Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Mel Vixen on April 28, 2013, 05:34:12 AM
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38cm C4 Advanced Spinal Ultraviolet Laser
Damage Output 38 Rate of Fire: 50 seconds Range Modifier: 4
Max Range 1,520,000 km Laser Size: 12 HS Laser HTK: 6
Power Requirement: 38 Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 4
Cost: 98 Crew: 36
Spinal Weapon Only
Materials Required: 19.6x Duranium 19.6x Boronide 58.8x Corundium
Development Cost for Project: 980RP
As it seems we also get some range-enhancement with those, hopefully with an appropriate range-increase for the firecontrols. hehe also with caronades a spinal mount could be fun. More the 200 points of point blanck damage sounds terrific.
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As it seems we also get some range-enhancement with those, hopefully with an appropriate range-increase for the firecontrols. hehe also with caronades a spinal mount could be fun. More the 200 points of point blanck damage sounds terrific.
It's worth us more obviously pointing out that, *without* such a follow-up change, Spinal Mounts will be gimped compared to our expectations. Sorry to lower the tone, but better to find and fix this now than finding out after the next release. For great COOLNESS.
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As it seems we also get some range-enhancement with those, hopefully with an appropriate range-increase for the firecontrols. hehe also with caronades a spinal mount could be fun. More the 200 points of point blanck damage sounds terrific.
Some of the existing lasers have huge ranges. However, you can't target them beyond a max of 1.5m kilometers (primarily because of the light-speed issue).
Steve
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Some of the existing lasers have huge ranges. However, you can't target them beyond a max of 1.5m kilometers (primarily because of the light-speed issue).
Steve
The light speed limit is understandable; however a range bonus within that limit might be a good thing to soften the rather hard line where you can be destroyed without getting a chance to fire a shot.
I mean, yeah, you can fire at 1.5m km if you have completely maxed out tech, but how many people get that far? If spinal weapons had a bonus to max range (capped at 1.5m km) it would fuzzy the line a bit.
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The light speed limit is understandable; however a range bonus within that limit might be a good thing to soften the rather hard line where you can be destroyed without getting a chance to fire a shot.
I mean, yeah, you can fire at 1.5m km if you have completely maxed out tech, but how many people get that far? If spinal weapons had a bonus to max range (capped at 1.5m km) it would fuzzy the line a bit.
The problem is that the max range comes from the fire control, not the weapon itself. One way to somewhat solve the problem is to make the tradeoff between range and speed somewhat more explicit. Create a tech that lets you build special long-range fire controls. When it's on, the fc you build has, oh, 50% more range and 25% of the tracking speed. You could even do multiple levels, with greater range boosts and tracking losses.
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Yeah, a higher theoretical weapon range just translates into higher practical damage for lasers, the fire control is the real limiting factor
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Yeah, a higher theoretical weapon range just translates into higher practical damage for lasers, the fire control is the real limiting factor
That's why I'm suggesting they get a bonus to the max range of the fire control.
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The max range of fire controls is based on the 5s * Speed of Light limit ;)
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The max range of fire controls is based on the 5s * Speed of Light limit ;)
Only at maximum tech.
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Only at maximum tech.
That would be the "ultimate" maximum range. :)
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The max range of fire controls is based on the 5s * Speed of Light limit ;)
As in: "It ain't likely to change" :)
John
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The max range of fire controls is based on the 5s * Speed of Light limit ;)
That's why I suggested implementing a tradeoff between range and tracking speed. If the target is moving slower, you should be able to hit it further away.
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That's why I suggested implementing a tradeoff between range and tracking speed. If the target is moving slower, you should be able to hit it further away.
But you can't. Then the weapon would be FTL.
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I understand what he's asking for and can see why there is confusion here. The max range of a laser doesn't have anything to do with firecontrols, laser size or the speed of your target. The max range is literally: if I hit fire how far can the beam go in 5 seconds? It's a game mechanics/physics limit. Unless Steve would want to make lasers be a weapon that can track across more than one time increment this will always be a hard limit. Even if he did change it the setup becomes far more complicated because you are now firing a weapon with a fixed trajectory and a pause in the action with the payload in mid-transit. It would make it very easy for a watchful player to manually dodge the incoming fire with a change in course.
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I think the thing to change on fire controls in order to make better use of the max range is altering the rate at which accuracey reduces. This would be in exchange for possibly further increased size (not a huge fan of this trade off) or substantially increased complexity in terms of research and build cost. This would then give a better chance of actually hitting something at that range and hence being able to utilise it without actually increasing the overall range of the weapons.
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What about making "Beam Fire control range" cheaper to research so you can reach the maximum earlier and have one or two levels higher then currently for the same cost?
That would probably provide a solution for 98% of the problems (the remaining 2% being at max level beam weapons), make spinals rangeboost useful and doesn't inflict with any light speed realism issues either.
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That would be the "ultimate" maximum range. :)
As in: "It ain't likely to change" :)
John
There seems to be confusion about what exactly I'm suggesting. ~1.5m km is the range limit due to speed of light, and I am not suggesting it be increased. Rather, I am suggesting that spinal weapons have a range boost within that limit, so that they could reach out to 1.5m km with less than maximum tech. Improving tech would then improve their accuracy at 1.5m, but never let them exceed 1.5m.
Mechanically, this might involve them having their own built in FCs, like CIWS, or having them fire as if a target was closer, like a reverse of how Nebulae work.
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But you can't. Then the weapon would be FTL.
I'm aware of that. In this case, I would file it under "reasonable abstraction". It may not be technically correct, but we don't worry about light lag for sensors or communications. Hitting a moving target with a long lag is theoretically simple. I'm suggesting very low tracking speeds to simulate the uncertainty involved in doing so.
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I'd like to raise three more points in defense of allowing longer beam ranges:
1. They're already in the game. A max tech PDC beam fire control will do 7.5 ls. The universe hasn't imploded yet.
2. If the energy detected by the sensors travel superluminally, then it's unlikely that we won't be able to send energy back.
3. The beam weapons are already FTL, or everyone in Aurora is very stupid. A ship travelling at 1250 km/s (basic tracking speed tech) that random-walks in a cone 1 degree wide has a positional uncertainty of +- 21.8 km/s. Even at 5000 km, that's +-364 meters, or the size of a large-ish ship. Yet the most basic firecon you can build will hit it 50% of the time, and a system that can be built with the same tech will do so 87.5% of the time. And the ship's forward velocity will be slowed by .015%.
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I'd like to raise three more points in defense of allowing longer beam ranges:
Been here, done this... Steve is unlikely to capitulate now.
1. They're already in the game. A max tech PDC beam fire control will do 7.5 ls. The universe hasn't imploded yet.
While you can design a PDC with a range greater than 1.4m/km the games code has a hard maximum limit of 1.4m/km which is actually a little short of 5 light seconds. The same goes for ship/missile speed, there is a hard limit of 299k/kps which is a little short of light speed.
2. If the energy detected by the sensors travel superluminally, then it's unlikely that we won't be able to send energy back.
This argument has been made before...no change.
3. The beam weapons are already FTL, or everyone in Aurora is very stupid. A ship travelling at 1250 km/s (basic tracking speed tech) that random-walks in a cone 1 degree wide has a positional uncertainty of +- 21.8 km/s. Even at 5000 km, that's +-364 meters, or the size of a large-ish ship. Yet the most basic firecon you can build will hit it 50% of the time, and a system that can be built with the same tech will do so 87.5% of the time. And the ship's forward velocity will be slowed by .015%.
This has also been brought up before. The short answer is that in the interests of game play and ease of coding the entire deviation potential is being ignored.
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The bigger problem is the turn length. If a ship was at 2m k and you fired your laser with appropriate tech to hit your target there would be a turn increment in the middle of the weapon payload travel. When you fire a laser the ship on the receiving end should have no warning as any possible warning signal would not travel faster than the light speed weapon travelling towards the target. So knowing that the laser was fired and impact would happen at the same time. If there is a play stoppage mid weapon travel you (the player) can thwart the laws of physics and you will now have an advance warning of a light speed weapon approaching. Thus your sensors, albeit your optical sensors and not in-game sensors, will have created a ftl alert of incoming laser fire.
Wow, that was a long winded response about something I only know of in theory...I hope I am right.
