions of km. But what's the point of that range if Beam Fire Controls are stuck at 1.4 million km? Suddenly, I'm beginning to understand why so many recommend Gauss Cannons (or Railguns) as their weapon of choice...

I'm suggesting that:

a) Beam Fire Controls: For late game, Why can't there be higher tiers of Beam Fire Controls to allow ranges beyond 1,400,000 km?

b) Spinal Mount Weapons: For all the restrictions and extra cost, they should have more range. At the least, they should have 50% more range than normal. Perhaps even more.

c) Spinal Mount Weapons: Why restrict them to just one per ship? What's the harm in allowing two, or even three or four to a ship? Regardless of the number, they have the other restrictions: They cannot be mounted in turrets and they cost a lot more. And like any ship design, one still has to balance component design ratios. There's only so much room for Weaponry before one sacrifices Engines, Fuel, Engineering, Defenses, etc. And if most of their weapons are Spinal Mount, if the enemy maneuvers to their rear or side they're sitting ducks.

d) Spinal Mount Weapons: (Assuming the wiki page isn't outdated) Why are Spinal Mount weapons limited to Lasers? Why can't we have Spinal Mount Mesons or Spinal Mount Microwaves?

Finally, I want to point out the Anyone ever built a Deathstar? Can it be done? thread over on Reddit in the Aurora discussion area.

Basically, this can't be done. Despite how Aurora actually has Spinal Mount superlasers, the best "Death Star" possible is an approximation, using a giant missile of all things.

You can't use lasers to hit stuff within an atmosphere and you can't actually blow up planets.

However, you could build a giant space station with engines and huge hangers for Tie Fighters, and then have it launch a giant size-100 enhanced-radiation missile at the planet.

Or you can just use SpaceMaster mode - build whatever you want to be your Planet-Killer/Death Star, and then decide that if it can spend X minutes in orbit of a planet without getting it's armor penetrated you're going to go into SpaceMaster mode and delete the colony...

[83athom]

Just a quick pip in, spinal mounts do increase range equivalent to how much the focal size increased. However, they are ultimately constrained to 1.4m km for the max range fire control. The reason that is is because that is the distance light can travel in 5 seconds. Currently, the game isn't set up for multi-increment laser weaponry. I do agree for multiple per ship, however that get really exploity down the line so they would need another drawback to them (first to be knocked out/low htk).

[Thundercraft (OP)]

...spinal mounts do increase range equivalent to how much the focal size increased. However, they are ultimately constrained to 1.4m km for the max range fire control. The reason that is is because that is the distance light can travel in 5 seconds. Currently, the game isn't set up for multi-increment laser weaponry.

That makes a lot of sense, actually. Thank you for explaining.

However, instead of extending the range fo Beam Fire Control, perhaps they could instead shrink the range of missiles slightly? Having missiles travel such vast distances in such a short time span does seem a bit rediculous.

Again, I'm reminded of the AMM doesn't need warhead topic. It was rightfully pointed out how missiles travel so fast that AMMs don't really need a warhead. The kinetic energy alone should very easily destroy a missile.

But then it was counter-argued:

Trying to fix the balance this way would promote smaller and even higher amounts of AMMs.

I would prefer going the other way around and giving ships with thicker armor 1 point of damage absorption so that AMMs don't scratch them.

Aurora doesn't need even smaller and more missiles going around IMHO.

Another words, we don't need to make missiles any more cheap or effective than they already are. If anything, we need to make missiles more restrictive.

...I do agree for multiple per ship, however that get really exploity down the line so they would need another drawback to them (first to be knocked out/low htk).

Exploity? Perhaps. But how can they become exploity so easily - by allowing more than one - when, currently, they seem so pathetic that very few designs bother to use them? Obscure or rare seems the opposite of exploity, where they'd be much more commonplace.

