Author Topic: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion  (Read 17530 times)

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Offline MagusXIX

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #30 on: December 27, 2015, 12:48:01 AM »
My three advices:
1. AMM and CIWS hit chance penalty to huge task group. Just to prevent invincible death ball.
2. long range beam weapon. Another way to  prevent invincible death ball and AMM spam.
3. new ECM/ECCM system. I hope ECM could actively jam missile in flight, or jam sensor on enemy ship. So simple AMM spam would lost track easily.

3 is the best solution. IMO, Aurora could be really improved by expanded electronic warfare options.  1 just forces players to split fleets into many smaller task groups, which is a headache to manage.  2 isn't feasible without developing faster than light beam weapons, as lasers currently have as long a range as anything can get within a given 5 second increment.
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #31 on: December 27, 2015, 05:56:47 AM »
How about an ECM/ ECCM system that takes into account how much and how powerful the sensor coverage overlapping the area is, missile and beam weapon detonations add to the confusion, more so for microwave and enhanced radiation warheads.
Even making it possible to confuse your own missiles or even active sensors by spamming too much ordnance in a small area or short time.
It would be pretty complex but I wonder if it's a possibility to simplify to the extent of adding slight increased strategy to current ECM without adding player confusion or micromanagement hell.
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Offline Thundercraft

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #32 on: December 27, 2015, 09:48:49 AM »
...In my battle, it seems that AMM and fleet defence turret is a bit OP against ASM...

My three advices:
1. AMM and CIWS hit chance penalty to huge task group. Just to prevent invincible death ball.
2. long range beam weapon. Another way to  prevent invincible death ball and AMM spam.
3. new ECM/ECCM system. I hope ECM could actively jam missile in flight, or jam sensor on enemy ship. So simple AMM spam would lost track easily.

The possibility of more range for Spinal Mount beams was discussed in the Spinal Mount & Fire Control: More Range, Please thread.

1 just forces players to split fleets into many smaller task groups, which is a headache to manage.  2 isn't feasible without developing faster than light beam weapons, as lasers currently have as long a range as anything can get within a given 5 second increment.

Beams may not be able to travel faster than the speed of light. That would be silly. However, I don't see any real reason why the game couldn't keep track of a beam attack that lasts more than a single 5 second increment. IRL, light does travel more than 1.4mkm. It does not just disappear after reaching that distance. Same with projectiles.

In the Spinal Mount & Fire Control thread, it was suggested to give Spinal Mount a new Fire Control different from regular Beams. It was also suggested to, maybe, give this new FC a reduced tracking speed. Perhaps, to reflect difficulty at tracking at that range and trying to predict/compensate for target movement.

...It would be pretty complex but I wonder if it's a possibility to simplify to the extent of adding slight increased strategy to current ECM without adding player confusion or micromanagement hell.

Giving Spinal Mount a bit more range would not add much to complexity or player confusion. And it would both make Spinal Mount much more useful and add variety to ship designs and combat strategy.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 10:20:56 AM by Thundercraft »
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Offline Zincat

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #33 on: December 27, 2015, 09:54:46 AM »
To be honest, I always thought that excessive amount of AMM usage was bad. Especially offensively. It's a weapon conceived to destroy other missiles, it makes no sense how powerful it is if used against ships as well. Same goes for micro weapons, or weapons that do just 1 damage.

That brings me to the point, which is: how to make it a less than ideal weapon against larger targets, while still keeping it as a good weapon against missiles (or fighters or small crafts?)

Frankly, there are 2 possible solutions

1 - ECM and ECCM rework. There's many ways this could possibly go. It could be a heavier penalty against smaller missiles/weapons (because they don't have as much space for ECCM) or other things along that line

2 My favorite thing. That is, damage reduction from armor. Right now, any and all kind of armor work in the same way. Even the best type of armor in the game will take the full damage from any kind of weapon. A railgun will ALWAYS do its damage, even against futuristic materials with insane characteristic. An infrared laser will always do 1 damage to a section of armor, no matter if it's some Collapsium armor ( and no, I never researched up to that point). To be honest, a basic amount of damage resistance could be instilled into different types of armor.
Say, just to make an example, Composite armor bounces off 1 damage explosions or railguns or lasers. Basically it's a damage reduction of 1 for those weapons (some weapons like mesons would not be affected of course).