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I too think that the light-speed restriction should be lifted. We're already throwing a lot of physics to the wind by invoking "Trans-Newtonian" physics. Why not just claim that lasers/etc that use TN systems are capable of super-luminal energy/matter transmission? It already happens for comms and sensors, as has been noted. There wouldn't even be much gameplay impact, except that your beam weapons now have longer potential ranges. Frankly, I think multiplying a lot of the beam weapon range values by two or three would go a long way toward making beam weapons more balanced with respect to missiles, something people have been clamoring for for ages.
I am not suggesting that beams be implemented such that they turn into an energy packet that hits on a later increment; they'd still be "same-increment" weapons, it's just that, if someone did the calculations, the beam front would technically have gone faster than light speed. I fail to see how this could be used to violate causality in game, so I'm not sure what the real reason for keeping it the way it is is, other than "It would be a lot of work to implement," which is probably valid.
I understand if Steve wants to stick fast to this restriction; it's his game, after all. I just want to throw my voice behind removing the restriction as well.
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Been here, done this... Steve is unlikely to capitulate now.
I was not aware of this, but I'm certainly not regretting trying.
The bigger problem is the turn length.
You're right, so long as we assume that the beam propagates at a speed no greater than c. If we remove that, then the problem goes away.
I am not suggesting that beams be implemented such that they turn into an energy packet that hits on a later increment; they'd still be "same-increment" weapons, it's just that, if someone did the calculations, the beam front would technically have gone faster than light speed. I fail to see how this could be used to violate causality in game, so I'm not sure what the real reason for keeping it the way it is is, other than "It would be a lot of work to implement," which is probably valid.
It couldn't be used to violate causality. I believe the model the game runs on is that there is a universal reference frame, in violation of relativity. (This is actually a plausible mechanism, because we might have simply not discovered it yet.)
I understand if Steve wants to stick fast to this restriction; it's his game, after all. I just want to throw my voice behind removing the restriction as well.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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If there is a play stoppage mid weapon travel you (the player) can thwart the laws of physics and you will now have an advance warning of a light speed weapon approaching. Thus your sensors, albeit your optical sensors and not in-game sensors, will have created a ftl alert of incoming laser fire.
Sensor ranges are determined by the amount of thermal and EM radiation the sensed object emits. Since any such radiation would be contained in the particle packet of any cohesive particle beam weapon, they would not be detected until the beam arrived at it's destination. Similarly, railgun and GC are lethal not because of the size of the payload but the kinetic energies the payload carries. Since velocity x mass determines their kinetic energy, and it takes less overall resources to increase speed than the mass of every shot fired, their ammunition masses would likely be measured in grams or at most a few kilograms. Keep in mind the minimum given sensor range vs. size is 6 MSP or 300kg. Furthermore, not having any engines or components they would not give off any detectable levels of EM or thermal radiation. This would make their detection ranges with even the best sensors effectively 0. Optical sensors detect visible light so they would of course be limited by the speed of light. In short the player should remain blind to incoming beam fire, making any intentional dodging impossible. Of course random changes or speed and/or heading should be SOP in any engagement but that's another discussion.
The only reason beam weapons cannot exceed the 5*c limitation, in my opinion, is purely due to coding difficulties. Adding an additional object and making it visible to the program and not the player seems like it should be easy enough, but I'm not a programmer so maybe it's not.
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I mostly agree. I didn't really think about the packet being visible to the game and not the player. The problem still stands, but the situation is now different. Once you are aware that the opponent is wielding a weapon with a fixed trajectory and requires more than one time increment to deliver that you can conduct evasive maneuvers to completely eliminate the weapons chance to land a hit. I agree evasive maneuvers should be a standard procedure in a battle but the fact that you could completely negate an opposing weapon system and may be able to destroy an enemy task force with impunity just because you zigged is a hurdle to address.
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Keep in mind the minimum given sensor range vs. size is 6 MSP or 300kg.
Just want to be pedantic and note that 6 MSP is 6/20 HS = 0.3 HS, or 15 metric tons (15,000 kg, not 300). And actually the game uses 0.33 HS (6.6 MSP) for the minimum size, not 0.30 (6 MSP) as the game displays indicate.
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I mostly agree. I didn't really think about the packet being visible to the game and not the player. The problem still stands, but the situation is now different. Once you are aware that the opponent is wielding a weapon with a fixed trajectory and requires more than one time increment to deliver that you can conduct evasive maneuvers to completely eliminate the weapons chance to land a hit. I agree evasive maneuvers should be a standard procedure in a battle but the fact that you could completely negate an opposing weapon system and may be able to destroy an enemy task force with impunity just because you zigged is a hurdle to address.
The problem goes away if we assume that the weapon propagates at superluminal speed. There are several reasons to accept that as a possibility, as I outlined previously. The point you raise is exactly why I'm convinced that they don't travel at the speed of light. Particularly with (practically) infinite delta-V, dodging is just too easy at anything over point-blank range.
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This is a game where gravity and momentum, to say nothing of relativistic effects or the third dimension, don't exist for spaceships. Getting exercised about the speed of light is, to be perfectly blunt, an unusual intrusion of physical reality into space combat. Aurora almost never lets that sort of thing get in the way of the sort of game it wants to be. I cannot at present think of any other instance of allowing physics to limit decisions made about game balance.
Even if Steve chooses to make an exception for and respect c, making weapon and fire control ranges match better can be done in at least two ways:
A. Reduce the ranges of beam weapons at all tech levels. I don't recommend this; the ratio of the distance ships can travel in a game tick and the range of beam weapons is already low.
B. Allow arbitrary beam ranges. Just have the beam pulse (a firing event) impact in following ticks. If we want to do this simply, we just save the beam pulse data, calculate its arrival time, and apply it then - don't worry about ship movement in the meantime. Later feature polishing could include adjustment of arrival time if ships move relative to each other. Dodging would not be allowed, or only allowed through a abstracted process.
Frankly, what this game *really* needs - perhaps in an Aurora II - is to get rid of the 5-second game pulse . However, this would pretty much require a complete coding overall, so this is pie in the sky for anyone other than a very determined Steve.
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Gentlemen, the beam fire control limits have nothing to do, functionally, with Relativity. For all intents and purposes it is nothing more than an arbitrary limit that can be described as a carryover from board/tabletop games (fiction as well) that describe ranges in relation to light seconds/minutes.
The decision was made early in development that beams either struck during the smallest game impulse or missed and would not be tracked into later impulses. I highly doubt that Steve will change this since it is a basic fundamental of of the coding.
Also early on it was decided that defensive maneuvers/dodging would be assumed to always be occurring and thus abstracted by lowered fire control ranges. This was done to releave a need to calculate the effects of movement for both ships on accuracy.
If you really want beam fire control ranges greater that 5ls, and have the database password, you can have it. It's a simple change to the tech systems table. Be forwarned if you do, that this is only a personal change and is not to be distributed. Also, if you start having "issues" related to range they are not to be reported in the bugs threads since end-user database changes are not something Steve has any desire to attempt to trace through the code.
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I highly doubt that Steve will change this since it is a basic fundamental of of the coding.
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If you really want beam fire control ranges greater that 5ls, and have the database password, you can have it. It's a simple change to the tech systems table.
That is not making much sense for me. Either the change is simple or it's not. It can't be both of them at once.
If it was a basic fundamental of the coding it normally would be either impossible or very complex to change.
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That is not making much sense for me. Either the change is simple or it's not. It can't be both of them at once.
If it was a basic fundamental of the coding it normally would be either impossible or very complex to change.
As usual, you've taken things out of context.
The first has to do with beam fire being resolved in one and only one game impulse. As noted, it is a fundiment function of the code.
The second has to do with at what range that beam fire may be resolved. As noted, this is a database table item that the code references governing range.
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Gentlemen, the beam fire control limits have nothing to do, functionally, with Relativity. For all intents and purposes it is nothing more than an arbitrary limit that can be described as a carryover from board/tabletop games (fiction as well) that describe ranges in relation to light seconds/minutes.
They do in that it's assumed that the beam can't travel faster than c.
The decision was made early in development that beams either struck during the smallest game impulse or missed and would not be tracked into later impulses. I highly doubt that Steve will change this since it is a basic fundamental of of the coding.
A problem which can be solved by removing the assumption mentioned above. If the beam could propagate at 10c, then the maximum range would be 15 mkm.
