Proposal for TechSystem table updates

[Charlie Beeler (OP)]

Lately I’ve been doing some baseline analysis of Aurora and I think some fundamental things could use some updating.

First some outlines of how the game mechanics currently stand.

Mechanics of engines and movement speed
For military ships maximum speed can be calculated as (((base engine power*engines install)/hull spaces)*1000).  Each engine is 5hs and ships have no limitation on the number of engines they may mount.

Gunboat engines are defined as being the same 5hs but 2x the base engine power and limited to a single installation.  GB speed can be calculated as ((((base engine power * 2)*engines install)/hull spaces)*1000).

Fighter engines are defined as being 1hs but 3x the base engine power and limited to a single installation.  FTR speed can be calculated as (((base engine power * 3)/hull spaces)*1000).

Missile engines are 5x the base engine power and that Missile Size Point(MSP) is .05hs.  Missile speed can be calculated as (((((base engine power * .05)*5)*msp of engines install)/msp of missile)*1000).

For purposes of this discussion commercial engines are not included

base engine rating 5 8 12 16 20 25 32 40 50 60 80 100

(5hs) ship engine output 25 40 60 80 100 125 160 200 250 300 400 500

ship speed with 25% mass to engine 1250 2000 3000 4000 5000 6250 8000 10000 12500 15000 20000 25000

(5hs) FAC engine output 50 80 120 160 200 250 320 400 500 600 800 1000

1000t (20hs) FAC Speed 2500 4000 6000 8000 10000 12500 16000 20000 25000 30000 40000 50000

(1hs) Fighter engine output 15 24 36 48 60 75 96 120 150 180 240 300

500t (10hs) fighter speed 1500 2400 3600 4800 6000 7500 9600 12000 15000 18000 24000 30000

base missile engine rating 1.25 2 3 4 5 6.25 8 10 12.5 15 20 25

Max missile speed with 50% mass to engine 12500 20000 30000 40000 50000 62500 80000 100000 125000 150000 200000 250000

Beam Fire Control Ranges
The established baseline is that all beam weapons are restricted to no more than the speed of light(C) limited to a maximum time segment of 5 seconds.  For purposes of discussion I have rounded C to 299,792 kps giving a maximum possible beam range of 1,498,960km.  Also for purposes of discussion maximum effective range is the range at which hit probability drops to 50%.  As it stands Beam Fire Control baseline 50% Range max’s out at 175,000km and with 4x that becomes 700,000km.  This is actually short of the stated baseline by less than 7%.

A lot of people will argue that beam weapons can be designed with ranges far in excess of 1,498,960km, this is true especially with Lasers (Max range of 20,160,000km).  The counter argument is that the beam maximum range is the range at which it will inflict damage without a limit time limitation.

Beam Fire Control Tracking Speeds
The baseline tracking speeds match the equivalent tech level of military ship speed with 25% mass dedicated to engines.  This can be modified to a maximum gain of 4x baseline speeds.  While this does not match missile speeds, it does keep the chance of beam PD in a usable range.

Current fire control speeds

baseline 1,250 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,250 8,000 10,000 12,500 15,000 20,000 25,000

4x 5,000 8,000 12,000 16,000 20,000 25,000 32,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 80,000 100,000

Turret Tracking Speeds
The baseline turret tracking speeds matchup with the same level baseline fire control tracking speed.  Turret hull space can be calculated as:
((beam hs * # of beams)+(roundup(total beam hs * .1,0)*roundup(requested turret speed/base turret speed,0)))

SUGGESTIONS:
1.   Change fighter engines to 5x instead of 3x of baseline.  The reason being that full size fighters (10hs-500ton) are only capable of 60% of the speed of an equivalent full size gunboat(20hs-1000ton).  At 4x they are 80%, but at 5x they at least match.  Yes this means that fighter engines functionally are at the same power level as missiles with a better fuel curve.  The difference is that missiles have variable engine power for their mass while fighters have a fixed power level, by comparison.

2.   Change the turret tracking speeds to being equivalent to the 4x fire control tracking speed instead the baseline.  This doesn’t seem like much of a change at first.  The main thing this does is it allows turrets to match equivalent level fire controls at the 4x level with only 10% additional mass over the beams mounted instead of 40%.  It incidentally allows for single turreted gauss cannon in a 500ton fighter that matches the fighter fire control speed some fuel and not much else. (I’d really like to see the  Gauss Cannon Size vs Accuracy(tech type 143) changed to .1-1hs instead of the .5-6hs, but I know that’s not going to happen) 

3.   This last one has the highest chance of being unbalancing.  Change the beam fire control ranges to allow 4x range to match the equivalent level max range of lasers.  The current binding restriction is about the only Einsteinium/Newtonian restriction to game mechanics.  Until the later tech levels it’s not much of a change.  Since active scan functionally gives realtime tracking to anything within range, and the systems are all trans-newtonian it’s not that much of a leap.

