Beam Fire Controls

[Konisforce]

I just want to throw in as someone on the "fine as it is" side of the fence.  Beam weapons out-ranging their fire controls isn't a new issue, it's only gotten (will get, rather, with 6.3) cheaper to run into with the spinal mounts.  My first and only thought when I saw the spinal mounts was a 'yippee!' that the damage at my beam limit will have gone up by a chunk if I go the spinal route.  I can see why it's annoying to feel like there's some extra range you're losing out on, but it's missing something you never had before.

That said, the atmospheric restriction removal is interesting.  I think the ability for orbital beam ships to shoot at PDCs but not populations might be a good one - ground-to-space and vice versa duking it out and short range.  It adds some strategic possibilities to ground invasions that aren't currently there.  What are the downsides that I'm missing w/r/t allowing PDCs to be targeted?

[CheaterEater]

Wouldn't shields be significantly more effective against long-range beam weapons? Their cycle times are long enough (or can be made long enough with additional modifiers) that shields can regenerate a reasonably large amount between shots. Since each ship can bring only one spinal mount you would need to spend a large ship premium to get lots of spinal beam weapons out there for focus fire. As an example, against the 38 cm advanced UV laser given at size 12 versus shield recharge rate 3 using 12 HS of shields would net you 6 shield strength recharged every cycle. That's enough to nullify a significant amount of their range with some shield strength as a buffer against more spinal weapons/closer ranges. You can tweak spinal mount recharge/size modifiers to make shields more or less useful as needed.

[alex_brunius]

Beside the 5 second light-speed limit, another reason for restricting beam range is that beam weapons have unlimited ammunition and have no counter. Currently, if you out-range your opponents in beam combat it is generally not by a huge amount and they don't have to be much faster to close the range in a reasonable time. If beam weapons had significantly longer ranges then one side could be at huge disadvantage. If you outrange an opponent with missiles, he can still shoot them down and you have to build and transport those missiles.

So another solution would be to give them a counter right?
For example reflective armor types or some kind of shields that can reduce damage from certain energy weapons.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the passive defenses in Aurora. We have so much choice and diversification when it comes to different offensive weapons as well as active defenses, but passive defenses are actually pretty boring in comparison.

Where are the reactive armors, reflective armors, absorbing armors, anti kinetic armors. Shields that you can tweak either for absorbing loads of damage or for quick regeneration, or for reducing special kinds of incoming fire. Or why not high vs low quality armor where you can spend lot's of extra minerals and build-cost for a slight improvement.


It could also be worth considering if beam weapons should always have unlimited ammo. What if continuous beam fire slowly starts to overheating the power-plants and these normally being designed to not sustain more then X amount of pulses before requiring cool-down or risk blowing up. A gutsy captain would keep running them anyways and gamble, but sooner or later the risk is to high unless you really design them many 100% over normal capacity required. Or the capacitors could act as batteries only able to store up a certain amount of pulses before a much longer cooldown is incurred, I'm sure there are ways to model such things if there is a balance need for it and could result in many cool situations.


I also like to make comparison to WW2 ship movement/ranges/reload to get "the right feeling" of balance. The most powerful naval gun could reach around 42km and the fastest fleet ships traveled around 70km/h. That means it could take over 30 min within firing range to reach a stationary battleship with a fast destroyer.

Reload times were comparable with Aurora (30 sec for big guns and 5 sec for small ones).

In Aurora we have say beam fire controls of a certain tech level reaching 500'000km and fastest well rounded ships (above FAC size) go say 10'000km/s. That means it takes only 50 seconds to close range to point blank, and the relation to ship speed versus gun ranges is off by over 30 times compared to WW2 maneuvers.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for such a feeling I seek in a game ships are either moving far to fast, or beam ranges are far to short. Beam engagements feel like they are over before they start, two aurora fleets moving at a "slow" 5000km/s and that are on collision course are closing with 50000km every tick meaning there is almost no time to even reload guns before your at point blank at these tech levels, so why open fire at range at all? It also makes beam combat very unforgiving for mistakes, a single 5 sec increment wrong or with untrained crew and your enemy is at point blank and evaporates your ships.