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As usual, you've taken things out of context.
The first has to do with beam fire being resolved in one and only one game impulse. As noted, it is a fundiment function of the code.
The second has to do with at what range that beam fire may be resolved. As noted, this is a database table item that the code references governing range.
So the first has to do with what range beam fire is being resolved, and the second has to with... what range beam fire may be resolved.
Thanks for that clarification. :)
Edit: No one here has asked that beam fire should take several rounds to resolve either as far as I can see, so I can't see why that is brought up for discussion at all.
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So the first has to do with what range beam fire is being resolved, and the second has to with... what range beam fire may be resolved.
Thanks for that clarification. :)
Incorrect
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Edit: No one here has asked that beam fire should take several rounds to resolve either as far as I can see, so I can't see why that is brought up for discussion at all.
Also incorrect.
This is a game where gravity and momentum, to say nothing of relativistic effects or the third dimension, don't exist for spaceships. Getting exercised about the speed of light is, to be perfectly blunt, an unusual intrusion of physical reality into space combat. Aurora almost never lets that sort of thing get in the way of the sort of game it wants to be. I cannot at present think of any other instance of allowing physics to limit decisions made about game balance.
Even if Steve chooses to make an exception for and respect c, making weapon and fire control ranges match better can be done in at least two ways:
A. Reduce the ranges of beam weapons at all tech levels. I don't recommend this; the ratio of the distance ships can travel in a game tick and the range of beam weapons is already low.
B. Allow arbitrary beam ranges. Just have the beam pulse (a firing event) impact in following ticks. If we want to do this simply, we just save the beam pulse data, calculate its arrival time, and apply it then - don't worry about ship movement in the meantime. Later feature polishing could include adjustment of arrival time if ships move relative to each other. Dodging would not be allowed, or only allowed through a abstracted process.
Frankly, what this game *really* needs - perhaps in an Aurora II - is to get rid of the 5-second game pulse . However, this would pretty much require a complete coding overall, so this is pie in the sky for anyone other than a very determined Steve.
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Also incorrect.
Out of context, as you can see it was brought up only as a workaround to get around your claim that the speed of light is absolute in Aurora, and that it must be respected for beam ranges (even though no other physical or Newtonian laws are in Aurora).
It's the same with the first statement. By your logic of having speed of light as an absolute you do tie beam ranges and them being resolved in the same pulse together.
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Out of context, as you can see it was brought up only as a workaround to get around your claim that the speed of light is absolute in Aurora, and that it must be respected for beam ranges (even though no other physical or Newtonian laws are in Aurora).
Please read the full topic again, carefully, you like to infer statements that have not been made. The only place I've stated that there is a hardcoded limit related to Speed of Light is in relation to movement not beam weapons. You're inferring that I've stated that beams are restricted to sub-luminal speeds when infact I have not.
It's the same with the first statement. By your logic of having speed of light as an absolute you do tie beam ranges and them being resolved in the same pulse together.
The basis of the single impulse actually has to do with avoiding course prediction in a universe that has ships/missiles with the ability to completely change course from one impulse to the next.
The range of 5 Light Seconds, while implying a Light Speed limit, was actually a moderately arbitrary mark. The limit has more to do with assumed error prediction not Relativity limitations. Since the range assignment is a table entry and not hardcoded Light Speed is not an absolute in relation to beam weapons. (unless Steve has added this as a hardcode since v4 which is the last version where I played with the BFC ranges changed to allow maximum range lasers)
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You two are always so damn snippy with each other. It's off-putting.
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I imagine that Steve went with the speed of light times 5 seconds (1,498,962,290 meters??) as the maximum possible range for 'beams' since it seemed the most logical thing to do at the time.
Possibly for a few reasons:
1. Weapon balance
2. Trying to keep some semblance to real world physics (TN materials not withstanding)
3. Complexity of tracking a beam over multiple increments - ignoring any diffusion (how/would a beam of high energy dissipate over distance in space/vacuum?)
4. Because it is his game and he felt like it :)
I am sure you could come up with some TN based techobabble to explain how the laser is sent as a pulse contained in a bubble of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff.
Or, you could explain it as ... your beam fire control range is actually the maximum range that you can open a micro-wormhole to shoot the laser through. A nanosecond wormhole just big enough to fire the laser through is generate in the laser's 'barrel' with a terminus in a direct line to the target. You can obviously still miss.
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You two are always so damn snippy with each other. It's off-putting.
Yeah, I agree. Ill try to stop.
But it's just too fun to see that he's so childish that he rather rate med down x6 times instead of admitting he might be mistaken once, so I have a hard time stopping :)
Please read the full topic again, carefully, you like to infer statements that have not been made. The only place I've stated that there is a hardcoded limit related to Speed of Light is in relation to movement not beam weapons. You're inferring that I've stated that beams are restricted to sub-luminal speeds when infact I have not.
I didn't actually state that the limit was hardcoded, even though it's hard to understand this is any other way:
The decision was made early in development that beams either struck during the smallest game impulse or missed and would not be tracked into later impulses. I highly doubt that Steve will change this since it is a basic fundamental of of the coding.
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I imagine that Steve went with the speed of light times 5 seconds (1,498,962,290 meters??) as the maximum possible range for 'beams' since it seemed the most logical thing to do at the time.
Be that as it may, game balance has changed significantly since then.
Possibly for a few reasons:
1. Weapon balance
Not any more. Beam ranges are negligible compared to missile ranges, and even to theoretical beam weapon ranges.
3. Complexity of tracking a beam over multiple increments - ignoring any diffusion (how/would a beam of high energy dissipate over distance in space/vacuum?)
That should be modeled by the falloff in laser damage, not by anything to do with the fire control. If we're speaking of lasers, a beam slowly spreads out due to diffraction. For a given laser with a fixed focus, it's like a pair of truncated cones with the focal point at the smallest diameter. Sort of like ><. If the laser is variable-focus, then the focal point can move. The size of the beam at the focal point is directly proportional to range, and nothing else. The laser can be thought of as being a cone, with the size set by the mirror and wavelength. The power of the laser has nothing to do with it. I hope that's clear enough for you.
As for other weapons, it's more complicated. Particle beams spread out as they travel, so their path is actually a cone.
I am sure you could come up with some TN based techobabble to explain how the laser is sent as a pulse contained in a bubble of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff.
Sensor packets come in that way.
Or, you could explain it as ... your beam fire control range is actually the maximum range that you can open a micro-wormhole to shoot the laser through. A nanosecond wormhole just big enough to fire the laser through is generate in the laser's 'barrel' with a terminus in a direct line to the target. You can obviously still miss.
Interesting. That's actually quite good, although it does leave the question of why lasers theoretical range is so much longer than their practical range.
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Interesting. That's actually quite good, although it does leave the question of why lasers theoretical range is so much longer than their practical range.
This was actually a suggestion for explaining why a laser can hit out to more than 1.5million KMs - if Steve was to remove that cap.
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I split this topic off of the main 6.3 change discussion. I think I grabbed all of the appropriate posts.
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Beside the 5 second light-speed limit, another reason for restricting beam range is that beam weapons have unlimited ammunition and have no counter. Currently, if you out-range your opponents in beam combat it is generally not by a huge amount and they don't have to be much faster to close the range in a reasonable time. If beam weapons had significantly longer ranges then one side could be at huge disadvantage. If you outrange an opponent with missiles, he can still shoot them down and you have to build and transport those missiles.
I could make the range increments cheaper so you have a slightly longer range earlier, but I want to avoid huge beam weapon ranges.
Another option I am considering however is to remove the atmospheric restrictions on beam weapons and give planetary-based beam weapons a similar type of enhancement to spinal weapons. Longer range is less of an issue when you can't move. Beam-armed PDCs on the same planet wouldn't be able to fire at once another (except for mesons). If I did this though, that raises the issue of using beams to cleanly wipe out planetary populations (which is why the restriction was added in the first place). To avoid that I can see two options:
1) Make ground-based installations and populations immune to beam weapon fire - each one is spread over a large area and beam weapons are precision weapons. Allow beam weapons to act as fire support for ground combat - adding to combat strength up to perhaps an amount equal to the ground combat attack strength.
2) Allow beam weapons a chance to fail with each shot. Not as keen on this as it removes one of the main advantages over missiles.