Current                 Proposed

baseline 10,000 16,000 24,000 32,000 40,000 48,000 60,000 75,000 100,000 125,000 150,000 175,000

4x 40,000 64,000 96,000 128,000 160,000 192,000 240,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000

baseline 3,750 10,000 22,500 50,000 100,000 180,000 280,000 400,000 720,000 1,200,000 1,760,000 2,520,000

4x 15,000 40,000 90,000 200,000 400,000 720,000 1,120,000 1,600,000 2,880,000 4,800,000 7,040,000 10,080,000

I’ve been playing with a database with suggestions 1 and 2 lately under the v5.42 program.  So far I have not found these changes to be unbalancing or causing any error propagation.  I do not advise others to make these changes since there is still a strong possibility that I’ve introduced issues that I haven’t identified yet.  These are not changes that can be made under the SM Mode, they require the database password.  Nor will I distribute modified databases.

Suggestion 3 is just that, a thoroughly untested suggestion.

Word of warning to others that may try #1, fighter engines (tech type 130) cannot be changed by itself.  There is either a table control entry I haven’t found or hardcoding that force the ShipDesignComponents table entry to be a full 5hs engine at 5x power instead of a 1hs engine and requires manual intervention on the table as well.

[Brian Neumann]

A couple of thoughts on your proposals.
1.)  Moving the fighter engine multiplier.  You used the 10hs fighter as your baseline, most fighters I have seen were in the 5-6hs area.  At that size fighters have a good turn of speed, and they are not all powerfull.  You have to make some significant design choices and that is something that I think that Steve wants. 
2.)  As for changing the tracking speed for turrets there is one thing that helps keep the turret size down.  The reasearch cost for a given turret tracking speed is 1 step lower than for the same fire control tracking speed.  For me that means that my turret tracking speed tends to be higher than my fire control tracking speed.  For many turrets the hull space penalty is more like 32% than 40%.  This is still significant, but turrets are a large mass penalty item in real life.  As for the fighter part of the idea, I rarely use turrets for gauss cannon on fighters, not because of the mass needed, but because such fighters tend to be small and fast already with there own speed aproaching the x3-x4 base tracking speed.  This effectivly makes turrets unnessasary for fighters.

3.)  The weapon tracking beyond the light speed barrier has been discussed before, and Steve has considered this.  I never got the feeling that he was convinced one way or the other so it is probably a good time to bring this up again.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler (OP)]

A couple of thoughts on your proposals.
1.)  Moving the fighter engine multiplier.  You used the 10hs fighter as your baseline, most fighters I have seen were in the 5-6hs area.  At that size fighters have a good turn of speed, and they are not all powerfull.  You have to make some significant design choices and that is something that I think that Steve wants.

 

True, most fighter examples are in the 5-6hs range.  The reason for using 10hs in the example was for comparative purposes to the largest gunboat at 20hs.  It was also to illistrate that not only are they slower than the gunboats, but that they are also only 20% faster military ships with 25% mass to engines.  If a military ship dedicates 50% to engines they are actually faster.  An alternative is to remove the single engine restriction (both fighters and gunboats) while retaining the max hs restrictions.  Both have trade offs.

2.)  As for changing the tracking speed for turrets there is one thing that helps keep the turret size down.  The reasearch cost for a given turret tracking speed is 1 step lower than for the same fire control tracking speed.  For me that means that my turret tracking speed tends to be higher than my fire control tracking speed.  For many turrets the hull space penalty is more like 32% than 40%.  This is still significant, but turrets are a large mass penalty item in real life.  As for the fighter part of the idea, I rarely use turrets for gauss cannon on fighters, not because of the mass needed, but because such fighters tend to be small and fast already with there own speed aproaching the x3-x4 base tracking speed.  This effectivly makes turrets unnessasary for fighters.

Thank you for pointing out development cost, it is too low.  Instead of being a step cheaper it should be more inline with the fire control. 