Before saying it's not realistic, consider that this is normal. Take a tank and a man with an assault rifle. He can shoot all day long but the bullets will just bounce off the tank. In Aurora it's not the same, you can apply quantity to overcome ANY amount of armor. Which is not realistic considering how insanely advanced the armor materials become. And yes, it would be a huge change. And yes, I know it's not likely to happen. But it WOULD solve the problem of AMM spam or small weapon spam against larger ships.

At any rate there's an even faster solution, which I use. That is, AMM can only hit missiles (and fighters). Period. If I have only AMM left, though luck my ships will die because I'll not shoot them at enemies...



All that said though, I think all this would be best left for 7.2. Considering how bugged 7.0 is, I hope Steve will release 7.1 soon and just leave any further gameplay change for later...
 

Offline GreatTuna

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #34 on: December 27, 2015, 11:11:54 AM »
To be honest, I'm against changing AMMs because they, in fact, seem rather balanced to me. They have their own advantages, disadvantages and counters (armor/shields).

You're comparing assault rifle and a tank with missile 6 times less strong than ICBM and a ship. It will deal some damage.
And yes, I'm against damage reduction. Research in armor already makes it more mass-effective (=more layers of armor), and your addition will make shields close to useless (in comparison to armor, at least), and railguns completely useless (whole point of railguns is "more damage at expense of penetration", and damage reduction will make them deal less damage than lasers).

Of course, AMMs may look perfect on paper, with overwhelming quantity and stuff. But they only deal 1 point of damage each, no shock damage, and they have terrible range.

Speaking of NPRs, the players AMMs are superior to NPRs ASM because they (NPRs) cannot make good missiles. They concentrate on range, neglecting speed and to-hit chance (that includes their AMMs too, sadly), but concentration on range makes missiles subpar at best.

As an example, I can show differences between my and certain spoiler's ASMs (from the v. 6.43, but you should still get the point).
My missile has 120kkm/s speed, 40mkm range and 16 maneouver rating.
Their missile has 51.8kkm/s speed, 1150.3mkm range and 10 (read: no mass for agility) maneouver rating.
Both missiles have solid AM drives, I checked.

My AMM has 100+% to-hit chance against spoiler missile, but only ~35-40% to-hit chance against my own missile. The difference is noticeable.

At any rate there's an even faster solution, which I use. That is, AMM can only hit missiles (and fighters). Period. If I have only AMM left, though luck my ships will die because I'll not shoot them at enemies...

And this is just silly. Why capitans suddenly shouldn't resort to the good old tactic of macross missile massacre? Even if that's macross anti-missile missile massacre.
Well, I mean, why they shouldn't be able to hit larger targets if they're able to hit smaller targets?
« Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 11:13:39 AM by GreatTuna »
 

Offline CharonJr

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #35 on: December 27, 2015, 01:04:35 PM »
Large ships with good armor should work vs lots of AAMs ys well, especially since they have no shock damage. In my last game I used 30kt cruiser with 12 or 15 armor as a vanguard during JP assaults. I dont recall the number of armor points on that one, but I think it was around 1k.

IMO the main point would be giving the NPRs better ships and missiles and making the NPRs adapt to AAM spam.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #36 on: December 27, 2015, 01:15:09 PM »
With how the tech progression works, the higher your tech level the more accurate AMMs become vs an equivalent tech ASM. To the point where at very high tech levels AMMs tend to have 100% accuracy against themselves.

This is because of the agility stat; it provides a bonus to hit but not a bonus to defense, so every missile agility tech you research makes AMMs more accurate vs themselves (or other missiles of a similar tech level).
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #37 on: December 27, 2015, 01:40:56 PM »
And this is just silly. Why capitans suddenly shouldn't resort to the good old tactic of macross missile massacre? Even if that's macross anti-missile missile massacre.