[Sematary]

Spinal mount and advanced spinal mount give you a laser one and two, respectively, levels above what you currently have researched. In essence it is your empire making a giant laser going down the center of your ship and that is what essentially gives you a larger laser. The reason the range is so restricted is due to the law of squares, and the properties of angles. A small angle error at the start and the distance off target grows very quickly when talking about the distances we are talking about, because keep in mind level one lasers can easily shoot distances greater than the diameter of the Earth. The law of squares also states if you double the distance of a beam of light the area it is covering quadruples, if you triple it the area goes up by 9x and so on. Since a laser is a beam of light there comes a distance where the light is so diffuse that it doesn't do damage and that distance is pretty quick relatively speaking.

Realistically kinetic missiles will probably be the weapons most used in space because they will do a lot of damage, in fact more damage than equivalent explosives would do, and with guidance and propulsion they can mitigate the problem of having tiny angular issues.

Now in Aurora the missiles have the range they do because their engines use the exact same formula, at least as far as I am aware, as every other engine in the game. I don't think that needs to be change nor should it be, I think its just a fact of the game. Missiles are better than lasers which holds true in the current world and should hold true in the future with space. Somewhere around here there is a really great post Steve made about five years ago talking about himself and making Aurora and the amount of research he put into it. For example, when he was learning about nuclear explosions he asked some military people some questions trying to clarify some things that he couldn't find in books and ended up being told he was asking about classified things. Realistically lasers are just not awesome, neither are slug throwers, when it comes to space.

[83athom]

Now I have a it of time I can get into discussion.
Point A) Talked about already (speed of light and no multi-increment energy fc)
Point B) Talked about, they do but ultimately restricted at end-level by fc.
Point C (and why they can become exploity)) I agree with that you should be able to mount multiple spinal mount with drawbacks. However, here is why they can be exploity especially at end-level (debateable). Where as a 40cm focus (highest designed except for spinal I have atm in my end-level play) does 43 damage max while only 3 at max range, a 1.2m advanced spinal can do 377 up close and 37 at max range. The 40cm (reduced size/reload) in a triple turret being about the same as the spinal will fire (just over) 6 blasts for every one the spinal will do (70 sec for 6 / 75 sec). So what you would do is have a ship that nothing but engine and as many spinal mounts on it a you can to make up for the fire rate difference, making large laser turrets near useless.  Note, that is from my experience and other players with other games can probably say different things about this.
D) I believe Steve just hasn't gotten around to doing it yet, however, for some I cant really see what benefit they would have.
Particle; Would increase the range and already stupidly high damage the end-level beam already has.
Plasma; Would probably work like normal as it gives a focal size 1 (2) tech above. Meson; not really a point as mesons only do 1 damage and regular techs already give it max range, unless it is changed so spinals do 2(3) damage, but then that can be exploited. Microwaves; same as mesons. Rail; Probably one most of us want to see a spinal mount for, increased range would be very nice.

@Sematary: I don't find 600 tons moving at 10% light speed or 3000 tons at 5% every 5 seconds "not awesome".

[Rich.h]

For me the issue of spinal weapons is how they use a standard FC. I'm perfectly happy with havinga maximum top tech FC range, and I can also accept a spinal weapon should not get the full TS of your normal FC. But there should be something like a spinal FC with reduced TS but and increased range in the same amount of tech increases as your spinal mount gives you with laser increase. This way you could at least makeuse of a spinal weapon as a sort of deathstar like thing that can target large slow objects at greater ranges than normal lasers. As it stands at the moment there is almost no point using spinal weapons when you can just chuck in a couple of normal lasers instead that will have far higher chances to hit and thus a better chance of causing damage, in addition to being able to hit a wider amount of target types.

[Sematary]

Rich.h, that sounds like a game play thing. As stated before a spinal laser is a laser in which a good chunk of the interior of the ship is changed to accommodate an over sized laser so you can build a laser at a tech higher than you have. No part of that means it has a lower tracking speed (since tracking speed outside of turrets is based on the speed of your ship) or would it change your sensor technology which is what a fire control essentially is. I have actually never had a problem with spinal mounts being worse than normal lasers as you seem to have a problem with. I really don't get where slower tracking speed comes in on this issue unless you put all of your lasers on turrets and have ships that go slower than your turrets.

