Replacing PDCs

[Bremen]

I definitely support the idea of a small breakdown chance for energy weapons (exact chance TBD); it helps with the bombardment issue and also kiting in beam fights, which is one of my pet issues.

Maybe scale it by fire rate, since it makes sense that a rapid fire low power laser would probably suffer less stress per shot than a huge spinal laser that fires every two minutes.

[bean]

Given that we're talking naval equipment it should probably be pretty high. Naval guns at their smallest are so large they can't reasonably be lugged around by anything that has to operate in a ground combat context. I mean, the smallest laser without reduction technology is 150 tons or so. That should be super heavy unit range. A balancing factor could be that while high in Shots, making a 5 second recharge capable naval laser is relatively trivial, naval artillery has poor Damage and AP because those weapons are tuned for vacuum, not atmospheres.

I definitely think it's fair to assume that the typical naval weapon won't penetrate atmosphere well.  In some cases, not at all.  X-ray lasers will just be absorbed.

That's kind of high. Naval guns were generally expected to be able to empty the entire magazine in a single go before needing maintenance, and often even longer.

Two different levels of maintenance.  Failures of guns to fire were relatively common.  Off the top of my head, USS Iowa's first action (off Truk) saw 2/9 guns go out due to problems.  One gun had a lock problem, the other a burr on the breech plug that had to be ground off.  Prince of Wales and Nelson both had well-known failures in their actions with Bismarck.  That said, PoW was new, and the 16" Mk I turret on Nelson was a dog.  Experienced crews generally did better.
What you're thinking of is rebarreling.  This was done every time the remaining life dropped below the ship's ammo capacity.  Depending on how hard the designers pushed the gun, barrel life ran from 1.5x ammo capacity to 4-5x ammo capacity.  (All of this assumes WW2 and earlier tech.  Later developments increased this a lot, but the Iowas were the only ones to take advantage of it.)

To be honest, very long shore bombardments, and I mean days long, were a definite thing during WW1 and WW2 military campaigns, especially against peer opponents that had dug in well and deep.

Those were executed with HC shells, which were significantly less erosive than AP rounds.  Offhand, I think the Iowa's HC was something like .25x full-service AP equivalent.

[Iranon]

Some limit to energy weapons would be good. In naval scenarios, ships that enjoyed a gun range advantage and were fast enough to keep the range open still had to worry about expending ammunition for questionable effect at extreme range.

At present, "render missile attacks impractical, kite enemy beam ships" is too dominant against AI designs, and doing away with the planned limit on point blank missile interception removes a natural counter.

[alex_brunius]

One other thing I am considering is to have a small breakdown chance for any ship-based weapon each time it fires (missile or energy) - maybe about 1%. This would be immediately repaired if MSP are available, but would prevent effectively endless orbital fire support.

Sounds like a great Idea. Could even lead to new techs lines or interesting design trade-offs in weapon reliability in the long run.

It should probably be normalized a bit for reloading time though ( so a PD gun firing every 4 rounds every 5 seconds won't break down all the time compared to 50 second reload spinal weapon or a 5 minute reload missile launcher ).

Could also be a balance issue for fighters ( which often don't carry around MSP ).

That's kind of high. Naval guns were generally expected to be able to empty the entire magazine in a single go before needing maintenance, and often even longer. It will also greatly increase logistical demand for MSP for point defense ships and other ships depending on lots of small rapid fire gun layouts. Maybe instead a chance for an 'out of order' event that takes a gun out of action for 2-10 times its firing cycle, with MSP needed for repairs for longer?

I think 1% for something that can be fixed instantly and with a small MSP cost sounds pretty low compared to reality ( for large caliber guns at least ).

Real Battleships typically had a barrel life of ~200 effective full charges ( with some early WW1 models going as low as ~60 firing cycles ).

After this the entire Battleship had to go back to dry-dock and undergo maintenance to swap out the barrels.