With all due respects. I like to play this way, with most weapons in their own niche. I'm not much keen on minmaxing, I play to have fun. Consider it a house rule, if you will. You are entitled to your opinion and to play however you want. I'm not forcing my vision on anyone, just making a suggestion in case Steve ever plans to adjust AMM.

The problem is,  this is a limitation of the Aurora engine. Because of how numbers work in aurora, the lowest possible warhead is 1. But in case of an AMM? You are using a small tactical nuke... to destroy an intercepted missile. Really? That's just overkill. If we were on earth, I'd expect a tactical nuke to sink a medium-sized ship, not to destroy a 5 meters long missile. Realistically an AMM would be smaller to be faster and more agile,  and carry a significant lower payload, as far as I understand the numbers in Aurora.

Anyway, it is just my opinion and you can obviously disagree. But the problem is always the same in my opinion. The AI has limitations. Many players suggest AMM spam because the AI cannot deal with them, not bringing enough antimissile capabilities. I do not consider that minmaxing, I consider that "gaming the system". As in exploiting things that the AI cannot do well in order to gain an advantage. Perfectly legal, but not my cup of tea. Same with box launchers, which would be perfectly fine against a human opponent. But the AI cannot really adapt to fight against them and dies horribly. To me using something the AI cannot defend against is just not fun, and I play to have fun. So I impose limitations upon myself to increase my fun. Basically I try to have diverse fleets, just as I would have if I were playing against a human opponent.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 01:42:50 PM by Zincat »
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #38 on: December 27, 2015, 05:41:14 PM »
I'm not against mechanics changes like adding armour damage reduction or similar, however comparing Aurora level combat to modern warfare is useful in some ways, but the extreme energy levels and masses involved changes the scale and even basic mechanics significantly.
I'll start with my observations of modern tank design considering I've spent the last 6 months researching this area (mostly youtube, heh).
Firstly tanks aren't invincible, they all have significant weak points and even small arms can can cause a technical knockout by damaging essential systems like optics, tracks etc. easily repairable after a battle. WWII tanks usually had semi exposed and lightly armoured engine decks which could allow severe disabling with high calibre machine guns or Molotov cocktails. Side, rear, top and bottom armour is generally weak, but will defeat small arms easily.
The real armour is always on the front, on modern Tanks the turret face is especially thick. As this is the area that should be facing whatever you're firing at. I'll take the Abrams as an example, it's turret face is almost a metre thick with armour rated as being worth about 600-800 mms of standard steel armour plate vs a kinetic penetrator and 1300 mms vs high explosive anti tank.
Important to note is the round this tank fired contains a penetrator that's 600 mm long, essentially you need a projectile as long as the depth of the armour to achieve penetration. Range has a massive impact too, at 4km you get half the penetration.
Modern composite armour however is fragile and less likely to take repeated hits as solid steel like in WWII. But there are recorded instances on an Abrams taking dozens of RPG hits with the crew being safe, the tank was damaged beyond repair however. RPGs work somewhat differently to Kinetic penetrators however, relying on creating a high energy plasma of melted copper which operates like a cutting torch blowing a thin hole through steel. Composites do well against this.
Now off the derail, you mention armour damage resistance. Let's take WWII steel armour when hit there's 3 outcomes,  deflection, partial penetration, and full penetration.
Deflection is a result of the angle the armour is at how hard the armour is and it's mass, Germans and sometimes the British used far harder armour than others which made it great at deflection, but brittle which had flaws.
Generally only undersized rounds, rounds fired ad extreme range or hits at high angle were deflected, but it was still significant to stop these rounds. Against the lighter armoured areas all these hits would possibly penetrate. Except for small arms which every part of a tank is usually well armoured against .
Partial penetration is what we're really interested in, what happens when a round that can't get through the armour hits? If the armour is well made you get a crater, even kinetic energy weapons release a decent quantity of heat at impact which deforms the plate around the shell. It may weld itself into the hole however, but another hit in the same spot might get through.
If the armour is brittle as the soviets found with late war german armour even a partial penetration might gouge a far larger chunk out, or even crack the armour.
Generally though armour damage is basically plastic deformation where armour basically melts out of the way and this is how I picture auroras armour to work.
The idea of damage absorption is rather flawed as either an impact is deflected or it actually damages the armour without getting through, Aurors does model this by having individual boxes that ablate away.
Consider the weapons we have, nuclear weapons, lasers, high energy rail guns, all these would turn armour into plasma at impact, in fact the nuclear weapon is the less effective weapon as it's energy isn't concentrated, The us army found that regular steel plate is very resistant to point blank detonations, ablating enough to protect itself from the heat. The physical shove of detonation is vastly more damaging.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline backstab

