Ramming Damage

[Paul M (OP)]

Well in the latest clash between the NCN and the Wolvers in Tau Ceti (Operation "starting with N") the discovery of point defense and empty magazines meant the NCN commander elected for "CQB."   For the first time in ages DPPD turrets were used in Anti-Shipping mode and the CA and CLs forward AS barbettes got into action.   The result was 3 Hiyru class Wolvers were destroyed but two of them kamakizied and each rammed a CLE.   The last one was cut to ribbons by laser fire while attempting to ram a FAC.  The main problem was after the ramming I forgot to reset the escort orders and so ships were "freezing."   But at the ranges in question the AS lasers were working very well...doing full damage with each hit (10 pts for the CA and 6 for the CL)...with good penetration if I recall how that works right (CA should have been 5 and the CL should have been 4).

But it is not at all clear to me why I lost a CLE to each ram attempt.  The Wolver ram did 179 pts of damage.  24 was absorbed by shields leaving 155.   Armour absorbed 55 pts of damage leaving 100.  According to my design listing the Warder Class CLEs have 124 internal hitpoints.  So while they should be scragged but good by those rams they should still be alive...instead well before absorbing 100 points of damage the message "ship destroyed" shows up.  I don't even see messages about each engine or each turret and between engines and turrets that is about 50 points of damage.

Is there some sort of damage multiplier to ramming attempts?   Clearly the wolvers suffered worse since each CLE inflicted 211 damage back to the rammer.  That is enough to go through their armour even without taking into account that one was shot up a fair bit at that point and time.  The other had around 6-10 hits from FAC lasers.

The operation up until then had gone very well...only 2 missiles had managed to avoid all the layers of defenses and hit a CLE, and that damage was absorbed by shields.  So that was a leaker rate of less than 2%.   Plus the latest batch of Arrow AS missiles was hitting with an accuracy of 75%.   The CAs harpoons unfortuantely fell victem to the wolvers point defense system...but the batch 2 will likely have 1 pt of armour on them to blow through a system like that in the future.

Currently 1 CA (with flag bridge), 6 CLE, 3 CLs, 2 DD and 2 DD(CO) plus 6 FACs are trying to find the last 6 wolver FACs they know of...but a starsystem is an awefully large place to hide 6 FAC.   My snowbird scout fighter is currently sniffing around the inner system and I have 2 Birddog recon fighters waiting in the CAs hangerbay to lock up the wolver FACs so I can use my full missile range on them.   As the wolver FAC carry a lot of missiles in their box launcher and I want them out of the way so I can bring in my salvage ship and exploit the habitable world the system has.

[DIT_grue]

But it is not at all clear to me why I lost a CLE to each ram attempt.  The Wolver ram did 179 pts of damage.  24 was absorbed by shields leaving 155.   Armour absorbed 55 pts of damage leaving 100.  According to my design listing the Warder Class CLEs have 124 internal hitpoints.  So while they should be scragged but good by those rams they should still be alive...instead well before absorbing 100 points of damage the message "ship destroyed" shows up.  I don't even see messages about each engine or each turret and between engines and turrets that is about 50 points of damage.

Steve posted the following message to a thread asking when ships actually died... so sufficiently bad luck can kill a ship that is still mostly intact, but that's quite improbable, getting more likely as more types of systems (and component categories which take up more of the hull) are eliminated.

The damage allocation code picks a component type for damage based on the damage allocation chart for each class.

If it finds that all components of that type have been destroyed, it re-rolls and tries again.

If this happens twenty times without success, the ship is destroyed.

Any component not destroyed at this point can be found in the wreck.

[Paul M (OP)]

ahh that explains that!  Thanks.  I figured there might be a different rule in play with massive sudden damage such as the ram.

[Steve Walmsley]

ahh that explains that!  Thanks.  I figured there might be a different rule in play with massive sudden damage such as the ram.

There may also be secondary explosions from engines, reactors or magazines, which in turn can cause further secondary explosions. I once lost a 15,000 ton warship to a single internal hit.

[Paul M (OP)]

Yeah I was considering that too but the damage listing didn't have any of those so I took on face value none happened.  Even the ramming wolver ship didn't have an engine explosion that I could see...it just became a wreck.   There may be salvageable tech there...but I need those FACs taken care of before I bring in my essentially defenseless salvage ship and its freighter companion.

[Garfunkel]

Can we expect an update to the NCN saga, Paul?

[Paul M (OP)]

I will do my best...current game date is Jan 7, 2326 and this is the third military operation the NCN has mounted so I shall have to consider how to do this but work is returning to normal after pretty much a year of full court press so I will have the mental energy to do the writing.  I have been wanting to add to the AAR that is for sure.   

One thing that has bothered me game wise though is why no new CMCs have showed up outside of Sol even with several systems with populations above 10 m are present with rocks that can be exploited.  I keep hoping for some as they are essential for mineral production as building hundreds of automatic mines is both mineral and time consuming.

Galacite still remains the NCCs biggest problem...critical shortages persist.

[Father Tim]

Civilians will not put a mining complex anywhere you have established a colony.  Note that this does not mean installations of your own, but simply having it in the list of 'Colonies' on the F2 Population & Production window -- such as with the 'Add Colony' button on the F9 'System View' window.  Also note that many move orders auto-create a colony at the destination, so sending Asteroid Miners or Geo Survey Teams (teams, not ships) or any sort of cargo delivery mission will 'claim' the body for you.

