How to retreat?

[xenoscepter]

- What about a Jump Range Mechanic? Maybe have it be a function of squadron jump distance? Perhaps a "Short Jump Drive" which is like a regular drive, but smaller and single ship only, where instead of Squadron Size and Squadron Jump Radius it's just "Assault Radius" and "Retreat Radius" with one being effectively the same as Squadron Jump Radius sans the squadron and the other being unique to the Short Jump Drive in that it can be used to jump through a Jump Point from farther away?

Well, the distance would need to be big enough to matter... so, long enough to escape enemy active scanning range most of the time.

I could also see it as a function of the jump drives so you jump a squadron that way. The distance should be quite far but you should be able to sett the distance (and vector) and then it will be somewhat random distance and vector based on that, each squadron in a fleet could potentially end up in different places. You would essentially open up a micro wormhole and instantly travel to a point perhaps a few hundred million to a billion or two km away, depending on technology. It might start a 50 million km at low tech and go up from there to a few billion at the highest tech. Time to initiate the jum could be a function of technilogy and size of the ships jumping. Larger ship and it takes longer time.

You should be effected by jump shock as normal as well.

The time to initiate a jump need to be at least like 20-60 minutes or so as to not be too abusive... if you are surprised you are not likely to escape before being attacked at least one time from a large missile strike or a long series of missiles strikes from rapid firing launchers. If you are caught in beam combat it will be a bad day... but in most situations you should be able to jump away from a threat if far enough away.

While the drives are spinning up your ships can't move at all.

There probably are many different issues with such an idea but it might have some merits. It is still expensive to cover all ships in a fleet with jump capable ships, so it is a pretty expensive overhead and you might not always use it either. You also would have to pay extra for this capability and it's range. So both expensive to research and build as well as taking extra space on the ship.

It should only be a function of military jump-drives and not commercials as they are not accurate enough. Covering a support force with such drives would thus be expensive. Every such jump could also be a high chance for a maintenance failure on the engine (also based on technology) which could make such jumps both expensive and limited in use.

On a different note this mechanic could also be used offensively by beam fleets to drop in very close to an enemy fleet by proper scouting and surprise them really good. Sure you are likely to end up millions of km from the enemy fleet, but still that can be quite scary.
So it could be an asset for every beam fleet out there...

 - I think in hindsight the term "Short-Jump Drive" is a bit of a crap name, rather they should be called "Long-Jump Drives" instead.

 - I like the "spin-up" mechanic, but think it might be better to tie it to jump range rather than ship size. I also think that it should affect Jump Shock instead of being a separate "spin-up", with the delay a function of said Jump Shock. The "Assault" and "Escape" ranges would be separate fields and I think that by tying it to the "Assault" range only would be ideal. So an offensively orientated drive would make a worse drive if all you want is a retreat function due to having a long cool-down between when you jump in and when you can both start shooting & jump out.

 - I do not like the idea of allowing squadron jumps with these, however, as I think that's a little to OP. The idea of these "Long-Jump Drives" is to be a smaller and more specialized form of the regular Jump Drive. They'd be smaller to allow you to fit them onto ships more easily, but you trade away the squadron jump ability for it. So you are more or less given the choice of maximizing mission tonnage by using the normal Jump Drives and their Squadron Jump feature, or using the new drives to gain the ability to jump away and/or jump deep into enemy territory, but needing to mount one on every ship you want to do it with.

 - As well, I think a Commercial version would be good as well. The Commercial "Long-Jump Drive" would lack the "Assault" option, and instead would rely on a Standard Transits, but also have the "Escape" function as well. It's important to stress that both of these would be not only self-jump only, but also be much smaller than a standard Jump Drive of the same variant for any given tonnage. Lore-wise, the concept would be that the Long-Jump Drive propels the ship through the wormhole more powerfully, but cannot stabilize more than it's own space in return. Likewise the Long-Jump Drive takes long to shake off the effects of such a violent jump, but also retains a form of temporal imprint that allows it to return through the Jump Point it came out of from a greater distance. Jumping through a new Jump Point resets this "imprint" and the 'Escape' function essentially only works if you go out the way you came in.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general the idea is good... but he opportunity cost of putting a jump-drive on every ship is simply too expensive unless you use very high tech. It would turn the mechanic a bit too niche.

[xenoscepter]

In general the idea is good... but he opportunity cost of putting a jump-drive on every ship is simply too expensive unless you use very high tech. It would turn the mechanic a bit too niche.

 - Even if those drives were say, half the size of a standard Jump Drive? That turns a Jump Efficiency of into a Jump Efficiency of 8 for the purposes of a Long-Jump Drive. If it's only 75% as big, that's still an effective Jump Efficiency of 6 at Jump Efficiency 4, a full two tech levels better. Unless you mean the actual mineral / wealth cost, but then it should cost you something. I'd envision it as a being 50% of the size, so every Jump Drive Efficiency tech counts double for the purposes of building a Long-Jump Drive. RP for the Drives themselves should cost the same as a Jump Drive of equal tech / size. The "Assault" & "Escape" functions, while different in their specifics would scale with the Squadron techs, and have size / RP costs that are roughly equivalent.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It might be a twofold cost... one is ship design become a bit less interesting as you get less room to put mission tonnage on them. If you use the squadron mechanic you still could use ships normally and build the jump ships separately and use them separately for different reason. I think this design would become a bit locket into the stereotype... sort of less dynamic.