The driving force behind this one is Quad Gauss Cannon point defense turrets.  At 4x the turret gear is actually over 60% because to the rounding(39hs for 24hs of beam).  And that is before adding armor to the turret.  The point the turrets is to be able to use the greater tracking speeds of the 2x-4x fire controls.  I'd have much less of an issue with that same turret being 27hs under the proposal.

On that same vein fighter fire controls start at 4x ship fire contol tracking speeds.  The problem here is that you can't mount any turreted beam that has a tracking speed to match the fire control and have a really usable range.  First level of tech would look something like this 10cm laser (3hs) + turret gears (4hs) + 1hs for engine + 1hs for power plant (assuming 5 sec rof) + .5hs for short range ftr fire control + .5 max for fuel.  Use the power plant can be small for a slower cyclic rate, and other minor tweeks.  The result is the same, you'll get better mileage out of using the resources for ship mounts.  With the proposed change the laser turret drops to a total of 5hs vs 7hs giving you 2hs of flexability.   

The Gauss Cannon, as it stands, is the only starting beam system that cannot be 4x turreted in a fighter (10hs).  With the change it is can be done, barely.

3.)  The weapon tracking beyond the light speed barrier has been discussed before, and Steve has considered this.  I never got the feeling that he was convinced one way or the other so it is probably a good time to bring this up again.

Brian

This last one was mainly to restart the discussion around beam ranges.

[Charlie Beeler (OP)]

Overall I am trying to give fighters a little more teeth(turret change) and make "heavy fighters" a viable option(fighter engine change).  Compared to warships fighters are fragile and should stay that way.  But they should be a segnificant threat if allowed to close to knife ranges, more so than a warship.

[EarthquakeDamage]

I don't like the beam range suggestion for two reasons:

• Lasers are popular enough already.  Allowing beams to fire beyond 1400k km would give lasers an even greater advantage over the other weapon types.  To stay competitive, particle beams would need vastly increased range, either by improving existing tech levels (giving them a huge advantage early on) or adding further tech levels (requiring several orders of magnitude more research, or tweaking RP costs -- not necessarily a bad thing).  Railguns would desperately need better velocity tech.  As is, they only get a x9 range multiplier compared to the laser/meson/microwave x12.  Plasma Carronades would become little more than a joke.  Gauss Cannons would be unaffected since they're only useful for PD, really.  It'd technically still hurt them since offensive gauss ships would spend more time outside their own range but within the enemy's kill zone (since hit % is determined by actual range relative to max FC range).
• Photon Torpedos already fill the mid-to-long range unlimited-ammo role.  Prior to their addition, I too felt beam FCs needed more range.  Now that we have them, only two problems remain:
  • They're hard to get.  You have to fight REDACTED or exploit ruins.  I'm not sure about the latter, since I haven't lucked out (oh, hey, you need an extremely generous RNG, which is horribly unlikely).  Either way, you can't simply research them, which bugs me.  Unlike absorption shields, which are basically normal shields with a x3 strength multiplier and some restrictions (must research different sizes and each ship can only carry a single unit), torps are functionally different than other weapons.
  • They're buggy.  First, the stats of the torpedo itself are wonky and do not match the stats of pre-generated REDACTED designs.  Second, the name of the launcher and/or torpedo (forget which) defaults to "Size-FOO Photon Torpedo Launcher" instead of using the assigned project name.  Finally, and this annoys me greatly since I use auto-fire with abandon, the auto-fire routine refuses to assign torps to MFCs.  Even if I assign them manually, auto-fire will happily unassign them.

[UnLimiTeD]

I don't think fighters need any more teeth.
I'm all for lifting the number restrictions, why shouldn't one use multiple? One meson hit and the whole ship is fireworks, and you need massive amounts of fuel, thats drawbacks enough.
But the average 6 HS fighter is indeed significantly faster than the average military ship, while being hard to detect and cheap to replace.
No one needs a fighter with a turreted Gauss cannon, thats what FCs are for.
A good fighter design shouldn't need a turret to blast missiles. Sure it'll hit only every 10 seconds, but they are cheap and disposable and if in question, build more of them.

Hell, my average missile fighter would be able able to go 4x as fast my average ship of the same tech level, while still loading a massive payload.

The main strength of fighters is their cloak, not their firepower.

On beam ranges, I'd say they are rather on the long side, but I'd say the same for missiles.
Though I'd love a super long range firecontrol with no tracking, to attack bases.

[Thiosk]

While I agree from a gamey and economic standpoint, related to the cheapness of the fighter and what not, I dislike the idea of disposable fighters.

