Quote from: serger on May 28, 2021, 05:08:25 AM

I'm absolutely with Garfunkel in the point, that we mustn't complain of AI strong sides, we must complain of weak ones!
It's good if AI have an ability to punch me in the nose nigh every time, it's desirable if AI will have an ability to do it multiple times, forcing me to build stronger and more thought-out navy and army. That's fan, that's why I need my brain, that's why I will continue to play Aurora!

What is undesirable:
1. To have an easy and natural way to crush any AI. What's the meaning of such baby food? I'm sentient being, and AI is not, I know I'm smarter - there is no interest to prove this point to myself again and again.
2. To be compelled in some monotonous, repetitive boring activity, absolutely necessary to continue the game. That's not an entertainment for the sentient being.

And here, I think, are our problems with missiles:

1. It's trivially easy to kill any AI fleet with missile alpha strike (box launchers), that AI cannot use itself because it cannot evaluate correctly a value of target against it's ability to dodge (jump away, hide, etc.)
2. It's absolutely boring to click through AMM spam, it's not an intellectual challenge nor aesthetic value.

So, really, missiles needs some form of nerf or countermeasure.

To revoke doubled max boost for one-off engines is an easy solution, but I think it's not a nice solution: better boost for one-off engines is natural, realistic and flavouring thing.

So, I think it will be much better to push more in the way of nerfing fuel efficiency for small engines and/or MFC max range against small/ECMed targets (lesser range of AMMs - lesser click-through time; bigger long-ranged ASMs - easier for AI to counter them).

In addition, I think it will be better to:
1. Make quick jumps impossible (easy way to bait AI's alpha strikes). Implement "warming up" time for any jump procedure, even through the gate (stab.JP).
2. Replace strict MFC range (another easy way to bait AI's alpha strikes) with steady increasing chance of lock failure. It's in addition will take off some strangeness of mechanics that officers cannot implement their tactical bonuses to missile combat.

This is why AI fleets do not use box launcher designs. These require a lot of logistics and production capacities, but cannot be countered on a tactical level. AMMs create a box launcher system on steroids though, as these are hard to kill and numerous at the same time. There is one thing you should remember when encountering these spammers though and it is that the best protection against AMM spam is armor. A point of armor is ~1BP and an AMM is several times more expensive. The enemy will hardly be able to afford to kill your ships with AMMs.
Another option to defeat enemy AMM spam is a healthy use of ECM. For every tech level of ECM advantage over the enemy, the hit rate will plummet by 10%, which is a significant reduction in damage output. Countering this ECM disadvantage costs .25 MSP per missile and significantly affects AMM cost and performance.

Now back to player use of ASMs. The goal of ASMs has always been to overcome enemy missile defenses by saturating them. This can be done extremely effective by shooting large quantities of relatively small missiles. The most extreme thing you could field in this regard would be size 1 ASMs fired from box launchers. There is basically no counter to this form of abuse and not doing it is left to the player. I do not touch missiles very much and right now. The main combat units are beams only. Skirmishers use missiles though and these are relatively large with 12 MSP or 30 tons per. This way they can be used against targets of opportunity and not against the enemy navy, as a small squadron or skirmishers will hardly overcome the combined missile defense capabilities of a sizeable force. These self-imposed limitations keep missiles useful and do not break game balance at the same time.

My self imposed limitations on missiles are my preference for beam weapons (Since we have a overall lack of kinectic weapons) and i just go with is close to our reality, so box launchers are on the multiples we get in real life, such as 36-72, etc. If i really need more missiles than that, then it has to be with missile launchers and those take space from the ship and that balances itself out.

The required missile and sensor range is quite significant when you intend to have 15 AMM salvoes in the air. At reload tech level 5 you would have to detect them at 15*5s*ASM missile speed. A 1000 ton size 1 sensor should do the trick at equivalent tech level. The main problem with missile fire controls is that they suffer from being able to target only 1 salvo per incement. We could still build fighters or FACs firing missiles which travel at the same speed the craft travels at. That should be pretty devastating for a fleet using AMMs.
There are quite a few ways to abuse anti ship missiles in aurora, which are pretty hard to counter.

