Author Topic: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike  (Read 20364 times)

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Offline ollobrains

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #60 on: February 15, 2012, 02:51:23 PM »
Well the civilan economy works in a fashion do the things trade automatically ?
 

Offline Havear

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #61 on: February 23, 2012, 03:58:32 PM »
More on-topic, how about a sort of hyperspace tracking station? There's a tech line increasing the range, and any ships passing through could be detected. At minimum, it encourages listening colonies, and at most prevents deep strikes as any force will be seen far from their objective.
 
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Offline ollobrains

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #62 on: February 24, 2012, 01:28:54 AM »
good thinking, steve whats youre take on this
 

Offline Moonshadow101

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #63 on: March 23, 2012, 10:24:41 AM »
I feel like the easiest way to have a "front," of sorts, is less about handicapping the attackers and more about giving the defenders two key advantages: notice and mobility.  Notice would be provided by the proportional warning-vs-distance function discussed earlier.  Mobility would, I'd think, be provided by some kind of spaceborne infrastructure, a sort of space-railroad.  Your home system would be linked to colonies by "hyperspace tunnels" or equivalent to decrease the theoretical distance between the systems, or perhaps a sort of catapult which imparts a substantial hyperspace velocity at no cost.  This way, empires could spend resources to bring systems closer in to their defensive heart.  Fringe systems, not necessarily worth the very large investment of building spacerailroads, are more vulnerable.

In this situation, the combination of early warning andr mobility creates a circle around your home system, which is presumably the center of both fleets and sensing equipment.  The circle represents the area within which you can deploy your fleet before being reached for a given attackers jump distance.
 

Offline UnLimiTeD

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #64 on: March 23, 2012, 06:42:20 PM »
I happy endorse the idea of built jump gates as a means of high tech Infrastructure.
The problem with that assumption is that it still won't stop anyone from directly jumping to a races home system to dump a few thousand tons of nuclear warheads on any inhabited planets.
Sure you can kill the fleet, but there is still no direct incentive for the attacker not to try. Fleet versus winning the war? I'd take it.
What else could they possible attack that bears the chance of instantly winning?
 

Offline Havear

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #65 on: March 24, 2012, 08:38:59 AM »
Depends on the person you're attacking. If they've moved important chunks of their industry to other systems, those become great targets. I mean, why not send a fleet to a potentially unguarded system when it contains their primary center of planetary construction? Or stage a diversion to wipe out the maintenance facilities keeping their fleet from degrading. If for whatever reason the opposing player has indeed kept facilities consolidated to his homeworld, he can expect to be attacked there and losing means the end, but then again he's very concentrated. Redundancy will make such attacks harder, necessitating an island-hopping approach until you take enough territory to totally cripple his war fighting ability.
 

Offline UnLimiTeD

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #66 on: March 24, 2012, 01:51:13 PM »
Thats the entire point.
You only spread if you don't expect to be able to defend yourself anyways.
Which is questionable, because why can't you when you have the very expensive means to move a significant percentage of your Industry?
 

Offline Havear

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #67 on: March 25, 2012, 07:27:45 AM »
Given time, even a small force of freighters can move everything off the homeworld, let alone the merchant marine capacity for most government types. Depending how long the game lasts, you're going to eventually need to transfer at minimum your mining capacity elsewhere. Fortifying and making such areas self-sufficient before they're necessary is a logical step, one that also makes your homeworld redundant. While not everyone will play like that, agreed, I see no reason why someone who wants to bottle up their forces in what amounts to a very small area should be discouraged further then the idea that their opponent is going to be able to expand further and faster.
 

Offline UnLimiTeD

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #68 on: March 25, 2012, 12:37:31 PM »
"Expansion" is a non-entity.
The cost of moving is measured in fuel, not time, though if the source is abundant it is obviously time to get the fuel.
And if time is the only factor, I'd be a scale of centuries, not years.

Ultimately, an expansion doesn't result in any "frontline", as some people seem to be advocating for.
It might just result in two or three centers of note for a particular race; mining, population industry, whatever;

Expansion won't happen for Expansion's sake, as we are used from Aurora, unless a player deliberately sets himself that goal.
I have no problems with those implications, the whole Project seems to be more or less a test balloon, and I'm eager to fly with it once the tickets are handed out.
 