Theres pilots in there.

[Brian Neumann]

I don't like the beam range suggestion for two reasons:

• Lasers are popular enough already.  Allowing beams to fire beyond 1400k km would give lasers an even greater advantage over the other weapon types.  To stay competitive, particle beams would need vastly increased range, either by improving existing tech levels (giving them a huge advantage early on) or adding further tech levels (requiring several orders of magnitude more research, or tweaking RP costs -- not necessarily a bad thing).  Railguns would desperately need better velocity tech.  As is, they only get a x9 range multiplier compared to the laser/meson/microwave x12.  Plasma Carronades would become little more than a joke.  Gauss Cannons would be unaffected since they're only useful for PD, really.  It'd technically still hurt them since offensive gauss ships would spend more time outside their own range but within the enemy's kill zone (since hit % is determined by actual range relative to max FC range).

A couple of things to think about.  Plasma Caronades are already a joke as far as range goes.  By even a few tech levels of research they are horribly short range.  Their advantage is that they are DIRT cheap compared to lasers.  Both for research and to build.  Railguns are another cheap weapon system.  They are not really supposed to compete against the other beam weapons at high tech.  They are significantly cheaper to research than lasers at the mid to upper levels and they are more damaging in close.  Large railguns are also fairly long range.  A 50cm rangex9 has a max range of 1.8m km and has a faster rate of fire than the 50cm laser does.  Rp cost difference is 495000 rp vs 505000 rp, and the railgun has an extra size in there that the laser does not.  (45cm)  Also the max damage for the laser is 64 points and the railgun is 80.  The railgun will still have a place if the ranges are doubled, maybe even if they are trippled.  Your point about the particle beam is however valid, and if the ranges are increased then they need to have longer ranges.  Probably more at higher tech but that is a different discussion.

Brian[/list]

[Narmio]

This is an interesting analysis, and I do agree that it sometimes seems like FACs can often be faster than fighters.  However, I am confused as to why we are even talking about turreted gauss cannons in fighters.  That does not make any sense to me. Why is that a baseline that is useful for comparison? Isn't the whole purpose of beam fighters that they don't need turrets to track fast-moving targets?

On the rest of the stuff, I'm also not clear as to why turrets need to be significantly smaller. It seems that if turrets with PD-capable tracking were not much larger than a normal beam, then normal beams would be completely obsolete.  That would in turn make beam weapons that cannot be turreted pretty much obsolete. I'm not clear on what the game design advantage of this is?

[EarthquakeDamage]

That would in turn make beam weapons that cannot be turreted pretty much obsolete.

To be honest, I don't know why more weapons can't be turreted.

[Brian Neumann]

To be honest, I don't know why more weapons can't be turreted.

The weapons that can not be turreted currently are Railguns, Particle beams, and plasma caronades.  Of these systems the railgun should not be turreted.  If it was then it would become the single best pd weapon, even better than the gauss cannon as two 10cm railguns get 8 shots and only the highest tech gauss cannon could get more than that.  Plasma carronades could be turreted without any real effect in game terms as they are effectivly short range lasers.  Particle beams are the only beam weapon where turreting would make for an interesting choice.  Their long range could be used as an outer intercept zone against incomming missiles or small craft.  The trade-off of course would be less of them on board a ship.  Particle beams are also fairly massive as compared to equal tech lasers or mesons.  The smalles size particle beam (pb) is 5hs where a 10cm laser is only 3hs in size.  Personally I think it is more of a flavor choice of Steve's.  Weapons that are basically for shooting at enemy ships are not turreted.  Those that seem to be more dual purpose or point defense nature are turreted.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler (OP)]

Minor correction, max damage for lasers is 168 from the 80cm.

Fighters are far from cheap.  They only look that way until you add in the logistics support they need.  The only thing that burns through fuel faster hull space for hull space is a missile.  Beam armed fighters (meson, laser, etc) are very slow(for fighters) and easy targets for gunboats to run down.  The intent of the high fuel consumption was to offset the percieved higher speed when compared to other ships and that only exists with the light fighters that cannot carry beams.  And a fighter, any fighter, that can't outrun an equal tech gunboat is a balance issue.

Turrets were introduced to mount a limited number of weapon types(lasers and meson cannon) for the purpose of point defense.  Gauss Cannon were introduced much later and I had not until recently looked into why they so much larger in quad turret mounts than the others.  I have a real problem the best point defense weapon needs 60% for tracking gears and weapons intended for ship-to-ship only need 40% to fill the same role.  That's a balance issue.