Steve
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Steve, that makes a lot of sense. I'm not wholly in agreement, but it's easier to accept this going forwards. For planetary bombardment, I'd go with option 1. Although I might suggest restricting the frequencies of lasers that can fire through the atmosphere. In reality, nothing too far about the visible band can make it through. Near UV might, but I'd have to check. Railguns and gauss cannons should be OK, while plasma carronades and particle beams wouldn't work at all.
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I just want to throw in as someone on the "fine as it is" side of the fence. Beam weapons out-ranging their fire controls isn't a new issue, it's only gotten (will get, rather, with 6.3) cheaper to run into with the spinal mounts. My first and only thought when I saw the spinal mounts was a 'yippee!' that the damage at my beam limit will have gone up by a chunk if I go the spinal route. I can see why it's annoying to feel like there's some extra range you're losing out on, but it's missing something you never had before.
That said, the atmospheric restriction removal is interesting. I think the ability for orbital beam ships to shoot at PDCs but not populations might be a good one - ground-to-space and vice versa duking it out and short range. It adds some strategic possibilities to ground invasions that aren't currently there. What are the downsides that I'm missing w/r/t allowing PDCs to be targeted?
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Wouldn't shields be significantly more effective against long-range beam weapons? Their cycle times are long enough (or can be made long enough with additional modifiers) that shields can regenerate a reasonably large amount between shots. Since each ship can bring only one spinal mount you would need to spend a large ship premium to get lots of spinal beam weapons out there for focus fire. As an example, against the 38 cm advanced UV laser given at size 12 versus shield recharge rate 3 using 12 HS of shields would net you 6 shield strength recharged every cycle. That's enough to nullify a significant amount of their range with some shield strength as a buffer against more spinal weapons/closer ranges. You can tweak spinal mount recharge/size modifiers to make shields more or less useful as needed.
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Beside the 5 second light-speed limit, another reason for restricting beam range is that beam weapons have unlimited ammunition and have no counter. Currently, if you out-range your opponents in beam combat it is generally not by a huge amount and they don't have to be much faster to close the range in a reasonable time. If beam weapons had significantly longer ranges then one side could be at huge disadvantage. If you outrange an opponent with missiles, he can still shoot them down and you have to build and transport those missiles.
So another solution would be to give them a counter right?
For example reflective armor types or some kind of shields that can reduce damage from certain energy weapons.
I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the passive defenses in Aurora. We have so much choice and diversification when it comes to different offensive weapons as well as active defenses, but passive defenses are actually pretty boring in comparison.
Where are the reactive armors, reflective armors, absorbing armors, anti kinetic armors. Shields that you can tweak either for absorbing loads of damage or for quick regeneration, or for reducing special kinds of incoming fire. Or why not high vs low quality armor where you can spend lot's of extra minerals and build-cost for a slight improvement.
It could also be worth considering if beam weapons should always have unlimited ammo. What if continuous beam fire slowly starts to overheating the power-plants and these normally being designed to not sustain more then X amount of pulses before requiring cool-down or risk blowing up. A gutsy captain would keep running them anyways and gamble, but sooner or later the risk is to high unless you really design them many 100% over normal capacity required. Or the capacitors could act as batteries only able to store up a certain amount of pulses before a much longer cooldown is incurred, I'm sure there are ways to model such things if there is a balance need for it and could result in many cool situations.
I also like to make comparison to WW2 ship movement/ranges/reload to get "the right feeling" of balance. The most powerful naval gun could reach around 42km and the fastest fleet ships traveled around 70km/h. That means it could take over 30 min within firing range to reach a stationary battleship with a fast destroyer.
Reload times were comparable with Aurora (30 sec for big guns and 5 sec for small ones).
In Aurora we have say beam fire controls of a certain tech level reaching 500'000km and fastest well rounded ships (above FAC size) go say 10'000km/s. That means it takes only 50 seconds to close range to point blank, and the relation to ship speed versus gun ranges is off by over 30 times compared to WW2 maneuvers.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for such a feeling I seek in a game ships are either moving far to fast, or beam ranges are far to short. Beam engagements feel like they are over before they start, two aurora fleets moving at a "slow" 5000km/s and that are on collision course are closing with 50000km every tick meaning there is almost no time to even reload guns before your at point blank at these tech levels, so why open fire at range at all? It also makes beam combat very unforgiving for mistakes, a single 5 sec increment wrong or with untrained crew and your enemy is at point blank and evaporates your ships.
I realize changing this would require a major re balance.
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I also like to make comparison to WW2 ship movement/ranges/reload to get "the right feeling" of balance. The most powerful naval gun could reach around 42km and the fastest fleet ships traveled around 70km/h. That means it could take over 30 min within firing range to reach a stationary battleship with a fast destroyer.
First off, this isn't WW2, and it won't balance the same, particularly as it covers so much technological territory. Second, those numbers aren't entirely correct. A Fletcher could make 38 knots only under ideal conditions (in service, it might make, IIRC, 35), while the very longest range gun hits were at maybe 26 km. The 42 km number is more like the theoretical maximum range of the lasers.
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First off, this isn't WW2, and it won't balance the same, particularly as it covers so much technological territory. Second, those numbers aren't entirely correct. A Fletcher could make 38 knots only under ideal conditions (in service, it might make, IIRC, 35), while the very longest range gun hits were at maybe 26 km. The 42 km number is more like the theoretical maximum range of the lasers.
Indeed, numbers are only in the rough ballpark, and of-course I realize the game is not supposed to be balanced after WW2. But sure half the range and half the practical speed (was alot slower in high seas) and their ratio remains identical.
To get the feeling of big ships trying to hit each-other from vast distances the ratio needs to be at least remotely similar though. Currently Aurora space-combat for me feels like the 30000 ton ships are small bees closing range in a matter of seconds and accelerating/stopping on a dime, and it just feels wrong for me. The acceleration part ofcourse can't change without newtonian or core gameengine overhaul, but the closing range within seconds before beams can fire again might be possible to change.
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Indeed, numbers are only in the rough ballpark, and of-course I realize the game is not supposed to be balanced after WW2. But sure half the range and half the practical speed (was alot slower in high seas) and their ratio remains identical.
I didn't say half the practical speed. It might make 30 to 35 in normal conditions. Not a lot of battles were fought in really bad weather.
To get the feeling of big ships trying to hit each-other from vast distances the ratio needs to be at least remotely similar though. Currently Aurora space-combat for me feels like the 30000 ton ships are small bees closing range in a matter of seconds and accelerating/stopping on a dime, and it just feels wrong for me. The acceleration part ofcourse can't change without newtonian or core gameengine overhaul, but the closing range within seconds before beams can fire again might be possible to change.
The problem is that aurora covers such a broad technical territory, without the limits of naval design. Making a ship go much above 30 knots is really expensive. The Fletchers are about the fastest truly successful design I can think of. Most faster ships weren't much good in combat. Aurora has no such speed limit, so speeds will tend to vary a lot more, throwing the balance off. It's not really a soluble problem. But the question I have is why a fast ship closing on a stationary battleship is the test case? Why not a destroyer and a battleship at speed? Keep in mind that in WWII, the longest gunfire hits were on slow-moving targets. A destroyer at 30+ knots is a lot harder of a target than a carrier or a battleship at less than 20. Against a small ship, the actual effective range would be lower still.
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Actually aurora has a speedlimit. The speed of light (iirc. Steve put that limiter in after someone mada FTL missiles) its high enought thought to ignore it most of the time.
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It could also be worth considering if beam weapons should always have unlimited ammo. What if continuous beam fire slowly starts to overheating the power-plants and these normally being designed to not sustain more then X amount of pulses before requiring cool-down or risk blowing up. A gutsy captain would keep running them anyways and gamble, but sooner or later the risk is to high unless you really design them many 100% over normal capacity required. Or the capacitors could act as batteries only able to store up a certain amount of pulses before a much longer cooldown is incurred, I'm sure there are ways to model such things if there is a balance need for it and could result in many cool situations.
I'd say add a "coolant" ammunition type (and a corresponding "coolant" tank module), but you could just abstract that away and make beam weapon use cost fuel, like shields.. I'd always assumed that the fuel cost for shields was the cost in fuel to run the reactors/engines (take your pick for which actually generates the power for shields) at a higher power setting in order to power the shields.
