Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: October 28, 2014, 05:01:06 AM »I've been thinking about beam range lately owing to a lot of Beam combat in my 3 faction start.
right now even the smallest advantage in speed + range equates to complete dominance in beam combat, against any odds. Even one tech level is enough to accomplish that, generally. Longer range BFC+ better ECM gives an absolute advantage in range, while higher tech engines give an absolute advantage in speed. Anything that a lower tech faction can do to try and counter a fast beam combatant (other than missiles), a higher tech can do better. It's not really a *problem* because missiles are the dominant weapon in the game but I don't think it's good for the game either.
Here's my brainstorms on the topic:
Tactical-level options
Basically, that there are things you can choose to do in combat that will affect your combat range or speed.
Sacrificing attack/range for speed: the "Afterburner/Hyperdrive" option. If you sacrifice the ability to fire effectively in order to gain a massive boost to speed, you could close the range against a higher range opponent. The main problem with this is that the higher range/speed opponent could also immediately afterburner, resulting in a stalemate. I understand the "Starfire solution" for this was to introduce engine failure chances. This could work with failure chances, but has the potential flaw of drastically reducing the hit chances of missiles - any intelligent TF commander would obviously afterburner before a salvo hits. There's also potential for micromanagement hell.
Sacrificing speed for defence: Reducing the enemy's chance to hit by going into 'evasive maneuvers' or some such. So he has to get closer if he wants to hit. This has the same basic flaw as the afterburner option, namely the other guy can do it too. He just has to mirror your actions. It shouldn't cause problems for missile combat though.
Sacrificing speed for range: the "Steady Platform" option. Basically the notion that a ship can sacrifice it's speed to gain a boost to beam/BFC range. 50-100% boost would enable ships equipped with long range weapons to at least fire back against reasonably close tech levels. One problem would be decreasing the importance of tracking speed against ships. It also slightly decreases the relative viability of short range fast beam ships, since they will be exposed to incoming fire for a longer period of time. I think this option has the least problems with mirroring, though theoretically a longer ranged attacker could get a range boost for one shot then disengage the boost and continue accelerating away.
All three of the above options might require 'cooldowns' on entering and existing range/speed/defence boosts to prevent mirroring problems.
Game design options
Fiddling with weapon/BFC statistics.
Equality in range: Essentially, that all BFCs and/or beam weapons can hit out to 5LS, though with wildly varying damage and hit chances. I think this would work fine, but would be less interesting than other options. You may not be able to effectively return fire, but at least you have a *chance* of
hitting.
Ship design options
Things you could do at the ship design level. You could turn the earlier'tactical' options into components if one so desired. Other than that though:
Overbuilding: If you had the option to drastically overbuild your beam range - much like how you can get range from low tech missiles/MFCs - then you could potentially build 'sniper' or 'dreadnought' ships capable of countering an enemy's range, albeit at high cost. Spinal mounts are an example of this from the weapon design perspective. The principal difficulty remains the same as in the status quo, the enemy can build the same ship but better. To work effectively, you'd have to have the option to overbuild out to max range from a relatively low tech level - say Ion or MP. You'd need this for both weapons and BFCs.
to get that kind of range though you'd need some pretty big modifiers. Two examples for 32kkm tech:Code: [Select]Size 1 2 3 4 5 6
Mult 1 3 6 10 15 21
Cost 19 38 57 76 95 114
50% 32 96 192 320 480 672
Max 64 192 384 640 960 1344Code: [Select]Size 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Mult 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Cost 19 38 57 76 95 114 133 152 171 190 209 228 247 266 285
50% 32 64 96 128 160 192 224 256 288 320 352 384 416 448 480
Max 64 128 192 256 320 384 448 512 576 640 704 768 832 896 960
40kkm BFC versionCode: [Select]Size 1 2 3 4 5 6
Mult 1 3 6 10 15 21
Cost 24 48 72 96 120 144
50% 40 120 240 400 600 840
Max 80 240 480 800 1200 1680
A potential problem would probably be the same one as now, that long range/ high speed boats may dominate beam combat. Spinals / ultra long range weapons would dominate the metagame.
Speed Interference: Fast ship designs get penalties to their weapons range or chance to hit (effectively the same thing), essentially penalizing designs that attempt to pack both capabilities into the same design. For example, you could get 5% penalty per 1000 kkm/s your ship is faster than your base tracking speed. I think this idea could work, but I have yet to come up with numbers I like or a method of application I like.
Have you actually tried combat formations rather than just keeping ships in one spot following each-other. This lead to the behavior that ships can not stay at distance to all ships at once and there will be opportunity for ships to fire at ships that are both faster and with better range. I also find it makes perfect sense for factions to make different types of ships for different roles so some ships are faster and others are slower which also make beam combat more complicated.
A faster beam combat ship might escort a slower ship but who has powerful long range particle beams. If they face someone with a better range and speed the escort will just slide further against the threat using the formation editor and the attacking ship must choose to stay and fight the slower ship rather than the escort. If you turn to engage the escort they fall back and you must enter into the particle beam range of the bigger cruisers. With targeting and ordering ships back and forth which ships you follow can seriously impact a ships position in combat and they can suddenly find themselves in very undesirable situations, especially initiative can also play a huge role in many cases.
In the battles I have previously done it quickly develops into huge fur-balls and volume is almost as important as technology if done right. Fleet training, high crew skill and commanding ability seem more dominating than technology in most cases so far.
I might also say it is very rare for any side to be completely dominating any one area and at the same time have all their ships upgraded and ready for battle, that almost never happens.