I really was not looking to place a turreted GC when I started the turret research.   But it does allow for something that hasn't been available, functional missile defense for fighter squadrons.  The ability to seed some specialist fighters into missile fighter strikegroups is needed since 1 thing that has not made it into Aurora, yet, is a functional fighter missile defense. (chaff?, flares?)

I had been looking at suggesting increasing the baseline fire control tracking speeds. But my analysis showed me it really wasn't needed.  That is when I really looked at the gulf between beam weapon ranges that we've always talked about.  There really isn't much a effective spread to range since they are all limited to the fire control range which caps at 1.4m km and your only rarely going to see a max of 240k km since anything above that is only going to be seen in campaigns that either run a very long time or someone starts with very high populations to boost starting RP's.  Even Plasma Carronades can reach that at level 4.  This is all moot if beams are to retain the range limitation of 5 light seconds.  I'm fine with that 1.4m of 20m km are still knife fighting ranges when the fire controls finally atain them when compared to the corresponding missile ranges at the same tech levels.  It's not really a balance issue.

Can any of these suggestions be exploited to unbalance a game, yes.  Can the unbalance be countered with other exploits, yes. 

[wilddog5]

I once found a weapon called a hyper laser in a web comic this could be applied with the firecontrol (hyper-firecontrol) this would be bigger than the normal firecontrol, require hyper engine tech, and have a minim range that can be reduced through tech (makes the compromise of do i have a super long range laser to kill ships or a standard laser for PD) maybe add a hyper emitter to the laser to allow it to work and prevent people switching between the FCs as the range drops

[Narmio]

Gauss Cannon were introduced much later and I had not until recently looked into why they so much larger in quad turret mounts than the others.  I have a real problem the best point defense weapon needs 60% for tracking gears and weapons intended for ship-to-ship only need 40% to fill the same role.  That's a balance issue.

Are you sure about this? I have never noticed that Gauss cannons require a larger percentage of their size allocated to turret gearing.  They're larger than most other turreted weapons, sure, but percentage wise I thought everything worked the same. There's the rounding problem, yes, but that just means you pick the mount multiple that rounds the best and work with that. I can't understand how you're getting from 40% to 60% turret gear for the same tracking speed with two different weapons.

One thing I would like to see is turrets not round to the nearest HS.  We have plenty of other components that work on the 0.5, 0.1 and even 0.05 scales (although that's just one slightly odd component of size 0.25).  If turrets rounded to the nearest 0.1 HS, the rounding problem is essentially a non-issue.

[EarthquakeDamage]

Of these systems the railgun should not be turreted.  If it was then it would become the single best pd weapon, even better than the gauss cannon as two 10cm railguns get 8 shots and only the highest tech gauss cannon could get more than that.

The only problem with that is relative size.  Aside from turrets, a 10cm railgun (potentially, at max tech) outperforms a gauss cannon in nearly all respects.  At high tech levels, the gauss has higher damage output (up to 8 shots) but still pitiful range.  I suggest either reducing gauss size (maybe 3 hs which IIRC matches a 10cm railgun), increasing the size of railguns and/or all other beam weapons (awful idea), or perhaps, heretical as it may sound, eliminate gauss entirely and use railguns instead.  They're conceptually and functionally (high ROF, low damage) similar anyway.  If you think that'd make PD too easy, add a railgun ROF tech line (up to 4 shots;  replace the Advanced Railgun line with a ruin-only 5th shot).

Really, a 10cm railgun (1 damage) has the same range as a gauss cannon until you reach the higher tech levels (velocity multiplier x7+), so it's not much different from gauss on the PD front besides size.

On a completely unrelated note, there's an interesting sort of specialty beam weapon we're missing:  ignore shields but not armor.  We have ignore armor but not shields (microwave;  also electronics-only, but whatever).  We have ignore both (mesons).  We have ignore neither.  We're just missing the one combination.  We don't really need a new weapon type, but here's a suggestion:  Plasma Carronades.  Aside from their low cost (apparently -- never noticed, myself), they're otherwise inferior to lasers in nearly every way.  If they ignored shields, they'd offer an interesting alternative.  Consider also that they have the same shallow damage template as missiles, unlike every other beam weapon.  Just food for thought.

Alternately, particle beams could go that route, but they already fill a role (long range at low calibers).  The benefit there is their relatively low damage, so they might not punch straight through a hull.