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #39 on: December 28, 2015, 12:27:58 AM »


The problem is,  this is a limitation of the Aurora engine. Because of how numbers work in aurora, the lowest possible warhead is 1. But in case of an AMM? You are using a small tactical nuke... to destroy an intercepted missile. Really? That's just overkill. If we were on earth, I'd expect a tactical nuke to sink a medium-sized ship, not to destroy a 5 meters long missile. Realistically an AMM would be smaller to be faster and more agile,  and carry a significant lower payload, as far as I understand the numbers in Aurora.


Errrr ... That's not totally correct.  During the Cold War there were nuclear capable SAM's to deal with strategic bombers and icbm's
Move foward and draw fire
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #40 on: December 28, 2015, 12:55:47 AM »
There's the nuclear mortars or hand held nuclear rockets if you only want to leave a small hole.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
Yielded 10-20 tons, the warhead was capable of going upto a kiloton but even the 20 ton would have a lethal range of 400 meters , the rocket could only fire 2km so it's pretty risky to use.
However considering a size 1 missile weight 2.5 tons but the smallest nuclear weapon ever in production only weighs 30 kilos it's pretty obviously possible to use small warheads for antimissiles.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #41 on: December 28, 2015, 10:34:36 AM »
And this is just silly. Why capitans suddenly shouldn't resort to the good old tactic of macross missile massacre? Even if that's macross anti-missile missile massacre.
Well, I mean, why they shouldn't be able to hit larger targets if they're able to hit smaller targets?

Please remember the "no hitting" rule.

It sounded to me (confirmed by Zincat's later post) like Zincat wanted to add an "AMM"-type warhead to Aurora.  In terms of ASM warheads, this would be strength 0.  It would do zero damage to ship armor, but would be good enough to kill missiles.  In his post he attributes this lack to engine mechanics; my recollection is that Steve has simply forbidden it (for a set of technical and game play complexities).  Part of the reason for this is that missile size and RoF is (or at least was before the engine rewrites) proportional to warhead size.  This means that 100x (strength 1/100 warhead) missiles were the same size/cost of 1x(strength 1 warhead) missile, which skews things in the direction of small missiles.  If there were a fixed guidance-package cost added to missiles this would go away.  This (a separate sector of AMM missiles) seems a reasonable choice for a different form of game mechanics.

On a side note for Zincat - IIRC Aurora armor used to work the way you propose.  Strength-3 armor would sap away the first 3 hit points of any strike.  I remember having an exploration ship (TFN Fluffy Bunny IIRC) blown away by aliens that were much higher-tech than me.  I built a couple of heavily armored "turtle" beam ships and plinked them to death while their bullets bounced off me.  In other words, that mode was waaaaay over-powered, which was motivation to swing to the ablative direction.