I think you could make the mineral cost practically equally expensive with the squadron mechanic (more or less)... also those jump drives would become rather expensive to research as they would be much bigger and more expensive.

If you also add the maintenance cost of the engine breaking that also is a cost per use and a practical limit on the number of jumps you could do.

[StarshipCactus]

Personally I hate the "jump in and out" bullsmeg that plagues DW battles. If you want to be able to retreat, you should earn that opportunity by scouting ahead and not committing! And conversely, if your enemy successfully denies you that opportunity, they should be rewarded for it.

This. You win by being more prepared. Both in terms of fleet doctrine, tech and numbers, but also how you choose to use those things. If you rush headlong into the jaws of a stronger enemy, you get destroyed. If you can plan around being weaker than the enemy, you have a chance. Otherwise, the battle happens in the decades before as you prepare your fleets.

[misanthropope]

it's fine to say "you win by deserving to win.  HOO AH" but all-or-nothing type battles make entire empires brittle as glass.  especially considering the way aurora combat is super-snowball-y (that is absoultely a term with a precise definition) fleets dying to a man [sic] is a great way to take fifty hours you've put into a campaign and just throw it into the toilet.

the problem is that a retreat mechanic that passes the giggle test is frickin' hard to come by.  i point you in the direction of federation and empire for a mechanic (from a pretty capable game designer) that is just immersion-breakingly awful but still absolutely essential to the game. 

speaking to OPs original point:  if you are fighting your battle at missile ranges and find yourself overmatched, at least in the Olden Days you could split your fleet and the AI would make some pretty peculiar pursuit decisions [not ragging on the script, managing such a situation isn't trivial for a human player] that might let you get some of your ships out of sensor range. at least, in situations like the one mooted, where your beam ships are faster than the enemy, you can create a situation where you have some real play in a situation which is broadly disastrous.  a disaster where you have something to *do* is a lot better a gaming experience, anyhow.

[Droll]

Yeah I like the DW way of handling jumping. I would absolutely agree that if there was no way to counter jump retreats it would be a detriment, but DW has hyperdeny components that prevent exactly that. Knowing the enemy is all well and good but you can never know all the possible reinforcements. It doesn't reduce depth to allow the player to effectively create a plan of retreat.

This means that a smaller force might have to partially retreat or risk everything and try to focus down the capital ship with the hyperdeny and potentially save everything.

Empires shouldn't lose all their teeth in a single battle, they certainly didn't in real life.

If aurora ever allows some sort of in system hyper 2.0 electric boogaloo the game also needs to add interdiction components to counteract such jumps. Retreats should be costly and force you to make sacrifices in order to be able to save something. Right now the depth of retreating in aurora is basically if slower your dead, if faster good for you - there's no substance to that.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Yeah I like the DW way of handling jumping. I would absolutely agree that if there was no way to counter jump retreats it would be a detriment, but DW has hyperdeny components that prevent exactly that. Knowing the enemy is all well and good but you can never know all the possible reinforcements. It doesn't reduce depth to allow the player to effectively create a plan of retreat.

This means that a smaller force might have to partially retreat or risk everything and try to focus down the capital ship with the hyperdeny and potentially save everything.

I agree that DW is not as bad as, for example, Stellaris (where there is no depth to the retreat system at all, it just sort of happens). But, at least when I have played, I find myself in the situation of "jumps are frustrating" until I get hyperdeny, then hyperdeny goes on EVERYTHING and there are still no decisions to be made. The possibility of the mechanic being...ok...is there, but at least in vanilla I didn't feel like the balance was there.

Empires shouldn't lose all their teeth in a single battle, they certainly didn't in real life.

On the contrary, naval strategists were obsessed with single decisive engagements for decades. Battle of Tsushima was, to my understanding, lauded as the "goal" of naval combat. WWI in the Atlantic never went anywhere because both sides were trying to avoid that. And WWII had Midway.

If aurora ever allows some sort of in system hyper 2.0 electric boogaloo the game also needs to add interdiction components to counteract such jumps. Retreats should be costly and force you to make sacrifices in order to be able to save something. Right now the depth of retreating in aurora is basically if slower your dead, if faster good for you - there's no substance to that.

Agree that the current "slower==dead" scenario is not optimal. I've discussed elsewhere how acceleration curves could resolve this, but Newtonian Aurora is not currently on Steve's radar so....