I realize changing this would require a major re balance.

[bean]

I also like to make comparison to WW2 ship movement/ranges/reload to get "the right feeling" of balance. The most powerful naval gun could reach around 42km and the fastest fleet ships traveled around 70km/h. That means it could take over 30 min within firing range to reach a stationary battleship with a fast destroyer.

First off, this isn't WW2, and it won't balance the same, particularly as it covers so much technological territory. Second, those numbers aren't entirely correct.  A Fletcher could make 38 knots only under ideal conditions (in service, it might make, IIRC, 35), while the very longest range gun hits were at maybe 26 km.  The 42 km number is more like the theoretical maximum range of the lasers.

[alex_brunius]

First off, this isn't WW2, and it won't balance the same, particularly as it covers so much technological territory. Second, those numbers aren't entirely correct.  A Fletcher could make 38 knots only under ideal conditions (in service, it might make, IIRC, 35), while the very longest range gun hits were at maybe 26 km.  The 42 km number is more like the theoretical maximum range of the lasers.

Indeed, numbers are only in the rough ballpark, and of-course I realize the game is not supposed to be balanced after WW2. But sure half the range and half the practical speed (was alot slower in high seas) and their ratio remains identical.

To get the feeling of big ships trying to hit each-other from vast distances the ratio needs to be at least remotely similar though. Currently Aurora space-combat for me feels like the 30000 ton ships are small bees closing range in a matter of seconds and accelerating/stopping on a dime, and it just feels wrong for me. The acceleration part ofcourse can't change without newtonian or core gameengine overhaul, but the closing range within seconds before beams can fire again might be possible to change.

[bean]

Indeed, numbers are only in the rough ballpark, and of-course I realize the game is not supposed to be balanced after WW2. But sure half the range and half the practical speed (was alot slower in high seas) and their ratio remains identical.

I didn't say half the practical speed.  It might make 30 to 35 in normal conditions.  Not a lot of battles were fought in really bad weather.

To get the feeling of big ships trying to hit each-other from vast distances the ratio needs to be at least remotely similar though. Currently Aurora space-combat for me feels like the 30000 ton ships are small bees closing range in a matter of seconds and accelerating/stopping on a dime, and it just feels wrong for me. The acceleration part ofcourse can't change without newtonian or core gameengine overhaul, but the closing range within seconds before beams can fire again might be possible to change.

The problem is that aurora covers such a broad technical territory, without the limits of naval design.  Making a ship go much above 30 knots is really expensive.  The Fletchers are about the fastest truly successful design I can think of.  Most faster ships weren't much good in combat.  Aurora has no such speed limit, so speeds will tend to vary a lot more, throwing the balance off.  It's not really a soluble problem.  But the question I have is why a fast ship closing on a stationary battleship is the test case?  Why not a destroyer and a battleship at speed?  Keep in mind that in WWII, the longest gunfire hits were on slow-moving targets.  A destroyer at 30+ knots is a lot harder of a target than a carrier or a battleship at less than 20.  Against a small ship, the actual effective range would be lower still.

[Mel Vixen (OP)]

Actually aurora has a speedlimit. The speed of light (iirc. Steve put that limiter in after someone mada FTL missiles) its high enought thought to ignore it most of the time.

[Bgreman]

It could also be worth considering if beam weapons should always have unlimited ammo. What if continuous beam fire slowly starts to overheating the power-plants and these normally being designed to not sustain more then X amount of pulses before requiring cool-down or risk blowing up. A gutsy captain would keep running them anyways and gamble, but sooner or later the risk is to high unless you really design them many 100% over normal capacity required. Or the capacitors could act as batteries only able to store up a certain amount of pulses before a much longer cooldown is incurred, I'm sure there are ways to model such things if there is a balance need for it and could result in many cool situations.

I'd say add a "coolant" ammunition type (and a corresponding "coolant" tank module), but you could just abstract that away and make beam weapon use cost fuel, like shields..  I'd always assumed that the fuel cost for shields was the cost in fuel to run the reactors/engines (take your pick for which actually generates the power for shields) at a higher power setting in order to power the shields.

