Author Topic: Magazine Explosions  (Read 13873 times)

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Offline Hazard

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #30 on: March 13, 2018, 05:39:18 AM »
Or for that matter, any weapon that only barely manages to pierce the armour and kills a magazine through sheer luck.
 

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #31 on: March 13, 2018, 05:40:43 AM »
IMO, what Graham is "ignoring" is simply not relevant to his point.
Beam vs. missile concerns don't enter the problem that too explodey magazines would make full-size beam ships unattractive compared to splitting the tonnage.

Blowing up from small damage doesn't only happen with mesons. It can happen from shock in a missile vs. missile fight. I don't see an obvious advantage for the larger ships here that more than mitigates the explosion risk. With the new sensor system, large ships will actually require a lot of support to not be blindsided by smaller ships, cutting into any efficiency gains (a 150t fighter hunting for 5000t+ ships will not be picked up at its weapon range by a 50HS sensor looking for 250t fighters).
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #32 on: March 13, 2018, 05:53:07 AM »
Or for that matter, any weapon that only barely manages to pierce the armour and kills a magazine through sheer luck.

The larger ship is supposed to have a lot more defenses. So it should be a lot more impervious to "something that only barely manages to pierce armor"

Hence my comment that the only problem is mesons. If you are taking enough damage to pierce the shields and strip the armor, then you are NOT taking small damage.

Unless you run your ships without shields,armor and point defense, but in that case in my opinion you asked for it so you have no right to complain. Same with running around without escorts. If you do not have a "fleet" that can deal with any type of incoming enemy, be it missiles, "beam" warships, or fighters, you are accepting the risk that if you are caught with your pants down you will die. If you treat your ships as disposable, they should be disposable.


And if instead you are in an epic battle, with dozens of ships on either side, with both sides taking a lot of damage, then yes it is possible that a ship will die just because of sheer unluck. A chance you can truly mitigate with proper research and magazine design however, so you can do something about it. Just, you can never be sure it won't ever happen.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 06:09:02 AM by Zincat »
 

Offline Tuna-Fish

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #33 on: March 13, 2018, 06:24:53 AM »
If you are taking enough damage to pierce the shields and strip the armor, then you are NOT taking small damage.

It is not necessary to pierce the armor to do internal damage. As I and others have said repeatedly here shock damage from missiles will ignore armor.
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #34 on: March 13, 2018, 06:36:23 AM »
It is not necessary to pierce the armor to do internal damage. As I and others have said repeatedly here shock damage from missiles will ignore armor.

Yes, shock damage from missiles will ignore armor. I haven't played in 6 months, but unless I remember wrongly in order for your ships to explode what needs to happen is:

1: Your anti missile defenses, be they AMM or PD or ideally both if you have a fleet, are bypassed
2: Your shields are down
3: You actually get shock damage, which is not a given. Especially if the warheads are not large.
4: The damage actually targets a magazine
5: The damage actually "wins" the damage check and destroys the magazine. If your magazine has high HTK, that's very unlikely as shock damage is likely lower than the HTK. Unless you've been hit by a huge  warhead torpedo, but your PD should have taken care of that.
6: Said magazine fails to eject the missiles. Magazine ejection chance can go up to 90% so that's unlikely

I think that the likehood of ALL this happening is very low if you're not taking a lot of damage. Especially it you design proper magazines. It is not zero, but then again it should NOT be zero.

If I got something wrong with that sequence instead then I would like to know and I apologize for my suppositions.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #35 on: March 13, 2018, 06:47:17 AM »
There are two ways to go here.

1) Accept that a magazine explosion is very likely going to cause the loss of the ship (I think that is probably the most realistic) .
2) Have mitigation so that magazine explosions usually cause significant, but usually not fatal, damage.

The former option is the 100% warhead strength & proportionate missiles lost scenario. For the latter option I like the suggestion that the magazine rolls for explosion chance, then a proportionate number of missiles individually roll. That still allows for catastrophe, but makes it much less likely.