With 1% chance to break you still have a over 60% chance to have paid not a single MSP for maintaining the gun after having fired 50 rounds.

[ardem]

Loving everything I am seeing, however I can see how orbital bombardment could be overdone my recommendations how to help minimise this.

If you fighting to take a planet then it make sense to go down and take it with troops, however I believe with orbital bombardment even with super powerful lasers and especially plasma carrondares that each fire brings up a certain amount of dust. This
a) Reduces the effectiveness for future bombardments until the dust or smoke settles.
b) If continues can read a threshold like a nuclear winter that make the planet inhabitable for a certain amount of time.

This is definitely the case with nuclear missiles, railguns and gauss gun.

Also the chance to miss should be higher then it is for real space combat, things like terrain and orbiting a planet quite fast should make hitting ship and ships hitting ground a much tougher prospect and hard target aquition periods.

As long as we looking at keeping this open ended so you can play the game how you wish, for instance a contract with other player race that have a no missile bombardment agreement, or you can play a race that bombard everything cause they are after eradication. My recommendation is work on the physics not on policies in how to make this.

[Barkhorn]

How will ground units with ground-to-space weapons detect and target enemies in space?

How will the new rules affect boarding combat?

[Marski]

If there's something to be changed in ground combat, it is this: Make orbital units unable to target ground units that are below certain strength percentage

A military unit dispersed is impossible to take out with support elements alone. There are plenty of IRL examples of this, notably afghanistan.

[Father Tim]

Given that we're talking naval equipment it should probably be pretty high. Naval guns at their smallest are so large they can't reasonably be lugged around by anything that has to operate in a ground combat context. I mean, the smallest laser without reduction technology is 150 tons or so.

Uh, no.  The smallest laser without reduction occupies a volume equal to that which displaces 150 tons of water.  It weighs whatever its cost in minerals is. . . about 6.3 tons or something?  I don't have Aurora running to check.  Light enough at least that having a Light Bombardment Weapon be equivalent to a 10cm laser makes sense.

[Iranon]

A more reasonable take would be that non-TN material costs are considered neglegible.
Keep in mind that cost (and therefore TN mineral expenditure) scales with tech: do you really believe a base-tech 10cm laser weighs in at a single ton, and that an ultraviolet 10cm/c3 laser would be 20 times as massive?

[alex_brunius]

If there's something to be changed in ground combat, it is this: Make orbital units unable to target ground units that are below certain strength percentage

A military unit dispersed is impossible to take out with support elements alone. There are plenty of IRL examples of this, notably afghanistan.

Yeah, an interesting suggestion which puts orbital laser bombardment firmly as a supporting weapon. If you want to wipe out defenders you still need to rely on nuking the planet ( and all the downsides ).

A more reasonable take would be that non-TN material costs are considered neglegible.
Keep in mind that cost (and therefore TN mineral expenditure) scales with tech: do you really believe a base-tech 10cm laser weighs in at a single ton, and that an ultraviolet 10cm/c3 laser would be 20 times as massive?

Indeed. The way I see it starting ( near conventional ) tech still utilize mostly non-TN materials similar to how modern composites & titanium often just replace key parts, while more high tech and advanced stuff increase the expensive materials use significantly.

If you look at most military vehicles their actual mass is not far from equivalent with water displaced Ships obviously being a bit lighter, while most tanks will sink to the bottom even when perfectly sealed.

[QuakeIV]

I like the idea of energy combatants not being able to fire indefinitely, and suffering a lot of wear and tear from sustianed firing.  I think that is a really good solution to a lot of the potential issues they currently have.

[Hazard]

Uh, no.  The smallest laser without reduction occupies a volume equal to that which displaces 150 tons of water.  It weighs whatever its cost in minerals is. . . about 6.3 tons or something?  I don't have Aurora running to check.  Light enough at least that having a Light Bombardment Weapon be equivalent to a 10cm laser makes sense.