Back to AMM warheads:  I it just occurred to me that, if Steve wanted to spend a bunch of time coding, he could introduce "Missile Warhead Points", which would be 1/20th of a normal damage point in the same way that a missile hull point is 1/20th of normal.  This would presumably be combined with changes to missile armor (to make it resist missile warhead points, not regular warhead points, plus take advantage of armor tech) and some mechanism to prevent ultra-tiny missiles (e.g. a telemetry/guidance tech line that would be required for the missile to talk to fire control).  "Warheadless" AMM that are allowed to kill un-armored missiles might also be worked in here - then missile warhead points would be intended to defeat missile armor.

Note that this wouldn't prevent using strength 1 ASM as AMM (the equivalent of the cold war nuclear AMM).

John
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #42 on: December 28, 2015, 11:27:53 AM »
-snipped for legibility-

I have not been around on this forum so much, so I did not know some of the things you wrote about how aurora worked before, or what Steve decided back then. Thanks for the information. I did not expect this much of a discussion. I'll try to explain better my views on the matter. They are all still just suggestions of course, based on my opinion.

Regarding the ablative vs deflective armor, I certainly do not suggest a completely deflective model. That would indeed be exploitable. But it is my opinion that the completely ablative model used now also has problems. Mainly, no matter how advanced the technologies become no weapon ever becomes completely obsolete.
Looking at the higher end armors, we have some pretty incredible and futuristic stuff there. I would expect that some armor named "Bonded superdense armor" would be capable of just shrugging off a tiny (damage 1) infrared laser, just to make an example. Or bouncing the smallest kind of railgun (damage 1 per shot also).
A possible proposal, considering we have 12 tiers of armor, could be: tier 1-4, 0 "deflection point". tier 4-8, 1 "deflection point". Tier 9-12, 2 "deflection points". This would be a small enough number not to create invincible ships, but would at least somewhat model the higher technology and encourage to build weapons a bit bigger.

This, and the fact I suggested AMM-only size 0 warheads (as you explained better than me >_> ) are tied. I think that size 1 missiles are somewhat imbalanced as they are now. The smaller the missiles are, the more survivability they have and the better their chance to hit. However this is a problem in my opinion because I can create a tiny weapon, which still serves as an AMM if I need it too, and which I can also use just as effectively against any kind of ship in range. And it never becomes obsolete (AMMs are FAST). And they still have a range many times that of any beam weapon or kinetic weapon..

Just my opinions of course, but I think that adding a little bit of deflection, and making AMM-only warheads, would remove imbalances and make weapons more balanced all around.


 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #43 on: December 28, 2015, 11:45:14 AM »
Firstly, I am reasonably happy with the way that AMMs (or small ASM) function at the moment. They are dangerous in numbers but they lack range, penetration and the potential for shock damage. That doesn't mean I wouldn't change if I heard something that i believed would improve the game, just that I don't think there is an urgency to change.

One of the major factors to consider in any weapon mechanics is how the NPRs would deal with it. Having warships that can't damage some other ships is a complicating factor and was the main reason I eventually changed the Invaders tech. Also, the 'AMM spam' from defensive bases makes things hard for the player in some circumstances. I don't think having a ship that could sail through that with impunity makes for a good gaming experience.

In terms of very advanced armour having no bonus against AMMs, that isn't really the case. With advanced armour you get more armour boxes per hull space, so the 1-damage AMM is damaging less volume than before. As armour volume increases, the shock damage and penetration of larger warheads becomes even more important.

Another option, as mentioned earlier, is some type of guidance package that would take the place of the warhead for AMMs. However, it would probably make sense in that situation to build AMMs slightly larger and keep the warhead anyway to make them dual-use.
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Change Log for v7.10 Discussion
« Reply #44 on: December 28, 2015, 03:10:06 PM »
Regarding the ablative vs deflective armor, I certainly do not suggest a completely deflective model.

Sorry - didn't mean to imply you did.  I was mainly trying to point out that this (and many other issues in Aurora) has had the pendulum effect take place.  The original design was too imbalanced towards impregnable armor; the next iteration towards ablative armor.  The "shock damage" change was Steve's effort to pull the balance back towards the center, and based on his post above he's happy with it, so it's unlikely to change :)

Have fun,
John