[alex_brunius]

But the question I have is why a fast ship closing on a stationary battleship is the test case?  Why not a destroyer and a battleship at speed?

The test case isn't really relevant more then as an illustration, what's relevant is the ratio of speed and gunfire range.

If we use your numbers instead, 30knt (55km/h) and say ships could start hitting such targets at 15km range that ratio is 3.6 gun ranges traveled per hour in WW2.

In Aurora using 5000km/s and 500'000km range we get 36 gun ranges traveled per hour or 10 times quicker to close range at any given similar ratio speed advantage.

Aurora combat to me "feels" like if a WW2 Battleship could start hitting a Destroyer at 3600 meter range and would do minimal damage due to fire-control and beam damage falloff (we are talking max possible range).

To this we add the fact that as you say speeds tend to vary alot more in Aurora then in WW2 vessels due to exponentially increased power need to increase speed in reality that's not present in Aurora.

I'd say add a "coolant" ammunition type (and a corresponding "coolant" tank module), but you could just abstract that away and make beam weapon use cost fuel, like shields..

If the only point is to add cooldowns or limits of ammo to beam weapon they would have to use a hell of alot of fuel to warrant someone stop firing. I don't think that much complexity needs to be added to simulate some cooling down periods if it's needed for balance.

If more complex coolant systems are added I think it should rather be a shipwide system for cooling the everything like engine thermal outputs, beams, power-plants and most active systems that handle a lot of energy.

[Bgreman]

If the only point is to add cooldowns or limits of ammo to beam weapon they would have to use a hell of alot of fuel to warrant someone stop firing. I don't think that much complexity needs to be added to simulate some cooling down periods if it's needed for balance.

If more complex coolant systems are added I think it should rather be a shipwide system for cooling the everything like engine thermal outputs, beams, power-plants and most active systems that handle a lot of energy.

My intention is to add another operational consideration.  If one of the big reasons beam weapons are short-ranged is that it is a way to balance their unlimited ammunition, I would gladly trade a (steep) fuel cost for beam use for longer (superluminal) ranges.  Fuel use is increased in 6.0+, so it would be an important decision if firing your lasers at a bad guy two more times will leave you unable to get back to base afterward.

Frankly, I think the idea of a "coolant" mechanic of equal design importance to power / fuel / armor / deployment is really "cool" (har har), but I wonder if it really adds that much meaningful gameplay or whether it's just complexity for its own sake.  I am unfortunately not a great game designer because I like deep, often pointless simulationism (I'd be fine if I had to produce , transport, and track railgun/gauss cannon projectiles), which is why I proposed abstracting it out and just adding beam weapons to the list of things that consume fuel.

[CheaterEater]

Fuel cost seems to go against half the point of lasers. If lasers cost a fair amount of fuel, enough to make it really something you care about, it negates one of their prime strategic advantages in how little logistics support they require compared to missiles. If you make it too little there's no point in adding them in. I don't think finding a good balance point would be easy if there even is one.

I think a cooling system or capacitor system would be much more interesting. Something that allows you to fire lasers quickly for a short period of time but then increases their cycle time as combat drags on. In particular, a capacitor system would open up a lot of interesting options for smaller ships like fighters and FACs operating very long-range single-shot beam weapons. It adds in tactical logistics (balancing power generation, short-term storage and power consumption) without compromising strategic logistics. Cooldown systems are good too but come with a lot of extras that seem to really deserve a place too to integrate that all together nicely the first time through.

[alex_brunius]

but I wonder if it really adds that much meaningful gameplay or whether it's just complexity for its own sake.

It could take into account all the combined output of all energy systems and compare it to cooling capacity. So you could for example build a ship with less cooling capacity but designed to only fire when stationary for a dedicated jump point guard (cooling either engines or weapons but not both at the same time). It could also be used to differentiate between different beam weapons, some requiring vastly more cooling then others for a bit more power or range. And in addition to that the main point, that it would be very hard to cool sustained beam fire for most beam weapons, leading to a sort of tactical soft limit on their "ammo".
I think such a mechanic could add a lot of pretty meaningful design considerations.

