C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[alex_brunius]

I'm a bit concerned, to be honest. Final defensive fire was already really powerful.

Yeah, agree a bit. I expect the other point defense modes to go from being mostly useless / very situational, to absolutely useless by making final fire even better.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Final defensive fire have only been very effective against regular sized missile launchers fired in decently large sized salvos.

It was very costly to defend against small salvos and it will still be weak against large box launched salvos in the same way as before.

It is now just going to be more difficult to use missile fire-controls or different missile loadouts to break up missiles in salvos. Now you will need to invest less in fire-controls which will not really impact ship size as much as it will ship cost. The cost of fire-controls will now be more in line with the cost of fire-controls in a missile ship.

You still need allot of turrets so you don't waste shots which will be less gamey.

[QuakeIV]

I don't really see why using one mode of defensive fire over another is a problem.  If point defense is too powerful, make it more expensive or have a lower rate of fire or something.  The salvo spam stuff was always bizarre.

[Hazard]

Frankly, the various PDFCS should not be treating every salvo separately. They should instead check salvos on the basis of 'am I authorized to engage' (ie, is the salvo hostile or friendly), 'is the target in range' (for Area Defence PD), 'is it targeting my TF' (for Final Defensive Fire) and 'is it targeting me' (for Final Defensive Fire (Self Only)). It should then generate a list of its own (or for less calculation requirements I'd expect generate a list for the TF with all Area Defence PD, TF-wide FDF and ship specific FDF(SO) PDFCS and weapons) and start shooting, treating every category list as one big salvo.

Yes, this means that some big salvos might get lucky and not get engaged and thus turn their targets into expanding clouds of debris. That'd also happen in reality.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm a bit concerned, to be honest. Final defensive fire was already really powerful.

I'll see how it goes in play-testing. All this change really does though is reduce the number of beam fire controls required for point defence ships. It doesn't make the point defence itself more effective (beyond having a little extra space for weapons that used to be for fire controls).

It is intended to correct the problem the current system has with a lot of small fighter-launched salvos vs the same number of missiles in a smaller number of salvos.

[Steve Walmsley]

This should solve the issue of loads of small salvos overwhelming defensive fire controls problem. But does it mean that quad turrets are less impressive now since their four shots will be limited on one salvo? I would assume not really, because nobody fires bunch of identical salvos but each consisting of only 1-2 missiles.

No, because quad turrets were already limited to just one salvo before the change. This change means that you no longer need a fire control for each turret, except for adding redundancy overall.

[alex_brunius]

I don't really see why using one mode of defensive fire over another is a problem.  If point defense is too powerful, make it more expensive or have a lower rate of fire or something.  The salvo spam stuff was always bizarre.

The problem IMO is not that Final Fire or Point defense is too powerful ( I think it will be pretty well balanced with this change ) but that Area Defence for engaging at range is too weak / useless in comparison to Final Fire. This change makes the difference even worse since Final Fire now won't need alot of fire controls vs smaller salvos, while Area Defence still will

[Steve Walmsley]

I don't really see why using one mode of defensive fire over another is a problem.  If point defense is too powerful, make it more expensive or have a lower rate of fire or something.  The salvo spam stuff was always bizarre.

The problem IMO is not that Final Fire or Point defense is too powerful ( I think it will be pretty well balanced with this change ) but that Area Defence for engaging at range is too weak / useless in comparison to Final Fire. This change makes the difference even worse since Final Fire now won't need alot of fire controls vs smaller salvos, while Area Defence still will

Yes, agree on that. I need to look at area defence. It doesn't really function as I originally intended.

[misanthropope]

between the removal of one-bfc-per-volley and the implementation of tracking time bonus (both its simple existence and the particulars of how it works) i think you might want to have a serious look at railgun barges, steve.  unless i am greatly mistaken they are going to be just outrageously effective against any kind of long-ranged missile attack.