However, something else occurred to me. If magazine explosions can be this deadly, the solution would seem to be creating a lot of tiny magazines to reduce the potential damage from a single hit. That is 'gaming the system' but would be an obvious choice.

Although larger magazines can be armoured (increased HTK) more easily and have better capacity than an equivalent size of smaller magazines, it probably isn't worth it compared to accepting smaller capacity with less damage from a single hit. I could add a couple of additional features.

1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.
 

Offline Graham

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #36 on: March 13, 2018, 06:49:37 AM »

So bottom line, yes I am in favor of both 100% damage and proportional explosions based on how full the magazines are. Because using missiles has to carry the realistic risks it implies.

Except these are nuclear warheads not conventional munitions, so you cannot argue that 100% yield is realistic. Nuclear warheads are extremely complex, with staged fission and fusion and are actually extremely difficult to set off. A hit from another warhead may well cause some partial fission, but it almost certainly will not have a full yield, so 20% may actually be the more realistic option.

But I digress, my point was and still is that with all the new changes taken into account, Splitting large vessels into multiple smaller vessels is looking very advantageous.

Pros of large ships:
Larger armour belt.
Possibly more efficient engines.

Pros of smaller vessels:
Much smaller sensor footprint.
More targets to engage so increases chances of enemy overkill.
No possibility of a lucky hit taking out everything.
Smaller jump tenders required.
Smaller shipyards required.

Edit (I have probably missed a load here, but I can't think of any more)

But the increase in armour is not overly high, while all changes from VB6 to C#, with the exception of maintenance changes, favour smaller vessels.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 06:58:56 AM by Graham »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #37 on: March 13, 2018, 07:11:31 AM »
All changes from VB6 to C#, with the exception of maintenance changes favour smaller vessels.

Based on that statement, I wondered if I had unconsciously favoured smaller ships so I ran through the changes list: The following favour larger ships:

Command & Control: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101818#msg101818
Engines: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102620#msg102620
Power Plants: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102707#msg102707
Shields: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102769#msg102769
Turrets: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103323#msg103323
Maintenance Changes: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101959#msg101959

You could also argue the New Sensor Model makes small ships harder to employ as they can be detected more easily by smaller sensors.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103085#msg103085
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102701#msg102701

The missile changes favour larger missiles and launchers, although you could mount those on smaller ships.

I didn't really find anything that favoured smaller ships (my intention with C# is the opposite).
 
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Offline Graham

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #38 on: March 13, 2018, 07:22:26 AM »
It appears I was mistaken then, probably due to confirmation bias since for some reason even though I've read through those changes I just didn't think of them. Apologies.

Thank you, although I would argue that the sensor changes also favour small ships, since the range of small sensors has been increased while the range of larger sensors has fallen. Still though yes on balance I probably have nothing to worry about.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 07:24:45 AM by Graham »
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #39 on: March 13, 2018, 08:04:24 AM »
There are two ways to go here.

1) Accept that a magazine explosion is very likely going to cause the loss of the ship (I think that is probably the most realistic) .

1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.

I would be in favor of all this. In my opinion, a magazine explosions should almost always be lethal. I have no problems however with large and highly advanced magazines having very low chances of explosion. So more HTK and better ejection systems for larger magazines sounds good.

In general I am always in favor of a small degree of uncertainty in combat. I think it really adds to the game. Consider these 2 cases:
1) I am 100% sure that the first 12 hits will not kill me so I can completely ignore them.
2) I am ALMOST sure that the first 12 hits will not kill me. But not 100%, so if I can I will mitigate/avoid/intercept them

The first case allows for "gaming the system" in my opinion, and lowers the tension. It is always, in my opinion, a lot more boring.
Instead case 2) really encourages you to stay on your toes. Always be cautious, never take the outcomes for granted, do not be afraid to use your "limited" resources like AMM to defend yourself. Field more balanced fleets, too.
And if sometimes things do not go according to plans, so be it. That is normal and realistic as well.