[QuakeIV]

Yeah I think if Steve managed to get the AI to play with weapon failures (and in particular got the AI to break off an engagement if it got too low on maintenance supplies) then that would at least mitigate the outright slaughter factor somewhat.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The one way suggested here I think would to some degree help and not be OP either as you still would have to have your fleet stand completely still in space for 20-60min (subject to balance) or so before you would jump. This means that if you choose to to engage in beam combat it would not be easy to then just change your mind and jump away. You also could not just jump away from a missile trike either. There also would be a limit to the number of jumps you could realistically do.

You probably would not need to have a mechanic where you trap the opponent this way as there are not any real way to jump away quickly like in DW.

The same mechanic could also help a beam fleet to surprise an enemy fleet at close range or jump past an enemy and block their escape route through a JP, even a slower beam fleet could do that to a faster enemy. It also would make more sense to spread a fleet out as it would be easier to use the jump ability to reinforce another part of the fleet, or use it to fool an enemy into a trap.

Scouting would still be super important so you know when you need to strategically use this jump ability.

I don't have a problem if one fleet is destroyed or if there is major battle or they are decisive. My main issue is that there is too much difference between a fleet being slower or faster, this is mainly a technology thing and it is not either strategic nor tactical. A faster fleet can generally make all the mistake in the world and not really worry all that much while a slower fleet can't make a single mistake.
I'm not against mistakes being bad but I just think that fleet speed have too much influence on what type of mistakes you can do.

There could be other better ideas out there which would fit better without disrupting the power balance too much.

[Jorgen_CAB]

On the contrary, naval strategists were obsessed with single decisive engagements for decades. Battle of Tsushima was, to my understanding, lauded as the "goal" of naval combat. WWI in the Atlantic never went anywhere because both sides were trying to avoid that. And WWII had Midway.

Yes... they were obsessed with them but in practice these occasions are the exception to the rule rather than the norm... I mean that they actually occur. I think that was the point made above. 

[serger]

Well, you want to have an ability to take all your eggs in one basket and not be able to drop it with one careless move nevertheless, and obviously it's smth you want to yourselves, not for AI - you'll whine forever if nearly any AI fleet will have the same ability to run from your exellent ambushes and superior assault forces. You want it in the universe, where your enemies must move through the chain of narrow points to get to your core worlds, so you want to be careless and invincible simultaneously.

Well, where is The Fun in this case?

[xenoscepter]

Well, you want to have an ability to take all your eggs in one basket and not be able to drop it with one careless move nevertheless, and obviously it's smth you want to yourselves, not for AI - you'll whine forever if nearly any AI fleet will have the same ability to run from your exellent ambushes and superior assault forces. You want it in the universe, where your enemies must move through the chain of narrow points to get to your core worlds, so you want to be careless and invincible simultaneously.

Well, where is The Fun in this case?

 - Ok, this one made me laugh. A scathing indictment, but oh so often true. The AI already can do a sort of retreat and so can the player, by kemping bush I mean by camping the Jump Point and going back and forth really quickly. There was much whining to be had, and indeed rightfully so. I like the idea of building for tactical retreat, building for interdiction and such, so long as it costs the player & the AI something to have it.

[serger]

Though I'd say the game might benefit from some tactical elasticity, i.e. pursuit might be in some degree harder, then retreat. To make it so I'd suggest to take into account relative vectors of velocities, so if you are moving towards missiles/mines or kinetic fire - you'll take more damage, and vice versa.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well, you want to have an ability to take all your eggs in one basket and not be able to drop it with one careless move nevertheless, and obviously it's smth you want to yourselves, not for AI - you'll whine forever if nearly any AI fleet will have the same ability to run from your exellent ambushes and superior assault forces. You want it in the universe, where your enemies must move through the chain of narrow points to get to your core worlds, so you want to be careless and invincible simultaneously.

Well, where is The Fun in this case?

 - Ok, this one made me laugh. A scathing indictment, but oh so often true. The AI already can do a sort of retreat and so can the player, by kemping bush I mean by camping the Jump Point and going back and forth really quickly. There was much whining to be had, and indeed rightfully so. I like the idea of building for tactical retreat, building for interdiction and such, so long as it costs the player & the AI something to have it.

Yes... it was really a mouthful... at least what we suggested could be used for setting up traps and surprise an opponent as well as doing tactical retreats. All this could be made possible despite the speed difference of ships in a more equal setting. It also would come at a cost.

The speed thing always give the easy way out for the one with higher speed... so, currently there always are one party that can take the easy way out and never have to drop the basket of eggs... you just have to be faster. 

I don't think that what was suggested would make combat either less interesting or dangerous in general, just more equal and tactical and even the odds a bit between higher and lower technology and make it a bit less snowbally. That was my intention...

I'm also always thinking in terms of multiple human controlled factions... so how well the AI handles it is less of a concern for me personally. I would be very glad and exited if the AI managed to escape a well thought out attack I planed against them, that is what I want to happen. Against the AI I really don't care because it already is easy to stay away from the AI even with slower ships through proper scouting.