Why would a space ship use a wet ship measurement?

I mean, it's very sensible for ships meant to float on water to weigh themselves equal to how much water they can safely displace without sinking, but in space?

In space it's far more important to weigh your actual mass, because that has far more influence on your ship's performance profile and structural stress than volume will. So yes, I presume that a laser requires a mass of about 150 tons in the ship dedicated to it between its mountings, radiators, capacitors and lenses. Bigger and more powerful lasers will require more mass dedicated to them for their performance.

Yeah, an interesting suggestion which puts orbital laser bombardment firmly as a supporting weapon. If you want to wipe out defenders you still need to rely on nuking the planet ( and all the downsides ).

Actually, if you are tossing around lasers with similar energy delivery profiles as a nukes you are basically nuking the planet anyway. You just don't use an actual nuclear warhead to make the kiloton and up explosions happen.

This means you can actually destroy a defending force to the last with orbital laser bombardment alone, just keep in mind the collateral. Because, you know, kiloton range explosions and up are pretty bad at only hitting targets smaller than a city. Usually everything around it also dies.

[Father Tim]

A more reasonable take would be that non-TN material costs are considered neglegible.
Keep in mind that cost (and therefore TN mineral expenditure) scales with tech: do you really believe a base-tech 10cm laser weighs in at a single ton, and that an ultraviolet 10cm/c3 laser would be 20 times as massive?

What I believe is that it is perectly reasonable to have a 10cm laser equivalent on my Medium Vehicle (GtO Arty).

[Father Tim]

Why would a space ship use a wet ship measurement?

I mean, it's very sensible for ships meant to float on water to weigh themselves equal to how much water they can safely displace without sinking, but in space?

In space it's far more important to weigh your actual mass, because that has far more influence on your ship's performance profile and structural stress than volume will.

Because we needed (well, wanted) a way to conceptualize the actual dimensions of our ships.  Originally, Aurora just did everything in Hull Spaces, and what that actually equated to was left entirely to the player to decide.  We agitated for a more defined number, and various volume-based suggestions were tossed about (for example, the idea that 1 Hull Space = 10m x 10m x 10m was popular) but for thematic equivalency to wet navies, displacement won out.  Then the argument was water displacement versus air displacement (since at the time Aurora ships were atmospheric-and-exoatmospheric) but we nigh-unanimously agreed air displacement gave silly-sounding numbers and water displacement kept the 'real navy' feel.  Steve spent an enjoyable afternoon researching all the ways real world displacements are measured and/or calculated, and the vocal majority of us (or, at least, the majority of the vocal us) agreed on 1 Hull Space = the (calculated) volume required to displace 50 tons of pure H2O at 20C & 1 Atm.

In Aurora, a ship's mass actually doesn't matter, as shown by the identical performance of an empty freighter and that same freighter hauling a entire Research Complex.  Or that of 57,000 ton supercarrier fully loaded, or empty of its 30,000 ton strike wing.  The technobabble explanation is that TN engines push the ship through the "Luminiferous AEther" - and it's the size of the 'bubble' that matters, not the mass inside it.

Sure, in the real world every kilogram is so critically important that some nations send their astronauts up on an empty stomach (or maybe that's just a vomit-related safety precaution) and the Space Shuttle had a not-quite 7% payload fraction to get to Low Earth Orbit.  In Aurora, TNE changes everything.

So, to summarize, I respectfully disagree with your contention that "Naval guns at their smallest are so large they can't reasonably be lugged around by anything that has to operate in a ground combat context. . .  The smallest laser without reduction technology is 150 tons or so. That should be super heavy unit range."

[bean]

Why would a space ship use a wet ship measurement?

I mean, it's very sensible for ships meant to float on water to weigh themselves equal to how much water they can safely displace without sinking, but in space?

You are aware that the weight of water a ship displaces is in fact equal to its actual mass, right?  It pushes water out of the way, and is pushed back up.