I also apologize if I seemed confrontational. That was not my intention, I am just very passionate about this  ;D  And I don't think C# Aurora will favor small ships, there's plenty of changes that favor larger engines, shields etc in the changelog.
EDIT: and Steve already went and listed the changes. I should have checked the new posts made while I was typing, instead I went and had lunch  ;D
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 08:13:59 AM by Zincat »
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #40 on: March 13, 2018, 08:11:39 AM »
There are two ways to go here.

1) Accept that a magazine explosion is very likely going to cause the loss of the ship (I think that is probably the most realistic) .
2) Have mitigation so that magazine explosions usually cause significant, but usually not fatal, damage.

The former option is the 100% warhead strength & proportionate missiles lost scenario. For the latter option I like the suggestion that the magazine rolls for explosion chance, then a proportionate number of missiles individually roll. That still allows for catastrophe, but makes it much less likely.

However, something else occurred to me. If magazine explosions can be this deadly, the solution would seem to be creating a lot of tiny magazines to reduce the potential damage from a single hit. That is 'gaming the system' but would be an obvious choice.

Although larger magazines can be armoured (increased HTK) more easily and have better capacity than an equivalent size of smaller magazines, it probably isn't worth it compared to accepting smaller capacity with less damage from a single hit. I could add a couple of additional features.

1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.

To throw another observation into the mix: post-WWII carriers actually seem to be pretty resilient to chained explosions, e.g. the 1967 Forrestal fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire  Even in WWII, I don't recall off the top of my head any catastrophic insta-kill magazine explosions of "modern" (e.g. Essex) carriers.  So I think there's a lot to be said for significant over fatal.

Aaaaand I just had a thought while thinking "that's probably because the magazines on modern carriers are deeply buried in the core of the ship":

Another option would be to have two "zones" in the interior systems of a ship: "core" and "surface".  The core would be 1/8th the interior volume; the surface 7/8 (corresponding to the core being 1/2 the total radius).  Core systems would be invulnerable to shock damage until the last surface component was destroyed.  Weapons (including box launchers) would be required to be in surface.  So one could put vital spaces (bridge, magazines, reactors) in the core, but be on a tight space budget.  Another possibility would be to have a fixed depth for surface, so that the proportion of core would go up with bigger ships (this should be easy to calculate, since Aurora already does a radius calculation for determining armor mass).  I think this might be a really good mechanic to solve the problem with swarms in SF that you wanted to address at the beginning of Aurora.

John
 
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Offline sloanjh

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #41 on: March 13, 2018, 08:17:44 AM »
Core systems would be invulnerable to shock damage

Actually, I would put the probability of damage penetrating to the core at the % destroyed surface HS.  So the first hit would be absorbed in the surface, but later hits might penetrate as surface systems are destroyed.

John
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #42 on: March 13, 2018, 08:24:57 AM »
Another option would be to have two "zones" in the interior systems of a ship: "core" and "surface".  The core would be 1/8th the interior volume; the surface 7/8 (corresponding to the core being 1/2 the total radius).  Core systems would be invulnerable to shock damage until the last surface component was destroyed.  Weapons (including box launchers) would be required to be in surface.  So one could put vital spaces (bridge, magazines, reactors) in the core, but be on a tight space budget.  Another possibility would be to have a fixed depth for surface, so that the proportion of core would go up with bigger ships (this should be easy to calculate, since Aurora already does a radius calculation for determining armor mass).  I think this might be a really good mechanic to solve the problem with swarms in SF that you wanted to address at the beginning of Aurora.

John

And this is one of the things that once you read it makes you go: "Why didn't I think of it before?"
I would be totally in favor of having "core" and "surface" zones, and especially with the additional proposal that larger ships have a lot more "core" volume. This would both make larger ships more viable, and allow to have some systems in a more protected location. Small ships should probably have no "core" zone at all.