Now back to player use of ASMs. The goal of ASMs has always been to overcome enemy missile defenses by saturating them. This can be done extremely effective by shooting large quantities of relatively small missiles. The most extreme thing you could field in this regard would be size 1 ASMs fired from box launchers. There is basically no counter to this form of abuse and not doing it is left to the player. I do not touch missiles very much and right now. The main combat units are beams only. Skirmishers use missiles though and these are relatively large with 12 MSP or 30 tons per. This way they can be used against targets of opportunity and not against the enemy navy, as a small squadron or skirmishers will hardly overcome the combined missile defense capabilities of a sizeable force. These self-imposed limitations keep missiles useful and do not break game balance at the same time.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this (sadly not enough time playtesting this - yet) and I believe in a player vs player context box-launched ASMs can be countered effectively by a prepared opponent. The key seems to be establishing a layered anti-missile defense structure rather than relying on effectively point-blank fire. While box launchers are the most efficient weapon in a context of launching an overwhelming salvo, full-size launchers with magazines are the most effective way to deploy the greatest total volume of missiles, which is relevant for AMMs. In this case the trick is to get to fire as many AMM volleys as possible against the single enemy box-launched salvo. The break-even point on a per-MSP basis is at approximately the 15th volley, otherwise box-launched AMMs are a more effective defense.

To accomplish this requires fairly long-ranged fire controls and active AM sensors. However the sensors are typically prohibitive, so in practice a more effective means to extend sensor coverage will be small AWACS-type craft deployed along the line of flight. Additional AMM firing time can be gained by retreating away from the incoming salvo. Ultimately the goal is really to thin out the incoming salvos well enough that a combination of beam PD and shields+armor can absorb the remaining, at which point the enemy fleet can be pursued as they are now out of their primary weapon ammo.

The case of countering size-1 ASMs is unclear, since the usefulness of a size-1 ASM is dependent on technology levels. At low tech you cannot do any better than a WH1 AMM without seriously compromising speed and/or range. High tech levels are needed to get more warhead damage into a size-1 missile and at these levels ECM/ECCM is a serious consideration, to mount ECCM means your size-1 missile has only 0.75 MSP for warhead, engine, fuel, and agility which will hamper performance to be poor enough that regular AMMs should still provide an excellent defense. The major value I see in small ASMs is going to be as a counter to lightly-armored fleets since a fair amount of leakers can be expected, however since the damage per missile will remain very low the result will be a sandpaper rather than big critical hit effect, which mainly counters lightly armored ships. Overall I think it is an interesting question but one that in multi-player-race games can be answered effectively if one chooses to allow such things.

Of course against the hapless NPRs any box launchers are simply overpowering, nothing more needs to be said about that particular case.

Personally, and that's just me, I'd make beam weapons progressively stronger at missile interception. This WOULD solve the amm spam problem, and the box launchers spam problem. It would however make missiles progressively not viable, so at high tech levels the focus would be on beam weapons. And I would like that, as I personally cannot consider missiles really being used at ultra tech levels.

Think about this for a moment. Max tech level for Aurora are:
Vacuum Energy Power Plant + Photonic Drive
Quantum Singularity Power Plant + Quantum Singularity Drive
You can work with quantum singularities and photonic drives... and you still use missiles? That's the best weapon you can have, really? That's... underwhelming, really doesn't feel like the future to me. It's just very sad.

I'm coming in late to the discussion here, but......you might want to look at some of the higher-tech sci-fi novels and how they handle "missile" weapons. Some of David Weber's works outside of Starfire and Honor Harrington are particularly good examples: "Path of the Fury", and the trilogy that starts with "Mutineer's Moon". These universes are essentially chucking guided miniature black holes across solar systems. Unless all that quantum and photonic stuff is instantaneously impacting the target, there will always be a use for weapons that can correct their aim as they travel to the target.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on May 27, 2021, 07:39:57 PM

A 50,000-ton missile dreadnought, dedicating ~15,000 tons to box launchers, could launch about 500 size-4 missiles in one large salvo. Of course, strategically, the carrier can re-arm its fighters for multiple strikes while the 500-missile dreadnought has to fire everything off and then run away, so the carrier in theory has more staying power....

You are assuming that my 50,000 ton missile dreadnought can't just return to its carrier and reload.
Mwahahaha!

You can also reload them at a Transfer Ordinance Hub or something like that, i belive. So you could tag along a big ass commercial ship as reloading support, it will just take you know, forever to reload it.

Fighters are a weird middle ground for box launcher tactics, because they're really quite inefficient (tactically) when you factor in the carrier used to transport them, so while they can still launch some fairly big salvos because box launchers exist, they tend to be significantly less overpowering than what the same tonnage in large missile ships could put out. A 50,000-ton missile dreadnought, dedicating ~15,000 tons to box launchers, could launch about 500 size-4 missiles in one large salvo. Of course, strategically, the carrier can re-arm its fighters for multiple strikes while the 500-missile dreadnought has to fire everything off and then run away, so the carrier in theory has more staying power, but the dreadnought has a lot more capacity for overmatching the enemy's PD and blowing things up, per missile fired.

