Trans-Newtonian Campaign - Part 12

[waresky]

STEVE>The hull designations are purely cosmetic, as they are in real life, so one race may class a 5000 ton ship as a cruiser but to a higher tech race, that might be a patrol ship because their cruisers are 50,000 tons. In 1852, HMS Agamemnon was classed as a battleship and she was 4600 tons. Less than 100 years later, HMS Vanguard was also classed as a battleship and she was 52,000 tons. The new Type 45 destroyers are 8100 tons, or twice as large as an older battleship-....

srry Steve,u have hit the right point of view.:)
the "class" it's mereley a technology question.am repeat u 100% right.
Probably in MegaTrav in early stage of "history" of Solomani (Rule of man u know what am mean) the tonnage r low compare to Vilani Empire Class battleship.And later in 15 or 16 tech lev BattleDome.

Ah Steve..the Jump point r similar at "Alderson's entry point" from "Co Dominium" Universe (Sparta,Covenant..:D Falkenberg do u remember? and Moties more and more later on future)
Obviously Jump point in Aurora r more easy to manage for ur Solar System generation program.

Cya

Giorgio

[vergeraiders]

>How about just disallowing the waypoint missile swarm entirely? That would seem to resolve a bunch of issues. Otherwise I expect it'll become SOP >since there seems to be little down side to it and a lot to gain by forming a swarm.

If you pack the swarm to closely you loose the ability to retarget missiles in flight (i.e. they all arrive on target during the same 5 sec. That's good when you are trying to saturate a well defended target, bad when the targets evaporate quickly.

At range of 40mil kms for missiles is there a light speed delay in retargeting? 30 mil km is 100 sec.

[sloanjh]

From "vergeraiders":
> At range of 40mil kms for missiles is there a light speed delay in retargeting? 30 mil km is 100 sec.

Ooooooh - that's a NASTY question!!!!!  I imagine it would be a nightmare for Steve to code up, but introducing a distance-based delay in missile retargeting would go a long way towards increasing the tactical difficulties at ultra-long ranges.  One effect would probably be to push terminal guidance up in importance (which might be important when Steve puts in ECM/ECCM).  OTOH, Steve could easily emplace techobabble that the communications links with the missiles are super-luminal (if he hasn't already) if he doesn't feel like dealing with it.  OTGH, he could also put in a tech line "fire control speed" that affects the range delay.

John

[Father Tim]

OTGH, he could also put in a tech line "fire control speed" that affects the range delay.

John

Or use an existing tech line - say, Active Sensor Strength or Beam Fire Control Speed or Range for the 'comm laser'.

Personally, I really like the idea of using a combination of (double) light-speed delay for passing info and Task Force comunications modifiers for delays in assigning new targets.

[Brian Neumann]

One small problem with doing a light speed delay.  Steve has already set things up that communications and active sensors are FTL.  This would therefore eliminate the sort of transmission delays, and old sensor data that you are talking about.

Brian

[jfelten]

STEVE>The hull designations are purely cosmetic, as they are in real life, so one race may class a 5000 ton ship as a cruiser but to a higher tech race, that might be a patrol ship because their cruisers are 50,000 tons. In 1852, HMS Agamemnon was classed as a battleship and she was 4600 tons. Less than 100 years later, HMS Vanguard was also classed as a battleship and she was 52,000 tons. The new Type 45 destroyers are 8100 tons, or twice as large as an older battleship-...

Giorgio

Personally I don' t really like that size class distinctions are arbitrary.  It means that people cannot talk about ships in generic terms with any common basis.  Saying "Three cruisers and 9 destroyers" doesn't really mean anything.  I would prefer if there was a table so people could customize the class ranges, but with standard defaults so most people would have a common basis for discussion.  I realize with open ship designs that there will be huge differences in capabilities between one cruiser and the next, but if the tonnages were in consistent ranges by default, at least it would give you some rough idea.

[Charlie Beeler]

Personally I don' t really like that size class distinctions are arbitrary.  It means that people cannot talk about ships in generic terms with any common basis.  Saying "Three cruisers and 9 destroyers" doesn't really mean anything.  I would prefer if there was a table so people could customize the class ranges, but with standard defaults so most people would have a common basis for discussion.  I realize with open ship designs that there will be huge differences in capabilities between one cruiser and the next, but if the tonnages were in consistent ranges by default, at least it would give you some rough idea.

