Slow Down engines -> make beam weapons ect... more relevant

[amimai (OP)]

Currently at any equal tech level at best a laser armed ship will have 1 shots against a missile before it utterly obliterates the ship.       .       .        this means at the highest tech level missiles are traveling at speeds between 80% and 99% the speed of light, which is honestly BS since fire controls cant even track that fast and all beam tech is rendered pointless in such a battles.       

so my suggestion is simple:

Reduce all engine tech thrust capacity by 50%

I mean seriously,  this is what max tech missiles look like. . .  its traveling AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 6 MSP  (0.3 HS)     Warhead: 51    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 43
Speed: 299000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 21 minutes   Range: 382.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 39.25
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 12857%   3k km/s 4257%   5k km/s 2571.4%   10k km/s 1285.7%
Materials Required:    12.75x Tritanium   26.5x Gallicite   Fuel x2000

Development Cost for Project: 3925RP
In game missiles behave functionally as laser beams with tracking, most of the time unless the enemy ship is armored to the nines it doesn't even survive the first volley (100% hit chance vs 120k Km/s warships. . . )

halfing all engine thrust would put at max tech missile engines at just over 1/2 the speed of light at max tech, which although not perfect at least gives beam weapons relevance at higher tech levels

max tech PD lasers (for comparison purposes)

Code: [Select]

Damage Output 10     Rate of Fire: 10 seconds     Range Modifier: 12
Max Range 1,200,000 km     Laser Size: 4 HS    Laser HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 10    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 6.25
Cost: 711    Crew: 12
Materials Required: 142.2x Duranium  142.2x Boronide  426.6x Corundium

Development Cost for Project: 7110RPor

Code: [Select]

Damage Output 24     Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 12
Max Range 2,880,000 km     Laser Size: 9 HS    Laser HTK: 4
Power Requirement: 24    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 25
Cost: 1469    Crew: 27
Materials Required: 293.8x Duranium  293.8x Boronide  881.4x Corundium

Development Cost for Project: 14690RPremember max beam FCS range is 1. 4m km (light speed missiles travels 1. 5m km in 5 seconds)

[swarm_sadist]

Seems like an easy fix. Make higher speeds require more engine power to reach exponentially. The closer to c you get, the more engine power you require, up to infinity.

[Barkhorn]

I think an easier fix is to remove the range cap on beam weapons.  I get that they're limited right now to how far light can travel in 5 seconds, but nothing else in this game has any relativistic effects.

[amimai (OP)]

Im personaly in support of the range cap more or less, its adds an interesting byplay between beam and missile armed ships

the only problem is that this byplay is somewhat broken by the fact that missiles can go so bleeding fast, that's why I proposed a reduction to all engine thrust output

[linkxsc]

Remove the 2x modifier for missile engine power settings. Perhaps a 1.5 instead.

Though I havent been around for a real long time, werent missiles slower in an earlier version, but because of that wound up kinda useless?

[MarcAFK]

I'm in favour of making the power requirement for speed curve more vicious towards the end of the tech tree.

[alex_brunius]

I'm in favour of making the power requirement for speed curve more vicious towards the end of the tech tree.

Could be solved elegantly by adding a relativistic component to effective speed once it becomes noticeable ( around 0.2C or 60000km/s )

[Paul M]

Could be solved elegantly by adding a relativistic component to effective speed once it becomes noticeable ( around 0.2C or 60000km/s )

Relativity is only important starting around 75% of the speed of light.  Even a 500 MeV proton beam (beta = 0.75) didn't need a lot of relativistic corrections.

for beta of 0.2 gamma = 1.02
for beta of 0.5 gamma = 1.15
for beta of 0.75 gamma = 1.51
for beta of 0.9 gamma = 2.29
for beta of 0.95 gamma = 3.2
for beta of 0.99 gamma = 7.1
for beta of 0.999 gamma = 22.3

beta = v/c  gamma = 1/sqrt(1-(beta)^2)

effective_mass = rest_mass*gamma  so this could be used to increase the effective mass of the missile as its speed increases...but that doesn't really work, at least I can't figure out how to sensibly calculate what the missiles final speed would be.

[amimai (OP)]

as i said there is a simple way to go about this
a flat reduction to the thrust output of all thrusters by 25% or 50% should do the trick

curent max tech 50%MSP engine = light speed (100% light speed)
25% thrust nerf max tech engine = 225k km/s  (75% light speed)
50% thrust nerf max tech engine = 150k km/s  (50% light speed)

25% is my preference all things considered, just past that is where relativistic effects would really start screwing missiles over

this should also effect ship, so missile vs ship accuracy would not change at all

this would make ships slower, so fuel efficiency of engines should be buffed accordingly?
(pro:no fuel shortages | con: missiles will effectively have 2x the range they currently have, slow space travel)

all that would really change is that Beam weaponry would have a better chance vs missiles in a fight
(pro: Beams can actually hit missiles | con: Change in meta, no more macros missile massacres, possible coiler wars)

its just tiring playing while consciously knowing that the best option to win will always be a cube made out of 75% missiles tubes

[alex_brunius]

as i said there is a simple way to go about this
a flat reduction to the thrust output of all thrusters by 25% or 50% should do the trick

No it wouldn't, it would wreak havoc on all game balance, and not just like my suggestion have a big impact on lategame balance for extremely fast objects ( only missiles or possibly some fighters )...