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But the question I have is why a fast ship closing on a stationary battleship is the test case? Why not a destroyer and a battleship at speed?
The test case isn't really relevant more then as an illustration, what's relevant is the ratio of speed and gunfire range.
If we use your numbers instead, 30knt (55km/h) and say ships could start hitting such targets at 15km range that ratio is 3.6 gun ranges traveled per hour in WW2.
In Aurora using 5000km/s and 500'000km range we get 36 gun ranges traveled per hour or 10 times quicker to close range at any given similar ratio speed advantage.
Aurora combat to me "feels" like if a WW2 Battleship could start hitting a Destroyer at 3600 meter range and would do minimal damage due to fire-control and beam damage falloff (we are talking max possible range).
To this we add the fact that as you say speeds tend to vary alot more in Aurora then in WW2 vessels due to exponentially increased power need to increase speed in reality that's not present in Aurora.
I'd say add a "coolant" ammunition type (and a corresponding "coolant" tank module), but you could just abstract that away and make beam weapon use cost fuel, like shields..
If the only point is to add cooldowns or limits of ammo to beam weapon they would have to use a hell of alot of fuel to warrant someone stop firing. I don't think that much complexity needs to be added to simulate some cooling down periods if it's needed for balance.
If more complex coolant systems are added I think it should rather be a shipwide system for cooling the everything like engine thermal outputs, beams, power-plants and most active systems that handle a lot of energy.
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If the only point is to add cooldowns or limits of ammo to beam weapon they would have to use a hell of alot of fuel to warrant someone stop firing. I don't think that much complexity needs to be added to simulate some cooling down periods if it's needed for balance.
If more complex coolant systems are added I think it should rather be a shipwide system for cooling the everything like engine thermal outputs, beams, power-plants and most active systems that handle a lot of energy.
My intention is to add another operational consideration. If one of the big reasons beam weapons are short-ranged is that it is a way to balance their unlimited ammunition, I would gladly trade a (steep) fuel cost for beam use for longer (superluminal) ranges. Fuel use is increased in 6.0+, so it would be an important decision if firing your lasers at a bad guy two more times will leave you unable to get back to base afterward.
Frankly, I think the idea of a "coolant" mechanic of equal design importance to power / fuel / armor / deployment is really "cool" (har har), but I wonder if it really adds that much meaningful gameplay or whether it's just complexity for its own sake. I am unfortunately not a great game designer because I like deep, often pointless simulationism (I'd be fine if I had to produce , transport, and track railgun/gauss cannon projectiles), which is why I proposed abstracting it out and just adding beam weapons to the list of things that consume fuel.
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Fuel cost seems to go against half the point of lasers. If lasers cost a fair amount of fuel, enough to make it really something you care about, it negates one of their prime strategic advantages in how little logistics support they require compared to missiles. If you make it too little there's no point in adding them in. I don't think finding a good balance point would be easy if there even is one.
I think a cooling system or capacitor system would be much more interesting. Something that allows you to fire lasers quickly for a short period of time but then increases their cycle time as combat drags on. In particular, a capacitor system would open up a lot of interesting options for smaller ships like fighters and FACs operating very long-range single-shot beam weapons. It adds in tactical logistics (balancing power generation, short-term storage and power consumption) without compromising strategic logistics. Cooldown systems are good too but come with a lot of extras that seem to really deserve a place too to integrate that all together nicely the first time through.
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but I wonder if it really adds that much meaningful gameplay or whether it's just complexity for its own sake.
It could take into account all the combined output of all energy systems and compare it to cooling capacity. So you could for example build a ship with less cooling capacity but designed to only fire when stationary for a dedicated jump point guard (cooling either engines or weapons but not both at the same time). It could also be used to differentiate between different beam weapons, some requiring vastly more cooling then others for a bit more power or range. And in addition to that the main point, that it would be very hard to cool sustained beam fire for most beam weapons, leading to a sort of tactical soft limit on their "ammo".
I think such a mechanic could add a lot of pretty meaningful design considerations.
It also risk adding some some frustrating game play if you have a vastly more powerful beam ship and many times more enemies to defeat and need to wait a lot more time for beam cooling before being able to kill them all. Another risk is that it makes beam fighters or FACs to complex, and need special or simplified coolant system versions for these craft.
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Fuel cost seems to go against half the point of lasers. If lasers cost a fair amount of fuel, enough to make it really something you care about, it negates one of their prime strategic advantages in how little logistics support they require compared to missiles. If you make it too little there's no point in adding them in. I don't think finding a good balance point would be easy if there even is one.
This was my point. Currently, as stated by Steve, one of the balance points is that missiles have long range, but limited ammo. Beams have unlimited ammo, but limited range. If you wanted to change the range of beam weapons (which I do), you'd need to alter that balance point, and I think making beams cost fuel (like another system, shields, already does) would be the most direct way to go about it. There are certainly other ways, and arguments to be made for them, but for ease of implementation and play, I think a fuel cost would be simplest.
I justify it by noting that reactors are only necessary for beam weapons, which means something else must be providing power for all the other things a ship does (scanners, ship electricity, etc). I choose to assume there is some power take-off mechanism from the engines (the fact that each engine tech has a prerequisite reactor tech supports this), meaning the engines contain an integrated reactor or something. Thus it doesn't seem far-fetched to me to make power reactors for beam weapons require fuel as well.
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Beside the 5 second light-speed limit, another reason for restricting beam range is that beam weapons have unlimited ammunition and have no counter. Currently, if you out-range your opponents in beam combat it is generally not by a huge amount and they don't have to be much faster to close the range in a reasonable time. If beam weapons had significantly longer ranges then one side could be at huge disadvantage. If you outrange an opponent with missiles, he can still shoot them down and you have to build and transport those missiles.
I wouldn't say that beam weapons (with the exception of mesons) have no counter. Shields at the same tech level will stop beam fire cold at all but the shortest ranges as long as fuel is available. At least the way I use them in ship design they will.
Common practice for most players is to design warships that use 5+ layers of armor and no shields, I tend to use about half that amount of armor and fill the "unused" armor hs's with shields*. even at ranges where BFC's are at 50% hit rates the actual damage is usually 25% or less of the max potential. The combination low hit probability and low damage means that the shields can recycle faster hull space for hull space than the damage can accumulate. This of course is only in a ship v ship scenario.
*-In actual practice I use a % formula based on projected ship size to determine armor and shield needs.
Using the example 25cm-UV-C4 laser/31cm-UV-C4 spinal laser/38cm-UV-C4 advanced spinal laser. The rof's are 20/35/50, and hull space usage is 8/10/12. Epsilon shields(3pts)/regen 3/BFC 50%-40k km are the matching tech. The 4X range BFC is 50% at 160k/km. Damage at this range for the lasers are 4/6/9 respectively. The shields can easily handle this at equal hs usage.
Even if the highest level BFC was changed to an absurd level to allow a max laser a 1% chance to hit at max range(80cm Gamma Ray/20.1mkm) the damage potential at a 'mere' 1.4mkm(hit chance 93%) is only 14 (down from the max a 168) and a singe max Omega shield is rated at 15. With the laser being 25hs in size the same space in shield can withstand 375pts of damage, with the matching regeneration tech they will fully recycle in 5 minutes. In the same time the laser will only get 8 shots (rof 35) which means the shields will counter the laser shot for shot, hull space for hull space as long as the fuel holds out and the range stays open.
Not saying that the beam ranges should be changed though. Just an examples that it would not be as unbalancing against the existing tech as is commonly presumed. The profile of degrading beam damage over range negates most of the potential of beams ability to inflict damage beyond very short ranges, especially if existing tech shields are being used.
Too offset the unlimited nature of most beams have powerplanets require fuel usage to produce a power point at the same rate as engines produce a propulsion point.
I could make the range increments cheaper so you have a slightly longer range earlier, but I want to avoid huge beam weapon ranges.
As things stand, I'd recommend leaving the current range increments stand. With the caveat that users with database access can still make personal changes to allow greater BFC ranges. This of course is with the usual stipulations about bug reporting related to user database changes (ie don't).
An alternative would be to code a hit bonus if the BFC has a greater tracking speed that the target. I haven't looked into what kind of imbalancing properties this may introduce, it's merely an off-the-cuff idea.