Your idea seems to come from a game play perspective in which all weapons should be balanced with each other, and Aurora just doesn't have that. Take a look at the Carronades Ignore Atmospheric Density thread for an example of this. I am a really big fan of spinal mounted lasers on beam destroyers to give the ship one big punch along with a couple other normal sized lasers, and honestly I love spinal mounted lasers as they are. From a position of game play comes first I can see and agree with your point, but I don't have that position. I enjoy that Aurora doesn't have a rock-paper-scissors weapon scheme or have all its weapons balanced with each other because its not realistic.

[boggo2300]

If you have more than one,  then it can't possibly be the spine of the ship surely?  you know where the name 'Spinal Mount' comes from

[boggo2300]

Rail; Probably one most of us want to see a spinal mount for, increased range would be very nice.

I can get behind that,  Renegade Legions 'Crowbar' Spinal Mount railguns were fan-bloody-tastic!

[Thundercraft (OP)]

For me the issue of spinal weapons is how they use a standard FC...
[snip]
...there should be something like a spinal FC with reduced TS but and increased range in the same amount of tech increases as your spinal mount gives you with laser increase. This way you could at least make use of a spinal weapon as a sort of deathstar like thing that can target large slow objects at greater ranges than normal lasers. As it stands at the moment there is almost no point using spinal weapons when you can just chuck in a couple of normal lasers instead that will have far higher chances to hit and thus a better chance of causing damage, in addition to being able to hit a wider amount of target types.

Agreed. And I really like your suggestion. 

...No part of that means it has a lower tracking speed (since tracking speed outside of turrets is based on the speed of your ship) or would it change your sensor technology which is what a fire control essentially is...

Granted, tracking with turrets is one thing, while tracking with stationary weapons has to do with aiming your ship. And that has to do with ship speed and/or maneuvering thrusters. But it does also depend on your sensors and tracking computers.

We're trying to argue that Spinal Mount weapons should have greater range than normal beam weapons. If that requires a special new Fire Control, so be it. Since we are suggesting a range beyond what standard Fire Control is capable of, I could imagine that it would be more difficult to sort through a larger volume of sensor data and more difficult to calculate accurately. That added difficulty and complexity could translate to slower.

Though, instead of slower TS, perhaps Spinal Mount should have a slower rate of fire? I'd be fine with that if it does enough extra damage and can use a special FC for greater range.

If you have more than one,  then it can't possibly be the spine of the ship surely?  you know where the name 'Spinal Mount' comes from

A name is just a name. To me, all Spinal Mount means is that it is stationary and runs the length of the ship. That is, the weapons are mounted along the ship's x-axis (bow to stern) near the center.

A small angle error at the start and the distance off target grows very quickly when talking about the distances we are talking about...

Granted. Though, keep in mind, we are talking about technology far more advanced than anything we have today. And energy weapons erupting with mind-boggling power outputs, built with entirely fictional Trans-Newtonian elements.

The law of squares also states if you double the distance of a beam of light the area it is covering quadruples, if you triple it the area goes up by 9x and so on. Since a laser is a beam of light there comes a distance where the light is so diffuse that it doesn't do damage...

Laser light is coherent and polarized, behaving differently from normal light. (See The light emitted section of Wikipidia's article on lasers.) Even a highly divergent laser beam can be focused into a precise collimated beam by means of a lens system. That is, via a Collimator.

...That is possible due to the light being of a single spatial mode. This unique property of laser light, spatial coherence, cannot be replicated using standard light sources...

There are limits to the precision, but it depends on certain factors. (If I recall correctly, this includes lens materials and laser wavelength.) And, with time, technology marches forward, making them even more precise. I can only imagine the properties of optics fabricated with Trans-Newtonian elements.

Yes, at such distances, even a tiny fraction of a degree can mean the difference between a hit and a miss. However, assuming laser and collimator technology keeps pace with the rest of technology, I don't see how laser damage has to be so terrible in space battles as to be worthless. If anything, I think lasers should be more precise than just about any slug-thrower we could engineer.