It also risk adding some some frustrating game play if you have a vastly more powerful beam ship and many times more enemies to defeat and need to wait a lot more time for beam cooling before being able to kill them all. Another risk is that it makes beam fighters or FACs to complex, and need special or simplified coolant system versions for these craft.

[Bgreman]

Fuel cost seems to go against half the point of lasers. If lasers cost a fair amount of fuel, enough to make it really something you care about, it negates one of their prime strategic advantages in how little logistics support they require compared to missiles. If you make it too little there's no point in adding them in. I don't think finding a good balance point would be easy if there even is one.

This was my point.  Currently, as stated by Steve, one of the balance points is that missiles have long range, but limited ammo.  Beams have unlimited ammo, but limited range.  If you wanted to change the range of beam weapons (which I do), you'd need to alter that balance point, and I think making beams cost fuel (like another system, shields, already does) would be the most direct way to go about it.  There are certainly other ways, and arguments to be made for them, but for ease of implementation and play, I think a fuel cost would be simplest.

I justify it by noting that reactors are only necessary for beam weapons, which means something else must be providing power for all the other things a ship does (scanners, ship electricity, etc).  I choose to assume there is some power take-off mechanism from the engines (the fact that each engine tech has a prerequisite reactor tech supports this), meaning the engines contain an integrated reactor or something.  Thus it doesn't seem far-fetched to me to make power reactors for beam weapons require fuel as well.

[Charlie Beeler]

Beside the 5 second light-speed limit, another reason for restricting beam range is that beam weapons have unlimited ammunition and have no counter. Currently, if you out-range your opponents in beam combat it is generally not by a huge amount and they don't have to be much faster to close the range in a reasonable time. If beam weapons had significantly longer ranges then one side could be at huge disadvantage. If you outrange an opponent with missiles, he can still shoot them down and you have to build and transport those missiles.

I wouldn't say that beam weapons (with the exception of mesons) have no counter.  Shields at the same tech level will stop beam fire cold at all but the shortest ranges as long as fuel is available.  At least the way I use them in ship design they will.

Common practice for most players is to design warships that use 5+ layers of armor and no shields, I tend to use about half that amount of armor and fill the "unused" armor hs's with shields*.  even at ranges where BFC's are at 50% hit rates the actual damage is usually 25% or less of the max potential.  The combination low hit probability and low damage means that the shields can recycle faster hull space for hull space than the damage can accumulate.  This of course is only in a ship v ship scenario. 
*-In actual practice I use a % formula based on projected ship size to determine armor and shield needs.

Using the example 25cm-UV-C4 laser/31cm-UV-C4 spinal laser/38cm-UV-C4 advanced spinal laser.  The rof's are 20/35/50, and hull space usage is 8/10/12.  Epsilon shields(3pts)/regen 3/BFC 50%-40k km are the matching tech.  The 4X range BFC is 50% at 160k/km.  Damage at this range for the lasers are 4/6/9 respectively.  The shields can easily handle this at equal hs usage.


Even if the highest level BFC was changed to an absurd level to allow a max laser a 1% chance to hit at max range(80cm Gamma Ray/20.1mkm) the damage potential at a 'mere' 1.4mkm(hit chance 93%) is only 14 (down from the max a 168) and a singe max Omega shield is rated at 15.  With the laser being 25hs in size the same space in shield can withstand 375pts of damage, with the matching regeneration tech they will fully recycle in 5 minutes.  In the same time the laser will only get 8 shots (rof 35) which means the shields will counter the laser shot for shot, hull space for hull space as long as the fuel holds out and the range stays open. 

Not saying that the beam ranges should be changed though.  Just an examples that it would not be as unbalancing against  the existing tech as is commonly presumed.  The profile of degrading beam damage over range negates most of the potential of beams ability to inflict damage beyond very short ranges, especially if existing tech shields are being used.