Another option I am considering however is to remove the atmospheric restrictions on beam weapons and give planetary-based beam weapons a similar type of enhancement to spinal weapons. Longer range is less of an issue when you can't move. Beam-armed PDCs on the same planet wouldn't be able to fire at once another (except for mesons). If I did this though, that raises the issue of using beams to cleanly wipe out planetary populations (which is why the restriction was added in the first place). To avoid that I can see two options:
1) Make ground-based installations and populations immune to beam weapon fire - each one is spread over a large area and beam weapons are precision weapons. Allow beam weapons to act as fire support for ground combat - adding to combat strength up to perhaps an amount equal to the ground combat attack strength.
2) Allow beam weapons a chance to fail with each shot. Not as keen on this as it removes one of the main advantages over missiles.
Steve
Dropping atmospheric restrictions sounds interesting. It does open up some possibilities. My suggestion is to only have populations immune from direct loss from beam weapons. But make installations (factories/mines/etc) susceptible to direct beam fire. Said beam fire does ramp up atmospheric dust and possibly background count. Maybe they need to inflict more damage than missiles to destroy installations representing the spread out nature of the targets vs precision beams.
If a failure possibility is added to beams per shot then missiles really should get one as well. Base failure rate could be based on the existing systems failure rate and be incremented is some fashion after x-number of firing cycles. The additional failure rate could be decrement based y-number of non-firing cycles (non-firing cycles could be days/weeks/months/etc). This would actually take a step towards representing combat usage impacting reliability and proper maintenance offsetting combat wear.
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This was my point. Currently, as stated by Steve, one of the balance points is that missiles have long range, but limited ammo. Beams have unlimited ammo, but limited range. If you wanted to change the range of beam weapons (which I do), you'd need to alter that balance point, and I think making beams cost fuel (like another system, shields, already does) would be the most direct way to go about it. There are certainly other ways, and arguments to be made for them, but for ease of implementation and play, I think a fuel cost would be simplest.
With the ranges proposed here missiles will still vastly outrange beam weapons in pretty much all cases, even for AMMs. It's not really changing the balance between those two systems and especially not when I would consider those systems "in their element" (open space for missiles versus close-range JP ranges for lasers). ASMs can easily have ranges of 100 mkm with moderate tech levels so boosting lasers from 1.5 million (at max) to even 20 mkm (max range with far gamma 80 cm laser) wouldn't approach vastly inferior tech missile ranges, much less contemporary tech missile ranges even before considering damage drop-off and hit-rate drop-off at longer ranges for lasers and BFCs. Comparing the two and trying to find balance between ranges and their other advantages/disadvantages is not really relevant then. Even with changes missiles should still have their range advantage so there's no reason to take away the logistics advantages of lasers on that count.
The real question is how it affects beam vs. beam combat. If it's possible to have such a range advantage so that even a speed-focused group can't effectively close the range to bring their own weapons to bear for reasonably comparable tech levels then there's a problem. Fuel costs don't seem like a good way to deal with that since small lasers be hurt as much as large lasers. I think something to restrict firing of large lasers more than small lasers would be one effective way to approach it. If larger, long-range lasers cycle less often they're trading off DPS for the increased range. Or they could pay a size premium, making small lasers better in terms of DPS/HS or having the same DPS but gaining speed/shields/armor to better close the range gap. Having longer ranges is an advantage but then not an overpowering one.
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ASMs can easily have ranges of 100 mkm with moderate tech levels so boosting lasers from 1.5 million (at max) to even 20 mkm (max range with far gamma 80 cm laser) wouldn't approach vastly inferior tech missile ranges, much less contemporary tech missile ranges even before considering damage drop-off and hit-rate drop-off at longer ranges for lasers and BFCs. Comparing the two and trying to find balance between ranges and their other advantages/disadvantages is not really relevant then. Even with changes missiles should still have their range advantage so there's no reason to take away the logistics advantages of lasers on that count.
The real question is how it affects beam vs. beam combat. If it's possible to have such a range advantage so that even a speed-focused group can't effectively close the range to bring their own weapons to bear for reasonably comparable tech levels then there's a problem.
The way that beam ranges do influence beam vs missile combat is in Point Defense range.
If you "average missile" (if there is something like that) got a speed of 25000km/s this means it travels 125000km per 5sec tick, so every time you increase the range of beam FCs by this range the beams get another shot in at them (as long as they got range to do at least 1 dmg that far out).
It's not that relevant for spinal mounts since PD is probably the last thing you want them for, but raising the base range of Fire Controls could potentially alter this balance drastically.
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The way that beam ranges do influence beam vs missile combat is in Point Defense range.
If you "average missile" (if there is something like that) got a speed of 25000km/s this means it travels 125000km per 5sec tick, so every time you increase the range of beam FCs by this range the beams get another shot in at them (as long as they got range to do at least 1 dmg that far out).
It's not that relevant for spinal mounts since PD is probably the last thing you want them for, but raising the base range of Fire Controls could potentially alter this balance drastically.
This is good in theory, but long ago the beam ranges were like this. I could typically get 2 to 3 shots with area point defense before the missiles were hitting. The problem with the theory is that the extra shots are always going to be at poor chances to hit, Even with excellent crew grade bonuses they don't tend to take out more missiles than 1 salvo with final fire. (sample chances to hit would be 10%, 35%, 60% before tracking speed penalties, vs 95% for the final fire option.) The final difference isn't so much in what an individual ship can handle, but with the structure of a fleet. If you have dedicated beam point defense ships deployed on the flank of the main fleet, and not being shot at then it does help as they get more shots off before the main fleet is being hit.
If the beam ranges were raised more than three or four times current ranges then this would change my analysis. I don't think anyone is proposing that sort of drastic change of range though.
Brian
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If the beam ranges were raised more than three or four times current ranges then this would change my analysis. I don't think anyone is proposing that sort of drastic change of range though.
Yes, I don't think that either, just thought it was worth pointing out in response to that hypothetical situation as a response to why it would be unbalanced to have 20m km range beams.
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The way that beam ranges do influence beam vs missile combat is in Point Defense range.
If you "average missile" (if there is something like that) got a speed of 25000km/s this means it travels 125000km per 5sec tick, so every time you increase the range of beam FCs by this range the beams get another shot in at them (as long as they got range to do at least 1 dmg that far out).
It's not that relevant for spinal mounts since PD is probably the last thing you want them for, but raising the base range of Fire Controls could potentially alter this balance drastically.
The problem with this is that it doesn't hold up under the numbers. Let's look at what happens if (in your scenario) we have three separate sets of beam weapons. One has a range of 125,000 km, the next 250,000 km, the third 375,000 km, and the last 500,000 km. The average hit chance for set one will be .5, but it will vary between ~0 and ~1. For the second, the average for the first shot will be .25, and the average for the second shot .75 (for a total of 1), but the numbers vary between ~0/~.5 (.5) and ~.5/~1 (1.5).
We see the same on the third weapon. Averages are .1667/.5/.8333 (1.5), but the numbers vary between ~0/~.3333/~.6667 (1) and ~.3333/~.6667/~1 (2).
The lesson from this is interesting. The average number of hits (before tracking speed is taken into account) is equal to the number of increments the missile is in range of the weapon divided by two, with variations of +- .5. Unless you have the weapon in range for a long time, the variation from randomness in missile positioning will be a fairly large portion of the overall hit chance. And that's only going to happen with an enemy who is vastly technologically inferior.
And with the current balance, you're likely to get more hits off of the same size/cost with final fire. Unless laser ranges are also increased, you'll need big lasers. That in turn means you can only have a few and they fire slowly. Big firecons are also expensive. All in all, it's just not going to work.
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Right, let's check out some numbers on point-defense at max tech levels (which I assume we would have for 20mkm BFC ranges). Caveat: I have no real experience at high tech levels so I'm working off of my best guesses here.
An 80 cm laser with cap rate of 25 fires every 35 seconds with a maximum range of just a hair under 20.2 mkm. It consumes 25 HS on its own, the powerplant is less than 1 HS. Let's take a hypothetical missile: total size 1, engine size (max boost) 2, enough fuel for a range of 200 mkm and the rest in agility. It has a hit chance of over 2000% against a 10k km/s target which seems reasonably accurate. The final speed I get is 299,000 km/s.