[83athom]

Though, instead of slower TS, perhaps Spinal Mount should have a slower rate of fire? I'd be fine with that if it does enough extra damage and can use a special FC for greater range.

Remember my previous post? They already have over a full minute between salvos (no reduced size), and do a stupid amount of damage. I'm all for a special FC but the spinal weapons themselves are quite fine as they are in my opinion.

A name is just a name. To me, all Spinal Mount means is that it is stationary and runs the length of the ship. That is, the weapons are mounted along the ship's x-axis (bow to stern) near the center.

Like the UNCS Infinity (yes I do notice I quote Halo a lot but ) has 4 upgraded Super-MACs as a spinal mount. Yes, 4 upgraded versions of the weapon that can punch through and kill multiple Covenant capital ships that each require a multitude of regular ships to even dent.

Yes, at such distances, even a tiny fraction of a degree can mean the difference between a hit and a miss. However, assuming laser and collimator technology keeps pace with the rest of technology, I don't see how laser damage has to be so terrible in space battles as to be worthless. If anything, I think lasers should be more precise than just about any slug-thrower we could engineer.

True (laser more acurate part), except when you get into guided projectiles (not missiles) that could cruise themselves into a target. I remember reading a book with that in it, but I can't remember the name.

[Sematary]

 Thundercraft, I understand what you're arguing, I'm just not sure that you do.  Spinal mounted lasers  give you a higher focal point that you have currently research. That gives you a greater range.   Now, that range is limited by a lot damage due to the type of light you're moving through your focal lasers, but your range is higher with the spinal mounted laser than it is with a non.  As stated previously, the maximum range of 1,400,000 km for all lasers is due to the speed of light. The laser stands for light and lasers travel at the speed of light. Five seconds is the  please interval for the game, and in five seconds light travel 1,400,000 km. Trans Newtonian physics does not change the speed of light. There is no special amazingness about the super advanced technology that is built in physics when it comes to the  there is no special amazingness about the super advanced technology that is built on Trans Newtonian physics when it comes to the speed of light.  The speed of light is a maximum, you can slow it down but pussy certain point you cannot speeded up any faster. At that fastest feed it can only go so far in five seconds.

[83athom]

Possibly a special "spinal weapon only" fire control that you have to fire it in a longer increment (30sec, 1min, etc.) for it to function.

[boggo2300]

A name is just a name. To me, all Spinal Mount means is that it is stationary and runs the length of the ship. That is, the weapons are mounted along the ship's x-axis (bow to stern) near the center.

But that isn't a spinal mount.  If that had been the intention, it wouldn't have been called a Spinal Mount.

[MarcAFK]

But that isn't a spinal mount.  If that had been the intention, it wouldn't have been called a Spinal Mount.

Just to nit-pick, your spine isn't exactly in the center of your body anyway, at best spinal implies being centered on one axis, but theoretically you could stack multiple weapons along the other axis and still be spinal.
I've wanted more option for increasing beam fire control size for range or speed but my games generally don't last untill higher tech levels so I don 't really know how that would completely effect balance.
Also at least at the low tech levels I usually play at missile fuel consumption seems too low, I'm sure that Isn't a factor once you get powerful enough engines.
Interestingly way back during the first versions of aurora missiles had ranges similar to energy weapons, at least from what I've read of Steve's campaigns. In fact in the patch to 2.6 steve mentions an increase in range of a factor of 100. http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=1017.0
While obviously missiles with ranges under a million kilometers is severely deficient, does anyone else think that fuel consumption might possibly be too low? I'm wondering if theres a balance to be found, if at a certain tech level a missile can easily reach a range where it matches a fire control or active sensor which was extremely expensive to research and is very heavy, shouldn't the fuel required also be significant?
That brings me back to a second derail, I recently suggested that research costs are too low for small systems, especially miniaturized fighter and missile components should cost at least as much if not more that a standard sized ship,s components.