[Jorgen_CAB]

between the removal of one-bfc-per-volley and the implementation of tracking time bonus (both its simple existence and the particulars of how it works) i think you might want to have a serious look at railgun barges, steve.  unless i am greatly mistaken they are going to be just outrageously effective against any kind of long-ranged missile attack.

Yes... railguns might become a bit too powerful for PD going forward.

I would like for range and speed of bullets/beams to have more of an impact on the accuracy on weapons as well. For example a laser should be quite effective at PD since it can engage at relatively long range (given the speed of the beam). A rail gun that fire four shots in 5 sec still need to be able to engage in a 5 sec range interval or all those four shots will never have been able to fire in the first place, this also goes for Gauss weapons.

I get that it is an abstraction mechanic just now... but say the range tech on Gauss are not really that interesting to be honest since they do diddly squat for PD purposes.

Also, railguns for pure PD duty can be extremely cheap since you need to invest nothing in the range of the gun for them to be effective.

The range of the weapon should matter even during final fire PD. A missile salvo travelling say 250.000km in 5 sec and a gun that can engage it at 10.000km only have a window of 0.2 sec to engage the salvo. I think that PD weapons and the mechanics should be changed and the mechanic reworked at some time. I don't think it is necessary to do it right now, just fix some of the imbalance for now.

[alex_brunius]

The range of the weapon should matter even during final fire PD. A missile salvo travelling say 250.000km in 5 sec and a gun that can engage it at 10.000km only have a window of 0.2 sec to engage the salvo. I think that PD weapons and the mechanics should be changed and the mechanic reworked at some time. I don't think it is necessary to do it right now, just fix some of the imbalance for now.

True. This is the issue I have with how the mechanics works as well. I also don't see why logically ( since the speed of the missile is known ) longer ranged PD like lasers could fire at range if they have range and time allowing for the cooldown, and then still perform final fire in the end.

[Steve Walmsley]

Weapon damage is always calculated with a minimum range of 10,000 km. The same could be done with fire controls, so that maximum range made a difference to the to-hit chance for point-blank fire. However that wouldn't affect weapon design.

Also, having longer range weapons is useful for offensive combat so I'm not sure I would ever deliberately reduce my max potential railgun range for the sake of cheaper point defence. I'll see how it works in testing.

[Hazard]

If I was talking about a dedicated PD mount I'd want to make my railgun as small as possible with as high a rate of fire as possible and as high a tracking speed as possible. FDF isn't really about hitting the target as much as it's about filling the vector it's approaching on with as much lead as possible so it either veers off or detonates without hitting its intended victim.

Railguns are great at being dual purpose weapons though, so you kinda want to make them also good at ship to ship or ship to surface combat.

Actually, talking of ship to ground combat, railguns IIRC are relatively low damage but fire 4 times in a single round, so they'd be very well suited to orbital bombardment of relatively poorly armoured targets like infantry heavy armies.

[Steve Walmsley]

Actually, talking of ship to ground combat, railguns IIRC are relatively low damage but fire 4 times in a single round, so they'd be very well suited to orbital bombardment of relatively poorly armoured targets like infantry heavy armies.

Yes, I think so too. I hope to find out soon

[Father Tim]

between the removal of one-bfc-per-volley and the implementation of tracking time bonus (both its simple existence and the particulars of how it works) i think you might want to have a serious look at railgun barges, steve.  unless i am greatly mistaken they are going to be just outrageously effective against any kind of long-ranged missile attack.

Until the AI starts building 'rail gun barges' I don't think it's the slightest bit of a problem.  Until recently, box-launcher spam and massive fighter swarms have been "outrageously effective" -- I'm tremendously pleased that this is finally getting addressed.

As always with Aurora, if you find something 'exploity' or 'too effective', don't use it.  Personally, I am desperately looking forward to my age-of-sail fleet not having to constantly 'break character' to avoid annihilation at the hands (tentacles?) of Precursors.