Let's take a second to calculate the BFC size. We'll assume max size of x4 range and x4 tracking speed for a max range of 20.2 mkm (hypothetically speaking with increased BFC ranges) and a tracking speed of 100,000 km/s, still significantly below the missile speed but it's the best we can do. This BFC requires an additional 16 HS. We'll turret the laser at 100,000 km/s to get a total size for the laser and turret of 35 for a total of 51 HS.
At a speed of 299,000 km/s for the missile and if we assume the ship is going about 60,000 km/s (based off a quick ship I made) we have a closing speed of 239,000 km/s for the missile. It will cross the 20.2 mkm range of the laser in 85 seconds, meaning that the laser gets off 2 shots. That's at a cost of 51 HS and only 1/3 the required tracking speed meaning a lot of these shots would miss. Against only one missile too.
So, I think it's safe to say that 20 mkm BFC ranges at max tech levels will not be unbalanced from a PD perspective. I haven't looked at other tech levels, but my first impression is that the relationship would hold. Big lasers require big BFCs and take up lots of room in turrets to get good tracking speed against fast-moving missiles. They require larger powerplants and have high cycle times meaning that they will be getting off only a few shots that rarely hit. Overall, I think that from a pure PD perspective they're a terrible investment and from a dual-purpose perspective it won't unbalance things.
I'll end here with a quick note on BFCs. They could be expanded beyond their x4/x4 options for range and tracking speed to help balance out increased ranges. If getting to a very long range requires a x10 range option and hitting missiles reliably requires a x4 (maybe up to x10 as well) tracking speed BFC sizes quickly become cost-prohibitive. It would force most ships to trade off between short-range high-tracking speed BFCs for point defense/short-range DP lasers and long-range low-tracking speed BFCs for long-range lasers and especially spinal mounts. That could give smaller, faster ships some good opportunities to close distances past the big guns to get into range with their inferior or short-range lasers.
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Guess I never realized just how fast max tech missiles are or how slow max tech lasers fire!
Thanks for the lessons :)
My concern was that if range of 5sec firing beams was increased drastically, it would make PD overpowered. If you can today get two shots with most 5 sec PD fire it should mean 20+ shots if all ranges are increased over 10-times (max range goes from 1.5 mil km to 20mil km).
For that to happen range of both FCs and beams would have to be increased.
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For completeness I checked the longest-ranged laser, a 30 cm far gamma ray laser with cap rate 25. It has a range of about 2.9 mkm and fires every 5 seconds. Based on the previous numbers it will get 3 shots instead of 2, but that's very dependent on the closing speed of the missile; just a little bit in either direction could give it 4 or 2. The thing is that a laser's range is directly proportional to its damage which is directly proportional to its power consumption which, because of the fixed cap rates, is proportional to the cycle time. Having a long range doesn't help against missiles because your cycle time increases proportionally, meaning you're taking the same number of shots just at longer range. I found that pretty interesting. It does mean that large lasers aren't any worse than small lasers for PD , barring turreting and to-hit at range considerations, but they aren't any better either. I think there is room to play with cap rates to get something interesting out of it, but not with the current system.
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For completeness I checked the longest-ranged laser, a 30 cm far gamma ray laser with cap rate 25. It has a range of about 2.9 mkm and fires every 5 seconds. Based on the previous numbers it will get 3 shots instead of 2, but that's very dependent on the closing speed of the missile; just a little bit in either direction could give it 4 or 2. The thing is that a laser's range is directly proportional to its damage which is directly proportional to its power consumption which, because of the fixed cap rates, is proportional to the cycle time. Having a long range doesn't help against missiles because your cycle time increases proportionally, meaning you're taking the same number of shots just at longer range. I found that pretty interesting. It does mean that large lasers aren't any worse than small lasers for PD , barring turreting and to-hit at range considerations, but they aren't any better either. I think there is room to play with cap rates to get something interesting out of it, but not with the current system.
There are also advantages for the heavier lasers when shooting at armored missiles. The extra damage can make a big difference in the actual kill numbers that you will get beyond point blank range. At point blank range the difference in damage is usually not as significant unless we are talking about very heavy armor designs (ie 5+ points of armor).
Brian
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Talk of changing the maximum beam weapon range aside, I think the issue is with how tech-intensive it is to reach maximum range.
It literally takes maximum BFC range technology to get close to being able to hit things near 5ls away, and that's including the 4x size modifier. I think that expanding the range of allowable size modifiers as was mentioned could be a good course of action, as well as allowing the player to straight-up change the base size of the BFC in design. This would shift the design paradigm more towards that of active sensors/MFC/engines, where a technological deficiency can be made up to a point by specialized, size-compromised design.
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Area PD beam armed ships is only worth it if you encounter someone that fire high armoured missiles (same tech levels) that usually are also much slower since they rely more on armour than speed. The missiles I have used in my multi-faction games have used rather big missiles with lots of armour and high yield explosives. These missiles are generally about 20-30% slower than regular small missiles but much more efficient in industrial terms and have huge range advantages. In these situation you can easily keep a small escort in front of your ships to get double their weapon range to intercept incoming missiles where the high damage and long range of the laser is far more destructive than PD gauss cannons or CIWS.
If you never is engaged by these kinds of missiles then there is no point in using any laser for PD duties other than for dual purpose as ship/FAC/figher killers.
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I've been thinking about beam range lately owing to a lot of Beam combat in my 3 faction start.
right now even the smallest advantage in speed + range equates to complete dominance in beam combat, against any odds. Even one tech level is enough to accomplish that, generally. Longer range BFC+ better ECM gives an absolute advantage in range, while higher tech engines give an absolute advantage in speed. Anything that a lower tech faction can do to try and counter a fast beam combatant (other than missiles), a higher tech can do better. It's not really a *problem* because missiles are the dominant weapon in the game but I don't think it's good for the game either.
Here's my brainstorms on the topic:
Tactical-level options
Basically, that there are things you can choose to do in combat that will affect your combat range or speed.
Sacrificing attack/range for speed: the "Afterburner/Hyperdrive" option. If you sacrifice the ability to fire effectively in order to gain a massive boost to speed, you could close the range against a higher range opponent. The main problem with this is that the higher range/speed opponent could also immediately afterburner, resulting in a stalemate. I understand the "Starfire solution" for this was to introduce engine failure chances. This could work with failure chances, but has the potential flaw of drastically reducing the hit chances of missiles - any intelligent TF commander would obviously afterburner before a salvo hits. There's also potential for micromanagement hell.
Sacrificing speed for defence: Reducing the enemy's chance to hit by going into 'evasive maneuvers' or some such. So he has to get closer if he wants to hit. This has the same basic flaw as the afterburner option, namely the other guy can do it too. He just has to mirror your actions. It shouldn't cause problems for missile combat though.
Sacrificing speed for range: the "Steady Platform" option. Basically the notion that a ship can sacrifice it's speed to gain a boost to beam/BFC range. 50-100% boost would enable ships equipped with long range weapons to at least fire back against reasonably close tech levels. One problem would be decreasing the importance of tracking speed against ships. It also slightly decreases the relative viability of short range fast beam ships, since they will be exposed to incoming fire for a longer period of time. I think this option has the least problems with mirroring, though theoretically a longer ranged attacker could get a range boost for one shot then disengage the boost and continue accelerating away.
All three of the above options might require 'cooldowns' on entering and existing range/speed/defence boosts to prevent mirroring problems.
Game design options
Fiddling with weapon/BFC statistics.
Equality in range: Essentially, that all BFCs and/or beam weapons can hit out to 5LS, though with wildly varying damage and hit chances. I think this would work fine, but would be less interesting than other options. You may not be able to effectively return fire, but at least you have a *chance* of
hitting.