There is also a performance trade-off; fighters require more redundant mass to lug them around, but can get close (very close, in the case of 250 ton fighters) to hostiles without detection compared to capital ships, allowing you to design missiles with less fuel and more agility/thrust/warhead. You get a significant standoff advantage in almost any situation without having to worry about encountering an enemy who both has a missile range advantage and a speed advantage, which would quickly be a bad day for you.

Box launcher capital ships are hands-down more efficient and I have built them before, accepting the strategic inflexibility and demand on my ords production in exchange for quick and dirty results. 6500 ton box launcher frigates with a few 10cm railguns for PD make for decent patrol/light combat vessels, or so I found in VB6.

240 missiles isn't a very big box launcher salvo for same tech level.

I do have three carriers and I've deployed them all together at times, which makes for... quite the salvo. 150,000 tons of box launcher ship with 1/2 to 2/3rds being box launchers... I could probably handle the NPRs I've met but I'm not 100% sure about equal tonnage in toasters. Assuming I go all in; ratio  of box launcher spam to beam ship escorts being 80/20 is still an argument in favor of box launcher de facto supremacy, I wager.

Anyway, how many fire controls would you put on this theoretical 50kt dreadnought with 15kt of box launchers?
Asking for a friend.

On my aforementioned VB6 missile frigates I installed a secondary missile fire control with sufficient resolution to target FACs (because that was the smallest ship I'd observed toasters using) with range equal to half my primary MFCs and electronic hardening on it. Its function was to serve both as a backup fire control to the main in case of battle damage, and insurance against attacks by FACs. (The main search sensor's detection range against a FAC was roughly 20% less than that MFC's range against a 1,000 ton target to allow for ECM.)

Were I to build an arsenal ship now in C#, I would perhaps include two anti-fighter/FAC MFCs like that, but also include quite a few 5 or 10 ton MFCs with 250 ton resolutions because I am afraid of that spoiler. I am very afraid of that spoiler. I do not like that spoiler. I can hear that spoiler in the walls, at night, and I will not be taken by surprise!

EDIT: I just mentally tried to calculate if you could, within reasonable tonnage, include enough electronics to guard against both beam-fighter hordes and also the sneaky hojillion missiles from nowhere that carrier box launcher fighters can dump on you, then realized that some sensor picket FACs are more efficient per ton, so I accounted for that, then tried to figure out if carrier fighters/beam fighters could reasonably thunk those pickets and now my head hurts and I'm gonna get a drink.

I am not a clever man.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on May 27, 2021, 07:39:57 PM

A 50,000-ton missile dreadnought, dedicating ~15,000 tons to box launchers, could launch about 500 size-4 missiles in one large salvo. Of course, strategically, the carrier can re-arm its fighters for multiple strikes while the 500-missile dreadnought has to fire everything off and then run away, so the carrier in theory has more staying power....

You are assuming that my 50,000 ton missile dreadnought can't just return to its carrier and reload.
Mwahahaha!

At this point, we're not discussing game balance, we're discussing where you're going to store all of the loot you're going to capture imminently. 

Quote from: Demetrious on May 27, 2021, 05:54:26 PM

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on May 27, 2021, 02:48:27 PM

The point of box launchers is to overwhelm point defense with a massive volley size. That's a strictly tactical purpose, however it is extremely effective, and as a consequence of that effectiveness the strategic problems caused by using box launchers (lack of magazine depth + need to transport and reload ordnance) are greatly outweighed by the strategic gains from the tactical efficiency - you destroyed several ships or even an entire enemy fleet with no losses aside from the expended ammunition.

My last two games I've been using carrier strike groups as my main fleet doctrine; in the current game I'm fielding 50,000 ton carriers that can deliver sixty 250 ton fighters with four size-4 box launchers apiece, generating a maximum salvo size of 240 missiles apiece, with two reloads in the carrier's magazine. So I have been unleashing some very big box launcher salvos myself. I have, however, encountered hostiles which are fairly resilient against even this titanic salvo weight.

240 missiles isn't a very big box launcher salvo for same tech level.

Fighters are a weird middle ground for box launcher tactics, because they're really quite inefficient (tactically) when you factor in the carrier used to transport them, so while they can still launch some fairly big salvos because box launchers exist, they tend to be significantly less overpowering than what the same tonnage in large missile ships could put out. A 50,000-ton missile dreadnought, dedicating ~15,000 tons to box launchers, could launch about 500 size-4 missiles in one large salvo. Of course, strategically, the carrier can re-arm its fighters for multiple strikes while the 500-missile dreadnought has to fire everything off and then run away, so the carrier in theory has more staying power, but the dreadnought has a lot more capacity for overmatching the enemy's PD and blowing things up, per missile fired.