[Paul M (OP)]

I understand the lack of a "colony" claim requirement and have purposely removed the "colony" after my geo-survey team was done so the places are free and at least one system has over a dozen suitable places for a CMC...  I have read and re-read the rules on them so far as I can see they should show up outside of Sol...the NCC has 4 systems besides Sol with planets greater the 10 m population...but Sol has Earth, Mars, Luna, Io, Calisto, Venus and Ganymede as population sites...so maybe the solar colonies are blocking formation of extra-solar CMCs somehow?

I'm just baffled I have to admit...

[Father Tim]

Well, I don't know how Steve coded things, so it is entirely possible that 'having had a colony on the body at any point, for any reason' is enough to remove them from the list of CMC sites.  Otherwise, it may simply be a case that the Sol sites are sufficiently numerous and/or high quality, that 99% (or more) of the 'growth' goes there instead of the other systems.  I do recall there being weighting system to the random allocation that makes not all sites equal.

Finally, as a last guess, I have a vague memory of a discussion of upping the requirement from 10 million population to 25 million (to be the same as the source/destination for colonists cut-off) or 40 million (for reasons that I definitely don't remember).  I don't think the CMC code was actually changed,  but only Steve could say for sure.

.


Edited to add:  Ooh, one last thing.  It may be the requirement is "10 million pop and a spaceport" rather than "10 million pop" alone.

[Steve Walmsley]

In VB6, a check is made each construction phase to see if new civilian mines are checked. The chance of this check is based on a random number of one million with a successful check equal to annual wealth or less. There must also be two populations for that race.

If a check takes place, the code orders all systems that contain a population of 10m or more (on a single body) and then steps through them in descending order of population. In each step, there is a 50% chance the system will be checked. Once a system is checked, no more will be checked in that phase.

The code then searches that system for bodies without a current population, less than 80 AU from the star, that have at least 15,000 tons of Duranium or Sorium and accessibility 0.7 or higher. The one with the highest combined amount of minerals of any type where accessibility is at least 0.5 accessibility is chosen.

C# is similar but only checks for Duranium, not Sorium.

[Paul M (OP)]

Hmmm....Ok weath is around 150K per year so there is a 15% chance of a check being made plus the CMCs in Sol grow consistantly (and that is a lower chance).
Sol has the highest population.  Next is Alpha C where the problem may be that the site is on the B component which is over 80AU from the A component though there is a colony with 25 m in the B component.  Next is Gliese 505 and I'm not sure what is there for sites (possibly none).  Next is Gliese 526 and again I'm not too sure there is a site there at all.   Next is Gliese 408 and there is nothing in terms of sites to the best of my memory.  Last is Gl493.1 where there is a dozen sites.  After that all the other colonized systems have sites but not 10 m population.

Steve, I'm not sure why you programmed it in this fashion.   Why look in a system that has no sites?  I'm fairly sure what is happening is that the program is never getting to the systems with available sites and likely never will since there is always a blocking system or three ahead of them.

From what I see based on what you wrote:
Chance to check is 15% (based on income)
Chance to look in Sol: 50% = 50%
Chance to look in Alpha C = (100%-50%)*50%=25%
Chance to look in Gliese 505 =(100-50%)*(100-50%)*50%=13%
Chance to look in Gliese 526 = (...)*50% = 7%
Chance to look in Gliese 408 = (...)*50% = 4%
Chance to look in Gl 493.1 = (...)*50% = 2%

If the first roll suceeds and there is interest in stating a CMC somewhere why not keep looking until a site is found?  Then the fact that their are older and more developed and exhausted systems or systems without a site for a CMC dosen't block the process completely.  As when a site showed up in Sol after I explored the oort cloud it was within a few months equiped with a CMC.

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve, I'm not sure why you programmed it in this fashion.   Why look in a system that has no sites?  I'm fairly sure what is happening is that the program is never getting to the systems with available sites and likely never will since there is always a blocking system or three ahead of them.

I'm not sure either

It was very old code and I just replicated it for C# Aurora. However, it is a lot faster and easier in C# to find eligible systems so I'll revisit this and make it more sensible.

[Paul M (OP)]

I kinda figured it might be that sorta thing Steve.   

Another thing I am seeing that maybe you can fix for the future is the "civilian line colonist dump"...possibly since I am playing an older version of the game you have fixed this but from observation it seems that whenever a colony has spare capacity every last single colony ship from every line runs to it and dumps their population on the poor hapless worlds unsuspecting infrastructure...causing massive negative growth.

Even when there are several shipping lines they all seem to target the same colony at the same time even when multiple possible target colonies exist.  I'd suggest revisiting this code and seeing if you could at least spread the various shipping lines out, maybe calculating the shipping lines capacity and comparing it to the space available at the colony or something.  There is an infinite number of solutions...but some are likely a bit more computationally intense than others.

[Steve Walmsley]

I kinda figured it might be that sorta thing Steve.   

Another thing I am seeing that maybe you can fix for the future is the "civilian line colonist dump"...possibly since I am playing an older version of the game you have fixed this but from observation it seems that whenever a colony has spare capacity every last single colony ship from every line runs to it and dumps their population on the poor hapless worlds unsuspecting infrastructure...causing massive negative growth.

Even when there are several shipping lines they all seem to target the same colony at the same time even when multiple possible target colonies exist.  I'd suggest revisiting this code and seeing if you could at least spread the various shipping lines out, maybe calculating the shipping lines capacity and comparing it to the space available at the colony or something.  There is an infinite number of solutions...but some are likely a bit more computationally intense than others.

This is the change you are looking for

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg106715#msg106715