Ship design options
Things you could do at the ship design level. You could turn the earlier'tactical' options into components if one so desired. Other than that though:
Overbuilding: If you had the option to drastically overbuild your beam range - much like how you can get range from low tech missiles/MFCs - then you could potentially build 'sniper' or 'dreadnought' ships capable of countering an enemy's range, albeit at high cost. Spinal mounts are an example of this from the weapon design perspective. The principal difficulty remains the same as in the status quo, the enemy can build the same ship but better. To work effectively, you'd have to have the option to overbuild out to max range from a relatively low tech level - say Ion or MP. You'd need this for both weapons and BFCs.
to get that kind of range though you'd need some pretty big modifiers. Two examples for 32kkm tech:
Size 1 2 3 4 5 6
Mult 1 3 6 10 15 21
Cost 19 38 57 76 95 114
50% 32 96 192 320 480 672
Max 64 192 384 640 960 1344
Size 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Mult 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Cost 19 38 57 76 95 114 133 152 171 190 209 228 247 266 285
50% 32 64 96 128 160 192 224 256 288 320 352 384 416 448 480
Max 64 128 192 256 320 384 448 512 576 640 704 768 832 896 960
40kkm BFC version
Size 1 2 3 4 5 6
Mult 1 3 6 10 15 21
Cost 24 48 72 96 120 144
50% 40 120 240 400 600 840
Max 80 240 480 800 1200 1680
A potential problem would probably be the same one as now, that long range/ high speed boats may dominate beam combat. Spinals / ultra long range weapons would dominate the metagame.
Speed Interference: Fast ship designs get penalties to their weapons range or chance to hit (effectively the same thing), essentially penalizing designs that attempt to pack both capabilities into the same design. For example, you could get 5% penalty per 1000 kkm/s your ship is faster than your base tracking speed. I think this idea could work, but I have yet to come up with numbers I like or a method of application I like.
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The way I see the trans-newtonian part of aurora, is that it allow us to break Newtons 3 laws (of motion). Most importantly, it means we can ignore effects of acceleration (2nd law), and that we need to keep pumping in fuel to keep going at a certain speed (1st and 2nd law). However, this does not necessarily mean that we are breaking other physical laws, such as relativity, which are not actually laws of motion but laws of space (spacetime). In light of this, it makes excelent sense to keep light limmits within the game, even jump points and wormholes are within the plausible region relativity (in fact their plausability comes from the curvature of spacetime introduced by general relativity). There is just slight little problem: The way the trans-newtonian mechanics are implemented, is by fixing a certain reference frame as the one in which these mechanics work in. You might ask "why is this a problem?", and the answer is actually quite short: Both the specific and general relativity is derived by mathematically extending the principle that light (special) and gravity (general) are indestinguishable in different reference frames (for those interested, it is actually the speed of light that is constant in special relativity and gravity and acceleration that are indistinguishable in general raltivity). When one introduces a destinguashable universal reference frame, we lose the the principle of indestinguishable reference frames, and as such we cannot derive the relativity theory the same way. This means that aurora does not actually need to conform to the relativity theory. On the other hand it is only the derivation of the relativity theory we have broken, not the actual theory, and the effects of it could still exist in the aurora universe (atleast until other problems like the active sensors comes into play). This means that aurora neither needs to not conform to the relativity theory. As such it is a free choice of aurora whether it wants to conform with the relativity theory, and with either choice there will not be introduced (meta-)physical inconsistencies.
TL. DR. :
Only Newtonian mechanics are broken dirrectly by aurora, and relativity is not dirrectly affect. It is however indirrectly affected by the implementation of this, in such a way that aurora no longer needs to be consistent with relativity, while it still can be.
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I've been thinking about beam range lately owing to a lot of Beam combat in my 3 faction start.
right now even the smallest advantage in speed + range equates to complete dominance in beam combat, against any odds. Even one tech level is enough to accomplish that, generally. Longer range BFC+ better ECM gives an absolute advantage in range, while higher tech engines give an absolute advantage in speed. Anything that a lower tech faction can do to try and counter a fast beam combatant (other than missiles), a higher tech can do better. It's not really a *problem* because missiles are the dominant weapon in the game but I don't think it's good for the game either.
Here's my brainstorms on the topic:
Tactical-level options
Basically, that there are things you can choose to do in combat that will affect your combat range or speed.
Sacrificing attack/range for speed: the "Afterburner/Hyperdrive" option. If you sacrifice the ability to fire effectively in order to gain a massive boost to speed, you could close the range against a higher range opponent. The main problem with this is that the higher range/speed opponent could also immediately afterburner, resulting in a stalemate. I understand the "Starfire solution" for this was to introduce engine failure chances. This could work with failure chances, but has the potential flaw of drastically reducing the hit chances of missiles - any intelligent TF commander would obviously afterburner before a salvo hits. There's also potential for micromanagement hell.
Sacrificing speed for defence: Reducing the enemy's chance to hit by going into 'evasive maneuvers' or some such. So he has to get closer if he wants to hit. This has the same basic flaw as the afterburner option, namely the other guy can do it too. He just has to mirror your actions. It shouldn't cause problems for missile combat though.
Sacrificing speed for range: the "Steady Platform" option. Basically the notion that a ship can sacrifice it's speed to gain a boost to beam/BFC range. 50-100% boost would enable ships equipped with long range weapons to at least fire back against reasonably close tech levels. One problem would be decreasing the importance of tracking speed against ships. It also slightly decreases the relative viability of short range fast beam ships, since they will be exposed to incoming fire for a longer period of time. I think this option has the least problems with mirroring, though theoretically a longer ranged attacker could get a range boost for one shot then disengage the boost and continue accelerating away.
All three of the above options might require 'cooldowns' on entering and existing range/speed/defence boosts to prevent mirroring problems.
Game design options
Fiddling with weapon/BFC statistics.
Equality in range: Essentially, that all BFCs and/or beam weapons can hit out to 5LS, though with wildly varying damage and hit chances. I think this would work fine, but would be less interesting than other options. You may not be able to effectively return fire, but at least you have a *chance* of
hitting.
Ship design options
Things you could do at the ship design level. You could turn the earlier'tactical' options into components if one so desired. Other than that though:
Overbuilding: If you had the option to drastically overbuild your beam range - much like how you can get range from low tech missiles/MFCs - then you could potentially build 'sniper' or 'dreadnought' ships capable of countering an enemy's range, albeit at high cost. Spinal mounts are an example of this from the weapon design perspective. The principal difficulty remains the same as in the status quo, the enemy can build the same ship but better. To work effectively, you'd have to have the option to overbuild out to max range from a relatively low tech level - say Ion or MP. You'd need this for both weapons and BFCs.
to get that kind of range though you'd need some pretty big modifiers. Two examples for 32kkm tech:
Size 1 2 3 4 5 6
Mult 1 3 6 10 15 21
Cost 19 38 57 76 95 114
50% 32 96 192 320 480 672
Max 64 192 384 640 960 1344
Size 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Mult 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Cost 19 38 57 76 95 114 133 152 171 190 209 228 247 266 285
50% 32 64 96 128 160 192 224 256 288 320 352 384 416 448 480
Max 64 128 192 256 320 384 448 512 576 640 704 768 832 896 960
40kkm BFC version
Size 1 2 3 4 5 6
Mult 1 3 6 10 15 21
Cost 24 48 72 96 120 144
50% 40 120 240 400 600 840
Max 80 240 480 800 1200 1680
A potential problem would probably be the same one as now, that long range/ high speed boats may dominate beam combat. Spinals / ultra long range weapons would dominate the metagame.
Speed Interference: Fast ship designs get penalties to their weapons range or chance to hit (effectively the same thing), essentially penalizing designs that attempt to pack both capabilities into the same design. For example, you could get 5% penalty per 1000 kkm/s your ship is faster than your base tracking speed. I think this idea could work, but I have yet to come up with numbers I like or a method of application I like.
Have you actually tried combat formations rather than just keeping ships in one spot following each-other. This lead to the behavior that ships can not stay at distance to all ships at once and there will be opportunity for ships to fire at ships that are both faster and with better range. I also find it makes perfect sense for factions to make different types of ships for different roles so some ships are faster and others are slower which also make beam combat more complicated.
A faster beam combat ship might escort a slower ship but who has powerful long range particle beams. If they face someone with a better range and speed the escort will just slide further against the threat using the formation editor and the attacking ship must choose to stay and fight the slower ship rather than the escort. If you turn to engage the escort they fall back and you must enter into the particle beam range of the bigger cruisers. With targeting and ordering ships back and forth which ships you follow can seriously impact a ships position in combat and they can suddenly find themselves in very undesirable situations, especially initiative can also play a huge role in many cases.
In the battles I have previously done it quickly develops into huge fur-balls and volume is almost as important as technology if done right. Fleet training, high crew skill and commanding ability seem more dominating than technology in most cases so far.
I might also say it is very rare for any side to be completely dominating any one area and at the same time have all their ships upgraded and ready for battle, that almost never happens.