Offline Havear

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #69 on: March 25, 2012, 01:58:18 PM »
I'm advocating less of a "front-line" and more of a "multiple-ways of crippling the enemy". I'm curious as to how the resource system will work out especially, since lack of TN materials is the usual impetus for expansion.
 

Offline MehMuffin

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #70 on: April 10, 2012, 05:46:46 PM »
One possible form of deep strike that I see is with the new self guided missiles, a task group jumping into a system only for long enough to target an enemy colony/base and fire self guided missiles at where it will be when they reach it, and jumping out. This would let a box launcher salvo of several hundred missiles combined with a deep strike easily wipe out an alien homeworld.
 

Offline UnLimiTeD

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #71 on: April 11, 2012, 06:02:56 AM »
Unless someone detonates a single nuke in their path.
Or a Canister of Sand.
 

Offline jseah

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #72 on: April 11, 2012, 10:06:58 AM »
Doctrine: 1000km separation between individual missiles. 
Doctrine: Missiles perform evasive maneuvers when enemy is within 300 000km. 

Then again, there is a different way.  The missiles may not be able to reach the planet but demonstrate it one time anyway.  Show up with a huge force, announce your presence, launch a deliberately under-strength salvo and leave. 

Now the defender is forced to place anti-missile defences at every important colony. 

Imagine defending Titan against an incoming missile salvo... while Earth is in opposition.  Defending spread out colonies in multiple systems could cost more than the attacking fleet + missiles. 
 

Offline swarm_sadist

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #73 on: March 10, 2013, 01:29:48 PM »
Resurrection; almost been a year but oh well...

I was thinking more about deep strikes in a 3D environment and I discovered some limitations, most of which have already been discussed.

1. Time: the amount of time from the order to the completion of the task increases as the distance increases. While this may be minor if there is some way to communicate FTL, a universe with a limited communications range will effectively put that unit out of action until the task is completed. It also increases the time between strikes, reducing the effectiveness as the enemy rebuilds any damage received.

2. Range: the range increases twice as fast as the distance, since the unit must turn around and head back home at the end of the mission. A longer range requires more fuel, more supplies, more room for the crew in place of weapons. A long range unit would therefor be weaker than a system defence craft, and this difference would increase as the range required increased.

3. Intel: the intelligence of distant targets will always be worse than closer targets, will be more out of date and will be less frequent. Scout ships would need to be placed nearer to the enemy in order to have accurate intelligence, but that would require either more range or more forward outposts to refuel them. Forward outposts that would most likely be circumvented by the enemy.

4. Firepower: as mentioned before, the firepower of a unit must be sacrificed for range, and the increased range will increase the time required to head back and reload. Therefor, even if you managed to infiltrate a system and bomb a planet, there is no guarantee that the planet would be wrecked enough to justify the fuel costs.

My idea:
Have it so that ships must travel between stars when moving at FTL (which is how it has been explained), and make it dependant upon the size of the star. The larger, less common stars would act as a crossroad for long distance travel, while the clusters of the more numerous small stars would act like islands. More powerful FTL engines could move a ship between much more distant stars, while the weaker starting engines would only allow movement between nearby stars only.

Movement between small dwarf stars would be possible only at short range, while two super giants could allow travel across thousands of ly at high tech levels. The distant super giant would have it's own cluster around itself, allowing for stellar highways across large distances. Further up the tech tree, more advanced travel from larger (and more dangerous stars) could allow for further distances to be travelled (possibly even between black holes).

This would result in forward bases being constructed across multiple systems, as well as the placement of fleets inside large star wells. The 'islands' of dwarf stars would allow for island hopping campaigns across a cluster, but would still allow for deep strikes at higher tech levels (or with better, dedicated engines for long distance travel).
 

Offline PTTG

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Re: Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
« Reply #74 on: April 19, 2013, 07:08:08 PM »
I got the feeling that Steve backed off from Newtonian Aurora, which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to it.