IIRC that is exactly what Steve was getting away from.  In Starfire there are rigid predefined parameters governing class size, allowable engine power, etc etc etc.  Personally I like class designation being more fluid.  YMMV

[Hawkeye]

Giorgio[/quote]

Personally I don' t really like that size class distinctions are arbitrary.  It means that people cannot talk about ships in generic terms with any common basis.  Saying "Three cruisers and 9 destroyers" doesn't really mean anything.  I would prefer if there was a table so people could customize the class ranges, but with standard defaults so most people would have a common basis for discussion.  I realize with open ship designs that there will be huge differences in capabilities between one cruiser and the next, but if the tonnages were in consistent ranges by default, at least it would give you some rough idea.[/quote]


This would be pretty stupid from a RPG point of view (no disrespect meant)

If my empire/nation is capable of building ships from 1.000 to 6.000t, for example, of course my (very few) 6.000t warships would be called battleships.
Who in his right mind would call the biggest ships his navy has, a corvette or frigate?
This would only make sense, if you are a 2nd or 3rd rate navy, where the 1st rate navies are a measure bar for your ships. Like, Britain has 6 battleships of 11.500t in service, and Portugal launches its first warship at 1.500t. Of course, this couldn´t be classed as a battleship, as you know, battleships are supposed to be at least 10.000t.
If the portugese navy would be the only one on all of earth, however, this 1.500t ship would be the biggest and meanest around and so rightfully deserve the classification of battleship.

A general classification for all empires, based on tonnage, would be highly "unrealistic", IMO.

If you want to talk with others about your fleet size, instead of talking about 3 CA and 9 DD, just talk about three 7.000t CAs and nine 3.500t DDs. Problem solved.


Ralph Hoenig, Germany


P.S. What´s up with the BBCode? No matter what I am trying in the board settings (where it shows "BBCode active    Yes"), I don´t seem to be able to get it to work (when posting, it reads: BBCode is OFF)???

[Erik L]

P.S. What´s up with the BBCode? No matter what I am trying in the board settings (where it shows "BBCode active    Yes"), I don´t seem to be able to get it to work (when posting, it reads: BBCode is OFF)

I just made a test post using your permissions, and it is not a permissions setting that is doing that. I'll poke around.

[waresky]

Agree with a definition: "500.000ton Class-Battleship" are right and more RPG,comparison to another Empire to have an "20.000ton Class-Battleship" term:D.
Ok,i think this out of topic can end:)

[Father Tim]

P.S. What´s up with the BBCode? No matter what I am trying in the board settings (where it shows "BBCode active    Yes"), I don´t seem to be able to get it to work (when posting, it reads: BBCode is OFF)???

I just made a test post using your permissions, and it is not a permissions setting that is doing that. I'll poke around.

Fiddling around in the fiction sections, I have confirmed that BBCode is OFF for non-moderators, but ON for Moderators (Eric, Steve, various authors).

[Erik L]

P.S. What´s up with the BBCode? No matter what I am trying in the board settings (where it shows "BBCode active    Yes"), I don´t seem to be able to get it to work (when posting, it reads: BBCode is OFF)

I just made a test post using your permissions, and it is not a permissions setting that is doing that. I'll poke around.

Fiddling around in the fiction sections, I have confirmed that BBCode is OFF for non-moderators, but ON for Moderators (Eric, Steve, various authors).

It should be fixed now. And it was only affecting the fiction forums.

[SteveAlt (OP)]

How about just disallowing the waypoint missile swarm entirely?  That would seem to resolve a bunch of issues.  Otherwise I expect it'll become SOP since there seems to be little down side to it and a lot to gain by forming a swarm.

I don't want to take away the ability to fire missiles at waypoints because it is useful for other reasons as well, such as firing drones or aiming missiles at the path of a contact rather than directly at it.

I have been reading up on electronic warfare lately so a future version (but not v4.0) could have systems along the lines of the following:

1) Jammers that can jam all active sensors and fire controls of a particular resolution within a specific area. This will affect friendly ships within the same area as well.
2) Jammers that jam a specific hostile active sensor within range of the jammer
3) Decoys that will have a chance to distract self-guiding missiles within a set range
4) Decoys that will appear to be ships to enemy sensors, or flares to generate thermal signatures
5) On-board blip enhancers to make targets appear larger
6) Some form of chaff to block hostile fire control against a specific target
7) A Towed decoy that exactly replicates the signatures of a particular ship
8) Specialized passive sensors that can detect the lock on of hostile fire control systems

These systems would replace the current ECM. ECCM would consist of improved sensors to burn through the jamming or be able to figure out which are the decoys, etc. This is all in the early stages at the moment though.

Steve

[SteveAlt (OP)]

At range of 40mil kms for missiles is there a light speed delay in retargeting? 30 mil km is 100 sec.

Aurora assumes FTL sensors and comms. It makes life so much easier for both gameplay and programming.

Steve