As you point out yourself further down the post listing a few of all the things that need to change like fuel efficiency. But we also have fire controls ability to hit ships, fighters and missiles lower techs, distances and travel time, ability to escape black holes pull, how harsh nebula's impact ship speeds, trade income from shipping and the list never ends.

At least consider fixing only what you think is broken ( extreme missiles ), and not breaking all balance in the entire game at once?



And Paul M, isn't 2% noticeable for 0.2C ?

As you say the big impact only happens at 0.75C which is precisely when amimai is starting to notice problems ( and as a solution wants to cut all thrust by factor 0.25  ).

[Paul M]

Depends what you mean by noticable.  A 2% increase in mass or a 2% time dialation effect is probably not worth considering. 

If something is 1 kg or 1.02 kg is in general terms of what is its kinetic energy not a critical difference.  If you consider a typical error bar as 10% then beta = 0.5 is where you exceed that.  It is really odd ball I know but in most practical senses relativity really is only significant at velocities very close to c itself.  Basically at the point where something is twice as heavy as it would be normally or its dimensions or time is half or double what they should be.  That is usually easily measurable and plays a significant role in the objects behaviour.

You can use relativisitic effects on atomic clocks to measure gravitational well depth with extreme precision and do tests of Einstein space time with shifts of wavelength on the nanometer scale but frankly these are things mainly of interest to theorists...  A factor of 2 is something...2% is well...not so much something.

Or maybe lets get practical...if you drop a 1 kg bag of sugar on your foot...that smarts...a 1.02 kg bag of sugar I doubt you could tell the difference...but a 2 kg bag of sugar I'm pretty sure you would notice the extra mass.   

This is really neither hear not there in terms of Aurora or fixing the issue...to be frank as one theoretical physicist said "you have to allow for errors up to 2-pi" as that is a factor in a lot of formulas that it is easy to forget or improperly add in.  For dealing with objects up to beta = 0.75 you can ignore a relativisitic correction and still derive answers that are wrong but are not much worse off than a good approximation anyway....but at some point the values start to deviate strongly from even "good approximations" and you need to get serious about the relativisitic corrections.  Does this make sense? 

[alex_brunius]

Depends what you mean by noticable.  A 2% increase in mass or a 2% time dialation effect is probably not worth considering. 

2% difference in speed may not sound like much, but many will still tweak their designs down to the last percent, and if rest of the fleet goes in 60000km/s then you won't accept a new ship design that goes 58823km/s as a result of 1.02 higher relativistic mass, so around this point is where it will have a noticeable impact on your practical design, as I understand it.

( But I am far from a theoretical physicist, so I might have missed something ).

[MarcAFK]

Depends what you mean by noticable.  A 2% increase in mass or a 2% time dialation effect is probably not worth considering. 

If something is 1 kg or 1.02 kg is in general terms of what is its kinetic energy not a critical difference.  If you consider a typical error bar as 10% then beta = 0.5 is where you exceed that.  It is really odd ball I know but in most practical senses relativity really is only significant at velocities very close to c itself.  Basically at the point where something is twice as heavy as it would be normally or its dimensions or time is half or double what they should be.  That is usually easily measurable and plays a significant role in the objects behaviour.

You can use relativisitic effects on atomic clocks to measure gravitational well depth with extreme precision and do tests of Einstein space time with shifts of wavelength on the nanometer scale but frankly these are things mainly of interest to theorists...  A factor of 2 is something...2% is well...not so much something.

Or maybe lets get practical...if you drop a 1 kg bag of sugar on your foot...that smarts...a 1.02 kg bag of sugar I doubt you could tell the difference...but a 2 kg bag of sugar I'm pretty sure you would notice the extra mass.   

This is really neither hear not there in terms of Aurora or fixing the issue...to be frank as one theoretical physicist said "you have to allow for errors up to 2-pi" as that is a factor in a lot of formulas that it is easy to forget or improperly add in.  For dealing with objects up to beta = 0.75 you can ignore a relativisitic correction and still derive answers that are wrong but are not much worse off than a good approximation anyway....but at some point the values start to deviate strongly from even "good approximations" and you need to get serious about the relativisitic corrections.  Does this make sense?

It seems to but the physics part of my brain is switched off atm. What I got was basically:
TLDR: Relativity becomes significant after .75% lightspeed.

[Paul M]

2% difference in speed may not sound like much, but many will still tweak their designs down to the last percent, and if rest of the fleet goes in 60000km/s then you won't accept a new ship design that goes 58823km/s as a result of 1.02 higher relativistic mass, so around this point is where it will have a noticeable impact on your practical design, as I understand it.

( But I am far from a theoretical physicist, so I might have missed something ).

What you say is correct, I won't argue with it...but my personal feeling is that the sort of person you are talking about has a different view of the word "signficiant" than I do. 

To be completely clear, I'm talking about reality, and no one not doing some sort of particularily high precision measurement is going to get excited by 2% relativisitic effects, for example when doing a typical scattering experiment, as they don't translate into anything that your detectors will see or will be masked by in general other things which have far greater uncertainties anyway.

[alex_brunius]

Speaking military wise and performance/design wise you are always chasing the last few %.

An improvement with 10% is pretty big and a 50% improvement of a key characteristics such as speed is nothing short of a massive technological breakthrough.

Speaking of breakthrough, defining important we can actual use the data on how much each new engine tech will improve over the last one. Isn't it typically something like +20-30% better power=speed compared to last generation for most of them?

Something that can set you back an entire tech level should be important enough to show up in the design IMHO, ( which would be around 0.5 - 0.6 gamma ).