Too offset the unlimited nature of most beams have powerplanets require fuel usage to produce a power point at the same rate as engines produce a propulsion point.

I could make the range increments cheaper so you have a slightly longer range earlier, but I want to avoid huge beam weapon ranges.

As things stand, I'd recommend leaving the current range increments stand.  With the caveat that users with database access can still make personal changes to allow greater BFC ranges.  This of course is with the usual stipulations about bug reporting related to user database changes (ie don't).

An alternative would be to code a hit bonus if the BFC has a greater tracking speed that the target.  I haven't looked into what kind of imbalancing properties this may introduce, it's merely an off-the-cuff idea.

Another option I am considering however is to remove the atmospheric restrictions on beam weapons and give planetary-based beam weapons a similar type of enhancement to spinal weapons. Longer range is less of an issue when you can't move. Beam-armed PDCs on the same planet wouldn't be able to fire at once another (except for mesons). If I did this though, that raises the issue of using beams to cleanly wipe out planetary populations (which is why the restriction was added in the first place). To avoid that I can see two options:

1) Make ground-based installations and populations immune to beam weapon fire - each one is spread over a large area and beam weapons are precision weapons. Allow beam weapons to act as fire support for ground combat - adding to combat strength up to perhaps an amount equal to the ground combat attack strength.
2) Allow beam weapons a chance to fail with each shot. Not as keen on this as it removes one of the main advantages over missiles.

Steve

Dropping atmospheric restrictions sounds interesting.  It does open up some possibilities.  My suggestion is to only have populations immune from direct loss from beam weapons.  But make installations (factories/mines/etc) susceptible to direct beam fire.  Said beam fire does ramp up atmospheric dust and possibly background count.  Maybe they need to inflict more damage than missiles to destroy installations representing the spread out nature of the targets vs precision beams.

If a failure possibility is added to beams per shot then missiles really should get one as well.  Base failure rate could be based on the existing systems failure rate and be incremented is some fashion after x-number of firing cycles.  The additional failure rate could be decrement based y-number of non-firing cycles (non-firing cycles could be days/weeks/months/etc).  This would actually take a step towards representing combat usage impacting reliability and proper maintenance offsetting combat wear.

[CheaterEater]

This was my point.  Currently, as stated by Steve, one of the balance points is that missiles have long range, but limited ammo.  Beams have unlimited ammo, but limited range.  If you wanted to change the range of beam weapons (which I do), you'd need to alter that balance point, and I think making beams cost fuel (like another system, shields, already does) would be the most direct way to go about it.  There are certainly other ways, and arguments to be made for them, but for ease of implementation and play, I think a fuel cost would be simplest.

With the ranges proposed here missiles will still vastly outrange beam weapons in pretty much all cases, even for AMMs. It's not really changing the balance between those two systems and especially not when I would consider those systems "in their element" (open space for missiles versus close-range JP ranges for lasers). ASMs can easily have ranges of 100 mkm with moderate tech levels so boosting lasers from 1.5 million (at max) to even 20 mkm (max range with far gamma 80 cm laser) wouldn't approach vastly inferior tech missile ranges, much less contemporary tech missile ranges even before considering damage drop-off and hit-rate drop-off at longer ranges for lasers and BFCs. Comparing the two and trying to find balance between ranges and their other advantages/disadvantages is not really relevant then. Even with changes missiles should still have their range advantage so there's no reason to take away the logistics advantages of lasers on that count.

The real question is how it affects beam vs. beam combat. If it's possible to have such a range advantage so that even a speed-focused group can't effectively close the range to bring their own weapons to bear for reasonably comparable tech levels then there's a problem. Fuel costs don't seem like a good way to deal with that since small lasers be hurt as much as large lasers. I think something to restrict firing of large lasers more than small lasers would be one effective way to approach it. If larger, long-range lasers cycle less often they're trading off DPS for the increased range. Or they could pay a size premium, making small lasers better in terms of DPS/HS or having the same DPS but gaining speed/shields/armor to better close the range gap. Having longer ranges is an advantage but then not an overpowering one.