I don't know if being in the "core" zone should grant total immunity from shock damage. It should however, in some way, ensure a higher survivability of the systems located there. The exact mechanic could be discussed in detail.

I don't know however how much coding this would require, and whether or not Steve would be willing to add it. I would totally like it though.  ;D
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #43 on: March 13, 2018, 08:45:05 AM »
In the past I have avoided any distinction between different areas of a ship, or ship facing, to keep tactical complexity down. However, the 'Core' suggestion could work without any disruption to combat. It just affects damage resolution.

Tracking which components are 'Core' and the damage resolution code (which as you might guess I have been recently working on), would be relatively easy. The tricky part would be implementing this in the ship design UI.

For damage resolution, the easiest option is probably to simply reduce the 'size' of core components on the damage allocation chart (DAC). That makes them less likely to be hit, but not impossible. I've already implemented a change in C# Aurora for the DAC so that when a component type is selected for damage, there is a chance equal to the proportion of intact systems that this component will actually be hit. Otherwise a new damage roll is made. This is to prevent a ship with several identical large components losing all of them quickly. In addition to my original intention, this means that any 'core' section would have more chance of being selected as other components are destroyed.

In terms of how large the core would be, there could be a certain depth beyond which the core exists (based on the assumption the ship is a sphere). For example, if we assume anything deeper than 5 metres is in the core section, that means any ships with a diameter of 10m or less have no core. Beyond that point, the core gets larger and larger relative to the overall size of the ship. We could even have an 'inner core' at 10m depth. (haven't run the numbers - I am just picking them out the air).

The program could calculate the size of the core area and make that a field on the class design window. You could then select components up to that size as 'Core' (probably on the component list section). Certain systems, such as weapons, engines, sensors, etc. would be ineligible for core. I would have to unset systems automatically if the design size shrinks.

Another question is whether penetrating weapons (lasers, particle lances) would have any advantage in hitting core systems.

« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 08:51:57 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #44 on: March 13, 2018, 09:02:05 AM »
For damage resolution, the easiest option is probably to simply reduce the 'size' of core components on the damage allocation chart (DAC). That makes them less likely to be hit, but not impossible. I've already implemented a change in C# Aurora for the DAC so that when a component type is selected for damage, there is a chance equal to the proportion of intact systems that this component will actually be hit. Otherwise a new damage roll is made. This is to prevent a ship with several identical large components losing all of them quickly. In addition to my original intention, this means that any 'core' section would have more chance of being selected as other components are destroyed.

This sounds sensible. Lower chance, but not impossible because the "damage energy" might, for example, "run down" through a corridor or a weak/empty section and reach an internal part of the ship.

In terms of how large the core would be, there could be a certain depth beyond which the core exists (based on the assumption the ship is a sphere). For example, if we assume anything deeper than 5 metres is in the core section, that means any ships with a diameter of 10m or less have no core. Beyond that point, the core gets larger and larger relative to the overall size of the ship. We could even have an 'inner core' at 10m depth. (haven't run the numbers - I am just picking them out the air).
Since ships come in all shapes and you want to keep the tactical complexity down, I'd just calculate it as a percentage of the total volume. It would be 0 under a certain threshold, and then start from 10% and rise as the ship total volume raises. It could be a logarithmic behavior, the percentage rising faster at first and slower once you are above 60% or so. I am not completely sold on making even an "inner core" zone, you would need to think well of the way to implement this.


The program could calculate the size of the core area and make that a field on the class design window. You could then select components up to that size as 'Core' (probably on the component list section). Certain systems, such as weapons, engines, sensors, etc. would be ineligible for core. I would have to unset systems automatically if the design size shrinks.
Sounds ok, and should not be too hard to handle I think.


Another question is whether penetrating weapons (lasers, particle lances) would have any advantage in hitting core systems.
Well, yes they probably should, although I'm not sure how. Maybe halving the benefit of the "core" zone? Also mesons could maybe have an easier time penetrating in order to hit core systems.